Balance
Balance might not be the first thing you think about when it comes to health and wellness, but it plays a crucial role in almost everything we do. From walking and bending to reaching and even standing still, balance is a foundational element of movement and stability.
Why Balance Matters
Good balance keeps us upright, helps prevent falls, and allows us to perform daily activities with confidence and ease. Balance relies on the coordinated work of our eyes, ears, brain, and muscles. If one of these systems is out of sync, it can lead to balance issues that make it challenging to stay steady.
We spend so much energy balancing our work and personal lives but forget how important our physical sense of balance is. This is where yoga balance poses come into play as they help you to find stability in our everyday activities, both physically and mentally. Balancing poses in yoga can prevent us from injuries, improve our focus, and help us to relieve stress.
Maintaining our physical balance is a complex interaction between various bodily systems. The sense of touch, the vestibular system in the inner ear, and our sense of vision all have to work together to send the right signals to our central nervous system so that we can balance.
Yoga balance poses help. While a regular well-rounded yoga practice helps you to improve your overall strength and stability, there some poses that are specifically aimed at improving your balance.
What Are the Benefits of Balancing Yoga Poses?
There is a variety of yoga poses that help us to find more stability and balance. Standing balancing poses, arm balances, poses practiced on all fours, and inversions. While each pose has unique beneficial effects, all yoga balance poses have some common benefits.
Physical Benefits
Balancing poses in yoga positively impact both our physical and mental health. In our body, they help us to align ourselves, to strengthen and lengthen our muscles, and to explore our center of gravity. Regular practice of balance poses can improve the function of the body’s equilibrium receptors. These are located in the vestibular system in the inner ear and provide information that enables the body to stay balanced.
There are two types of equilibrium receptors in our body: dynamic and static. The dynamic equilibrium receptors provide information about the position of the body in response to movements such as rotation, acceleration, and deceleration. The static equilibrium receptors recognize the body’s position in relation to gravity, i.e. whether we’re standing upright or lying down.
Mental Benefits
Having a good sense of balance is more than just being able to stand on one foot. Apart from physical stability, yoga balance poses also help us find mental and emotional steadiness.
Remaining steady and centered in a balancing pose improves focus and helps to relieve stress. This is because you have to stay concentrated and alert while trying not to wobble so much that you fall over. You have to learn to disregard external stimulations in order to stand stable and still for a while.
Balancing yoga poses are, thus, a great way to stay mentally and emotionally strong, especially in difficult situations. This is why balance poses also benefit you outside your yoga mat. They enable you to approach life with patience, calmness, and awareness.
Find Your Balance Workshop
Take your yoga balance practice to the next level. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced yoga practitioner, join me Thursday, April 24 from 6:00-7:30pm at Sellwood Yoga.
Refine, strengthen and improve your standing balance poses.
This 90-minute workshop is an immersive session that will empower you to feel grounded and confident both on and off the mat. Learn a variety of techniques designed to elevate your balancing skills, allowing you to approach balancing poses with confidence.
We’ll start with a brief discussion and get right into the techniques to improve your standing balances. You’ll have the opportunity to play with and experience these techniques in the workshop while we experiment with poses like Tree Pose, Eagle Pose, Half Moon, Warrior 3 and more.
Participants will benefit from personalized one-on-one coaching to address their unique balance needs.
No matter where you are in your practice, beginner to seasoned practitioner, this workshop is your opportunity to deepen your understanding of the benefits of standing balances and create greater stability in body and mind.