Moving with attention to balance

Movement

Apr 1

Written By Gina Loree Bryan

… especially before it becomes an issue

(This post contains affiliate links.)

The husband and I recently had a lovely dinner with family, which included the company of an almost one year old.

He’s just about mastered his walk, and there are few things more delightful (and humorous) than watching a tiny human toddle around a room, navigating adult legs and getting waylaid in their attempts to explore stuff they’re not supposed to.

From my obsessive movement perspective, I couldn't help but to notice, compare and contrast this with my weekly class of 70-80+ year olds who are working to relearn the foundations of balance, while also considering all of the factors that come into play between the age we learn to move our bodies around with ease and when we may begin to lose that ability.

In most cases, there’s no one contributing factor as to why it diminishes - however, because ‘age’ seems to be the most common variable, it’s often accepted to be the predominant cause.

And here is where I would agree with biomechanist Katy Bowman, that, it’s less about the age of the body and more about the age of the habits.

Throughout a lifetime, postures, gaits and movement patterns will be shaped by shoes, environments, activity and non-activity, adoption of personas, familial and cultural mirroring and a myriad of other factors, promoting or hindering our relationship with gravity.

Meaning, even if balance isn't posing a challenge for you now, it's well worth considering how the shapes and activities you currently choose and participate in - whether in exercise, daily movement, work life, leisure time, whatever - are influencing your overall bodily coordination in the long-term.

Here is a short list of common and key areas of challenge I’ve observed in adults who are dealing with balance issues, and what you can consider integrating into your own activities.

Foot mobility.

This is a biggie. As the foundation of a vertically-moving body and sole (no pun intended) interface with the ground, the human foot is an appendage of information-gathering, base of support, assimilator of textured and unpredictable terrain.

To the degree that the 33 joints of the feet don’t move, other parts upstream have to move instead, or more often, lock down in tension, creating a domino-effect of aberrant patterns throughout the body.

Reclaiming healthy foot mobility at the age of 80 is a lot harder than expanding on it at age 40 or 50. Regularly moving the little bones and muscles within the feet as well as the feet relative to the lower leg (at the ankle) will also support circulation throughout the rest of your body.

Suggested moves:

The foot handshake. (Can’t comfortably reach your foot? Use massage balls, yoga strap, or find a friend!)
Spend more time with less footwear. Move toward minimal shoes. Here’s a good beginner’s resource. Here’s another.

.Neck mobility.

Besides having less reasons than ever before to even move our heads and necks in all the ways they are designed to (thank you, rear-view car cameras!), the ubiquitous ‘head forward’ and tech neck postures not only prohibit aligned rotation of the vertebrae of the neck, but cultivate muscle tension patterns that pull on structures like the inner ear (which influences balance).

'Displaced crystals’ in the inner ear are often blamed for vertigo, but as a bodyworker, I respectfully submit the possibility that chronically-taut neck muscles are a more common factor than assumed, and is worth exploring.

Suggested moves:

‘Head turning’. With your chin tucked slightly in, shoulders relaxed, and eyes gazing forward, take a gentle breath in and while slowly exhaling, turn your head to look over your left shoulder. On the next inbreath, return your gaze to center, and then exhale to while turning to look over your right shoulder. The key is go slow, stay relaxed, and not turn so tightly to the end range that you create discomfort. Repeat 8 times in each direction.
Attend more mindfully to your relationship with your phone here.

Simple neck stretches. Just as it’s named. :)
Where your head lands relative to your upper body is also the result of what the rest of your spine is doing - and so, addressing the alignment of the body and restoring flexibility to the spine as a whole is a priority.

Eye mobility.

Tight necks and tight eye muscles go hand-in-hand (… yeah, there’s a weird visual ..).

But, along with our tech relationships affecting our spinal alignment, fixating visually on a distance 18 or so inches away from the face is like holding your biceps in contraction for hours on end. I’m convinced, also (based on personal experience) that our peripheral vision is diminishing as a result of this prolonged focus.

