Does Yoga Improve Balance? What the Research Actually Says
We often say that yoga improves balance.
I've certainly said it.
But while researching balance for a recent episode of the Enlightened Anatomy Podcast, I realized I'd never really looked closely at the evidence.
And what I found surprised me.
Balance Is More Than Standing on One Leg
In yoga, we tend to think of balance as Tree Pose, Dancer or Warrior III.
Stand on one leg. Find your drishti. Try not to wobble.
But balance is much more complex.
It involves your brain integrating information from your vision, vestibular system and body, then producing the muscular responses needed to keep you upright.
There are also different types of balance: static, dynamic, anticipatory and reactive.
So getting better at holding Tree Pose doesn't necessarily mean you're getting equally better at recovering when you trip or navigating an uneven surface.
Does Yoga Decrease Fall Rates?
An interesting 2025 randomized controlled trial followed 700 adults aged 60 and over.
Participants completed either an Iyengar yoga-based exercise programme or a seated yoga relaxation programme.
You’d expect the yoga group to have fewer falls.
They didn't.
The Iyengar yoga group actually had a 33% higher fall rate.
That might be a result we yogis don’t like to hear but that doesn’t mean the research is not valid.
Remember though: This is one study involving one particular programme and population. But it does challenge the assumption that practising yoga balance poses automatically translates into fewer falls.
And I think that's worth paying attention to.
Read the study:
But Doesn't Yoga Improve Balance?
Probably.
A 2016 systematic review found that yoga produced a small improvement in balance and a moderate improvement in physical mobility in adults aged 60+.
But the researchers couldn't determine whether those improvements translated into fewer falls.
That's an important distinction.
You can practice Tree Pose three times a week and get much better at Tree Pose.
But falls involve much more than static balance.
Strength, power, vision, reaction time, medication, environment and our ability to recover from an unexpected disturbance can all play a role.
Read the review:
What Does Reduce Falls?
This is where the evidence becomes much more encouraging.
A large 2019 Cochrane review found that exercise reduced fall rates in community-dwelling older adults by approximately 23%.
Balance and functional exercise reduced them by around 24%.
So movement matters.
But perhaps we need to think more broadly than simply holding a balance pose.
Read the Cochrane review:
Could We Teach Balance Differently?
I'm definitely not suggesting we stop teaching Tree Pose.
But we could add other challenges alongside static balance.
Try:
Reaching in different directions while balancing
Changing your gaze rather than always fixing it
Stepping into and out of balance poses
Transitioning between poses, such as High Lunge → Warrior III
Turning or changing direction
These challenges may better reflect the dynamic nature of balance outside the yoga studio.
And remember:
The wobble is the balance.
Wobbling doesn't mean you're doing it badly. Those constant little adjustments are your balance system doing exactly what it's designed to do.
So, Does Yoga Improve Balance?
Probably.
But improving a balance test or getting better at Tree Pose isn't necessarily the same thing as reducing your risk of falling.
Perhaps the takeaway isn't to stop practising traditional balance poses.
It's simply to expand our idea of what balance practice can look like.
Hold. Reach. Step. Turn. Transition. Recover.
Want to Learn More?
I take a much deeper dive into balance, ageing, falls and yoga in Episode 19 of the Enlightened Anatomy Podcast.
🎧 Listen:
And if you're a yoga teacher who wants to explore the research and practical teaching applications further, check out the Enlightened Yoga Collective:
Research mentioned:
Oliveira JS, et al. (2025). The effect of an Iyengar yoga-based exercise programme versus a seated yoga relaxation programme on falls in people aged 60 years and older (SAGE): a pragmatic, two-arm, parallel randomised controlled trial.https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41005344/
Sherrington C, et al. (2019). Exercise for preventing falls in older people living in the community. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30703272/
Youkhana S, et al. (2016). Yoga-based exercise improves balance and mobility in people aged 60 and over: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Age and Ageing, 45(1), 21–29.https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26707903/
Transcript of the episode
EA 19: Should we teach balance differently?
