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Creative Wellness Newsletter
Newsletter - Spring/Summer 2009
In This Issue
- The Health Benefits of Balance
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The Health Benefits of Balance
Finding balance in the world today is not an easy task. Balance can be defined as the harmonious relation of the individual parts within a whole. It is an important component of holistic health which recognizes all the parts of a person: the body, the mind, and the spirit. To neglect one aspect of ourselves is to invite imbalance into our physiology. However, when complimentary these components help boost our health. According to Andrew Weil, M.D., “Far from being simply the absence of disease, health is a dynamic and harmonious equilibrium of all the elements and forces making up and surrounding a human being.” We can strive to attain balance in our lives through the forces we control, though it is equally important to recognize the natural balance and order in the world, about which we can only marvel and strive to be in harmony with.
Day to day, it can be hard to find the presence of balance in our lives. Life is an ongoing exchange of moments, and we are perpetually trying to rearrange ourselves to fit into them and to have those moments fold into our expectations. It is necessary to possess the agility to allow our feelings, our bodies, and our minds to transform and transcend along with the changing reality. It is true, we often feel compelled to rebel against this change, having grown comfortable in our current predicaments, and perhaps a little complacent. We may feel some or even great uncertainty about the unexpected which lies ahead of us, but we can still proceed, assured that the forces working around us are at once necessary, though not always understood at the time.
Exerting energy and effort to balance our minds and emotions is as necessary as balancing our checkbooks. We, at regular intervals, regulate and realign the tools which seemingly enable us to get where we want to go, but often take ourselves for granted. The unseen tools helping us to achieve success are integral to our health and in need of balance and restoration. Alternative medicines, such as acupuncture and Ayurveda, focus on integrating a person’s system of health, and seek to understand why a particular person is experiencing imbalance such that their symptoms are emerging. In movement classes such as NIA, Yoga, and Tai Chi the mind receives training in stillness, in concentration and even in elevation, so that the workout one experiences reaches deeper beneath the layers of skin and muscle to the restore the balance of our spirit.
To have an imbalance can mean to be either lacking or to have something in overabundance. We need only to look at the equilibrium in the forces of nature for illustration. As winter begins its slow thaw, and the spring ground softens anticipating the culmination of its fertility; the power of death and emergence meet, one taking and the other repleting. It is a silent dance without coercion, and one which cyclically continues. Dr. Joan Borysenko, author of Inner Peace for Busy People notes, “The only workable strategy for maintaining productivity over the long haul is to learn how to relax.” Without limit, life does not exist. Physical or mental overexertion can be dangerous when not in proportion with rest. Restoring our energy and peace of mind helps us to endure and resist emotional and physical bankruptcy.
We can all strive to find the personal balance in our lives, though our limits are as individualistic as we each are. Although the notion of balance is rather simplistic in nature and overtly embedded in the world around us, the realization of it in our lives is not an easy task making. By valuing ourselves and our lives and not being afraid to move lightly into the unknown, we may find that balance is only a dance step away.