Day 49: The secret to balance

Today was 1130 am with young Mark.  I'm always lulled into meditation by his dialog.  No regulars showed up today (Reggi was on her way out after a hot and crowded 930 class) but my friend Madeline who practices occasionally decided to come as we were talking on the phone earlier.  She parked herself in the way back corner, while I took Reggi's usual spot front row directly to the right of the door.  I had every intention of going to the 930 this morning but I have not been sleeping that well this past week and decided to just spend some extra time resting.  Haunted by strange dreams, I toss and turn and wake up every few hours.  I'm not normally so aware of dreams and usually don't remember any when I wake up.  Hopefully it will pass soon.

My practice was very deliberate today.  I say that because I was really working on small things with form and focusing on coming in and out of things correctly.  Lately, I've been struggling with standing head to knee.  Once I started kicking out second set early on in the challenge, I got the idea I should try to kick out first set as well.   What has since ensued has been alot of falling out and me looking like a hot mess in the posture.  So today I went back to basics and stayed in first part of the posture first set, standing leg locked, foot in my hand looking at my locked knee in the mirror and focusing on my breath.  As I was doing so, I was observing the standing leg and watching all that was going on with a bit of incredulity.  The muscles in my foot were constantly making small corrections, my quad muscle would "wink" at me and I'd tighten it back up immediately.  I'd then become aware of my abs, would focus on sucking them in and my eyes would wander back to my foot, still making tiny corrections constantly to keep me balanced and stable.  While all of this is happening, it appears that I was calm, still, steady to the outside observer.  Hmmm.  Very interesting.  So that is how you balance.  Tons and tons of small corrections, never over correct or off to the side you go, game over!  Don't we do this all day long in life?  We are seeking balance and all day long we make hundreds of small decisions, respond to thousands of outside stimuli and make small corrections sometimes sending us in the wrong direction, sometimes taking us back toward equilibrium.  We all have things we want to work on or change, but it won't happen overnight.  We can't over correct, we must continue to make small corrections to keep ourselves on course constantly. 

On a lighter note, I rocked out second set of standing head to knee, kicking out solid, bringing my toes in and bending my elbows down.  It's been maybe at least a week since I've achieved that so it felt good to be back on track with that very challenging posture.