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Matt: Hello and welcome to episode 19 of the Enlightened AnatomyPodcast. And this week we're looking at balance. So balance poses,balance training. Does it help people? Does it prevent falls? All ofthese questions and more in today's episode. So it's a good one. Staytuned and cue the intro music
Matt: so we often say things in yoga like, you know, yoga is goodfor improving balance, and I've definitely said that. I've said thatduring our Physiology of Yoga eight-week course. I've said it when I've
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taught the anatomy on a yoga teacher training. But does it actually?
I've actually never looked into the research until now. And the reason Istarted looking into this is because our online community for yogateachers, the Enlightened Yoga Collective, has a monthly inspiration,and this month, August 2026, it's all about balance. So I actuallylooked at the research, and it was fascinating, and I learned a lot.
Um, and contrary to what we might think or hope there was some reallyinteresting research about Iyengar yoga and the people who did Iyengaryoga in this specific study and whether they had a decreased orincreased fall rate. So we'll get into that a little bit later. Butfirst, just wanted to explore what questions we're gonna be looking attoday.
So we're going to be exploring, first of all, what do we actually meanby balance? And it might be different to what you actually think. Doesbalance inevitably decline with age? Is balance actually important for
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younger people? Because we often talk about it in relation to olderpeople, but what about young people too?
And does improving balance reduce falls? Now, that is an importantthing, and that is two different things, as we'll learn. So has yogabeen shown to improve balance? H- has what I've said actually beenjustified? And what kinds of balance training actually work? Finally, wewill think about how to apply this to our yoga practice and especiallyas yoga teachers, how to apply it into our classes.
So let's begin. First of all, that Iyengar yoga study. So this largetrial of 700 people, published in 2025, but actually they did the workof it during COVID, and so that was why they did o- online yoga. Theyhad seven hundred volunteers divided into two groups randomly. So thisis a randomized controlled trial, which is, you could say the highestlevel of evidence.
And half of the
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people did an online Iyengar yoga program, and the other half did aseated meditation. So that would be the control group, and it's, it's anactive control, which is better than just people doing nothing. So aseated meditation, at least they're doing something, and we can compare.
And- As most of us would hope, I think, you would expect the Iyengaryoga group, and, you know, I don't think this is specific to Iyengar,but just in general yoga, you would think, you would hope people wouldhave fewer falls as a result. It was actually the opposite in thisspecific study.
So the Iyengar yoga group, and these people were followed for a wholeyear, which is actually a good amount of time for a study. The Iyengaryoga group actually had a 33% higher fall rate. Now, I know that soundshorrible, right? But don't be disconcerted because there are lots offactors that go into this, and what this definitely does not mean isthat yoga causes falls or, you know, we should all stop our yogapractice.
And in fact, I'm gonna get into evidence later about how useful exerciseis for
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reducing falls. But in this specific study, and remember, this is whyit's important to look at the whole body of evidence, not just oneindividual study. But in this specific study, they did find that thosepeople had a higher incidence of fall rates.
Maybe it was a, an outlier. Maybe it was a one-off. This is why the samestudy should be repeated and see, do they get the same result? And, theparticipants did that one specific style of yoga. Would it be the sameif they did a different style of yoga? Would it be different if they diddifferent balance poses?
So in this study they primarily did tree pose as their balance pose, andthen there were other standing poses also. But nonetheless, already Ithink it's good to have this information. Let's not discard it 'causeit's very easy to say, "I don't like that information 'cause it goesagainst my beliefs that yoga is good for everything."
So still, let's keep this information. Let's be good critical thinkersand say, "Okay, I'm gonna incorporate that knowledge and also look atthe wider body of knowledge" which is what we're gonna do today. Solet's start by looking at first, you know, what is
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balance, and I think most people would probably say balancing on oneleg," right?
But it's actually more than that. A classic textbook definition iskeeping the body's center of mass over its base of support. It's a nicesimple definition. Now, your base of support can change. It could be twofeet, okay? Two feet parallel hip distance apart, which would be what?
