The Myth Of Balance
Out of balance is when too many days at the computer are sickening, followed by too many days wowing out (weekending, climbing, sexing, arting, exercising, naturing, sleeping) attempting to recover from the sickness. Balance becomes urgent clawing for autonomy and soothing.
Balance can also mean putting harsh limits on what you love and enjoy, while forcing yourself to do more of what you hate. It’s normal to justify this cruelty with abstract, future-feelings of health, well being and success. You are called forward by an enlightenment-through-asceticism formerly religious culture whose ragged, primal edges have been honed to an exquisite, cutting blade by the promise of consumer comforts and aesthetics.
💔 The promise of a well balanced diet is thinness, not fitness.
💔 The promise of a well balanced mind is uniformity, not uniqueness.
💔 The promise of a well balanced ego is solo achievement, not friendship.
Nothing breeds “general anxiety” more effectively or immediately than a disconnect from purpose and integrity. But in the self-help-approved version of balance, purpose becomes reactive soothing to balance the tally of time spent doing what makes you sick versus soothed, what you hate versus love. This soothing feels justified and deserved, backlit with an anxiety that literally cannot be resolved until you’re reunited with your purpose. Your soul knows better than to be satisfied with a balanced spreadsheet. Your soul knows this accounting is not its true purpose.
What is balance, really?
As a climber, balance is a delicate, temporary situation. Balance is deep engagement with full body tension that is physically, mentally and emotionally tiring to maintain. You are facing actual, immediate consequences for losing precise attention to difficult tension. Balance is uncomfortable and full of effort. You are standing somewhere pretty extreme and uncomfortable, a place it might benefit you to move on from. A sense of relief, a change, happens when you root down to the tips of your toes, your breath is mighty yet paced, you connect with the big picture, big P purpose in your heart (why you’re climbing the goddamn mountain in the first place), and you take a single, tiny step away from balance.
In the Saint Nightmare Universe, I am here to help you feel more comfortable wherever you are. In the suspended moment of tension, or the exhale of moving on.
Working with me you learn how to stop avoiding places and experiences you’re afraid of or don’t like, and learn the practical skills it takes to exist somewhere uncomfortable.