The eyes are another system of information gathering and anchoring for balance mechanisms, and need to be exercised - both within the eye sockets, and by taking ‘distance breaks’ - looking away from close objects, allowing the eyes to ‘relax’ on points as far away as you can manage.

Suggested moves:

Eye stretches. In addition to the head turning move above, as you gaze over one shoulder, extend your eye focus just a little further behind you. Take care not to overdo - sometimes this can cause some dizziness. (If you’re seeing sparkles, you might be going too far…)
Peripheral practice. This simple move can help you re-engage with your side view - so necessary for greater field of vision (especially when driving!)

Hip strength.

More specifically, strength of the lateral hip muscles, namely the gluteus minimus, medius and TFL (the tendon at the uppermost portion of the IT band).

These are primary muscles that move the leg directly to the side, as well as stabilize the ball of the femur in the hip socket. Between prolonged periods of sitting or in postures or movements that bypass the use of these muscles, they become less available for the powerful source of support they are designed for - like, going up steps, getting up from a chair, or even walking in alignment.

This is a simple, not so simple exercise for engaging this all-so-important muscle group, which can take some pressure off over-used knees as well as place weight-bearing loads on the neck of the femur (a common site of fractures).

Contralateral arm swing.

A surprising little revelation in a recent class was the challenge of alternating arm swing with gait pattern.

For a few folks, it was their habit to swing the arm forward on the same side as the forward-moving foot (and for one person, to not move arms at all.) While not every occasion for walking requires dramatic arm swing, it is the body’s way of counterbalancing the momentum of moving forward, engaging the torso in such a way as to stabilize the center, and is especially important when navigating turns (a high risk move for those with compromised balance).

Try this: Stand still, and alternate arm swings. Notice if one arm swings more freely than the other, or if you can sense your torso turning slightly more in one direction than the other.

Also try taking a few strides to notice what your native pattern is: arms swinging bilaterally with the feet, or opposite.

Alignment.

Both influencing and being influenced by movement, proper alignment is what ties it all together.

More than a forced positioning of body parts, healthy whole body alignment is the sum total of healthy alignment between as many parts as possible: each vertebra of the spine, bones of the legs, pelvis over feet, head over torso over pelvis over feet, and so on … meaning, each relationship of parts is situated so as to allow for as wide a range of movement as possible.

It’s challenging to talk and think about alignment without evoking a sort of rigidity and tension in the body, and this is precisely what we want to avoid - instead, reconstituting a fluidity and continuity throughout all the body, where balance emerges naturally.

This is a much deeper topic that is worth revisiting in future posts.

Confidence.

Another big factor, and in a way reflective of the larger human condition.

With diminishing balance usually comes anxiety.

Fear of falling is actually one of the biggest risk factors of falling.

The loss of mobility - even on small imperceptible levels, like within the feet - can be directly affected by increased dependency on external support.

And it’s hard to know where that line is - between necessary support and unnecessary dependency.

There are so many areas we outsource our support to: chairs, shoes, railings, steps - that we rarely notice the loss of our own motor skills and balance until it’s too late. And then it’s hard to know what we can reclaim, or when it’s safe to try and do so.

There’s no formula for this, no algorithm.

But, it is a matter of taking the lead now, becoming proactive and mindful of what we reach for or apply to our bodies for ‘support’ that is bypassing our own innate capabilities.

This is not easy in a culture that is constantly mirroring to itself an encouragement to move less, rely on gadgets and devices more, and expect that with increasing age automatically comes diminished mobility and coordination.

This really doesn’t have to be so.

Mobility can only be preserved if we are practicing movement. All. The. Time. There’s no way around this. Same with balance.

There are potential factors that can, of course, handicap one or more of the systems involved, but there’s a great deal we still have influence over, and the beautiful thing is that whatever movement and practices we are doing to improve and sustain balance are healthy and nourishing for other parts and systems as well.

Chronic tension-holding patterns are another phenomenon that creeps up on us, affecting our feelings of ease, body awareness and whole body continuity and coordination.

How do scrunched shoulders, locked knee caps, sucked-in belly affect our graceful and dynamic posture?

Check out my ebook: