Stepping Up to the Barre

 As a little girl, I took dance and stuck with it most of my young life. I stayed connected to my dancer roots through most of my adult life, whether taking class or teaching. I love dance, whether I am watching it or doing it. I still dance when no one is watching. My feet and knees did not survive toe shoes and pointé well, and are stiff and sore most days, and it slowed me down. When I got really out of shape, I was drawn to type of exercise called, barre. In my head, I pictured myself back at the ballet barre, doing  a deep plié followed by a tall relevé, along with a few grandé jetés across the floor. And it went like this...

Barre is hard and I was not in shape. But barre is filled with grace. Not being graceful, exactly, but grace in that you aren't expected to be good or accomplished. It is not about successfully completing the exercise in perfection as ballet was, it is about the work and the rest. There is a term that I have become very fond of, "reset." It is the term used when you are in the. midst of a combination of moves that are repeated in a contracted muscle group. Sometimes you just have to stop, shake those muscles out and reset and go back to work. Resets give your muscles a chance to relax a bit, and your mind reconnect with your body to begin the work again. Sometimes the reset is more for my mind. My mind is telling me I can't, this is too hard, it is more than my body can handle. I need a reset to check in with my mind AND body and refresh my heart for the work. There is no shame in resets. In fact, resets are needed sometimes to remind me from where the power for the work comes.

Rest is also important to barre. At the end, we lie down and melt into our yoga mats and become a hot sweaty puddle of nothingness as our contracted muscles release and the working side of our brain turns off and our introspective mind listens, to the instructor encouraging us or to God refreshing us. 

I have learned resetting and resting is critical in our everyday life too. Somedays we just need to stop, focus and reset followed up by some rest to hear from our Power and re-discover our Strength (capital letters indicate names fro God). As I study, I am drawn to the Psalms, Psalm 127 in fact:

Unless the Lord builds the house,

    the builders labor in vain.

Unless the Lord watches over the city,

    the guards stand watch in vain.

2 

In vain you rise early

    and stay up late,

toiling for food to eat—

    for he grants sleep to those he loves.

God designed rest for us to reconnect with Him. When we don't stop, and don't reset, we begin to toil in vain, on our own strength and wisdom. Work...reset...work...rest.

Today:

• Reset
• Rest
• Rediscover from where the Power within you comes