The Balloons Rose Because Someone Let Go

By Sol Runemaster

I was halfway to my Tai Chi spot when the sky filled up with lanterns. Or that is what it looked like at first, before my sleepy eyes sorted themselves out. Hot air balloons. Dozens of them, maybe more, drifting low over the desert north of Santa Fe just as the sun began its slow climb over the Sangre de Cristo. Yellows and reds and one deep green that looked poured rather than inflated. I stopped in the middle of the road, which I do not recommend, and simply stood there. Here is the part I want to be honest about. For a moment I did what I always do when something beautiful arrives. I started to hold it. I made a little mental list of what I wanted to remember. I planned how I would describe the light to a friend. And somewhere underneath all of it, I was already bracing for the balloons to leave. I was standing in the middle of a small miracle with both hands on the rope. ## A Sound I

Knew From the Studio From where I stood, I could hear the burners firing. That is the sound healer in me talking, because the sound is the whole story. A hot air balloon does not move like a bird. There is no wingbeat, no rowing, no leaning into the wind. When the pilot wants to rise, the burner sends a long breath of flame up into the envelope and the balloon simply goes up. When they want to come down, they mostly wait. The air cools on its own and gravity does the rest. All of the effort happens in the air, not in the basket. I have spent thirty years learning that a singing bowl behaves the same way. \*You strike it once, and then you stop.\* The tone leaves the mallet almost immediately. For a second it belongs to your hand, and then it belongs to the room. If you chase it, if you keep striking to hold it alive, you ruin it. Everyone in the studio can hear the difference between a

bowl that is playing and a bowl that is being made to play. ## What a Balloon Gives Up to Rise Ballast. Every balloon carries sandbags, and they are not there to steer. They are there to weigh down. When the pilot wants more height, one of the first things they do is drop some ballast. They do not add anything. They give something up. I have been hauling sandbags of my own for years and calling it preparation. A list of shoulds. A folder of old proofs that I was good enough. An appointment book full of things I already know how to do, so that no one, including me, asks me to do anything new. In Tai Chi we say the same lesson a hundred different ways. Do not push. Sink, then receive. The force comes up through the ground and your only real job is to stop arguing with it. The balloons understood it without being taught. They rose because someone had the sense to untie a bag and let it fall

away. ## The Rope I Was Still Holding I got an invitation last week that I have not stopped thinking about. The Harmony Wellness Conference asked me to lead a big Tai Chi session, a whole hall of strangers, out in the open air. My first feeling was not joy. It was inventory. I opened a document. I listed the moves. I counted how many minutes a session like that should run. I researched what the other speakers were doing, as if their work could tell me anything about mine. My old teacher once asked me why I kept both hands on the ropes of my own happiness. I did not have an answer then. I think I have one now. Part of me trusts the sky completely. The other part remembers every time the lift did not hold, and so it keeps a hand on the rope just in case. That is the shadow, and I am not going to pretend it is not there. The trouble with living in wonder is that wonder can quietly become a

hiding place. If everything is beautiful, then nothing ever has to be looked at too closely. So I did the honest thing. I closed the document, walked outside, and stood under the balloons until my neck hurt. Then I practiced the form without a plan, just sinking and rising and turning, and let the invitation be what it was: a gift I could either carry or drop. ## Being Carried, Not Chased There is a big Himalayan bowl in my studio with a voice like an old door. I use it at the end of sessions because it does something no instruction can do. It demonstrates what surrender actually sounds like. You offer one strike. The room takes it from there. The tone finds the corners you could not reach and it keeps going long after your hand has moved on. That is the whole practice, as far as I can tell. Heat the air. Drop the ballast. Let the tone carry you. The lift is under you the entire time,

and it was never going to come from your own arms. ## Closing Reflection I finished the form just as the last balloons cleared the ridge. They were small by then, the size of coins, riding a morning I will never get back. I did not take a photograph. I wanted to, and choosing not to felt like its own small letting go, so I just watched them go and let the sky do the remembering. If you find yourself standing under something beautiful today, notice where your hands are. The rope you are gripping so hard may not be holding you up. It may be the one thing keeping you from rising. The sky is patient. It has been waiting for you to drop the sandbag this whole time.