We talk so much about the body’s stabilizer muscles that it implies that the ultimate goal is stability. Yet, stable is not the word I’d use to describe the feeling that you get when you are working appropriately in a Pilates exercise or yoga posture.
The feeling you want in your body during a practice is not like concrete, firm and solid. It is, instead, more like a suspension bridge. It sways a bit in one direction, then the forces pull it back into another direction, keeping it centered.
An episode of John Leinhard’s “Engines or our Ingenuity” made clear my error in symantics.
The other side of instability is “equilibrium.” It is the loss of equilibrium that makes us fall. The presence of equilibrium keeps us ready to respond appropriately to forces or challenges.
In short, it’s not stability we seek, but “equilibrium.” And not even a stable equilibrium, but an unstable equilibrium.
As Lienhard put it, “A healthy equilibrium is one that rides instabilities. A little girl on roller skates, the man in the hand-glider, a person who can lose one job and find the next.”
A stable equilibrium, he explained, is like a marble in a V-shaped groove. If you jiggle it, it will fall back to the bottom. It is in an “uninteresting rut.”
When our bodies are in a rut, we wear out joints, overusing one area while letting another dry up. We open ourselves to pain and discomfort.
Even in life, sometimes I feel like we’re looking for a rut – a stable path on which we’ve traveled before and know what’s going to be around the bend. But even familiar paths have a way of changing on us, forcing us to find equilibrium.
My mother, who was always the healthiest person in the family – at 78, she took no medicines, had no conditions, saw no doctors. Then suddenly she’s diagnosed with cancer and we all have to adapt.
In equilibrium we fly like helicopters, always managing and adjusting to the forces around us to stay aloft.
And we need to maintain that equilibrium as effortlessly as possible, maintaining our energy reserves, so we can be ready for that next tightrope that we may have to walk.