In 1967, I was in Bologna, Italy,\u00a0performing with my ballet company. In the particular ballet we were doing that\u00a0night, I emerged from the wings and took a step onto the stage on one toe,
pirouetting and balancing and then letting my weight slowly settle until I was\u00a0standing, both feet beneath me. It was difficult and scary. I never knew what\u00a0would happen but my job was to have the courage to find that balance every\u00a0night, no matter how I felt.<\/p>\n
It took endless practice to finally\u00a0understand that I had to find my inner balance first and then translate it to\u00a0what I was doing on the outside. In my classes and rehearsals, I pictured what\u00a0I wanted to do and I strengthened my resolve. Then I moved. As dancers, we
learn to isolate every muscle in our bodies as we will them to do what we want\u00a0them to. One day during my many years of dedication, I found a point in the\u00a0center of my body that seemed to be the secret chord. I focused on that muscleand felt energy shooting upward and downward until I felt weightless. It was if
something unseen was holding me up.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I used to train in a girl\u2019s\u00a0gymnastics gym. I wasn\u2019t doing gymnastics but that was where my trainer worked.\u00a0In between my exercises, I watched the young girls execute what seemed like the\u00a0impossible and the dangerous. Some of them swung on the uneven bars and lost\u00a0their grip. They ran across the room, practiced back flips and fell. Most daunting\u00a0to me was the balance beam where they performed unthinkably difficult moves. I\u00a0wondered, Why did a person have balance at certain times and not at others? It\u00a0was all about the blending of mind and body.<\/p>\n
One afternoon when the gymnasts had\u00a0gone home, I told my trainer I wanted to get on the balance beam and see how it\u00a0felt. He set up foam padding on either side of the beam and he hoisted me up
four feet onto the four inch surface. I stood there, paralyzed. I wanted to get\u00a0back down immediately. What a stupid idea, I thought, but I was there so I\u00a0might as well try.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook at the end of the beam in\u00a0front of you,\u201d he told me. I tried but when I took one step forward, I fell sideways\u00a0onto the foam. He hoisted me back up several times and I got the same result.\u00a0My fear was overwhelming me. The next time I found myself standing there, I\u00a0remembered my ballet training. It had seemed impossible to dance on my toes, to\u00a0jump and twirl, but when I stopped thinking about what I couldn\u2019t do and\u00a0starting imagining that I could, I found my center. A place without fear. Once I\u00a0got control of my mind, I began to slowly walk across the beam. The idea of\u00a0doing backflips and pivoting around seemed impossible but I pulled my focus\u00a0back. I took a few steps and I didn\u2019t fall. When my trainer took my hand and
helped me down, I had proven to myself that the key to outer balance started on\u00a0the inside.<\/p>\n
We all talk about living a balanced\u00a0life.\u00a0 What we eat. How much we sleep. How much times we devote to play and to business. But balance comes and goes. Both outer and inner. That is its nature. The idea is to go inside and become aware of how we\u2019re thinking and what we\u2019re doing. Are we moving so fast, we\u2019re falling over? Are we thinking so furiously, our minds are spinning out of control? Are we eating so much, we\u2019re giving ourselves a stomach ache? When I lived in New York many years ago, I knew a woman who talked so fast, she choked herself. She moved around fast, with so little awareness, she tripped herself. She dropped everything because she wasn\u2019t paying attention. She ate unconsciously and by the end of a day, she was exhausted but she was so revved up, she couldn\u2019t sleep. She wasn\u2019t having much fun.<\/p>\n
Preparing for the future while we\u00a0enjoy the present moment is what Buddhists call divine balance or the middle\u00a0path. It\u2019s about harmonizing our inner and outer experience of life. We try not
to get overly excited or overly numb. We try to find moderation \u00a0 where we detach\u00a0from yearning but stay connected to the people we love. We try to take care of\u00a0other people but we also take care of ourselves. We try not to judge but we\u00a0have discernment about what we allow into our lives. One of my spiritual\u00a0teachers said, \u201cYou can let someone into your heart but you don\u2019t have to let\u00a0them into your house.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n
I like to think about trees whose\u00a0roots burrow as far into the ground as the treetops shoot high into the sky. The\u00a0dark and the light. In order to emulate that kind of balance we have to accept\u00a0the idea that we live in a world of duality. The symbol of yin and yang\u00a0represents two opposing forces that are interconnected and always changing. As\u00a0much as we try, we can\u2019t have happiness without sadness. We can\u2019t have light\u00a0without darkness. We can\u2019t have courage without fear. Trying to accept one and\u00a0banish the other only causes pain. When we look around, we can see suffering in\u00a0the world but we can also see joy.<\/p>\n
Anthropologist Carlos Castaneda,\u00a0said, \u201cThe aim is to balance the terror of being alive with the wonder of being\u00a0alive.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 1967, I was in Bologna, Italy,\u00a0performing with my ballet company. In the particular ballet we were doing that\u00a0night, I emerged from the wings and took a step onto the stage on one toe,pirouetting and balancing and then letting my weight slowly settle until I was\u00a0standing, both feet beneath me. It was difficult and scary. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2631,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2632"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2633,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2632\/revisions\/2633"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}