Tadasana pose, right? But then it could also be one foot. That's just adifferent base of support, and the fewer bases of support you have, themore difficult balance becomes. Similarly, the closer, the smaller thebase of support, so if you bring your feet closer together, that will beharder. Or if you bring one foot in front of the other, that will beharder than having your feet wider apart.
And in fact, people who tend to have bad balance tend to have their feeta little bit wider because they tend to feel more stable in that widerbase of support. But your base of support could also be two hands, whichis of course a
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handstand. Your base of support could be one hand and the outer edge ofone foot, which would be side plank.
Yeah? So balance is not just being on one foot, though of course y- youknow, that's often what we think of. But it's basically being able tobalance out all of the opposing forces on the body, gravity pulling youdown to the center of the earth forward forces if you're leaningforward, backwards forces, side to side, balancing of all of those outso that you can remain over your center, over your base of support.
And this is an ... I think this is an interesting little thing. There isa cone of balance. So if you think about your base of support, andlet's, let's just think about tree pose to make it really simple. Yourbase of support is one foot, and then there's a cone of balance insidewhich your center of mass can be, and you can be in balance.
So your center of mass can shift over to the side. So if you shift yourhips over to the side, you'll still be in balance. Hopefully, as long asyou're inside that cone, and then the other side. But there is somepoint outside that cone where
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no matter what, if your center of mass is outside that cone, you have tofall.
You will fall. That's simple physics. But also what's interesting isthat cone of balance can increase with training, and it tends todecrease as we get older or if we detrain, if we don't train, if wedon't exercise, if we don't move. So that's a little aside.
Another thing to bear in mind about balance is it's not just purely amechanical thing like, like I described, but actually it is a constantlychanging interaction of your nervous system, your body, the task thatyou're doing, and actually also your environment. 'Cause if there's astrong gust of wind that will affect your balance.
So there are two important elements to balance. There is the sensoryinformation that we receive, and then there is the muscular output thatyour brain gives in order to maintain your balance. So vision isimportant in our balance. We are sensing
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where our horizon is, and we'll notice with our vision if our horizongoes off to the side because that means our head is tilting to the side.
We have the vestibular system, which is located in the inner ear, andthis is really fascinating, I think. There are these donut-shapedstructures inside your inner ear, and they don't really have anything todo with hearing. So we think of inner ear as having to do with the earand hearing, but they're kind of separate to that.
That's just hap- where they happen to be located. But you have thesedonut-shaped structures filled with a small amount of fluid. And so ifyou imagine you tilt the donut structure to the side, then the fluidwill drain to one part of the donut. And then we have sensors allthroughout the inner ear which are sensing where that fluid is moving.
And so that sensory information will be sent to the brain. And so for anissue like vertigo, where someone feels dizzy, there might be a problemwith that information being sent
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to the brain or it being processed inside the brain
We also receive sensory information from joints, so what you know of as,as proprioception. Like, you can tell if your head is leaning to oneside. You can tell if your arm is lifted up, if your knee is bending. Wealso can sense our muscles, and I think this is really interesting, skinalso plays an important role in balance.
So you can feel if wind or air is brushing across your skin and youknow, oh, I'm falling. Now, all of those things taken together, thebrain will synthesize that information and say, "I am in balance," or,"I am out of balance." And then it will choose what it does next.
And your brain is just an incredible thing, right? Um, another thing isthat it will not rely equally on those three systems. So for example,standing on a firm floor in good lighting differs from standing on softground in darkness. And so your brain will choose to
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prioritize, uh, the visual information, visual feedback, in a well-litroom on a hard surface, versus it'll choose to increase theproprioceptive information that it receives if you're in a darker room.
Again, balance is, I'm hoping you're, you're starting to realize, a, avery complex thing. It's more than just a mechanical thing and more thanjust one system involved
Now that your brain has that information, it decides what to do with it.So your brain can send motor signals down to muscles to produce muscularforce, to contract muscles, um, to increase joint stiffness, to move itscenter of mass, to change your posture, to take a recovery step ifneeded, to reach for support, all of these different things that we knowthat we tend to do when we feel like we're losing our balance.
