Finding Your Center

Often in yoga and meditation, we hear the term, “find your center”.

What is your center and how do you know once you’ve found it? What’s the goal or aim in finding your center? Unfortunately, I don’t know because I think it is a very personal thing. But what I have come to understand is that finding your center can feel a lot like walking a tight rope.

Your footing seems off. You can’t quite seem to get it right, and your lack of balance, or practice, pulls you this way and that way as you wobble wobble and inevitably fold at the hips in one last attempt to keep your self up right before gravity gets the best of you.

As you practice getting centered, your balance on this tight rope begins to come with ease. You begin to know where to tighten up and how to bring yourself back when you’ve lost your center without falling too far. The wobbles become less and less extreme and you fall off only when you’re really distracted, tired, and way off center to begin with.

You keep practicing, gaining confidence in your ability to improve skills you thought you could never master. You practice furthermore, finding joy in seeing how much longer you can keep you balance this time and this time and just one more time. Until you can raise the rope higher and higher off the ground where you felt safe - leaving your comfort zone. And at these higher levels, you begin to find your focus and center with equal ease until the rope no longer feels like a tiny string beneath your feet, but one with your feet - sturdy and unshakable.