Picture Perfect Gymnastics by Hopes and Dreams

Balance is all in the head.

The brain monitors the position and movement of the head and body to keep balance. The inner ear listens to the Labyrinth, which determines balance through three semicircular canals. Each canal is at right angles to the other two, so no matter which way you move your head... nod if you understand... one or more of the semicircular canals will identify the position. Within the canals, the utricle and saccule portions register the pull of gravity. This information, tallied up with information from the eyes and the muscles, identifies balance.

A gymnast on a balance beam listens to the balance but doesn't really pay attention to it... as if balance were music in a store... it's not the reason to go into the store.

Balance on a balance beam is easy. Stand. Ta-da! Balance.

Keeping balance while doing back handspring layouts and everything else? That's the trick.

What's the trick?

I like music. When I'm in a store, I don't want to hear music that I don't like. That's not difficult, because I like a lot of music. I also don't want to hear music that I like because nothing smashes up a perfectly good song like most store sound systems. The trick is not to listen.

The crowd is too far from the gymnast to hear the distinctive gulm-thump of their feet on the beam. And the gymnast isn't listening. They aren't listening to the gulm-thump or the crowd or the inner ear. It's a mind game.

How is the game played?

Training teaches the process. Practice teaches the internalization of the process, to make it natural, without having to think about it. Thinking about being balanced only gets in the way.

In Zen in the Art of Archery, D. T. Suzuki says that "as soon as we reflect, deliberate, and conceptualize, the original unconciousness is lost and thought interferes." Great work is done when not calculating or thinking.

In The Inner Game of Tennis Timothy Gallwey says that only when the mind is quiet is one's peak performance reached.

Whenever something is tried, it is bound to not always be right. Mistakes are made along the way. Mistakes can be very consistent.

I am a highly creative person, but I do not relish the creative process. I am too wedged in the future.

What I see ahead is an image of the end product. I just have to get there, and I have no idea how, because invariably I've never done the thing before.

If I growl, that means the frustration, the impatience, has taken over. Until I get past that, I will never have the open mind needed for a leap of creativity.

Life is like the high jump: just when you've lept over the bar, someone raises it. (Usually it's me.)

No, life is like a cross between the high jump and hurtling. Every so often something comes along that you've got to leap over, often higher and higher.

No, that's not it either. Life is like the balance beam. You don't want either extreme. You want to stay in the middle. But once you're up here. You might as well...

Jump
Flip
Do a handstand
And test the extremes.