There’s No Such Thing as Perfect Balance

There’s an old Buddhist saying, “Not Too Tight, Not Too Loose.” I first heard it from one of my favorite yoga teachers, Cyndi Lee.

For the first 35 years of my life, my fitness was too tight. I almost never ate and I exercised obsessively. I was always tired, always hungry, and always in a bad mood.

About eight years ago, for a wide variety of reasons, some positive, some not, I decided to loosen the screws I had put into myself.

The good thing was that I was still able to exercise enough to feel pretty good. Rather than walking for hours every day, I used an elliptical trainer and got my heart rate up to an energizing level, and I loved listening to my favorite songs while I worked out. Even though I had just had my heart broken, I felt happy when I was exercising. I was so blissed out for those 40 minutes that my fellow YMCA members would comment on my euphoria.

My playlist included Rosalita (Bruce Springsteen), She Bangs (Ricky Martin), Don’t Stop Me Now (Queen), and Hold On Tight (Electric Light Orchestra). So you can tell I’m pretty old. But, hey, when I look back on those couple of years, I remember those workouts as fondly as I remember long walks and long swims.

Then, three years ago, besides being a single mother and having a full-time job, I went back to school to get my master’s degree, which I accomplished in one year. Next, in quick succession, I moved and got another job, plus I was still a single mother. Guess what got thrown out the window? My very favorite thing in the world: exercise.

There is only so much a person can do in one day and, despite losing my high level of fitness, I’m glad I made the choices I did. The problem is that I got too loose. Like before, when I was too tight, I was always tired, always hungry, and always in a bad mood.

The human body strives to maintain balance, but it doesn’t strive to maintain “perfect” balance, it strives to maintain the balance it is most used to maintaining. In other words, if you’re fit, your body will work to stay fit, but if you’re out of shape, your body will try to keep you that way. Basically, the human body likes to be in a groove, but the problem is, “there’s a fine line between a rut and a groove.”

Homeostasis is just one reason why it is so hard to leave that bad lover, so hard to quit that chocolate habit, and, most especially, why it is so hard to work out intensely after you’ve sat on the couch watching an hour of Iron Chef, even though you feel perfectly sick at the idea of Paula Deen’s cheese fudge balls.

The thing about homeostasis is that it isn’t your body wanting to maintain balance in a good place, i.e., getting you to your perfect level of fitness or giving you true peace of mind. Instead, it’s basically your body wanting to get back to where it was. So, if you were somewhere tight, your body will strive to be tight. If you were somewhere loose, your body will want to stay loose. And I was very loosey-goosey, at least when it came to exercise, at this point.

I needed balance, but true, perfect balance is pretty hard to come by. Really, there is no such as thing as balance, as you can see by the artist who tries to teach us that lesson with rocks.

In fact, when I teach “balance” in yoga, I always tell my students that being able to balance is not the same as being still. The human body cannot “be still.” We aren’t meant to not move. Breathing moves us, having eyes moves us, having ears moves us. We move. Moving is part of the definition of “living.”

Instead, when I teach my yoga students to balance, I explain that they shouldn’t focus on being still, but should instead consider letting themselves gently adjust and readjust to the movement of their body without judging or panicking. Focus on a still spot on the wall or floor, a “non-living spot,” and then, as your body moves (which it will, you can’t stop it), simply go with it. Your body doesn’t want to fall so it will right itself. The whole process of holding a balance pose in yoga is more about calm than about still.

Did you notice that when I talked about balance I mentioned the problems of “judging” and “panicking?” I used those words because human beings are terrified of falling. In fact, good teachers of ice skating, bike riding, and even walking, such as the parents of toddlers, try to let their kids know that it’s okay to fall and that, in fact, if a person is going to learn something new, they’re going to have to get used to falling.

But, we tend to think of falling as being a “bad” thing. We laugh at people who fall, we judge them, and, if we think we’re about to fall, we panic. But falling is a way to learn the balancing skills you need to walk, to ride a bike, and to stand up straight.

Although it was hard to fall off the fitness wagon for a couple of years, and although I missed being fit, it has brought me a few unexpected rewards.

First, it became very clear to me that exercise will always be my number one love (I mean, after my son, my family, my friends, you know what I mean, my number one hobby or interest that is part of life but not actually life itself). Because, whenever I had a minute or ten or 30 during this very hectic time in my life, I would work out. True, I couldn’t take an uphill climb as quickly as I had before, nor could I ride through a spinning class at exactly the same intensity level that I used to, but I did those things nevertheless, and they always made me happy. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t the fittest, it just mattered that I was moving and trying to take care of myself when I could.

Second, and most importantly, having let go of my fitness, I learned that no matter what type of exercise I’m doing–even if it’s none–certain people will always love me and always think I’m beautiful, no matter what my size or shape. I think it’s important that you know that, too, because many people exercise only because they want to be thin. The problem with exercising only to be thin is kind of like walking around thinking only of the fear of falling; you’re filling yourself with judgment and panic.

No judgment, no panic.