The Heart Takes the First Step

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Life has a habit of going around in circles, until you stand still and decide to follow the path that your heart is drawn to.
~ Leon Brown

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With balancing being such a big part of my life, it isn't surprising that my emotional state is often a reflection of my physical balance. In this post I’d like to share about heart—what I've learned about the role of the heart in physical balance, how that connects to what I've experienced emotionally, and how important it is to follow the paths our hearts are drawn to.

First let’s talk a little bit about adjusting balance for funambulistic¹ ventures. Along the narrow support of a rope, line, or rail, moving oneself forward is delicate operation: there isn’t room to shift from side to side as we normally do when walking. In the beginning, a balancer tends compensate for the frequent wobbling by throwing a leg out to counterbalance.  In this position the counterbalancing leg keeps the center of gravity over the wire, but actually has the upper body—and heart—significantly off to the side of the wire or line.

Here as I try to stay dry a counterbalancing leg is thrown out
and my heart is visibly off to the other side. My friends, who
experienced this while waterlining, termed it “starfish position.”

As the balancer progresses, he/she uses full “starfish” position less and less, but the tendency to shift from side to side can linger.

Rail walking; still in control and balanced but still kicking out a leg for
counterbalance (a moderate “starfish” position).

This is the stage I’ve been at: even when I've been walking fairly steadily, I find myself leaning a little to the right when I step onto my right foot and a little to my left when on my left foot. If you were to view my walk from above, tracing the path of my feet versus the path of my heart, the two lines would look something like this:

Now this kind of weaving and counterbalance footwork is inefficient at best. If too pronounced, it is downright dangerous: if a balancer on a highwire gets in that starfish position and the wire shakes or the wind gusts, he/she could very well falter just that fraction more and go toppling sideways, cartwheeling into the void.

Cartwheeling Starfish: A quick sketch a friend made while reviewing my post.
Thanks, Stacie P!

Since cartwheeling into voids is something to avoid, I’ve tried to stabilize my weaving. I drilled keeping my feet in line; I focused on posture; I trained my arms for continuous, subtle balance shifts. In spite of all that, I’ve still sensed myself weaving subtly from step to step, and I haven’t been sure how to stop it.

My heart had a hard time holding up under the frustration of this progress plateau.  As I’ve struggled for months to steady my weaving without success, my belief in myself and my ability to achieve my dreams has been weaving, wavering, and wobbling.

With sky-high dreams tugging so insistently at my heartstrings, it isn’t surprising that there is a good measure of heartache when I feel like my physical progress isn’t keeping pace toward my dreams. Ever since I read Mirette on the High Wire at seven years old, my feet—and my heart—have been unhappy on the ground. I dream of dancing in the sky. When I have practice session after practice session in which I fall off time and again without apparent progress, it can feel like my dreams might be cartwheeling into oblivion, soon to be dashed to bits against unforgiving realities.

And there are some daunting realities.

I’m already old for a full-time career in physical performance—most elites performers are peaking or winding down in their careers at this age, not beginning, and yet I aspire to approach that level of athleticism and skill.  I’m frequently and painfully aware of how unathletic my childhood was—and twinges of jealousy and insecurity claw their way up past my heart when I’m around “real” athletes. And even though hard work now can make up for some of that, without a circus center nearby, the training I do for the time being is solo and improvised, which often leaves me feeling directionless in my training and, worse, aching for a sense of community and belonging. Also, given my beginner (possibly intermediate) status, the idiom “don’t give up your day job” seems relevant, but I’m struggling to scrape together time for serious solo training while holding down that professional job. Plenty of evenings when I get home I want to fall into bed rather than hop up on my balance pipe for even the 5 minutes of balancing I committed to as part of my winter solstice resolutions.

Besides the discouragement of those daunting realities, I’m also very sensitive to what other people say or (may) think. When I think people doubt my ability to succeed, I worry they might be right. The  risk and irresponsibility of dangerous high balancing can make people frown with disapproval and genuine concern…and I've usually been proud to be “the responsible one.” Even this blog sometimes adds to the pressure: though I love you readers, it’s intimidating that there are even more people who will notice if my dreams never amount to anything.

The dreams of conquering a highwire or a highline, of having the skill and finesse to perform on a slackrope or tightwire take a thick skin, time, passion, and life. On the hard days that investment and sacrifice seems inconvenient and impractical at best, impossible and irresponsible at worst.

In spite of all the hard days, the doubting days, there are the days and even mere moments that completely make up for it. Times when I’m reminded that I am at my best—focused, passionate, and laughingly enthusiastic—when I’m pursuing what I love, when I’m balancing. In those moments I stop worrying over slow progress, over what others think. Everything fades away except the beautiful feeling of being balanced. Recently a breakthrough in overcoming my weaving created one of those deeply fulfilling moments.

My mental strategy for overcoming weaving came, interestingly enough, from my favorite Regency era romance novelist, Georgette Heyer. A phrase she uses in several stories is how skilled horseback riders take jumps by ‘throwing their hearts over’—a vividly appealing imagery of daring and confidence. Approaching the stile, hedge or ditch, the rider isn’t hanging back but leaning forward, anticipating, positioning himself or herself to complete the jump successfully.

Though a far cry from equestrian riding, I decided to apply the focus on heart to my balancing. With each step I would visualize moving my heart straight forward so it would be directly over my next foot when I stepped. Projecting farther ahead through multiple steps, my heart should trace a straight line, remaining constantly within a narrow invisible channel parallel to and above the straight line of my balance pipe or line.

