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“When you feel most alive in your life, you are in balance,” she said, noting that every aspect of our existence, including everything in nature, seeks balance, and that feeling a little “off balance” at times is natural and not a bad thing. “What becomes a problem,” she said, “is when you don’t even know you’re off balance.”
Recognizing that you are off balance is the first step in becoming more balanced.
She said, “Everything is constantly seeking balance, and this balance that we’re seeking is a very dynamic kind of thing. It’s not something that’s static.”
She pointed out it is important to remember that balance is not merely getting various activities in your life in line, but deals with a whole inner dimension of ourselves that accompanies our outer self. “If the inner is off, the outer is going to be off,” she said.
Noting that the world has become more fast-paced and complex and that this will continue to be so, Sister Batto observed it is important to build skills that will keep us “whole and healthy and holy.”
She then led the class through an exercise in meditating on their life journey and the question of balance and stress in their lives. “What indications are there in your life that you are living more or less in balance?” she asked. “Are there other things in your life that are indicating you are more or less out of balance?”
Following observations by the participants, she noted, “When you are in balance you are very alert and feel much more whole, healthy, happy, secure and so on. But when you are feeling out of balance, you’re feeling perhaps much more anxious, expressing inappropriate emotions.”
It is important to be aware of the values, beliefs and assumptions that led to the answers given to the previous questions, Sister Batto noted. “One of the things I think we are coming to recognize more and more,” she said, “is that we make a lot of choices that are healthy or unhealthy, and so some of the things that we attribute to God (e.g., “God is punishing me.”) are really, a lot of times, choices that we have made that are poor choices. ... If I have an incorrect concept about something, it’s going to color everything else that I connect with that thing.”
Sometimes our whole lives are out of balance, she observed. “We rush around and don’t feel like we’re getting anything at all accomplished — we’re spinning our wheels. We spend more time at work, we spend more time in various kinds of things, but we feel still very unsatisfied.” Trouble sleeping is one indication of this.
“We live in a universe where everything is seeking balance,” she said. The sun rises, then sets; pressure in a volcano builds up, then explodes; we inhale, then exhale. “We always have this dynamic interplay of these different opposites,” she said.
It is helpful sometimes to just be out in nature, she observed, learning from it and recognizing that we cannot constantly “go, go, go” without sometimes also building in periods of rest. As an example of balance, she described trying to walk a tightrope, which requires constant adjustment in shifting our weight from side to side.
“One of the things that is important in achieving a sense of balance in your life and a sense of being able to deal with being off balance or in a stress situation,” she said, “is to just be aware of yourself. ... Cultivate that sense of a deeper self.” An excellent way to accomplish this is by closing one’s eyes and consciously breathing in and out.
“Don’t forget to smile to yourself when you exhale,” she added. “The smile allows you to not to take it all so seriously!” Your smile can also positively affect others, she noted.
“The very fact that you’ve become conscious of your breathing ... allows you to be very mindful about the fact that you are alive,” she said, “to be truly present where you are.” Allowing this inner stress to build up too much can bring about strokes, heart attacks — and death.
She pointed out the need to be aware of the things we do that drain our energy and to not get caught in “lopsided patterns of thinking” that contain only positives and no negatives, as balance includes both ends of the spectrum. It is important to acknowledge, for example, when we are in pain and not act like everything is alright when it is not. It is important to acknowledge both polarities in our lives, realizing that they are different dimensions of the same reality.
“Anytime you are not in touch with reality,” she said, “then it’s going to feel inauthentic. It’s going to produce stress and keep you off balance in your relationships with yourself, with others and with God.”
She then led the class in a good exercise for being attentive, in which all remained silent, becoming conscious of small sounds that they had not been aware of before. “Notice,” she said, “how sound — and really focusing on that sound — can pull you into your own center, into that deeper place of quiet within you.” This is the reason people sometimes listen to music, she noted.
“One of the things that more and more people are beginning to recognize,” she said, “is that the earth itself is like a living organism, and so what we do to one aspect — for example, to nature — we are doing to ourselves.” This includes pollution and other stresses we place upon nature.
“It affects us physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually,” she said. “We tend to forget that the earth itself is ... alive. And most of the time we treat earth as if it’s something that we can dispose of very easily, without realizing that the attitudes that we have, the behaviors, are really the same attitudes and behaviors we express toward ourselves.”
In order to attain balance, we must shift our focus from the mere forms and structures of our lives and concentrate instead on the inner flow of energy within us. Cleaning our desks or arising an hour earlier in the morning might be useful strategies in effecting change towards balance, Sister Batto noted, but we must first begin to have a deeper understanding of balance.
