Can we move beyond work/life balance?
The concept of balance in our culture mostly comes down to juggling the increasing demands of the work we do to earn income (“work”) with all of the other things that are important to us (“life”.) If you take a breath and widen your perceptions, doesn’t that seem a little bit…limited? Doesn’t it seem like there’s an awful lot of vital, beautiful, diverse stuff that falls under the single category “life” in this framework?
In Chinese Medical thought, there is no dualistic framework like this to try to fit Life into. At minimum, there are Five Elements that need to exist harmoniously in our bodies, our families, and all other human and natural systems in order for them to function healthily. This complexity is part of what makes it hard for someone like me with a Western-trained mind to start learning Chinese Medicine.
Rather than try to jump into the deep end with Five Element theory, let’s start expanding our ideas about balance using a metaphor that will easily resonate with the Western habit of dualistic thinking. They’re right there in the sky for us, serving as constant reminders of these two different approaches to life.
Sol et Luna: Practical Esoterism
Your body and mind feel very different on a sunny Summer afternoon and a cool moonlit night. Poets, playwrights, and artists have long drawn on this knowledge to set the scenes for their creations and to evoke particular feelings. You do the same thing when you plan a picnic for a Sunday afternoon and a steamy rendez-vous for 8pm on Friday night. You wouldn’t invite your friends to brunch at midnight, and you wouldn’t plan a bachelorette party for 10am!
A healthy, balanced human life includes the full range of human experience and emotion. It seems to me that as our culture talks about health we tend to overemphasize the solar aspects of healing and neglect the more mysterious, paradoxical, and magical lunar side. Neither one is better than the other, but life without lunar medicine can be pretty dry. More importantly, pushing away the lunar medicine we need can leave us vulnerable to lunar “possession,” moments in which we’re overtaken by urges to connect with our lunar nature in ways that feel out-of-control or even dangerous. (I am convinced that a large percentage of binge eating and binge drinking comes from suppressing our need for lunar medicine.)
Solar medicine includes all the things that you probably already identify as healthy habits. Good nutrition, regular exercise, getting your checkups, practicing (most) yoga, taking vitamins and remedies, cognitive behavioral therapy, good sleep hygiene….all of these things help to make our bodies strong, resilient, and supple. This is what solar medicine is all about. Words like “enlightenment,” “sun salutations,” “clean eating,” “regimen,” and “protocol” are all in the realm of the Sun.
Lunar medicine is a little harder to recognize as “medicine” at all, unless we open our hearts to a definition of medicine that’s closer to the definition used in indigenous cultures. For many of the oldest human cultures on Earth, “medicine” is anything with power. The Moon’s gravitational force is connected to the ocean’s tides and the tides of fertility within women’s bodies. And anyone who has ever looked up at the full moon intuitively knows something about its beautiful, indirect power.
Have you ever gone out dancing all night and come home exhausted, relieved, and somehow maybe even healed? Have you ever gotten a little tipsy and found yourself in an unusually open conversation? Have you watched a movie or seen a play that moved you to tears and changed the way that you see yourself and the world? All of these are examples of lunar medicine.
Lunar medicine encompasses the aspects of deep human experience that are mysterious, shadowy, unconscious, and draw their potency from their dark, hidden, or unpredictable nature. It relates to the unconscious mind, dreams, premonitions, intoxication of all kinds, altered states of consciousness, dancing, sexuality, theater, poetry, music, all kinds of artistic expression…. And in circles concerned with healthy living and work/life balance, it’s rarely considered to have any role in a healthy or balanced life at all. (And yet, there are entire subcultures in which lunar medicine is heavily emphasized. Think of artists on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the 60s, rave culture in the 90s, absinthe culture in the late 1800s, and the ancient Greek cult of Dionysus for just a few examples.)
Finding your own balance….
Most of us tend to gravitate toward either solar or lunar medicine in our lives. Do you have a sense of which one is more familiar to you?
Instead of trying to create balance in your life by adding more practices that are similar to the ones you already lean on, what would happen if you let yourself play with something different?
If you’re an over scheduled working Mom with a regular yoga practice and a penchant for healthy eating, does adding a running workout twice per week really create balance? Or would a night out on the town with a glass or two of wine and some tango lessons help open the door to parts of yourself that you’ve been disconnected from?
If you take every esoteric energy healing workshop that you can find, regularly use plants and practices to alter your consciousness, and spend a lot of time making or witnessing art, would another weekend workshop or ayahuasca vision quest really create balance? Or would your life work a little better if you started a morning meditation practice and observed a regular bedtime?
Balance looks different for everyone. There’s no finish line to cross, no perfect configuration of activities and practices that constitutes balance. My dream for you is that as you pursue healing and balance for your own life, that you’ll remember to include all of the parts of yourself and all of the aspects of your humanity in your vision.
I wish you the warmth and power of the Sun.
I wish you the enchantment and mystery of the Moon.
Above all, I wish you a full and meaningful life.
