His instincts told him that each person would learn best how to improve his performance if he could see, in slow motion, what his own personal versions of excellence looked like. Really great performance often happens in a state of flow, such that we’re barely conscious of what we’re doing—Michael Jordan used to watch himself in post-game highlights and shake his head, saying, “Wow, I did that?

And in the end, balance is an unachievable goal anyway, because it asks us to aim for momentary stasis in a world that is ever changing. Supposing we ever get things just exactly in balance, we know for sure that something will come along and unbalance them and that we’ll be back to pushing our balance rock up the hill again. Balance as an ideal erases our humanity—the essence of who each of us is and aspires to be—and replaces it with a Sisyphean coping strategy.

It is the nature of living a real life that experience is not uniform, but ever changing and ever challenging and requiring more and more comprehensive integration. It is not enough for the brain/mind simply to tick over, maintaining uniform function (like the heart); it must adventure and advance throughout life. The very concept of health or wellness requires a special definition in relation to the brain.

Muscles really are like animals, and they want to take it as easy as possible; if pressure isn’t applied to them, they relax and cancel out the memory of all that work. Input this canceled memory once again, and you have to repeat the whole journey from the very beginning.

Inertia keeps us doing things that don’t get us what we want. It operates in our subconscious largely undetected until its effects are too hard to counter.