Beautiful Balance!
What is more beautiful and graceful than watching a person balancing? It may be ballet, figure-skating or tight-rope walking. It may be when your Auntie Maggie falls from her bar-stool, lands on her derriere holding her glass of whiskey poised in the air without spilling a drop. Beautiful!
The standing balancing poses in Yoga are not only a wonderful thing to behold but to experience. Balance outside requires stillness and concentration inside. One might focus on a point on the wall (preferably not a spider liable to take off at any moment) and gently move all attention within as they lift a limb and shift their weight. There is something very empowering about this feat of equilibrium; It makes you feel taller and more elegant – the Eiffel Tower meets Audrey Hepburn. It may increase your confidence –
“I might not be an Olympic champion and came last in that song contest at school but, by God, I can stand in the Tree Pose”.
You may feel so profound after your accomplishment that you wish Yoda had been present to observe you, and philosophically utter,
“With you the force strong is”.
The beauty about standing, going upside down or coming onto your hands and moving into a balancing pose, is that there is no room for shopping lists or that all your friends have au-pairs and you don’t. Neither is there room for the guy who was flirting with you at work or the tub of mint chocolate ice-cream in the freezer. Of course you can think about them if you so wish but most likely it will be as you topple over! Another great thing about these poses is that if you do not have a clear head starting off, you can repeat them over and over until poise and focus naturally arises in you. Whether you are becoming a simpler standing balance such as Tree Pose, or a more advanced arm balance such as Pose Dedicated The Sage Astavakra, you are sure to gain strength of mind and body, focus, steadiness, self-appreciation and fierce magnificence.
