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" Last summer, my children (11, 9, and 7; boy, girl, boy) and I spent a day in New York City. By late afternoon, the kids were blissfully grimy and feeling their oats. We&amp;#039;d climbed rocks in Central Park, stuck our feet in fountains, sucked flavored ice. I could feel them casting about for the next piece of the adventure. That&amp;#039;s when we met up with Kate, a friend who has the distinction of having once been proprietress of her own circus. Although she disbanded her ensemble, she still loves doing acro-balance and asked, with an inviting twinkle, whether any of us would like to have a go. We were all quick to hang back, the boys especially. But there was something seductive about the smell of grass and the freedom of the day. Our resistance proved short-lived.  Kate lay down in the grass. She&amp;#039;d &amp;quot;base&amp;quot; us, she explained. The first thing we tried was simple &amp;quot;flying.&amp;quot; This involved letting Kate brace her feet against our hips and tipping our weight forward, holding onto her hands as our bodies were elevated. Little ones do this trick with their parents all the time. It was surprisingly scary to try as an adult, and surprisingly elating once I was up. I felt like I was levitating, flying in the actual sense.  At that moment, and moving through more difficult poses, we&amp;#039;d feel the whole thing begin to go \u2014 we&amp;#039;d lose the essential alignment of body weight that made it possible, and the sense of danger and our dread of crashing would make us squeal. Then Kate, patient and rooted and strong as a tree, would make some brilliant, very minor adjustment with her toes or knees or waist. And we&amp;#039;d go from feeling free fall was imminent to feeling safe once more, as though we could hold the posture forever.  The more we tried it, the more we wanted new challenges. In the upside-down postures, the sky, rimmed in trees and skyscrapers, was the floor, and the grass was the ceiling. Everything was topsy-turvy and riotous but strangely serene and gorgeous. Hours elapsed before we realized we were getting hungry for supper.  That night in bed, the sensation of acro-balance \u2014 that feeling of constant, minor readjustment \u2014 caught me up again, as when you&amp;#039;ve spent the day in the ocean and, lying down to sleep, you feel the undulating waves once more. And I realized how much life itself is about finding our balance between flying and falling, between holding on and letting go. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/entertainment/a17873/balancing-acts-blog/>