Rewiring the brain at any age with balance poses
If you’re concerned that you’re losing the good balance you once had, you’re right in thinking that balance matters. The good news is that we have the capacity to adapt, learn and improve our balance at any age.
At the most basic level, good balance helps to prevents us from the acute injuries from falling, which we clearly want to avoid. Studies show that the biggest predictor of a fall is having a previous fall, so preventing this cascade is important.
Balance poses focus the mind
Most active yoga classes include balance poses which bring both physical and mental benefits. When we balance on one leg, not only are we strengthening the supporting leg and hip through the extra ‘load carrying’, we have to pay full attention to what we’re doing. The minute your mind wanders, you’ll start to lose your balance. How we ‘catch ourselves’ as we fall out of balance or how we wobble back into balance is exactly where the body and the brain adapt.
Allowing yourself to wobble when your balance is challenged, is allowing your nervous system to adapt, learn and fine tune your balance with each wobble.
Reduced balance is less to do with aging and more to do with disuse or avoidance.
If we stop challenging balance, we can lose capacity and confidence. Balance and coordination are not just muscular activities, they are neurological tasks.
Research shows that the brain remains adaptable in response to learning, movement and challenge throughout life. (Erickson et al., 2011). Neuroplasticity does not suddenly stop in mid life! Bodies adapt to what they repeatedly do, but they also adapt to what they stop doing. When you practice balance poses, you’re laying down neural pathways.
Yoga balance poses integrate three sensory systems:
Vestibular: These are the crystals in your ear that track your relationship to gravity.
Proprioceptive: The nerves and sensors that report where your body is in space. The wobbles are your proprioceptive system learning out loud.
Visual: The gaze or drishti, where you look to aid your balance. (Close your eyes when you’re on one leg and notice the difference).
A well thought out class will incorporate all three of these in addition to the musculo-skeletal aspects required for balance. In a class of mixed ability, there’ll be options to start with a basic version, and variations to provide more challenge, with plenty of encouragement to wobble your way through challenges, learning as you move.
But shouldn’t we be still in a balance pose?
One one level, yes, because yoga is about finding stillness or mental calm through the practice of physical postures or asana. If you’ve been in a class where everyone is perfectly still in a pose, they might be very practiced or very familiar with a particular way of doing a pose. However, having a small amount of variety or challenge is where learning takes place and sharpens the mind. There are so many small ways to spice things up, such as turning the head providing a vestibular challenge or closing the eyes, a proprioceptive challenge.
Finding our balance is a subtle (and useful) practice.
Too much muscular effort and the body goes rigid, too little effort and the body is too floppy to find the structure needed. The sweet spot is the combination of stability and ease. This is a key quality of all yoga poses: Sthiram Sukham Asanam translated as ‘postures should have a steadiness and an ease’ to them. Each time we find this quality, we’re learning to centre our selves, an important quality to transfer from our mats and into our lives every day.
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Sources:
Demystifying Aging, blog by Dr. Andrew Mc Gonigle
Research suggests that movement, coordination tasks, cardiovascular exercise, social engagement, and learning new skills may all support brain health and cognitive resilience (Erickson et al., 2011).
Why teaching balance matters, blog by Sage Rountree