While we would like things to stay static or slow down, this is not going to happen, she observed, and the more we fight this, the more stressful our lives will become. She invited the class to “let go” of having things in an orderly, organized way and instead learn to deal with flexibility. “We’re always going to have this interplay of chaos and order,” she said, noting it is when we find ourselves in always one state or the other, that we have a problem.
“One of the tasks of midlife and beyond,” she observed, “is to keep incorporating more and more of the ‘opposite side.’” When we are younger, our identity becomes caught up in being, having or doing certain things. (I am a good mother, good leader, organized person, etc.). Age allows us to incorporate and accept the different or opposite parts of ourselves as reality and achieve a better balance.
“And so it’s OK if I don’t remember everything,” she said. “ ... It’s OK that things are not going to be perfect all the time.” We can learn from nature, she observed, where things build up to a maximum kind of energy and then gradually break down and start a new cycle. “It’s important to recognize that everything in nature is teaching you that it’s OK to be yourself,” she said.
Another important factor in gaining balance is the power of intention in our lives, something evident in nature as well. Sister Batto noted that, despite the seemingly random, chaotic nature of our lives, there is actually an observable pattern, over time, and that if the slightest change is introduced into that pattern, it can produce extremely significant results.
“So the slightest change we make in our intentions,” she said, “we can begin to redirect our lives in a whole different way.” It is therefore important for us to question why we do what we do and what it is that we want to be doing — something we often do not stop and think about. “Know your intention,” Sister Batto said. “That gives direction to all your other choices.”
She described a state we have all experienced, being “in the zone,” illustrating this with a diagram. “We all have times in our lives where we are living ‘in the zone,’” she said, “that time of optimal energy and experience where it feels like we are graced.” There are states on either side of this zone where things are still going well, but if you go too far one way or the other, you move into the “danger zone.”
If we lack challenge in our lives, we can become bored and depressed, entering the “Rust Out Zone.” If we move too far the opposite way and become overly challenged, we move into the “Burn Out Zone.” Both are states of high stress. If we find ourselves in either zone, Sister Batto recommended making choices to pull back a little to stay more within our comfort zone.
“If you’re not feeling challenged enough,” she said, “find something that challenges you, that takes you out of your typical habits and patterns. It might be a class. It might be joining something in your neighborhood, offering your services somewhere.”
On the other hand, should we find ourselves in the “Burn Out Zone,” we must learn to say “no” she said. “Learn to assess how much is too much for you and recognize that you’re not going to do yourself or anybody else any good if you overextend yourself.”
As an exercise, the class was asked to use a diagram of the previously described zones, writing in where various aspects of their lives fell, such as family life, job, club work, church ministries etc. “See where you are ‘in The Zone,’” said Sister Batto, “and then decide for yourself. ... Look at what changes you might need to make.”
She noted that the choice in making positive changes in our lives is up to us. “Nobody makes you do anything,” she said. “You choose to do it. You choose to allow certain expectations to be placed upon you.” If you cannot completely remove yourself from a stressful situation, she recommended choosing to look at things in a different way. For example, if there is a difficult person we must be around, we can choose to look at that person in a different way and interact with them differently.
“If we focus on what’s shaping and forming our ways of thinking and so on,” she said, “then we can also change those and learn to be more flexible, learn to be more compassionate.” This does not mean ignoring reality, but really seeing something as it is and not necessarily how we wish it to be.
An important skill that Sister Batto brought up was “mindfulness,” a way of being fully present in the moment. “Many, many times our minds are somewhere else,” she pointed out, and we are not even aware of the ways in which we spend our energies. She noted the average American spends five years waiting in lines, four years doing household chores, six years waiting at red lights.
She pointed out that some of our stress may be coming from the way we spend our time and suggested examining how our time is actually spent. “Are you investing it in ways that really bring you life?” she asked. This being “mindful” of how we spend our time, even if only experienced for a minute or two at a time, can gradually begin to transform one’s life.
“We spend an awful lot of our energy thinking of things that are in the past, thinking of things that are in the future,” she said, “and we pay very little attention to what’s really right now.” We also tend to avoid thinking of unpleasant things, she noted, but these must be experienced as well.
“The more you try to run away from something,” she said, “the more it’s going to come after you. You’re not going to accomplish anything by running away from it. Learn to incorporate the opposites and make friends of both polarities and that is going to help you,” she said. “Remember, even the tiniest change is going to have a major effect on you.”
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