Rond de Jambe: Holding onto your center

There are a thousand little negotiations and adjustments your body makes in a Rond de Jambe. Circling one leg around the body, you also use all the muscles in your core, which work hard to hold the rest of you still. Otherwise, you look like you’re doing the hula.

This relationship between the moving leg and the still center is a wonderful image for the role of the spiritual life. When the movement of daily life threatens to throw us off-center, our spiritual lives are our center, holding us still and strong.

But what happens when your center gives out? 

Recently, I was planning my weekly beginner ballet class on a day I was overtired and overwhelmed. Doing Rond de Jambe, I realized I was depleted. It was just SO MUCH effort to hold onto my center, and my working leg kept throwing me off kilter. Nothing in me had the strength. Not my body, not my heart, not my mind, not my soul. My center had given out.

Then a still, small voice whispered, “Just go with it.”

Instead of pushing through and fighting my depleted energy, I let my body take me where it went.

It wasn’t ballet. But it was joyful and playful. And by letting go of my center, I found the the kind of centeredness I’d been needing that day.

One of my favorite prayers in the Episcopal Church is the prayer for a newly baptized person. It prays that God would give the person “an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works.” 

It’s that last part I love the most.

Joy and wonder are so central to our inner spiritual lives, yet they easily fade when life’s busy-ness circles around us—even though they are a strong antidote to the overwhelm we’re all feeling.

We fight so hard to stay centered. Sometimes, the best way to hold onto our center is to completely let go of it. Let it lead you somewhere unexpected. Somewhere, perhaps, joyful and wondrous.