Year in Review - Balance (Part 1)

Spring comes late in Montreal, so here I am, a few weeks after the equinox again this year, chiming in on the past year in light of my chosen theme: balance.

This post is a riff on some ways of thinking about balance that I picked up from Chinese medicine, and are becoming increasingly useful for me. I'll follow up in the next few days with a post on my experience working with balance this past year, and then a post on my theme for the year to come.

Balance: Centred in the Heart

In traditional Chinese medicine (which I'm familiar with via my acupressure training), balance is defined as a dynamic interplay between different forces/organs/energy systems. Each system, or organ, has psychological & physical dimensions. The heart (also sometimes called shen) is at the centre of this system of systems, which is none other than the body-mind of a human being.

Much like ancient Western conceptions of the mind (and some traditional Native American views, I believe), in Chinese medicine the heart is seen as the proper home base for our spirit. When we are in balance, the heart is protected, nourished, purified and advised by the other energy systems of the body-mind, and is the source of all commands. There's a whole metaphor of a sort of palace court with "officials", with the heart as emperor or empress.

So when we're in balance, we do what we do on the word of the heart. And when someone else starts running the show we are out of balance.

Pushed Off Centre

Out-of-balance can take many forms. Psychologically it could look like constant anger, self-judgment, excess thinking or speaking, dominating fear, doing our "shoulds" instead of our truest, deepest understanding of what's right for us, or just going through the motions of life. Being out of balance means being stuck in one emotional or mental state, and having blockages or stuckness in our bodies, too. Out-of-balance bodies are dis-eased.

But what gets us there? Overemphasis on any single emotional (or physical) state can do it, and that usually has to do with misaligned ideas or beliefs of some kind. We think we have to be afraid, or it's better to be angry, in order to keep us safe or to get what we want or to be loved (or to avoid being loved!). And so we hold onto those emotions and cultivate them with our thoughts.

We can also be pushed off course by the messages we receive from others. Of course, this is really just a corollary of the first point, because in order for anyone to influence us, we have to take it in and make it our own. But as children this is the natural and necessary thing to do. Part of the work of maturity then is to build up some healthy defenses and work out our own values and desires so we're not pushed this way and that by every passing breeze. Another way of saying this is that we must grow some roots at and into our centre.

Finally, physical influences, including diet, posture, breath, pathogens, climate and the balance of exertion and rest, all have their effects on the body-mind system. I believe there's something fundamentally "us" about each of us, but our personalities change with our physical condition. Sometimes a great deal. If we are tired, sick, and slumped over as general habits, these will all act to throw us out of balance emotionally too -- away from the peacefulness and wisdom of our heart.

It's A Cliche Because It's True!

As I was writing, I realized a lot of this can sound awfully cliche and empty -- "just follow your heart"!

And it's true that on it's own, "follow your heart" is not that useful. There's just not enough information there. But after a few years of exposure to the ideas of Chinese medicine, and taking on various practices, these cliches are becoming grounded for me. They tie into my experience, and vice versa.

It feels like something to be centred in the heart, and like something else to be subtly (or not so subtly!) pulled towards anger or fear -- or to have tight hip joints, or tense shoulders. It's like learning a whole new spectrum of colours and shades for the sensations of your body.

So if this all sounds a bit hokey, I hope you can give me the benefit of the doubt: this is practical, useful stuff!

But what do we use it for?

The Goal is Peace

When we're centred in our hearts, when shen is in command, we are peaceful, vibrant and creative. We flow through the challenges and opportunities of our life with ease.

We will not always be "happy", walking around with big goofy smiles and hugging everyone. That's a caricature of "enlightenment" -- it's out of balance, a rigid stuckness in joy. Instead, a quiet, peaceful kind of joy becomes the background and default position.

From this background our emotions -- including joy, anger, sadness, fear, guilt and shame -- arise and dissipate naturally. All these emotions have functions and carry messages. Once these are received by the heart and taken into account (and whatever necessary action taken), they can be let go. None of them dominates us.

Our bodies will flow easier, too. And we can work with our bodies to cultivate this heart-centred balance. This is one of the principles of various kinds of holistic bodywork, including the acupressure tradition I'm familiar with. By addressing the blocks in the body, we are addressing the emotional and mental stuck points. Just bringing awareness to some kind of stuckness can do wonders.

Other body trainings also work to bring us into alignment with our hearts. This is what yoga, martial arts and qi gong can do. Arguably, it's what they're for. By cultivating uprightness, strength, suppleness, fluidity, (physical) balance, and by using our attention to bring our minds and bodies into alignment, our emotions and thinking become more upright, supple and balanced too.

Ordering the Kingdom

When we put the heart at the centre, giving shen it's rightful place of command, we get spontaneous compassion, contentment, gratitude and peacefulness. Like Confucius' righteous king, a righteous heart creates an ordered "kingdom" (our body-mind) through its presence and character alone.

This year I started to recognize who was on the throne at any given time. Still a rapid rate of coup-d'etats and counter-revolutions, and the gentle King Shen sure took his licks, but recognition is a good step for cultivating better balance.