The Middle Is a Place We Move Through

Originally shared in the Nurture Bodyworks newsletter · September 2026

I first read Erich Schiffmann’s Moving Into Stillness in my early 20s, and the idea that stillness can be dynamic has stayed with me. These days, I’m finding myself thinking about centeredness in a similar way, not as a fixed place we finally reach, but as something alive and responsive.

September itself holds that kind of tension. Summer is not quite gone, fall is beginning to arrive, routines are changing, and the equinox reminds us that light and dark are always in relationship. We are not standing on one side or the other; we are moving through the transition.

It also feels hard not to notice how much transition we are living through in the larger world. There is uncertainty, grief, tension, and change, and at the same time there is still beauty, connection, movement, and joy. For me, being centered does not mean becoming neutral, detached, or unaffected. It means staying connected to what matters while remaining able to feel, respond, and participate.

I’m beginning to think about the middle in the body in a similar way. We often imagine that good posture, balance, or a strong core means finding the right position and holding ourselves there. But our bodies are not designed to stay perfectly centered. They are designed to move into support, pass through the middle, and organize again on the other side.

Think about walking. You transfer your weight onto one leg. That side receives you and creates support while the other side becomes lighter and swings forward. Then you move through the middle and do it all again on the other side. One side receives while the other releases. The middle matters, but it is a transition, not a place where the body stops.

That is why a body can look centered and still feel braced. If we are holding ourselves in the middle because we do not trust either side to support us, we may appear balanced without having the freedom to shift. Real balance asks for more than symmetry. It asks whether we can arrive fully on one side, let that side support us, and then release enough to move somewhere else.

I’ve been exploring this in my own movement and teaching. Instead of asking the body to stay centered, I’m becoming more interested in whether we can move through center with enough support and control to truly arrive on the other side. Center becomes less like a position to protect and more like a place we can return through again and again.

This has also changed the way I think about core strength. Your core does not simply hold you still. It helps you transfer weight, rotate, reach, walk, breathe, and adapt as your position changes. A responsive core creates support without taking away movement. It can organize pressure, receive force, and help you move from one side of yourself to the other.

Sometimes we do not need to hold ourselves together harder. We need enough support to let ourselves move. To me, that is a more useful kind of centeredness: strong enough to support us, spacious enough to respond, and flexible enough to move through change without losing our connection to ourselves.