Turning a Challenge into an Art Form

Being in balance is a little like standing to put on a pair of tennis shoes without a chair in the room and without giving up and sitting on the floor.

The act requires first standing on one foot then the other to place a sock over each set of toes.  The second challenge is getting the laced openings open enough for one fell swoop of a foot to enter at least far enough into the shoe so you can put it quickly back on the floor and wedge your heel into place.  The third challenge is tying the laces into a bow.

I find I can tell many things about myself and how my day is beginning by how well I can execute this task. I’m almost beginning to think of it as my morning yoga exercise or maybe even a meditation. From another perspective, I feel it as a dance and perhaps it is becoming a personal morning art form. This practice developed after an introductory Aikido class I took one summer at Brightenbush Hot Springs with 50 or so other Reiki Masters.

We were asked to stand with one foot in front of the other in our best balanced form.  We each had partners who then pushed at our shoulder to see how much it would take to topple us sideways.  I was appalled at myself when my partner had only to exert a feather touch and over I went.  I had no balance, even when I asked to do it again and planted myself more strongly (or so I thought) on both bared feet.  Over I went, again.

Later in the morning after I’d learned where my center was, how to hold onto my Chi, and how to ground plus after I’d discovered various other reasons I was off balance, (like my ragged breathing, lack of focus and self awareness) my partner had to press a little harder on my shoulder to get me to topple, but it wasn’t much pressure at all.

Using this ‘putting on my tennis shoe’ routine, I can now tell much about myself (whether I’m in a rush, not remembering to breathe, or am ungrounded ) by the way I hop in place trying to put on a sock or how my upper body drifts to one side when I’m working on the ‘toes-in-the-shoe’ maneuver.  How much I struggle, while I accomplish this task, lets me know how alert I am or how disgruntled or how much I may have on my mind.  Sometimes it goes well, sometimes not.  This daily experiment is just a little thermometer of my level of stress. It’s like a dance with me that tells me I have too many thoughts and distractions going on inside me and around me.

If I can slow down and settle myself before I start this challenge, the whole event takes much less time. I can find a place where my muscles seem to float and barely feel used.  I can become so engrossed in this morning test that I can feel light and heavy at the same time.

As it is usually the final piece of dressing, my entire sense of self ends up being absolutely ready to get on with my day.