Balancing Act

Balance. It's something we learn as tiny babies. First we learn to sit up without falling over. Then we learn to stand. Then walking. We learn to jump, to stand on one foot, to hop, skip, lean forward or side to side, and we learn to run. All of these activities require balance. It should be something that is second nature to each of us.

Eventually, we learn to understand that balance is integral to stability. And not just in a physical sense. We have to learn to balance work and play, extracurricular activities, time with ourselves and time with others. We have to learn to balance priorities.

I learned an important lesson last week in physical therapy - my balance was off. I had no idea. I was doing what seemed like a simple exercise when Wanda pointed out that I was leaning back - I thought I was leaning forward. Then my very generous friend Mark agreed to help me get started lifting weights at the Y. He realized my left shoulder was several inches higher than my right; when he corrected me, I felt like I was literally leaning to the left.

This was an important realization. Think about it - if my balance is off just standing up which puts extra strain on certain areas, think about the strain that I was putting on my body when I was running 30 and 40 miles per week. When runners start putting in long runs of 15 miles or so, it's pretty typical for fatigue to set in and for their form to collapse. This happens when the core weakens. Well, I was never actually using my core to effectively support myself, which means for the entire distance of my runs, I was overly reliant on the wrong muscles.

So now an integral part of my therapy is focused on improving the strength of my core muscles. Some of the exercises I like, some of them I don't, but before I can run again, I need to learn to sit, stand, and walk correctly. I need to relearn how to balance correctly - a lesson I learned for the first time about 30 years ago. That's a lot of retraining!

This got me thinking about other areas of my life, though. Are my priorities in balance? How about the way I spend my time? What I think about? Where I place my trust? My emotional stability?

I'm learning to rebalance physically, but I don't want to waste the momentum I have right now to miss the opportunity to rebalance emotionally, spiritually, and mentally as well. I'm pretty open about my struggles, but I'm not always good about taking the necessary steps to work through my weaknesses. I know that I struggle with staying motivated to eat well, but I continue to focus my efforts on "powering through it" instead of addressing the underlying reasons why. Maybe it's because my balance is off and I'm relying on the wrong spiritual and emotional muscles. As I learned, I can get away with being off balance in the short-term, but it leads to major complications in the long-term.

Physically, I need to focus on strengthening my core. I need to strengthen my spiritual core, too.