Here is a recipe for happiness. Add equal parts of what you love, what you fear, things that are beautiful, things you don’t or won’t judge, drink lots of water, sit up straight, smile at everyone and practice balance.
For the bottom liner’s, those who ask ‘What’s in It For Me (WIIFM) amongst us, one word, Moderation, says it all. Balance activity with rest. Balance fruits and vegetables with proteins and carbs. Balance your attention out on other people with balancing quiet times and attention in on oneself.
For the more adventurous, those who do not have clearly defined edges, rules or procedures, moderation is a limit. Balance is more the fun and challenging tightrope on the edge than recommended daily allowances of moderation. It is the stand on one foot, the juggle, movement without excess tension, the trip and catch yourself, without the fall type balance. There is a balance for both ends of the happiness continuum
that can be practiced for safety, increased physical awareness and a panacea for dementia. Postural balance is a way to keep gravity at a minimum and continue to build plasticity in neural pathways keeping the brain doing brainwork. This is the type of balance that supports the tree posture in yoga, the challenges of walking the cracks in the sidewalk, the basic riding a bicycle balance, even a sobriety test.
This physical freedom is not easy to acquire. The human body is too often ignored, and a real feeling of bodily awareness is seldom experienced.
Feeling awareness is the ability of the body to sense its own existence, for the body to become conscious of itself. It is not just the talk of being “more aware” of the body, because this can suggest simply observing it from the outside. It is feeling the body from within.
The difficulty arises because we spend most of the time in a state of identification with the external world. We appear stuck outside our body, in distraction, making accessing and using our center for balance challenging.
It may be that we experience our body only when in pain and have blindness to the tensions that creep into the muscles and joints, interfering with the natural freedom of movement. To build our balance center, to recover this freedom is a worthy aim, and requires the ability to let go of tension.
Here is an exercise to relieve tension in the neck. This area is called the Atlas, from mythology, the one who carried the weight of the world. Make tiny, almost invisibly small figure eight motions with the tip of your nose. This un-do’s tension in the neck.
Make the figure eights smaller and smaller, and the neck and shoulders become looser and freer with every figure eight you do.
Learning to use your breathing with the concept of a ‘backward flowing motion,’ allows gravity to provide a sensation of letting go. Our bodies want to relax, but years of tension require new skills and practice to get back to our balanced state and let gravity ease up and be our friend.
Whether a moderator, or one on the edge, keeping one’s balance physically is great exercise to keep from missing old age.
