What Does It Mean To Lose Balance?

ROSALIND PEARMAIN explores the notion of losing balance and restoring it, and how we have to lose our old balance in order to find a new one.

- John O'Donohue

A Pilates teacher once suggested that if you ever suffer an ankle injury, it helps to practice standing on that foot alone (when it is sufficiently recovered) as often as you can. Why? Because the nerves are also injured in sprains and the neural connectivity between the foot and the brain is undermined. Standing on one leg restores the passage of information from the ankle to the brain so that your balance and movement become more resilient again.

I find this a good metaphor. Balance is a shifting and dynamic notion; not about achieving a static point but sustaining dynamic equilibrium, which is far more fluid in living systems. It tells me that what is important with a balance is opening and restoring the flow of information. We could say that we become imbalanced whenever we block or close down to a wider understanding of our situation, our relation, and our context. We lose the ground upon which we stand and substitute for more abstract thoughts and memories. It is as if we literally lose our understanding.

This happens for me when I fall back on old patterns and get stuck. It could happen when I repeat past judgments and ideas about a person or situation that has changed, and get into conflict. We can see this happen with our friends, families, bosses, and also in political situations all the time.

It seems that we have to apparently lose our balance, our old stance, in order to find a new one. We have to sometimes let go of what we hold on to in order to keep our sense of upright strength, in order to move forward and explore new territory. Is this what we do every time we take a step and walk forward?

Within psychology, there are many different ways to make sense of how we lose balance in our relationship with the world: