In my last blog, I wrote about resilience as a balance between strength and flexibility. If you are strong and inflexible, you snap. If you are very flexible but not strong or grounded, you fall over. I wrote about the opposing balance in Yoga between Sthira, our structure and strength, and Sukkha, ease, or mobility. Even the strongest trees will snap in the wind if they can’t bow to the force.

Yoga is the practice of balancing opposites. It is finding balance or equilibrium in all things in life. Not too much, not too little. Like Goldilocks looking for the just-right bowl of porridge, not too hot, not too cold.

Yoga as the Balance of Opposites

Strength and flexibility are just one example of finding balance in pairs of opposites.  Almost everything in our lives holds a range of possibilities between pairs of opposites.  

Finding balance is hard.   Reality is continually changing, shifting around you.  As soon as you find balance, you lose it and go back to seeking balance again.  Finding balance is like surfing the waves.  You learn to paddle up and ride the waves down, rebalancing all the way down.  There is a balance between everything, too much and too little, hot and cold, moist and dry, heavy and light.  What was the right balance one day may not be the next.  What works for you may not work for someone else.  

Like makes Like

Ayurveda, a wellness practice related to Yoga, has a doctrine of like creates more of the same.  For example, if you are already hot, drinking hot liquids will make you hotter.  Ayurveda suggests applying the opposite as a remedy.  If you are hot, drinking cool beverages or finding shade will cool you down.   Balancing of opposites can be used as a way to find balance.  If you want to lose weight, try to lighten the diet and eat less heavy, greasy, fatty, or dense foods. Feel sluggish and dull?  Move your body more.  Try walking someplace quiet if your mind is overstimulated.   We each have a different need for balance, and our balance will change based on the time of day, the seasons of the year, and the seasons of our life.

Clinging and Running

Humans alternate between clinging to safety, certainty, and pleasure and running away from anything unsafe or uncomfortable. You may try to hold on to joy; you run from sorrow.    But the truth is, you only fool yourself. In your ever-changing reality, you will feel both joy and sorrow.  You end up clinging and running, never fully present to the reality around you.  If you shut out sadness, anger, and frustration, you also shut off feeling joy and happiness.    

One of Yoga’s main goals is finding balance, the equilibrium where you can feel, be aware, and know everything is transient.   You allow yourself to feel joy and appreciate it even more because you know it may not last. You allow yourself to feel fear, pain, and grief, knowing it is a part of being human and will pass.    You know happiness only because you have felt sadness. 

Finding Balance on the Mat

On your yoga mat, you practice finding balance, sometimes literally, through physical movement.  You connect, ground, through whatever meets the mat, your legs, hands, or seat.  You build shapes from the mat up.  If you start to topple over, you move back toward the mat.  If you are holding your breath or fighting to create a shape, back off and find just enough. You are grounded and mobile.  There is both effort and ease.    The physical practice of Yoga allows the experience of frustration and joy.  It teaches you to stand in your own balance in the middle of whatever comes up in practice or life.

This is the true practice of Yoga.