#equilibrioception

Balance allows us to generate power from unstable positions. In this post I explore multiple methods that allow us to train for "superhuman" balance.

Balance is an overlooked aspect of human performance. Yet it is integral to the ability to move powerfully and with confidence. Balance is not only crucial to ensure you remain steady on your feet, it’s also critical for generating power, traversing the environment, and moving with grace and poise.  But how do we train balance? Defining Balance Training First, we must define it. Friend of the…

❯ ❯ Equilibrioception

The sense of balance. A generally unobtrusive physiological sense in humans and animals to prevent them from falling over as they move or stand. It entails a visual system, a vestibular system (spatial awareness via the inner ear apparatus), and proprioception ("kinesthesia," the sense that lets one perceive the location, movement, and action of various parts of the body), all working together to orient the individual to the surrounding environment (and gravity) to achieve balance.

Balance is a quintessentially multi-modal sense. To summarize an array of medical literature on the matter, balance occurs when (1) sensory input (vestibular, visual, proprioceptive) is processed by (2) the cerebellum (coordination and regulation), the cerebral cortex (higher-level thinking), and the brainstem (sorting of sensory information), and is then paired with (3) motor output reflexes, motor impulses, and postural adjustments.

Cognitive or physiological damage, spatial disorientation, illness, or malfunctioning sensory inputs all affect one's sense of balance and one's dependence on it. As cheekily noted in an editorial published in Behavioral Sciences, "It is said that (perfect) balance is the action of not moving."

I See Dead People

Ok, no I don’t.  But the Bruce Willis movie “The Sixth Sense” reinforces the universal childhood lesson that there are five, count ’em, senses.

But is that really true?

Recently, I was teaching that Aristotle said that “knowledge is the product of experience”, which I interpret to mean (notwithstanding St. Anselm’s proof for the existence of God), that at least from a scientific viewpoint, we…