Balance: Get It. Keep It.

If you could be either in or out of balance, you’d choose to be in balance, right? Choose it you may, but often it feels that life grabs hold of your post-yoga class sense of balance and smashes it against the nearest wall. Zen-like one minute, frazzled the next. Definitely not the objective.

If you know you’re not as balanced as you’d like to be, you have to ask, Can I find and sustain a more balanced me?

Change is possible in life so it’s reasonable to assume that you can discover a new level of balance and learn to maintain it. To get there you’ll need a little information. Let’s start with something you experience every day that influences how balanced you feel: your sensitivity to energy. Stick with me.

You sit within a personal energy field that travels with you wherever you go. We all have one, as do all living things. The human energy field has been part of holistic healing for millennia and, thanks to measurements begun in 1963 in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Syracuse University and then furthered at MIT during the 1970s and ‘80s, acceptance of it has slowly been seeping into the purview of mainstream science.

While we wait for the scientific community to further its research, you can begin to observe how your energy field works, which will help you better understand your personal balance.

Consider what happens when you’re around other people. You notice their physical attributes including the quality of their voice, clothes and hair; perhaps the scent they’re wearing; whether they make eye contact, and what they say or don’t say. Information all gleaned through the five senses.

But you have more in your sensory arsenal. If you start to notice, you’ll realize that in addition to being aware of someone’s mood, you’re also sensitive to his or her energy field. You’ll have a “sense” or “feeling” about people when you’re with them that goes beyond what you’re observing with your five senses. You’ll need to be quiet and non-analytical to do this—which will take some practice—but when you succeed, you’ll see that touching into another person’s energy field is not only totally natural, it’s also pretty amazing.

Not surprisingly, we usually prefer to be around people who are more in balance because in part their internal balance is reflected in their external energy field. When we’re around someone who is in a state of inner balance we bask in his or her calming energy field and if we let it, some of that energy rubs off on us. Spending time with people like this helps us grow.

While you’re searching for someone a little more “Zen” than you, you’ll also want to learn what else brings you into balance. To do that, start by asking yourself, What does it feel like to be in balance?

Most of us feel more balanced after a few weeks of R & R. On vacation our goal is to unplug from stress (and electronics, hopefully). We take care of ourselves by getting ample sleep, eating well and playing. We return to our normal life feeling happier, calmer and more aligned. We feel in balance, or nearly so. Then our life kicks back in and we quickly lose what we’d gained.

What we discover on vacation, you probably already know: self-care—self-nurturance—REALLY works. Whenever you self-nurture you always benefit, and so does your energy field because it’s a representation of you.

Women tend to self-nurture better than men, but they often cut corners and take care of everyone else before they care for themselves.

I know you want to take better care of yourself and having a daily reminder can help. Write this word equation down and put it where you can’t help but see it: Every self-nurturing action I take today will increase my state of balance. Read this statement every day for a month (for starters) and think about what it means. Then, follow its advice.

This is not only about being nice to yourself; it’s also about identifying what you truly need to operate optimally. You will feel far more balanced when these self-nurturing actions are folded into your life: a healthy diet, regular and effective exercise, an enjoyable sex life (yes, we could say a lot about this one), not over working (this one too), getting enough sleep (see ‘not over working’), spending time with loved ones and friends, meditating, having time to read and, if you’re a creative person, regular creative expression.

And you can do even more!

You can take all of that great self-care to a whole other level by connecting to something that takes you outside of yourself. Life tends to focus us down on minutiae and when we look up and out we gain more understanding and enhance our perspective. Connecting to something bigger than you magnifies the impact of your other self-nurturing efforts by aligning you with what is both outside and, on a deeper level, inside you.

Albert Camus said that life is the sum of all our choices. You can make the choice to care for yourself, as you also care for others, and simultaneously look beyond what is observable by contemplating a far larger expanse. Your mind, heart, body and energy field will feel the difference.