TRAINING YOUR BALANCE
Inspired by one of the guest speakers at Yoga Medicine® Innovation Conference, I have recently been incorporating plenty of balancing drills into my classes and personal practice. Already a topic that I have explored in my article Everyday balance, it is one I am particularly eager to highlight and share. Balance is one of the core components of physical health. It is trainable and should be trained at any age. Well trained balance makes you more adaptable and resilient, it gives you the confidence to move freely in your yoga practice and in your everyday life.
Balance is the ability to control equilibrium either static or dynamic. To translate this into yoga language – we train static balance when we hold pose and we train dynamic balance in our transitions from pose to pose. Dynamic balance is the version we use most often in our everyday life. You can add an extra challenge to your static balance by lifting a leg in standing poses; having the feet narrower like on a tightrope in lunges; and lifting to tip toes in standing poses; or any version of a pose where you reduce your base of support (the circumference around your foundation). You can add an extra challenge to your dynamic balance by stepping a leg back or forward; moving from the front of the mat to the side of the mat; getting up and down from the ground or a chair; going from plank to side plank or any transition where you change from one base of support to another.
POSTURAL + PROPRIOCEPTION + COGNITIVE
Balance is the interaction between postural control, proprioception and cognitive distractions:
Postural control is our ability to react to postural needs using the musculature system – particularly in the feet, ankles, gluteus medius (outer hips), adductors (inner thigh), transverse abdominis (core). In this sequence you will train your postural control with poses that strengthen the postural balancing muscles listed above.
Proprioception is our ability to work out where our body is positioned in space using the sensory systems of the eyes, vestibular (inner ear) and nerve endings in the joints. In this sequence you will challenge your proprioception by tracing your gaze in static balancing poses and moving your limbs while in the static and dynamic balancing mini flows.
Cognitive distractions is our ability to handle distraction while balancing in both static and dynamic using the nervous system of the brain to juggle the jobs at hand. In this sequence you will introduce distraction by balancing a brick in a hand while in a static balancing mini flow. You can also try to practise some of the flows without looking at the sequence to add a cognitive list as a distraction!
EXPLORING EVERYDAY BALANCE IN YOUR PRACTICE
This sequence starts with a series of balance challenges from table top position. They will wake up your postural balancing muscles and give your outer hips plenty of opportunity to find your centre of gravity. The second row are the main standing balancing drills. You can use these drills at the start of other yoga practises to continue to build better balance. The first one is simple leg lifting drills. Try to keep the leg lifted, tapping the toe down if you need to realign yourself. The second one is the hip hikes. Keep your hips squared while you hike up and lower the hip of the dangling leg. The third one explores the effect of gaze on balance. Keep your leg lifted and gaze up and down. In the final one you balance a brick on your hand with a leg lifted, then slowly swap the brick to the opposite hand, following it with your gaze. Expect to have the wobbles, they are part and parcel of challenging your balance and making your postural control and proprioception work hard to keep you upright.
Varying your balancing drills will ensure you are continuing to challenge yourself with as much variety as possible. You can use both this sequence and Everyday balance to get variety.
ALIGNMENT CUES
You can scale up or down your balance challenges using these props or add below to ensure you challenge yourself at the right level.
Have a read of the below and and either print out the sequence or save it onto your device:
To give you more support, place a chair beside you as you do the balancing drills in the sequence. You can progress from hand on chair, to fingertip on chair, and then just knowing it's there if you need it.
To give you more support in high lunge poses, have the feet at least hip width or wider. The wider the base of support the easier it is to balance.
To add to the challenge, place a folded up blanket under the top of your yoga mat for the balancing drills. This will give you a softer surface to stand on and make your feet and ankles work harder.
To add to the challenge, have the feet narrower than hip distance or even in line with each other like on a tightrope. The narrower the base of support the more challenging it is to balance.
To save the images for personal use click and hold down the image until the ‘save image’ option appears; on Mac hold down ‘control’ and click the image to get the option box; on PC right click on the image to get the option box. Scroll down in the ‘option box’ and click ‘save image’.
Ruth Delahunty Yogaru
