Finding Your Center...

Most dancers know that one of the most challenging things about dance is finding your center. In dance your center is the basis for everything, you cannot master any moves without it. I think of life in the same vein. Life is all about finding your center, when you're off balance, not focused you will fall off of your center and sometimes that means taking a few moments to re-focus before you move forward.

There are three times out of the year, where I loose control and begin to exhibit some self-destructive behavior. Most of the time it's when all of the things I'd been holding in for months finally find their way to my brain and/or heart and escape from my body and cause me to loose my center. I do things that are out of character, sabotage relationships; I let stress get the best of me and I loose sight of the small things that are essential to me getting closer to my goals. To make matters even worse, I am my own worse critic, so when my center is off I beat myself up about it.

Finding your center again...
When everything seems out of place and you've made one too many mistakes over a short period of time it's hard to figure out how you can get back on track and leave all of those things behind. What I have to remind myself of every day is that I am human and that the only person that I am accountable for is me. So when my life spirals out of control, I am the one who has to put back the pieces.

One of things that I do to find my center is have a retreat for myself. This means taking a few days to spend some time with myself, not being caught up at work, in other peoples lives and drama, not worrying about what's going on around me, getting into my daily routine with a clear mind and lastly doing a few things that offer me a sense of peace. For me that's working out and taking walks. This retreat begins with me taking a vacay from the world as it is in that moment to get a sense of what it needs to be in the next. It ends with me getting clear about what it feels like to be in that space where I've lost my center, dealing with those feelings that got me to that place and letting go of them. It ends with my clearing out any negative energy around me and drawing into my life positivity and peace.

I know all of this may sound like something from a self-help book. But my way of making sense out of the moments in my life that have an impact on who I am is by putting things into this kind of perspective.

My center is a place where I feel secure, have some clear direction and know that I am living my life organically and with purpose.

Today is day one of me regaining all of this...I am finding my center.