The Need For Balance – Honoring Our Habits
Our bodies are always seeking balance. Continuously assessing the fluctuations in our systems and adjusting to keep us in homeostasis - the state of steady, internal, balance in living systems.
When you feel cold your body begins to shiver to create more heat. When your blood sugar drops you feel hunger pangs. When we encounter a stressful situation the heart rate and breathing begin to increase. Your body is always picking up subtle cues from the internal and external environment and adjusting in order to keep you in balance. It’s happening all the time. For any unmet need the body intelligently and intuitively adjusts in order to meet that need.
This Need for Balance is Present on Every Level of Our Systems -
not only the physical. If there is an unmet need on the level of mind, emotion, or spirit our intelligent systems will talk to us in sensations - the language of the body - that something is off.
If what we need is unavailable or we just aren’t listening, our systems will find a substitute in order to quiet the sensations of discomfort so that we can continue on with life.
This is how we develop what we call our bad habits, addictions, cravings, greed, and compulsivity. Our body (physical, mental, and emotional) identifies an unmet need that seeks to bring us into balance with whatever is available.
What the body cares most about are safety and survival. The body either has a sense of safety or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t it will do almost anything to establish or recover that sense of safety
-by Resmaa Menakem
Just for a few examples:
The unmet need for love could manifest as what we call an addiction to sugar.
The unmet need for security could manifest as greed.
The unmet need for belonging could manifest as perfectionism.
The unmet need for grounding could manifest as drinking or smoking.
The unmet need for true joy could manifest as drug use.
The unmet need for excitement could manifest as binging on TV.
The unmet need for a connection could manifest itself as excess consumerism.
These behaviours that we see as harmful are actually resources - at the time they began, they were necessary to keep us in balance. They remain necessary until we are willing and able to turn towards the true need.
Not truly understanding that our behaviours are rooted in an unmet need we label these behaviours as wrong and attempt to use discipline and willpower to give up our bad habits. However, if the unmet need remains, our body will find another way to soothe the discomfort. Replacing one addiction with another.
Rather than judging, shaming, and attempting to discipline away from the behaviour, what if we tried to compassionately understand and meet the deeper need? This is how we can restore the balance we crave while coming into true intimacy with life.
Practice: The next time that you notice a familiar craving, try to first locate the craving in your body. Where do you feel it? Once you locate the sensation, breathe into it. Feel or imagine the breath actually moving into that place. After a few deep breaths ask yourself - what do you truly need? Allow for some silence as you breathe and listen.
Of course, you might still decide to reach for the cake, or wine, or remote - and let that be ok.
Honour the continued need for this resource at this time. Continue to stay present with your body and sensations and notice the shifts. The way that you feel during and after. As you become more aware of the experience, you are becoming more intimate with the deeper need that your body is attempting to meet. Notice the satisfaction and also notice what isn’t yet satisfied. Ask yourself - What is still missing? What do I really need?
When you explore your behaviours with love and awareness you are likely to have the felt sense that this isn’t meeting your true need. That it feels empty, numb. You might get in touch with a deeper longing to be fully alive and that this behaviour is cutting you off from intimacy with life. This longing for true aliveness once it has been awakened can’t be ignored. It will take you from behaviours that were allowing you to survive to ones that allow you to thrive. When you feel ready to move away from the behaviours that are no longer satisfying, you will need to choose new resources that will continue to support you as you meet the discomfort that will inevitably arise from leaving your old behaviour.
Here are just a few examples of resources that attend to our deeper needs. These resources help to keep us in balance while we seek to experience the full spectrum of the human experience, to remain in our centre as we ride the waves of life.
Do you need love and connection? Reach out to a friend, practice vulnerability, ask for a long hug, say Hi to someone you don’t know, go to a new class or group, make more time for the people in your life who love you.
Do you need the feeling of security? Practice generosity and tune into the feeling of abundance, start a gratitude journal.
Do you feel the need for belonging? Spend time in nature, go for a walk outside, watch the sunset, put your hands on your heart and speak words of love, meditate or practice yoga and allow yourself to experience your interconnection to life with each breath.
Do you need grounding? Go to a yin or restorative class, put your legs up the wall with some gentle music or a guided meditation, snuggle a loved one - human or animal, enjoy a nourishing meal made with love.
Do you need to feel true aliveness and joy? Dance, sing, run, yoga, move your body, feel the aliveness from the inside out.
About the Author:
Anisha fell in love with yoga in 2006, when she took her first class and understood this was an intimate language of movement that her body understood. Yoga became her personal medicine and practice of coming home to herself and her body. She took her first Yoga Teacher Training in 2015 and has been sharing the gift of Yoga throughout Asia since.
Her teachings draw on her background in Classical Hatha Yoga, Yoga Therapy, Somatic Vinyasa, Biodynamic Yin, Yoga Nidra and Meditation, and Self-Inquiry. She compassionately encourages students to remember who they are and experience the bliss of awakening and falling in Love with oneself.
Originally born in Canada, but fascinated with the wisdom traditions of the Eastern world, her travels eventually landed her in Bali, which she now calls home. You can contact anisha in here: anisha.rajguru@gmail.com .
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