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
~ Leon Brown
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.
As the balancer progresses, he/she uses full “starfish” position less and less, but the tendency to shift from side to side can linger.
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:
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.
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| 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.” |
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| Rail walking; still in control and balanced but still kicking out a leg for counterbalance (a moderate “starfish” position). |
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.
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| Cartwheeling Starfish: A quick sketch a friend made while reviewing my post. Thanks, Stacie P! |
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.
1 If you're having trouble with this word, please review my post Learning the Ropes.
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