Finding Balance

I woke up this morning from a baroque dream which segued from a documentary/participatory drama about a buffalo hunt featuring someone like a Sioux and then ended up being a lion doing the hunting, then to a bizarre golf tour/decorating tour during which I realized that what our house needed, in terms of decoration, was bunches of crystal-bedecked chandeliers mixed with found objects (one of which was a black and white picture of a very elderly, seated, Winston Churchill). Apparently that is all it's missing to turn it from the "Daily Chaos" style we feature now into something really. . . different.

That taken care of, I realized that there is one very good reason for Thing 4 to not have a cup of blackberry tea with honey before bed. I'll be doing a load of my sheets and blankets and pajamas this morning as soon as she realizes it, too.

Since staying in bed wasn't an option, I got up and did some yoga. For this morning's practice, I decided to focus on breath. In on the extensions, out on compressions/folds. I can seriously call what I do a "practice," because I'm so very very inexperienced. But I did what I could think of, and near the end decided to throw in some Tree Pose.

One of the things that stunned me when I began working out again, a year or so ago, was that my balance had somehow gone missing. Not my metaphorical balance -- no one with four children under the age of, say 35, has that -- but my literal, physical balance. I guess I'd been used to moving so fast that I never tried to stand on one foot or turn while keeping my feet together, or anything. And somewhere along the line, I'd lost the ability. Go figure.

So I've kept that in mind as something I'd like to improve. There's nothing like imagining oneself as a little 65 year old woman with a broken hip to provide motivation for working on improving one's upright-ability.

The first tree pose I tried got wobbly, rapidly. Fortunately, in my living room, the only living thing around was the fluffy cat, and he can get out of my way. So I did some thinking. In balance poses, it's all about the foundation. Hey -- metaphor! So I breathed in, thought about rooting my base foot down, slowly raised my other one, hooked it into my thigh, exhaled, looked through the window at my focal point, breathed in, and raised my arms.

And darned if it didn't stick. Really stick. I thought, "I could do this all day!" Of course, I couldn't, but I could repeat it on the other side. And I did.