Contemplation: Embracing Moderation and Humility - A journey of inner balance

Ever felt a longing for genuine fulfilment and vibrancy in your life? Bingo! You're not alone. I want to take you on a journey through my personal experience, and how the principles of yoga and tai chi helped me regain balance and discover a sense of contentment I never thought possible.

The concept of brahmacharya in yoga and the principle of empty and full in tai chi, taught me the art of moderation and the power of humility. Unearthing the essence of these principles, we explore a shift in our cultural habits, particularly our fear of missing out, and how this can lead to emotional instability.

With a leap of faith, I learned to surrender to divine guidance, liberating myself from the incessant need to control outcomes. The secret of satisfaction, I found, lies not in accumulating more, but in embracing moderation, grounding your emotions, and nurturing your emotional well-being.

Let's delve deeper into simple practices that can become a part of your daily living with the  Ground Your Emotions Self-Paced Course, a beautifully designed course to arm you with practical tools that help you maintain balance in decision-making and nurture emotional well-being. Join me on this transformational journey towards emotional well-being and a fulfilling life. Buckle up, it's going to be a ride you won't forget!

You can learn more about the course at https://www.nidsnidra.com/ground-emotions

Read the blog at https://www.nidsnidra.com/blog/journey-of-inner-balance

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:50

Embracing moderation and humility a journey of inner balance In times of great change. How can you navigate, making choices that keep you centered and energised on a path that's fulfilling for your life and the impact that you're going to have on others? In this personal story, I share how yoga and tai chi principles can ease life for greater stability in times of great change. This blog was originally written five years after my brain injury in 2018, when I was hiking in Panama with two friends. This trip was a hike of Volcamburu, which is in between the Pacific and the Caribbean Ocean, where, on a clear day, you can see both sides of the land and water, and it brought together a deep contemplation. Amidst these lush landscapes, I was confronted with a deep internal conflict. It was frustration stemming from my head injury and, though physically and mentally strong, I often found myself really exhausted and overwhelmed. A realisation led me to reflect on the principles of moderation and humility, particularly in the context of yoga and tai chi. It's moderation in yoga.

Speaker 1: 2:19

Through my head injury, I was taught that the significance of moderation or brahmacharya in yoga's yamas, which are the ethical observances of how we perceive our interaction with the world around us. It's a bit like the mirror that is reflected back. And moderation is about finding balance in our external relationship with the world, allowing for quality experiences over mere quantity. However, in our world of constant stimulation and instant gratification, choosing moderation can be really challenging. Our culture of fomo, or fear of missing out, and the perpetual desire for more, perpetuates much suffering, leading to mental health issues like anxiety and depression, and it's essential to break free from this cycle of lack and embrace moderation in order to be able to find contentment and be in the present moment. The other principle that came to me was the tai chi principle of empty and full. In mastering tai chi, there is an understanding of a concept called empty and full. By differentiating between these two states during transitions of movement, we can efficiently redirect the flow of energy and maintain balance within our body and therefore all the different forces that are placed upon our body In every movement. There's a dynamic interplay between this fullness and emptiness and that creates a harmonious equilibrium. And while beginners may exaggerate these states, masters will embody a refined sense of moderation internally full and empty, yet externally balanced and there's more on that to come.

Speaker 1: 4:07

And finally, how did this come into humility? True humility isn't about seeing ourselves as inferior or superior to others. It's about recognizing and accepting our own uniqueness, acknowledging the divine guidance that shapes our hearts. Surrendering to the will of the divine allows us to be with our soul's purpose and frees us from our own ego-driven desires. When we release the need to control and push for outcomes, it's possible to become a servant of the divine and find greater fulfillment and vibrancy in life. And, to quote a course in Miracles To accept yourself as God created you cannot be arrogant because it is denial of the arrogance. To accept your littleness is arrogant because it means you believe your evaluation of yourself is truer than God's. So where do these principles meet?

