However, I've been remembering something important about balance lately: it is an incredibly active process. You can't always just sit back and wait for it to find you. Even though this word "balance" has these rather calm and relaxing connotations for me, you ain't gonna get there by just sitting back and waiting. You have to KICK. AND stretch. Balance comes from a combination of active processes. Even in the simple act of standing still, balanced on your two feet, your body is making hundreds of tiny adjustments every second to keep you in equilibrium. It's physics, it's chemisty; just because you're in an equilibrium state, that doesn't mean that there's not a LOT going on!
The Tibetans have a saying about meditation that I am absolutely in love with: we should do our (meditation) practice "as if our hair was on fire." That's the level of immediacy and urgency that they bring to their practice.
The idea (and I'm paraphrasing horribly here) is that we are here in this painful place (an unbalanced life, a world full of pain), and we need to get out of it, just the same way we would immediately try to escape from a burning building. Don't be complacent. Your hair is on fire! You've got to do something about it! And as Bikram says... (I just love this)... "What you waiting for?? Somebody come and help you?!" It's all up to you.
You've got to balance like your hair's on fire, and this is the only way out of the burning building... through your asana practice, through your meditation (moving or still), through the yoga of your life...
