Balancing the energies
The practice of Yoga aims to achieve inner balance. Hatha (Ha Tha) Yoga is balance between the sun and the moon energy. It is the balance between the hot and cold, active and passive, male and female, yin and yang. We need to learn to regulate our energy and understand that all of our problems are coming from the imbalance of energy. Imbalance of energy is manifested in personalities. We can alleviate the imbalance of personality through regulating our energy.
When we are imbalanced, it is like we see reality lopsided because we have a lopsided vision. The imbalance is often times between the emotions and the intellect, that means a person would be left brain dominant or right brain dominant.
Left Brain
A left brain dominant person would not have connection to their emotions . You can say the emotions are stuck, or they cannot feel them because the left side of the personality is dominating the right side, so the person’s behavior is more rigid as everything has to go through the reasoning. They cannot be spontaneous, they have difficulty to practice empathy, either for one’s self or for others. Empathy means putting yourself in the skin of somebody, and understanding the feeling and the experience of somebody, or even putting yourself in your own skin as well and have the feeling for one’s own self, and know how to harmonize our emotions and to adapt. The person can appear self- absorbed . In fact any imbalance either emotional or intellectual brings about self -absorption. Tuning means adjusting , adapting, harmonizing, moderating . You would say “this is the right thing, the right tone, the right attitude , the right reaction”. In the absence of tuning, there will be unhappiness, lack of touch of one’s emotions, there can be self violence, self torture, self denial, addiction, intolerance, fanaticism , abuse, passive aggressive attitude, emotional outburst and emotional repression, incapacity to stop and to regulate yourself back or know what is right and wrong for yourself. It can create difficulties to oneself and to others because it only sees one side of the picture , the logical side. But the truth is life is not just logical, life is not just black or white.
Right Brain
A right brain dominant person would be immersed in their emotions, their likes and dislikes. They would think: “I like this until I die or I dislike this until something or myself will be destroyed. “ The emotions swing and the mind is up and down, all this or all that.
Finding the balance
If we are alternating between Right and Left brain behavior, it is not called balance. It is just compensation and not balance.
A balanced person is a Yogi who has achieved equanimity of mind because they have found themselves and they can be adapting to situations and to people without loosing their sense of Self.
That person is basically calm in all conditions, they do not get excited about anything , neither get despondent about anything. They are content and go about their life, centered in the Self, not living life to attract attention or to prove something.
We need to be aware that an exceptional person that stands out from the crowd is not necessarily balanced but often, they are so imbalanced that they create their mark in history because of their imbalances.
We are not born perfect, so we all need to regulate ourselves through Yoga.
What to do?
First we need to recognize that our unhappiness comes from our imbalanced state and not coming from anyone else. Grief and blame come from our lack of recognition that this difficulty comes from our own outlook . Integral Yoga practice gives you a little bit of reprieve because it balances the two hemispheres of the brain and awakens the Self Knowledge . Yoga practice by helping you to recognize your strength and weakness, by regulating your energy , acts as a pain preventative measure and a self renewal tonic.
Your new balanced Self: Practiced regularly, it prevents you from returning to your habitual mode of imbalance – falsely identified to be your own Self . When you grow in Yoga, you slowly change your patterns and feel gradually very different as if you are losing yourself, but in fact you are regaining your own True Glorious Radiant Self.
© Swami Sitaramananda 2014 No part of this article may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of the author.