Finding Balance

I remember, when I started learning dance, people would always keep talking about FINDING CENTER. Finding that point where you push down through your feet, reach up from the top of your head, extend and lengthen and lo and behold! you achieve balance!
                                           Photographer: Rob Kunkle

Easier said than done. Much like life. That is one of my goals for this year. Balancing choreography and performance, teaching and learning, dance and other aspects of my life. Every day I try. Sometimes I fail, sometimes succeed. But I try to do it with a sense of calm, which does not come easily. TRY is the keyword.

Teaching about 14hrs a week, spending a few (or a lot of) hrs. in rehearsal, taking class (which I want to do a lot more of), doing other non-dance stuff which supports the dance stuff, I come home quite exhausted and usually with zero inclination to research, mail, cook, clean, or all the other things I should be doing. Sometimes I even become a social recluse. I am oblivious to what is happening in the world and am often jolted awake by Facebook statuses.

Then I go an a MANIC spree catching up on everything and realize that once again something is getting left out. Emails slipping through gaps, applications getting dangerously close to deadlines, me getting seriously close to exhaustion. Then a  reevaluation of everything and a new beginning.         
                                                                                       Photographer: Rob Kunkle
These are a few of my goals for the year: take more dance classes, practice more yoga, BREATHE, read more and in a more balanced manner (usually a book can keep me riveted to an extent that I forget to eat, sleep and move). Cook more (don't think it will become a passion, but maybe a habit), wake up earlier, less CAFFEINE, spend more quality time with friends and family, less negative energy, try and have our place look more habitable, STRESS less, be willing to let go, write more, and just try and be a better dancer, better teacher, better PERSON.

Finding balance does not happen. Just like one doesn't ever become a dancer. One is constantly BECOMING; it is a process. I may never find it. But I will get closer.