The Power of Living a Balanced Life with Yoga
Balance (together with Energy) is one of the most used word in the Yoga Universe.
We all aim for a balanced-lifestyle, balanced-diet, balanced work-personal life time, but do we mean exactly? Oxford dictionary defines Balance as:
- an even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady.
- a situation in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions.
Equality, Correct Proportion, Equilibrium. Is there a Univeral recipe that we can apply to all human beings, when we talk about nourishing and cultivating a balanced lifestyle? Is there a magic potion?
No, there isn’t.
Why? Because all human beings are unique pieces of art with different needs, wants, stories, values and upbringing. It means that our point of Balance (an even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady) is different for each of us.
So many times, I tried, in vain, to hold on, to carve out in my life a point of balance that I had found after many attempts. So many times, I had to readjust that point, because the conditions of my life have changed or something has happened and brought me out of balance.
However, those out of balance moments, are great master teachers and blisses: they are like a mirror where we can clearly see what we need to adjust, so that we can bring elements in a correct proportion. They are moment of contractions in our life, where can gently humble our head down, learn our lessons and move on.
Today I want to use this Blog Post to facilitate an experience for you; I am not here to teach you anything, or influencing you in any way – I am facilitating an experience with and for you: I will give you tools that you can apply on your personal life situation.
What is Balance for you? How would you define a Balanced Lifestyle?
All the women reading this Blog Post have different jobs, roles, culture, values and experiences. I invite you to close your eyes and try to imagine yourself living and thriving in a balanced lifestyle. Unleash your imagination, even if your mind is telling you that this is not possible for you.
How does your Life look like? What are you doing? How do you feel?With whom are you?
Take all the time you need to reflect and if it’s possible, to write it down.
Now ask yourself: now that is clear what Balance means to me, am I out of balance? Do I need to adjust something?
Where do you need Balance the most?Personal life? Working Life? Between the two?In your body, mind or heart? Or among the three of them?
Use your Inner Compass to tap your Intuition.
As I always say to my students: you are your own teacher, because only you know if a position is accessible today or not. I am not in your body and I can’t take this decision for you.
To be able to access our inner compass and intuition, we need to become quiet, invite lots of silence in our day and slow down.
When we unwind (and Yoga of course are great tools to do that) we can regulate our nervous system: from a survival mode (fight or flight response) to a relaxing and restoring response (rest, digest and restore). By doing that, we not only bring balance back in our life (balance between the SN and the PNS) but also we make space to see what we need to change in our current life to adjust and bring and sustain balance in the long term.
If you are curious to see what happens when you slow down (especially if lately you have experienced exhaustion, burn out, disconnection from your body/emotions, and a constant need to be distracted with a very active mind) the doors are officially open for the Slow Down to Unwind FB Live Challenge!
Follow the Wisdom of Nature, you are nature.
We don’t need to teach our planet or the Universe how to be balanced (on the contrary with our actions we – human beings – are putting our Earth constantly out of Balance). That point of Balance is in constant evolution, transformation, is and will be forever changing.
How can we follow the wisdom of Nature with our Yoga Practice? Honouring our cyclical living. We often think that our life is linear, but in reality, we experience a constant cycle.
Here in Corpo Giardino – Yoga Practices we follow seriously the cyclical living, by offering Yoga classes paying attention to the different energetic phases we find during the day, month and year. As women, all single cells of our body know what is means to live with cycle: our menstrual cycle gives us an insight of this powerful pattern of energy of contraction and expansion.
Look at this infographic below, I would love to hear your thoughts about it:
Imagine to apply this scheme to your Yoga Practice, would it make sense?
Your next step
At this point, it’s likely that you have great information about your current situations (your personal definition of balance, and if you need to adjust something in your life to bring balance back), what do we do with this information?
We take action. Begin small – what can you really implement in your life right now? Can it be a short breath exercise during your lunch break, the way you speak in your relationship or increase the time to take care of yourself?
If you found this article inspiring, or supported you in having big or small insights comment below or share it with a friend,
With love
Andrea
Inspirations:
Katie Brauer: https://www.katiebrauer.com
Donna Farhri “Bringing Yoga to Life”: https://donnafarhi.co.nz
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