The results of that visualization were incredible. In the limited confines of my kitchen, with the dinner table against the wall to accommodate ten feet of practice pipe, I was moving steadily and smoothly forward, all the while keeping my heart inside of that invisible path I had created in my mind’s eye. I wasn’t weaving or wobbling; I was more balanced and steady than I’d ever been before.

That feeling of being almost perfectly balanced was a straight and steady joy. As that joy bubbled up, flowing around and over my solid sense of focus, something shifted. In my imagination I projected that perfect line of my heart much further than the confines of the room. I felt sure that if I could just keep walking like that, keeping my heart inside that perfectly straight channel, I might be able to step off the end of my pipe and onto a slender strand of a dream, walk straight through the wall and into the phantasmic white and silver circus tent beckoning shimmeringly just a few perfect steps farther in the distance.

Though at the end of my practice pipe I halted, reluctantly remaining within the confines of reality, that ethereal waking dream left me a gift—a profound confidence that if I can walk like that, anything is possible.

While the weaving of my heart and feet was a specific source of discouragement, carefully following an invisible heart-path became a source of success and deep fulfillment. I believe there is a truth to be found in my experience: following the paths our hearts are drawn to keeps us steadier, protects our confidence and our passion, and positions us for a successful arrival in the realm of our dreams.

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¹ If you're having trouble with this word, please review my post Learning the Ropes.

Yoga: Balancing Strength and Softness

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Life is a balance of holding on and letting go.

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For the winter and spring months, especially while my regular balance training was somewhat inhibited by the weather, I tried a new cross-training sport: yoga, a discipline centered around awareness and balance—perfect. After four months, I’m still easing into it, learning terms and poses, and becoming comfortable with the mentality, but it’s been good for me. I’m sad that the last practice was this week, but hopefully Hulu’s multiple free yoga channels will get me through the summer.

Something my instructor Emily focuses on that resonated with me is balancing the opposites of strength and softness, ease and intensity. My body is incredibly reluctant to go into some of the more challenging poses…and some days “challenging” means just about anything besides mountain pose (standing upright on two feet) or corpse pose (lying flat on my back). I started out with the assumption that advanced yogis just slid into the poses easily and when I couldn’t, I just needed to keep pushing myself down into the pose until it became easy and elastic.

At first when my instructor told us to find areas to relax in the midst of the poses, I was incredulous. Nevertheless I followed directions, and was surprised how, even with my body twisted into somewhat uncomfortable pretzel shapes, I could still carve out spaces for ease: a softening behind my heart, around my eyes, or along my throat.

I was also amazed how often Emily instructed us to engage muscles—and the exact opposite of the muscles I was using to force myself into the shape of the pose. I learned that this engagement of opposing muscles creates a sense of support so the body won’t fight the pose. Strength is actually a key component in softening.

When it comes to my personal preferences for ease versus intensity and strength versus softness, I learned within my first hour of yoga that I am far more comfortable with strength and intensity than with ease. That first day of class I honestly felt somewhat cheated when I realized that for the last 5 or more minutes of class we were going to lay down on our mats and close our eyes (like it was pre-school nap time!). I’d dedicated 40% of my sacred hour-long lunch breaks to a fitness class: nap time is not a workout. Worse than that, lying there trying to relax and quiet my thoughts left me not just restless but unsettled.

Since I was certain that the relaxation of shavasana meditation shouldn’t be emotionally threatening, I tried to figure out what was going on. As best as I can articulate it, the meditation brought to the surface a nagging fear that allowing myself to unwind would devolve into an emotional unraveling. I’ve been holding on to stress believing that holding everything in is holding me together. In much the same way I initially tried to force myself into the poses, I was attempting to force myself into relaxation—while holding onto tension in ways that prevented me from achieving anything more than a superficial relaxation.

Even after four months of yoga, I’ll admit I haven’t yet learned to relax enough to risk that unraveling, but I recognize my resistance to it. In class Emily often instructed us, when we felt physical discomfort or resistance, to “honor that resistance” or to “sit with it” for a few moments before moving more deeply into a pose. I’ve had to do that with my resistance to relaxation. I notice it and acknowledge that there must be reasons for it I don’t really understand, but I can let it be—and simply accepting where I’m at in my life. Aknowledging the resistance seems to loosen its hold on me.

Shavasana is now a welcomed end to a yoga practice. I’ve learned to appreciate the rewards of quieting the incessant internal dialogue that dominates my mental processes and the simple restful quiet of corpse pose—and I’ve only fallen asleep once so far. I’m also learning to use my strength to create a sense of stability as I patiently work with my body rather than forcing it.

These yoga lessons have already translated into improved balance training. Even though my thoughts are quietest on a rope, even there my internal dialogues still intrude. I’m more aware of the chatter now and then refocus on the purity and simplicity of me and my rope. And even in the midst of the strict and controlled posture of rope balancing, I have also found spaces for relaxation—my eyes, my throat, and especially my shoulders and upper arms so they flow through the constant counterbalancing.

The incredible thing about balance is that it can take two things that should clash—after all the root of "opposite" is the verb “to oppose”  which means “to compete”—and lets them work together. Strength and softness, ease and intensity. Allowing opposites to work together in our lives is transformative, creating peace where there was contention. And so ending with “namaste” seems incredibly appropriate.

Namaste.