This is your reset position

In 2014, I became a huge Bar Method addict. “Reasons I love Bar Method” is a topic for another day complete with promotional video. But I go to class most weekdays and it has become a huge part of my daily routine, one that keeps me healthy and balanced and starting my mornings on a positive note.

During one of the exercises, you support your leg with your hand between reps, and the instructors will say “this is your reset position.” It seems to be part of the Bar Method phrasebook along with “you’re shaking so hard you look like you’re going to fall over.” (It's all about the shake.) and “Retuck, resqueeze.” (It's also all about the tucking and squeezing). 

Last spring, my organization held a huge event with almost 100 young party activists at a hotel on the beach in Sousse, Tunisia. (Tough gig, I know.) Like a lot of work events, it was intense and round-the-clock – lots of work, lots of socializing, lots of political debate. I found myself escaping to the beach to walk through the waves before breakfast or to watch the sunset after I'd closed the laptop for the evening. I tried to make it at least once a day.
   

Sitting on the beach one evening, after the sun had set, the phrase popped into my head – this is your reset position. And it was true. It was a literal and figurative breath of fresh air in the middle of long, crazy days. Work trips entail a huge, exciting, exhausting overlap of work and life and travel. In the midst of all that stuff piling up, I needed that time to myself - to come back to myself. It was like wiping the slate clean and starting fresh. Washing everything away. Refreshing the page. Starting back at zero.

This is your reset position.

Lots of things can be reset positions. Writing and reading and creating and running and going to Bar Method and walking on the beach and getting 10,000 steps and drinking wine. They are so necessary, especially for a textbook introvert like me. You need those pauses, rests, times to refresh, times to come back to yourself.
This is your reset position.