Everyone lately is always talking about how balance is the wellness holy grail. I totally agree and it is part of what SERENE is all about. Drink green juice, sure. But also drink a glass of wine with your friends. Do yoga and workout regularly in fabulous workout attire, but find some time to watch Netflix on the couch, preferably in your most ragged sweatpants. Preferably with a carton of non GMO, almond milk, fairtrade ice cream. (The best thing about Vegan ice cream is that you can eat more of it. See? That’s balance.)

However, lately, I have been relishing moments of imbalance. I have been enjoying the times when I don’t know exactly which way the scale is going to tip, whether or not the shit is going to hit the fan, whether the path is going to disappear, whether the net will be there when I fall, whether a project will exit my brain and become real. I have been enjoying it because in that tipping point moment between the now and the appearance of the what-if…that is where the magic lies. That is where creation actual happens.

As an architect I am constantly staring at an empty computer screen or blank page not having any idea what is going to appear in front of me - appear out of me - in the next moments. The true genesis is somewhere in that place of discomfort when the blank page is still blank and the resolution is uncertain. And that moment is delicious.

We get scared of these moments of uncertain imbalance, but shouldn’t be. Just imagine the incredible amount of potential energy contained in the uncomfortable moment right before the big bang. Planets, species, the entire periodic table of elements, your parents and their parents, your kids and their kids, your dog, the Galapagos Giant Lizards - in that unbalanced moment buzzed the potential of infinite universes. Every one of us has the possibility to create a million universes, but if we shy away from shifting the status quo because of a fear of uncertainty and imbalance our only imprint on the world will come from the results of complacency.

We are all a little bit in between right now. It is technically spring, but the trees are still bare and it is still cold in the shade. The equinox was a few days ago. We can’t wait for it to be warm, for a president to be chosen, for new jobs to begin, for children to be born. But lets try to just be patient, to appreciate this moment where we are gathering momentum.

Earlier this week I ran across an article over at Mystic Mamma that quoted this incredible passage by Gregg Braden’s book Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer: The Hidden Power of Beauty, Blessings, Wisdom, and Hurt in honor of the equinox and it so perfectly summed up my feelings about this moment in my life, this moment in the seasons, that I had to bring it to you here. He says:

“There’s a power that lives in the space ‘between,’ that subtle instant when something ends, and what follows next hasn’t yet begun.

“From the birth and death of galaxies, to the beginning and ending of careers and relationships, and even the simplicity of breathing in and out, creation is the story of beginnings and endings: cycles that start and stop, expand and contract, live and die.

“Regardless of scale, between the ‘beginning’ and the ‘end’, there is a moment in time when neither one has fully happened. That moment is where magic and miracles come from!

“In the instant of between, all possibilities exist, and none have been chosen. From this place, we’re given the power to heal our bodies, change our lives, and bring peace to the world. All events originate from this powerful, magical moment.

“The mystery and possibilities of the space that connects two events has long been honored in the wisdom of traditions of our past. Native traditions of North America, for example, state that two times each day the earth enters into precisely such mystical realms.

“We find one realm immediately after the sun disappears below the horizon, just before the darkness of night arrives. The second realm occurs justbefore the sun reappears from the edge of the sky, after the darkest part of the night.

“Both are twilight moments — neither completely day nor completely night. It is during this time, the traditions suggest, that an opening occurs in which profound truths may be realized, deep healings may occur, and prayers have their greatest power.

“In his classic work A Separate Reality, anthropologist Carlos Casteneda called this opening a ‘crack between the worlds’ and described it as an access point into the unseen realms of spirits, demons, and power.

“Modern scientists acknowledge the power of just such a place. For them, however, the point is less about day, night, and time, and more about the matter that our world is made of. From the perspective of a scientist, what we see as the solid world around us is anything but solid!

“When the local movie theater projects a moving image on the screen in front of us, for example, we know that the story we’re seeing is an illusion. The romance and tragedy that tugs at our heartstrings is actually the result of many still pictures being flashed very quickly, one after another, to create the sense of a continuous story. While our eyes do see the single pictures, frame by frame, our brain merges them together into what we perceive as that uninterrupted film.

“Quantum physicists suggest that our world works in much the same way. For instance, what we see as the football touchdown or triple axel of a figure skater on a Sunday-afternoon sports program, in quantum terms, is actually a series of individual events that happen very fast and close together.

“Similar to the way in which many images strung together make a movie look so real, life actually occurs as brief, tiny bursts of light called quanta. The quanta of life happen so quickly that, unless our brain is trained to operate differently (as it would in some forms of meditation), it simply averages the pulses to create the continuous action we see as the Sunday sports.

“Within this simplified explanation of life, we also find the key to our healing. For one burst of light to end before the next begins, there must, by definition, be a moment in between.

“Within this space, for a brief instant, there exists a perfect balance where nothing is happening — the events that led to the burst are complete, and the new events haven’t started.

“In this place of ‘no thing,’ all scenarios of life/death/suffering/healing/war/ peace exist as possibilities and potential. This is the place where feelings and prayers become the blueprints of life.”

And with that, happy Equinox. Happy spring. Happy Easter. Go out and create things in the space between!

About Tegan

Tegan is a vinyasa yoga teacher, architect and product designer, insatiable traveler, and co-founder of SERENE.