I’ve been struggling recently with a pesky case of vertigo, origin unknown, that is keeping me cognizant of staying upright when it arrives in waves. At the same time, I’ve been working on a piece of art in which the element of balance has been a challenge.

This got me thinking about the word balance itself: to keep our balance or to lose our balance or to achieve balance. This implies that balance is something we can find and something that we have control over. But for anyone who has taken a tumble, we know that is not always so.
In the meditative tradition, there’s a practice called statio.  It is associated with the tradition of prayer throughout the hours of any given day. It’s a moment of pause, a brief standing still.  Statio is the brief quiet moment you take between ending one activity and moving on to the next. 

You finish one email and pause before composing the next.  You complete one color on the canvas and pause before applying the next.  Statio is a practice. It is a moment of contemplative consciousness that acknowledges the sacredness of what you’ve just finished and the sacredness of what you’re about to do next.

Statio is a helpful practice for maintaining balance. It slows us down just enough to focus on the whole and not rush between tasks and details. It helps us to grow our awareness of where we are in the moment and observe our reactions as we enter each new situation.

Statio slows our fall and makes it more likely that we will fall into what is most important. If we must fall, let’s fall into compassion, into love, into union with something larger than ourselves or oneness with others who are falling too. Maybe in doing so, we will stumble and fall into our better selves.

“Statio”, 2023, Micron Pen on Archival Paper

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