Physical Balance
Isa in balance.
I am so lucky to have our Isa, an ISA brown chicken who inhabits our back garden. Every morning in summer when the days are long, like clockwork she gives us a thing of beauty, an egg. In winter her circadian rhythm is shifted and each day’s egg arrives a little later until she misses a day. Sure enough, the following day’s egg arrives early again and the cycle repeats. At the present time of year I go into her coop in the morning to clean it and not long afterward am gifted a physical object of beauty. It sits warm in my hand when I collect it. Isa, unlike the Willie Wagtails nesting outside our back door, doesn’t mind this intrusion into her personal space and communicates her contentment with soft clucks.
Isa has had challenges in her life and has had to re-establish her balance. She had an infected foot and was being hen pecked by the other chickens at the property where we acquired her. Antibiotics from the vet did not help. Her foot lost it’s circulation and began to dry out. Through all this Isa made no complaint. I would often see her using her dried foot to scratch her ear and she still used it to get around. She stopped laying during the course of antibiotics so something was certainly out of balance. One day her foot simply fell off.
After her foot was gone, we wondered how she would manage. However, once off the antibiotics she started laying again. She gets around very well with a single foot and if she sees food, she will use her wings to cross the yard with speed as she hops along. I love her and she has reinforced a belief I hold. Physical perfection is not required to achieve physical balance in life. When life hits a curve and things become off balance, a new equilibrium can be established by strengthening other areas.
This is something I did a couple of years ago when I tore the meniscus of my right knee. Since cartilage does not have a blood supply, it will never heal. When I asked the specialist what I could do to alleviate symptoms he said, “Nothing. You will eventually need cortisone injections and sometime in the future, knee reconstruction surgery”. Ouch.
Well, I had the yoga asanas (poses) to help me. I turned to them and worked on strengthening and maintaining flexibility in the muscles of my legs. Muscles help support the knee joint and I can now say, although at times I am still aware of the injury, it is no longer noticeable in how I move. I have no pain. Just as Isa uses her wings to compensate for her missing foot, my leg muscles keep my knee in alignment and help to replace the support I lost. Sometimes physical imperfection leads to new balance; new strength.
Asanas, or poses, are one of the eight limbs of yoga; one of the spokes keeping the wheel moving smoothly around the axle.