Now a little task I like to do when teaching anatomy on a teachertraining is for everyone to stand up and to balance on one foot, andthen to look down at that foot. And
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so as long as you're not driving, I encourage you to do this, or thenext time you're at home with no socks and shorts on, lift one foot andlook at all the muscles that are engaging and the tendons that you'llsee moving underneath your skin to maintain your balance.
As a matter of fact, your foot is a bit like a puppet, and the puppetmasters which control your foot, they have these strings, so thetendons, which originate on the foot or even beneath the foot and go allthe way up the sides and the front of the calf. And then the puppetmasters are at the top of the calf.
So your evertors and invertors like the tibialis anterior, your plantarflexors, dorsiflexors, they are moving, pulling up and down to keep yourfoot in balance. And so when you look at your foot while you're tryingto balance on one foot, you will see that balance is not a passivething.
It is constant movement. It is a constant wobble. It's a constantshifting right and left. And what's incredible is we don't
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even have to think about that consciously at all. It's all justhappening
Now, factors can influence our balance. So these include our strengthand power. So
It's one thing to sense that you are out of balance. It, it's anotherthing to have that muscular strength to be able to pull yourself backinto balance. Certain really important muscles in one-legged balance areall around the shin, like I was mentioning, those tibialis anteriormuscles, the fibularis muscles. And then also muscles higher up into thehip, particularly as you bend forward.
So muscles involved in balancing Warrior III are gonna be high up in thehip versus being vertically stacked like in tree pose are gonna befurther down on the ankle and the calf
And so if you have stronger muscles to begin with, they'll be able toengage. And also power refers to how quickly a muscle can engage, howquickly it can produce force. So if you can do those more quickly, thentheoretically your balance will be better. But also what matters is yourreaction time, your attention,
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and your cognitive load.
So something I'm always talking about in balance in a yoga class is tofocus. Focus on one point, but also to focus on the thing that we'redoing. And I almost feel like I can see when people's thoughts shift andthey start thinking about something else, and then their balancewobbles. Now it could be something else.
It could be a muscle thing, but I often see there's like a shift of theeye or something, and then boom, they lose their balance. Um, alsocognitive load, so if you're carrying a lot cognitively, in your mind,that will also affect your balance. Confidence and fear affect yourbalance. I was just in the States visiting family, and I was there withmy mom, who's in her 70s now, towards her late 70s.
We were walking on a little beach towards a lake, and she had her arm inmine. And as we were getting to a place with an uneven terrain and sand,I could feel her grip on my arm get really tight. And so she had adecreased confidence. Now, that could actually be a
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useful thing because it tells your body, your brain is saying, "Okay, Ineed to be more alert now.
There, you know, this is a less safe terrain. I need to be morecareful." That could be a positive thing. But also, as we know withfear, we can over-engage. We can tighten up. We can take smaller steps.We can do things that actually might not help our balance. So confidenceand fear do play a role in balance, both in a good and potentially a, a,a less helpful way Also things like fatigue, pain, medication, previousinjury, and also the environment, like I said before, like a gust ofwind or the terrain that you're on will all affect your balance.
So the take-home message for this little segment on the introduction isbasically balance is not one single system, but it's lots of thingsinvolved, both sensory and motor.
There are also different types of balance. There is static or steadystate balance. So this is quite often what we focus on in yoga, put yourfoot on your thigh
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in tree pose, look forward, don't move. Right? That is one way of doingbalance, and if you do that, you'll probably get better at doing thatthing.
But that's only one way. There's also dynamic balance, which iscontrolling the body while it's moving. So instead of just holding thepose, going into a pose and coming out of it. So for example, going intohalf moon and then coming back up to tree pose.
That works a different type of balance There is proactive oranticipatory balance where you are preparing f- for a predictablemovement that will disturb your balance. So if you think about throwinga baseball or throwing something and you know you're gonna be steppingonto one foot, so you can expect that.
