In our previous blog, we discussed what a balanced state looks like. This help you understand when you are balanced and when you are not balanced. In our Chinese medicine practice, people often ask us what they can do to create or maintain a balanced state. We are often overjoyed to hear this question. This question indicates that the person has made the first most critical step to a balanced state as the person has made the task their responsibility.  Indeed, a Chinese medicine practitioner may help you create a balanced state, but this state relies on the person to maintain.

A balanced state in Chinese medicine means “Yin is calm and Yang is securely inside the body to drive the life force”. That is to carry out daily activities and tasks in a calm status with direction and clear awareness.

Here are three key strategies

• Be aware and be tuned into the time when we are not balanced;
• Letting go;
• Practise self-compassion.

They are ways to carry out each strategy. In this blog, we will focus on how to be aware.

Be aware and be tuned into the moments when we are not balanced.

Often we go through life with little awareness of our thoughts or our emotions as we are busy in carrying out the conversations inside of our head. The next minute we know we are angry with some remarks or we are upset for ourselves or others not doing things properly. Those are the imbalanced moments. Actually way before those upsetting moments, dis-comfort has been simmering. If we detect those, we could easily dis-engage at that time and prevent later upsets.

To be aware, one must maintain mental clarity, including sleeping well, eating a balanced diet, and engaging in daily physical activities and awareness training. To learn how to be aware, we highly recommend reading some books or learning some techniques. There are many good resources. Here are just a few.

• Michael Singer “Untethered Soul”.
• Eckhardt Tolle “The Life Purpose”
• “RAIN”: recognise, acknowledge, investigate and nurture is a technique used by Tara Brach, an America-based psychologist who practices mindfulness and medication.