A Little, Often: Come to Center

Hold on and let go

A season ends, a season begins. We’re inhabiting an in-between space right now — making the most of the light and our heat baked sandals, tomatoes and strawberries, even as autumn makes its imminent arrival known, flashing earthier colors, nudging more structured days, suggesting a morning jumper…

The winds of change are gaining momentum and their disorder is confusing. Choose summer or fall, they seem to ask. Hold on and let go. It’s not a clear choice because it’s all changing so our task is to embrace it all — to integrate what’s happened in the season that’s sunsetting and to open fully, offering ourselves to the uncertainty-filled season that’s unfolding.

Change, the only truly constant beat, is whispering — Come to center.

Can you hear it?

Because change is so fluid, this prompt is always timely. Like balance, the notion of “center” a practice rather than end destination, more gesture than arrival, and different day to day and moment to moment. And yet, there’s nothing airy about it when you feel it.

Your structure is always a good place to start — it’s your container, literally, for balance. Especially when the reality of impermanence feels confusing or turbulent (or whatever comes up for you), placing your body into its innate neutral, balanced alignment — putting your bones into their homes — gives your busy mind a clear reference point of center when it’s difficult to locate, helping to realign your perception with reality. Yes, center is available, here, just as sure as change. This is, as much as anything, a practice of awareness. You can refine these subtitles in a few short moments, most effective when used a little, often…

Inviting you to Come to Center with this 6-minute yoga practice (borrowed from my video platform + app, Athletes for Yoga) — align your body into balance, activate your muscles to support that engineering, and put center into context by feeling how balance supports your continual movement. 

Start with your body
Place, gently, your bones into their homes
Aligning joints —
knees over ankles
hips over knees
ribcage over pelvis
shoulders…

Activate, strongly, 
your muscles into remembrance 
of how to hold your structure
your refined, subtle awareness
of how to uphold yourself

Inhale — hold yourself
Exhale — try easier

Holding on and letting go in equal measure
into your ever-changing center 
Disorder (re)ordering
into a new, timely order
center, balance
here, again.

Practice and feel the difference.

What does coming to center feel like to you?