balance

It's my biggest challenge...finding balance admist all the chaos. I have elaborate plans for finding balance that tend to burn bright for a brief moment, then sputter and become ash. I have this hope that in the ashes there are tiny sparks that can be kindled into a flame again. This morning I rose before dark to do yoga with my favorite yoga teacher. It was incredible and exactly what I needed. If I could just hold on to that feeling all day I would be centered, calm, peaceful...and stress would roll off my back effortlessly. It's a dream...

During yoga this morning we used a visualization of my heart being an ocean, breathing into that ocean, watching it expand past the borders of my physical self to include everything, the breaths being the waves rising and falling...and if negative thoughts entered my mind I was to imagine them as raindrops falling into the ocean...flowing into the current...not disturbing the water or the ebb and flow of the waves...drifting away into nothingness. In the quiet, dimly lit room before sunrise it was easy to lose myself in that ocean...at one with the universe for a fleeting instant...later at work I've tried over and over to bring that image back into my consciousness but instead the ocean has become a stagnant pool of negativity and self-doubt but I will continue to breathe and seek balance and try to float out to a tiny island where I will find peace....