How We Balance

by Nina

Kim Schleicher, Age 60, by Melina Meza

It turns out that our ability to balance is surprisingly complex, requiring the cooperation of three different systems in our bodies. I thought today we should have a look at all three of those systems, as understanding what influences your ability to balance will help you see what you can improve with yoga practice and what you cannot affect. The three different systems in your body that affect your ability to balance are: 

Vestibular System: The three canals in your inner ears provide your brain with information about linear and angular positions of your body with respect to gravity. For example, are you standing on a flat surface, such as a floor or a sidewalk or are you standing on an uneven surface, such as a rocky path or walking down a set of stairs? 

Visual System: Your eyes provide your brain with information about the position of your body relative to other objects in your environment, including their depth, velocity and motion. And you use that information about your environment to orient yourself. For example, when you’re walking outside, you use the horizon to tell you what an upright position is, and inside a house, you’re using the angles of the room in which you’re standing in the same way. If you have poor eyesight, have you noticed what happens to your ability to balance without your glasses or contacts? Or have you ever closed your eyes in Tree pose? 

Somatic Sensory System: Sensors in your body provides your brain with information about where your body is in space so you know how to make adjustments to keep your balance. There are two different somatic sensors: exteroception and proprioception. 

Exteroception is the ability to feel what is interacting with the exterior of your body. Sensors on your skin allow you to feel the outside environment. For example, if you are walking outside, are you walking on solid ground or sinking into mud? Even if you’re not on your feet, you take in information about the surface you’re balancing on, for example, try kneeling on a stack of blanks vs. on the floor. 

Proprioception is the ability to tell where one body part is in relation to another. Sensors in all your muscles and joints allow you to feel from the inside how your body is moving in space.The classic test for this is to have you close your eyes and then use your hand to touch your nose. And, in fact, proprioception is what allows you to walk around in the dark. 

Although you cannot use yoga to influence your vestibular and vision systems (and they do tend to deteriorate somewhat with age), you can use yoga to improve your somatic sensory system. So let’s take a closer look at both exteroception and proprioception next.

Also, keep in mind, that even with all three of these systems functioning perfectly, your body won’t be able to respond well to the information it’s receiving from your brain if you’re very weak or stiff. So working on strength, flexibility, and agility are also key for maintaining your ability to balance. Maintaining mental focus in the face of distraction—because in the real world we’re often distracted—is also key, so you can work on mental focus by practicing meditation and also by doing your poses where there is some distraction, such as at the beach or at home with some kids in the room.

Yoga and Exteroception 

By practicing your yoga asanas with bare feet you are increasing their sensitivity. That improves the exteroception on the bottom of your feet, which will improve your ability to balance. And once you are comfortable with your balance on a wood floor or a thin yoga mat, you can vary the surface on which you practice to further increase your exteroception. Try practicing on a rug or carpet a foam mat, or even a firm mattress or doing a balance pose with half your standing foot on the mat or standing on a foam block. Or practice yoga outside on the grass or at the beach on the sand. 

We also recommend practicing yoga balancing poses where you balance on other parts of your body to improve exteroception in other areas. Try Side Plank pose (Vasithasana) variations to work on hands and the sides of your feet. Try Boat pose (Navasana) variations to work on your buttocks area. Try Hunting Dog pose to work on your shins as well as your hands. 

Taking vision out of the equation also helps improve exteroception as you’ll need to work with your sense of touch to compensate for lack of sight. So you can experiment by practicing in a darkened room or keeping your eyes closed. 

Yoga and Proprioception

Doing a variety of poses takes your body into all different kinds of configurations. And practicing without a mirror—which is typically how we do yoga—helps you feel all those different positions from the inside out as you sense your own alignment without using your eyes. That will help refine your proprioception. So take some time to really feel your own alignment. Are you arms even in Warrior 2? Are you knees actually straight in your standing poses? Is your head really aligned directly over your torso?

Also, be sure to practice a wide variety of poses rather than just doing the same 10 every day. And when you’ve been practicing for a few years, you might even want to invent some new variations to keep things fresh and challenging, as Baxter has done with his Balance Pose of the Week, or at least search them out.

To take your proprioception to another level, you can try working with more subtle alignment cues. For example, you could work with your shoulder blades, your collar bones, your inner thighs, or something even more esoteric like your psoas muscles . Sometimes there is an area you are not used to even sensing and, at first, it will be hard to feel something there. But the more you bring your mind to it, the easier it will be to sense that area and eventually to move it.

Taking vision out of the equation helps improve proprioception as you’ll need to work with your sense of where your body is in a space to compensate for lack of sight. That’s how you can walk in the dark! So you can experiment by practicing in a darkened room or keeping your eyes closed.

And now can I take a moment to say that we have more than five senses—way, way more? Today I discussed two senses that are typically excluded from the big five, your vestibular system and your proprioception. And there are a lot more where those came from! 

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