Moving Balance

Yesterday I talked about moving balance. You might have thought, what the heck is that?! Well, I don't like to make it too easy on you. I'm a coach after all. I'm hoping that you reach a little to see what you can find on your own before I start telling you how I see everything. After all, a lesson that you learn from your own exploration, experimentation and experience is far better than anything you can pull from a book. But now that you've had a bit of time to imagine moving balance on your own, I'd like to give you my take on this concept in ice skating and in everything else.

I once heard walking described as "highly coordinated falling". With every step you are falling forward, but you catch yourself before any disaster happens and then you allow yourself to fall forward onto the next foot. But, of course, we don't focus on the falling part. Walking is a great example of moving balance. Each step is an opportunity to fall, but we don't, because we are in balance even as we move.

It takes longer to learn how to walk than it does to just stand up on your own. That's because moving balance is more complex than balancing yourself when you are completely still. There are more muscles involved and more variables to deal with, too. But you aren't going to spend your whole life standing in one place to hold your balance. You learn to walk and then you move confidently through life.

Moving balance is that equilibrium which is always in flux. It's a controlled fall that doesn't feel scary because you are confident in your ability to hold it, to stand upright throughout the motion, and to continue to move in the direction you want.

Ice skating is all about moving balance, of course. It's about working with the forces that work on your body: gravity, acceleration, inertia or momentum. When you have learned a move it becomes comfortable as you become confident in your ability to control the fall, to manage the equilibrium throughout the entire process.

Life is all about moving balance, too. Life is always in motion, and you are always balancing yourself within it. Your mental, spiritual, and physical health are all affected by your equilibrium in life. Work-life balance is only a piece of this big puzzle. You balance your desires, your dreams, your family, your beliefs. You balance what you want to do with what you can do and what you must do. You shift your weight, sometimes subtly and sometimes drastically, in order to continue to move onward.

Posted by Lisha at 12:52 AM