Try a little experiment in your own life to see how constant change is even in what you experience everyday. Take any part of your day that seems similar to what you experienced the previous day, maybe driving to work, and really open your mind and senses up to what is happening around and withing you. Are the sight, smells, feelings on the skin, and/or sounds the same? Are your feelings and thoughts the same? How about the feelings that you are experiencing throughout your body parts? Another experiment could be reading a book or passage that you have not read in years. Check your feelings and thoughts, and what else arises as you experience the writings.
Change was always there though I had not realized how much. It took time and practice to realize this. I became more sensitive to the causes of change and began to understand that it was a normal part of life, moment to moment. Having things stay as they are seemed like a romantic ideal that was worth striving for. However, the more that I would try to hold onto a feeling of security and enjoyment in my life, the more that it seemed to be corrupted by that attachment into feelings of paranoia and sickness like the kind that you experience when you over eat your favorite food. In one form or another I have experienced this unhealthy feeling in my life, helping to cause various uncomfortable and sometimes painful and/or costly consequences. Over the years I have been lead down a particular path because of my aversion and attraction to change. Why do I do this to myself? This was something I did not really grasp until I started studying brain science and practices like mindfulness and yoga. I learned that it was simply part of my nature to have these mixed up aspects within me. I also learned to begin finding acceptance and even enjoyment of a sort in what from one perspective can seem like a very insecure way to live but ironically can also be the most secure, referred to as the standing on groundlessness by Pema Chodron.
I really enjoy balancing poses in yoga because they allow me to experiment the acceptance of changing aspects in life that naturally arise. I find this important to my everyday sense of well being. In a balancing posture I am given both opportunities to feel change and stillness. Change is experienced in agitated feelings and thoughts, and a wavering stance. Stillness is experienced when those feelings and thoughts settle, and my body weight settles into a balanced position. This is achieved through letting go of fears that involve I can not, but also a careful retention of feeling the truth that the body will not balance unless the weight is placed in a certain way that I must calmly feel through in each different pose. The more time that I am balancing in a posture, the longer I come close to accepting the inevitable change found in the shifting outer world's circumstances, relaxing my inner world to flow with that change. For example there might be a loud noise that startles me, someone that is watching me, insects crawling on my skin, an itch, a full bladder, an empty stomach, a to do list that I am caught up in, etc. These internal and external phenomena might throw my balance off if I begin to follow them with my mind, but I keep practicing in order to learn to live with the changing of life, and to better relax into the nature of who I am and what life is. Try a little experiment of balance in your own life. It could be an actual balancing yoga pose like the one legged tree, or it could be by learning to flow better with a circumstance that would make you upset if you allowed it to get to you of balance.
May your life be balanced as changes arise,
May love and wellness live in and through you my friend!
Love -Aaron :-)