That is predictive balance
And then there's also reactive balance, which is responding to anunexpected disturbance. If that's bumping into a pole, someoneaccidentally pushing you or purposefully pushing you, hopefully not. Butanyway, y- th- y- your balance can be disturbed, and how good is yourreaction to that balance? So all of these are different elements ofbalance.
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There's not just one thing of do this one thing and you'll get better atall of them. Each one will probably improve based on w- how you do it.And then there's also what's called functional balance, which is a, a, abit of a vague term, but it's things that are more tied to specificthings that you would do in your life.
For example, if you need to step over a bathtub to get into a shower,that i- then that movement would be considered a functional movement
Okay. Yeah, babe? So edit this out. Yeah, I'm recording. What's up,babe? What time will you finish, do you think?
How do I pause it? And we're back
So now onto the question of does balance decline with age? And, onaverage, the sad answer is yes. I know it can be a bit depressingtalking about aging and hearing about things, and as someone who is nowcloser to 50 than 40, I, I'm starting to think about my later life. And,and the reality is we are all aging.
We are all a day closer to, to our grave, And I know that can sound abit depressing, but
But I, I don't know where it is, but somewhere in some yogic text thereis some in... Let me start over
while we're on the topic, you know, there are some interesting yogatexts that talk about how coming to terms with death actually can help,uh, liberate us in life. So
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again, that's a bit of an aside, but nonetheless, we are on this, thissteady path towards death. Nice and enlightening podcast episode for youhere, isn't it?
But the good news is you're still alive. You know? Let's celebrate thefact that we are still here, and I'm grateful that I'm close to, closerto 50 and I'm still here, I'm still kicking. I'm still doing yoga. And Ihope to have all the problems that come with being a 100-year-old andthat I'm still alive then.
I know I've said that in a previous podcast episode. But anyway, yes,balance does decline with age is the point, I guess, that I was going toget to. But there's a lot that we can do to help slow it down andactually maybe even reverse it if you're someone who hasn't done balancetraining. You know, possible factors that affect- whether or why balancechanges with age, uh, has to do with changes in vision 'cause vision isan important part.
Reduced vestibular function, so that inner ear donut thing I was talkingabout. Lower muscle strength and power,
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and that's something that we can control, as we know. Slower reactions.So there are some adaptations that happen with the nervous system whenyou start training and when you start training for quicker movement.
So that can be trained also, so don't think, "Oh, it's just, uh, alldownhill from here." No. Uh, reduced physical activity, again, a thingthat we can change, can-- thing that we can influence. Medication andhealth conditions, now, you know, that, that's just part of life, innit?And greater difficulty dividing attention between movement and anothertask.
Okay? That's another factor
But let's not catastrophize here, okay? So age-related changes arenormal and, and they are real, yeah? But it is not a cliff edge. It isnot, as soon as you get to a, a certain age it's all boom, it's allgoing to pot.
A- and actually physical activity and exercise and practice canmeaningfully improve balance in older adults, and that's supported bythe literature.
And also, as you kn- probably know, people of the same
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age can vary enormously. Y- I'm sure you can think of an 85-year-oldwith great balance and then a 60-year-old who, uh, has, has poorbalance. So y- th- there's... We've also seen examples of people intheir 80s and 90s with great muscle mass, people in their 20s with verylittle muscle mass.
So a lot of it comes down to what we do with our bodies.
As I mentioned, balance is also important for younger people
It's not just a senior's disease. So young people need balance to runand change direction, land from a jump, play sports, dance respond tophysical contact, navigate uneven ter- everything that adults do andolder adults do
And interestingly, 2018 systematic review evidence has found thatbalance training produces moderate to large improvements in static anddynamic balance in younger people.
So the effects are not just restricted to older adults
And really good news another systematic review suggests
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balance and neuromuscular programs can reduce ankle sprains,particularly in sporting populations.
So another reason that more than just older adults need to be doingbalance training.