Speaker 1: 5:06

As I was descending Vulcan Baru on a midnight hike to see a sunrise that unfortunately we could not see due to the cloudy and misty night, I encountered moments where I actually lost physical sense of my body. My emotional stability became quite unsteady too as my feet lost their way on the slippery mountain slopes, and I felt my ego really frustrated as my mind was losing its ability to really grasp where I was in this reality. These were familiar feelings since my brain injury, and it dawned on me that embracing moderation and humility can lead to profound shifts when you choose moderation. It allows us to perceive abundance in the universe, it reduces the frustration of what we perceive as maybe lacking and therefore gives you a boost in energy. And when I understand the balance between empty and full, it allows for efficient energy management and therefore the appropriate seizing of opportunities and energy expenditure and, through surrendering to life's purpose, it alleviates suffering and it fills life with a fulfillment and a vitality that cannot be touched on with words. So what are the key steps to maintaining this balance?

Speaker 1: 6:37

In yoga's moderation, or brahmacharya, you can observe your choices. There's a constant cycle of more and never enough in our modern world, especially the way we are advertised to, and it means that you're living in a culture that supports a desire for perpetual suffering, a perpetual not enough. So is there any choice that you make based off of this? Not enough is a restatement of your karmic cycle that you are sufficient and unworthy, and this cycle of insufficiency creates a cycle of lack, and it seems as though lack needs an instant reward. It's constantly seeking for instant gratification, and this is seen in the mental health issues of depression, anxiety, addictions, other kinds of mental health struggles, whether the actions are to reflect on the past or to worry about the future or just to bury your head in a place of ignoring what is. It's a choice to live in lack and suffering, and lack only lives in the extremes. It bounces between the highs and the lows. It's just hanging out in those ends, waiting to send you back to the other one. And moderation is learning to find an even keel in the middle. And this is actually where contentment resides. The more you take moderate acts, the more you can see the quality of the moment and feel the abundance that is around you.

Speaker 1: 8:07

Through Tai Chi is empty and full. You learn to learn to hold your center or your plumb line. There are eight directional forces that are coming in on the body at any one moment and, in order to maintain your physical balance, there is an kinetic activity and shift in transitions between the upper and lower body to need to balance one another. And there's no bias towards what's empty and full, or upper or lower. It's just a quality that either has and helps to create equanimity in the body and, with conscious awareness, you can begin to coordinate the upper and lower so that there's always this balance of empty and full and therefore you can keep your center and maintain your balance, and this also goes for emotional balance.

Speaker 1: 8:55

A beginner may exaggerate the fullness and emptiness, just like we do when we're looking at lack. We're exaggerating. But as you begin to refine, the moderation of energy becomes easier and you can master this empty and full Change comes from an intention, an intention to maintain our center and as we move and depart from the center position which change brings about, whether you like to stay still or not, you always have to grow and growth is change. So as you move away from the center and you adjust, there's this moment of opportunity to move into something and if you don't have this weight in the right place, you may miss, waste energy and potentially fall. Through my own head injury, I learned to adapt and find my center. Through constantly walking into loss of energy, to constantly making those errors of choice, I was able to make more mindful choices and more conscious energetic shifts of where to place my energy.

Speaker 1: 10:13

As we release the need for more and embrace moderation, it nourishes the body, the mind and the emotional state.

Speaker 1: 10:20

Decisions made from an emotion of fear, lack and worry add more drama, create more instability and it takes more energy to stabilize who feel more tired when you learn to ground and calm your emotions.

Speaker 1: 10:35

It sues the nervous system and you can maintain better balance, and that means that the decisions you make can come from a balance between rational need and your intuitive calling, from your soul.

Speaker 1: 10:48

In the ground your emotions, self place course you are going to be learning those calming and grounding tools that sues your emotions, help you maintain that balance in those choices that you make, and we've designed it through a healthy app, easy app, so that you can use it on the go for convenient accessibility, with a resource that's going to keep you on that path of moderation, so that you can find solace amidst life's inevitable challenges as you grow and unfold. And that means you can embark on a transformational journey towards emotional well-being and a life that's fulfilling and that is here for you at your soul's perfect calling. We'd love to invite you to discover more about this course, its self-paced, designed to work for you and your time and your nervous system, so you can be gentle and integrate at a pace that really supports you to your best abilities. I look forward to seeing you there and to connect in with our community, who are here to hold and support you with so much kindness and unconditional love.