Balance

Z

Zoopsia59

Forum Master
There are 5 things that allow you to keep or regain your balance.

1 - The fluid in your inner ear and the signals sent to your brain by its movement

2 - Your sight and what it tells your brain about where you are in space and your relationship to your surroundings

3 - The sensory information from your feet and other parts of your body to your brain about the relative position of parts of your body and its contact with any other surface.

4 - The ability of your brain to process and utilize relevant information. (For instance, I know a woman whose interface between the hemispheres of her brain is damaged.. its easier for her to balance on one foot than shift her weight back and forth from one leg to the other)

5 - The ability of the muscles and joints to hold a position or do what's necessary to "right" your body when it gets off balance. (strength and flexibility)

Note that NONE of these things require a specific body position in order for you to to be balanced. Even if you find a position that is easiest for you to balance in, if you close your eyes, you will probably be able to sustain it for less time than if you can see something in your surroundings.

If you have stuffiness and congestion, your balance can be affected. If you lose sensation on your feet or leg, you may find out just how much you rely on the sensory info they send to your brain to know whether you are on balance. For instance, if you can't feel your sole to know that one side of your foot suddenly has less pressure to the floor, you may not realize as quickly that you are falling over. When I was learning to spin on the ice, I sometimes didn't know I was falling over until I was nearly down on the ice. And I never had any sense of which way I was falling or what part of my body would hit the ice first because of the rotation.

If you are limited in one or more of these areas, you have to rely more on the others. A short term limitation (like closing your eyes, having a head cold or having your foot go to sleep) is hard to manage because it takes time to learn to do without one of them and focus on the others exclusively. Skaters and dancers who have to perform when sick have trained to rely on muscle memory even when their head is stuffed up. A famous blind ballerina had to rely on her own body info (and sound... I forgot about the changing direction of sound because its often not constant to begin with) to know where on stage she was and what direction she was facing as she performed choreography, as well as how to stay on balance.
 
One thing that you don't mention specifically is awareness and control of your core/axis. How do you relate that to what you've listed?
 
Peaches said:
One thing that you don't mention specifically is awareness and control of your core/axis. How do you relate that to what you've listed?
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My guess is that's part of #5, but I'm curious what Zoops will say as well.
 
I once saw a rather nice example video of acrobats standing on each others shoulders. A stack of 3 men could maintain the tower as long as they needed to, but turning out the lights (with warning) brought them tumbling down very quickly. They needed the visual reassurance to be stable.

The inner ear is a slow-reacting source of balance control and needs support from other senses to refine it for challenging tasks. It is also readily fooled by spinning or rapid acceleration which cause the fluids to move in directions contrary to normal gravity i.e. dizziness.

In a discussion purely of balance, I would say controlling an axis is deliberately sacrificing maximum balance in favour of mobility. Having a clear axis is about restraining the joints to restrict the number of ways your body responds to forces, i.e. pivot or step. Thus you have to learn how to balance using fewer and/or different bits of your body when dancing, hence we are all so wobbly all the time where normal walking presents no challenge.
 
Peaches said:
One thing that you don't mention specifically is awareness and control of your core/axis. How do you relate that to what you've listed?
Click to expand...

#3... information to your brain about the placement of different parts of your body relative to other parts of your body... sorry if that wasn't clear.

Maybe it should have been separate... one item based on contact with other surfaces, and another item based on the placement of certain body parts in relation to other parts.

But keep in mind that you can balance stationary with your axis twisted and whacked as long as one part out of whack is counterbalanced by some other part. I'm not speaking of proper tango form... just of the ability to balance in general. Balance can be achieved in any one of a multitude of positions.

(In fact, I've told female students NOT to let their axis get whacky just to stay on balance because then the leader may not even know there's a problem, or if he does, it will be hard for him to fix and hard for her to follow his fix.)

Balance and Posture are not the same thing.
 
It's also interesting to note that your senses are so closely tied together they can mislead each other. My sister did a cool experiment a few years back where she had someone sit down in a dark room, with their arm immobilized with a light source attached to their hand. She then sent vibrations down their arm such that they felt like their arm was moving. After a few moments, the subject 'saw' the light start to move around. :D neat huh?
 
I try to relate my little knowledge as a student of martial arts to my AT, or specifically balancing in AT.

I don't think controlling the axis is essential to maintaining balance. You can be off-axis and still keep your balance, it just puts stress on your muscles under #5 above. Many exercises, in gymnastics for example, deliberately put stress to build muscle strength.

I think the idea is to maintain good postures to help keeping balance with minimal or almost no effort, relaxing the muscles for quick changes of steps (or in martial arts for quick strikes of your opponents, sorry I digress).

I think good balance comes from good postures, good postures come automatically through muscle memory. I used to practice simple movements repeatedly (Tae kwon Do), later doing movements very slowly (Tai Chi) and naturally positioning my center of gravity, or more correctly my Tan Tien, over my active foot. My Chi Kung postures, exercises, and breathing, help a lot in my understanding (well, Chi Kung is not a martial art as such, it's more of a foundation for all martial arts, sorry I digress again).

Now if only I can apply the stuff to my AT!

PS. I read on another thread about the positioning of the feet, together or V-shape. I was taught feet together for Waltz so that was what I did. Now I am taught V-shape for AT a la Paiva school, so that is what I do. You can balance using both, the V-shape helps a bit with stepping "on-a-wire" backwards, less so stepping forward. IMHO I find for the ladies, maintaining the V-shape while stepping backwards make their feet look prettier.

Btw, being ignorant of what makes a "style", so borrowing from the martial arts, I term the AT I am learning salon style Paiva "school", I hope I don't get flamed over that.
 
flyhere said:
I try to relate my little knowledge as a student of martial arts to my AT, or specifically balancing in AT.

I don't think controlling the axis is essential to maintaining balance. You can be off-axis and still keep your balance, it just puts stress on your muscles under #5 above. Many exercises, in gymnastics for example, deliberately put stress to build muscle strength.

I think the idea is to maintain good postures to help keeping balance with minimal or almost no effort, relaxing the muscles for quick changes of steps (or in martial arts for quick strikes of your opponents, sorry I digress).

I think good balance comes from good postures, good postures come automatically through muscle memory. I used to practice simple movements repeatedly (Tae kwon Do), later doing movements very slowly (Tai Chi) and naturally positioning my center of gravity, or more correctly my Tan Tien, over my active foot.

Now if only I can apply the stuff to my AT!
Click to expand...
Good post.
 
When practising on your own technique:

There are some teachers I go to that advocate balancing exercises within the step ie side step, then raise the moving leg, then go on the toes of the standing leg .

Other teachers say that you should not compromise any steps in order to do balancing exercises as it compromise your muscle memory. Balancing exercises should be done as a separate exercise to steps generally. Although an exception to this would be where balance is a requirement of the step.

I would be interested to hear other peoples views please.
 
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