Which brings us to the question of, does balance training work? And theresearch actually does say it does work. And as I'm gonna get toshortly, that might be a little bit different to falls, okay? Butseveral reviews have found that in both healthy older adults and adultswith health conditions, balance training improves static balance,dynamic balance, like I mentioned earlier, proactive and reactivebalance
And it seems the more you do it, the better, to some degree. So based onthe research, 11 to 12 weeks of training.
Is much better than just a couple of weeks. And doing it three times perweek, so three sessions of balance training yields better results thanjust one per week, which does not tend to have meaningful results. Also,sessions should be, according to this research, around 30, 30 to 45minutes,
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and if it's more than 60 minutes, you're not getting any more benefitout of it.
You know, this doesn't mean you need to drop everything and, you know,we've always got this benefit-cost analysis. You can't do everything inthe world. You can't do every single exercise. You can't do every singleself-care treatment. You can't be taking a bath and relaxing while alsogoing out for a run, you know?
So we always have this cost-benefit analysis, and so we're, remember inresearch, we're just looking at one specific question, what is thedosage? How much has to be done? And these systematic reviews have foundthat information about the 11 to 12 weeks of training and doing it threetimes per week.
That's gonna be more beneficial than doing it once per week. I thinkwhere this all keeps pointing to is the value of moving and of not justsitting down, right? Of going to yoga classes and going to your exerciseclasses and everything else
But what the research also points to is specificity. So if
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you do static balance, you will get better at static balance. If you dodynamic balance, you'll get better at dynamic balance
And so if you generally wanted to help someone with a very specifictask, like I want you to be able to comfortably step over the bathtub toget into your shower, then doing things that involve that would bereally useful, like stepping over yoga bricks, considering the sensory,mechanical, and cognitive demands of that task, and getting away fromholding onto the wall.
As useful as touching a wall can be or having support from the wall orsupport from a chair, and as useful as chair yoga can be, nothing willbe as good for balance as just letting go of that thing and trying tobalance on your own.
Which brings us to one of our last segments and, you know, ties backinto that initial Iyengar study with the question, you know, doesactually improving balance prevent falls?
And incredibly, falls, as in slips, trips and falls, are the number onecause of accidental death of people over
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And just last year I lost my own aunt as a result of a fall whereshe was alone in her house going to the kitchen in the middle of thenight.
So, if we can decrease fall rates, it's gonna be really beneficial... solet's look at what the research says
So just to be clear, there is... Th-there's two different things, right?There's improved balance test performance. Like, it's one thing to havesomeone do dancer pose, right? And then measure them. Let's do thislittle study where someone does dancer pose. We measure how long theycan do it for, and then we have them do dancer pose three times a week,uh, you know, in, as part of a yoga program, and we measure it 12 weekslater.
They will probably get better at dancer pose. Like, that's pretty muchguaranteed, and that's what the research supports. So balance makes youbetter at balance, right? But do improved balance test scores actuallytranslate to decreased falls?
First of all, falls are not simply down to balance, though, of course,that is an important factor, but actually falls have many factors thataffect them in- including strength and power, vision, medication,cognitive impairment, environment, footwear, previous falls, risk-takingand activity exposure, and the ability to recover from a disturbance.
Okay, so having said that, Let's finally get to the punchline. Let's getto the point of this podcast episode. And the question is, you know, canwe actually reduce our fall risk? Because that's ultimately what canlead to
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problems both, you know, if you're an older adult, but also just, fallsare what cause injury, wh- when you land on your elbow, when you land onyour hand, right?
So if you've listened to podcasts with me or done a course with me, youwould know there are different levels of evidence. The systematic reviewis considered the highest level of evidence, and even within systematicreviews, there are still different levels of quality.
There's one by the Cochrane Library, the Cochrane Reviews. CochraneReviews have a reputation of being the most rigorous, and they tend tocome with the most conservative conclusions, right? So they tend to bemore cautious in saying, "This treatment," whether it's a drug or, youknow, a, a, a movement modality like yoga, "this thing will do thateffect, will have that effect."
They tend to be more conservative. And here is what their 2019 review,Sherrington et al., concluded. They looked at, first of all, exercise ingeneral for
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older adults, and they found that exercise reduced the rate of falls inolder community-dwelling adults, as in people who are still living inprivate homes, living with their families, living on their own, not innursing homes.
