How better balance can help slow ageing

Improving our balance is relevant to people of all ages, especially if we’re trying to achieve a steady standing balance in yoga, like tree pose or dancer. And as we age, balance becomes more crucial in everyday life.

Our balance may be affected by lack of strength, by poor alignment and by lack of concentration, and these are areas that yoga poses - asanas - can help with.

In the yoga room, many people find their ability to successfully balance varies not only from one side of the body to the other, but also from day to day. All sorts of factors can influence these daily fluctuations, such as our emotions, our energy and our health.

But whatever factors are having a hold over us, we will be a lot steadier if we connect to our base, to our deep stabilising muscles, to our breath and focus.

How good balance helps body and mind

Connecting with that balance has such amazing benefits for both body and mind.

Enhances focus and concentration

Forging a concentrated mind is crucial in yoga. Keeping balance is a complex challenge to stimulate our body and nervous system.

Balancing poses are especially useful if you’re a beginner to meditation and mindfulness. Doing a series of balancing poses before your meditation practice will help you build up focus and go deeper than you would without such preparation.

Improves spatial body awareness

Spatial body awareness (also known as proprioception) is the sense of how our limbs are orientated in the space around us.

Practising yoga balancing poses is an excellent way of developing a good understanding of the exact position of our body parts and helping them move. As you develop this skill, your movements will become smoother and more controlled.

Improves neuromuscular coordination

Balancing poses requires all the muscles in the body to cooperate. The brain and nervous system need training to do this efficiently. Having developed neuromuscular coordination, you will be able to stay in difficult poses gallantly and to move in and out of them smoothly.

Builds stability in our joints

One of the many benefits of balancing poses is that you can increase joint stability and thus prevent for example ankle sprains.

Makes our reaction time quicker

By doing poses that train your balance, your body learns to react quickly if you’re about to fall, or if there are external influences. With more and more challenging poses, you will continue to quicken your reaction time and work towards perfect compensation.

Practising on an unstable surface - such as a thick yoga mat, or when we do my classes outdoors - is particularly useful to improve reaction time.

Improves agility

Agility is the capacity to move quickly and with ease. Agility requires coordination, fast reaction, and strength. Since these qualities require balance, yoga poses that challenge your balance will also improve agility.

Reverses age-related loss of balance

As we grow older, our sense of balance declines and injuries from falls become more common. Therefore, good balance is crucial as we age.

The good news is that by training your balance, you can stop it from declining and even radically improve it.

Helps lower back pain

Balance training is one of the best ways to strengthen your core and prevent lower back pain. Yoga poses are well known for increasing lower back health, as they increase strength, flexibility and blood circulation.

The combination of muscular contraction and relaxation you get from balancing poses is particularly beneficial.

How to practise standing balances

The base of a standing balance is usually one foot. We need to spread the toes wide and make a very broad base with the weight spread evenly through both sides of the ball of the foot and back into the heel, forming a tripod effect where the weight is grounding down through 3 points.

Our deeply stabilising muscles are found nestling around our joints. Crucial to standing poses are these muscles which support the ankles, the knees, the pelvis and lower spine. To activate these muscles is a simple 3-step process:

1. activate the base by broadening the foot and pressing down into the tripod

2. activate the 3 arches of the base: one arch spreads across the broadness of the foot, one down the outside, and the one which we are all familiar with down the inside

3. activate the bandhas: we actively draw the front and back of the pelvis in towards each other, broadening the chest and lengthening the spine

Tips on keeping your balance

Focus is an extremely important part of balancing. This is brought about by gazing steadily at one non-moving object. Keeping the gaze steady helps to keep the mind steady because when the mind is diverted we inevitably lose balance.

Focus can also be directed to our breathing. Focusing on slow, steady breathing harnesses a restless mind and helps to prevent wobbling in the pose.

Push your balance skills further

To further enhance our balance we can be a little creative in our practice. Try exploring variations in the pose like practising with eyes closed, raising the heels or standing on a softer surface.

While in our balance pose we can challenge ourselves and grow our stability with dynamic arm movements. We can even move from one balance to another, like going from tree pose to warrior 3 while still on one leg and maintaining safe alignments.

Indeed, balance is a skill that can be developed and improved over time. It requires patience and consistency, and then with practice we can cultivate better balance both on and off the yoga mat, leading to increased stability in our lives.

Come and hone your balance in my classes!

Love,

Francesca x