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Notes on balance, falling, ground, and grounding

July 9, 2021 Becci Curtis
Photo by Jon Flobrant on Unsplash.

Photo by Jon Flobrant on Unsplash.

Despite changing location many times—from venue to venue and, more recently, online—each Wednesday evening class with me involves some kind of group discussion and it has been this way for 7 years, or so. People come and go, but we have built enough of a foundation that we can maintain an exchange of ideas. There is a thread that loosely connects one class to the next.

Last month, our topic (the container, or 'guiding structure' for our chat) was ‘balance’, which has led me to think a lot about falling (and not falling), support (and lack of support), the relationships (and outcomes) between the two (and their opposites).

Balance as aspirational state

We often use 'balance' to describe 'an even set of circumstances’, or ‘an even experience of circumstances’ (‘equanimity’ comes from the Latin for ‘equal’ and ‘mind’, quite literally: even-mindedness). In yoga and mindfulness practices, 'balance' comes across as a sought after quality, or state. There is perfection in symmetry: the middle path one might take towards obtaining a clear and unfluctuating mind (citta vritti nirodha). It has an aspirational quality to it.

Balance is the fruit of practice; something to work towards. It is to be gained and maintained from moment to moving moment. [Perhaps it would be better to substitute ‘balance’ for ‘equilibrium’ here i.e. the balance between two competing forces resulting in no net change.]

Balance as temporary experience

In movement practices, we use 'balance' to describe what happens when we don't fall over. We can get really good at balancing, but we can only really get good at balancing in limited positions, on limited surfaces, under limited conditions, and for a limited amount of time: tree pose on the sand in a thunderstorm FOREVER, anyone? Balance is something to be experienced. It is dynamic and fleeting: it moves from moment to moment.

I favour the experiential. I am a big fan of stepping away from the superficial confines presented by a yoga mat. The moving (and witnessing) of a body and mind in a small space—mostly facing the same direction, and always on even ground—is not true to life (it's definitely not true to my life) and therefore has limited application. A good place to start, a good place to learn a new skill, to concentrate, and rest perhaps, but still, not a place anyone can realistically (or even desirably) inhabit forever.

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In Practice Room Tags Balance, Philosophy, Community
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"Things could always be worse"

September 15, 2020 Becci Curtis
Photo by Étienne Godiard on Unsplash.

Photo by Étienne Godiard on Unsplash.

Thoughts on neglect, self-worth, and social justice

In one form or another, the sentiment of 'accepting our lot' is something we hear very often: primarily because it contains some wisdom, but also because nobody likes a whinger.

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In Living Room Tags Social justice, Neglect, Community, Self-care, Abuse
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New Year, New You, and other nonsense

December 28, 2017 Becci Curtis
Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash

Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash

If you are thinking of setting any New Year's resolutions (especially of the yoga kind), my unasked-for advice is to keep them simple, long-term, and bullshit free. There is room for improvement in all of us, but nobody is getting an overnight transformation. We don't suddenly need a different 'bod' to the one we had yesterday; we don't need to punish ourselves for indulging in too many mince pies, and we certainly don't need to pay for a service, object, or miraculous foodstuff that claims it will sort our lives out for us (especially if an amount of days is specified). 

I'm not trying to downtalk New Year's resolutions;  sometimes a change, or a challenge, is exactly what we need. New Year, like the first, crisp, blank page in a fresh, new notebook (who doesn't love that?) can be useful for garnering the energy to take action. It's the pursuit of being somebody else, somebody we idealise as being 'better' than we already are, that I take issue with. Our 'goodness' does not rest on a conditional and projected sense of self. We can all be better, sure, but we don't need to defer our wellbeing to the completion of a self-appointed task. 

  • Instead of "When I lose weight/drink less/quit smoking, I will be happy", we could think "I am going to lose weight/drink less/quit smoking because my health is important".

  • Instead of "When I can meditate for an hour, I will be content", we could think "I'm going to set aside some time to meditate because I am curious about my state of mind".

  • Instead of "When I can perform Pincha Mayurasana (forearm stand), I will be good at yoga" we could think "I'm going to practise [insert challenging posture] because I am interested to see if I can redefine the limits of what I believe to be possible at this moment in time."

Perhaps this can be viewed as a lesson in self-marketing trickery - glass half-empty, versus glass half-full - but I can't shake the thought that a month spent 'detoxing' compels us to spend a month believing that we (or the lives we lead) are toxic. I struggle to see how this belief could help any of us in perpetuity. (Been there. Done that. Got the T-shirt.)  

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In Living Room Tags Community, New Year, Aging, Creativity, Self-practice, Philosophy
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I got 99 problems but my yoga teacher ain't one

October 31, 2016 Becci Curtis
Voga. Taking the world by storm since 2014... 

Voga. Taking the world by storm since 2014... 

There has been a lot of noise in the UK yoga community recently (and the press more widely) around creating a 'national standard' for yoga teacher training. The British Wheel of Yoga (the organisation I trained under and I am currently registered with) is the governing body* pushing for this change, with the aim to 'safeguard' students from 'dangerous' teachers.

Disappointingly, what is essentially a healthy debate about inexperience and potential injuries has centred around anecdotal evidence and inflammatory language quoted in tabloid articles. So far, I'm failing to see how this approach can serve to do anything but encourage people to be scared of yoga, scared of yoga teachers, as well as making yoga teachers themselves, scared to teach.

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In Practice Room Tags Community, Beginners, British Wheel of Yoga, Injury
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Finding Room

September 27, 2015 Becci Curtis

Photo by Phillip Goldsberry on Unsplash

This room, our yoga room, is a mess sometimes.

It's an everyday place—like the bathroom or the kitchen—that we sometimes like because it feeds us, and we sometimes avoid because it requires us to work.

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In Finding Room Tags Self-practice, Philosophy, Creativity, Community
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