Exercise reduced the rate of falls by approximately 23%, right? So wecan pretty confidently say that if you exercise and if you move in lotsof different ways, you probably will reduce your risk of falls. That's arelative risk. And they also looked at more specific balance trainingand, quote-unquote, "functional exercise," finding that balance andfunctional exercises reduced the rate of falls by approximately 24%, soreally not much more.
So-
What does this all mean? Maybe we don't need to be looking specificallyat balance, and when we look at balance, maybe we should look at it in aslightly different way.
And that review also found some characteristics of promising
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programs, which included that, number one, balance is sufficientlychallenged, that exercise is progressive, as in it, it's not just thesame thing every single day, but it becomes harder. You do morechallenging things. You work to build more strength.
Functional movements are included, so things that are-- you find in youreveryday life, again, like stepping over the tub or reaching acrosswhile balancing on one foot, if that's something you do, which most ofus tend to at some point. You know, reaching into your car.
Also promising aspects are when strength is included where appropriate,practice is repeated consistently. So, you know, it's not like you cando all your exercise in one week and then rest the rest of the year. No,we need to keep at it week in, week out.
And the overall amount or dose is sufficient, right? So it's not just alittle bit here and there. Balancing on one foot while brushing yourteeth two minutes a day might not be enough.
And also another authority
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for guidance is the World Health Organization, which looks at all of theevidence and comes up with guidelines as they have, for example, forphysical activity, 150 minutes plus two days of strength training everyweek. That is the standard guidelines that a lot of countries have thenadopted from the World Health Organization.
And what they say specifically is adults aged 65 plus should undertakevaried multi-component physical activity. So multi-component refers tocomponents like balance, strength, aerobic activity, and also functionalmovement such as stepping, turning, and getting up from a chair.
I think those are quite good guidelines. And the World HealthOrganization also recommends doing this on three or more days per week.And so this is broader than simply practicing static balance poses.
And into our, our last two segments, you know, does yoga actuallyimprove balance? And then what should we be doing differently in ouryoga practice, if anything?
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In answer to the question, yeah, yoga probably does improve balance tosome degree
But the certainty and the practical application of the evidence varies.
A 2016 systematic review looked at six trials that involved yoga, and sothere were 307 participants. So remember, this is before the Iyengarstudy. And they concluded that yoga produced a small improvement inbalance. Okay? And they also f- determined that yoga produced a mediumimprovement, so better than just a small improvement, in physicalmobility, which is also important as we get older, the ability to benddown, pick something up, or to squat down and get something from thelower cupboard
But the researchers explicitly stated that it was unclear whether theseimprovements translated into fewer falls And as you all know, there's somany different styles of yoga. People do yoga at different frequencies.Class lengths can vary. And then even within the research, there aredifferent balance tests. And quite often yoga
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studies can be quite small, and it can even be difficult to identifywhich element of yoga is responsible. Is it the one-legged balance,which seems the most obvious, or is it actually the combination of theone-legged with the two-legged balances, w- with the arm balances youknow, like with a side plank or a crow?
There are plausible reasons that yoga could help balance, you know? Likerepeated one-legged standing, narrow base of support, shifting thecenter of mass and all that stuff But I think we need to be a little bitcautious to say that yoga will definitely prevent falls at this point.
And as for what we might do differently, first of all, I don't thinkit's for me to tell you how to change your yoga practice or to how toteach differently. That that's up to you. And you might love yourpractice just as it is. However, if you would like to try some differentthings, and based on everything that we've explored today, here are afew things that you could add in to your yoga practice/yoga
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teaching
So of course, we're already holding poses statically in yoga, you know,balance poses. We already have that nailed, but what about tryingsomething like reaching during a balance pose? Reaching over to theright side, reaching to the left side. Transitioning between posesrather than just holding that pose, going in and out of it, especiallybetween balance poses.
That could be really challenging. Maybe adding a step. So steppingforward, sideways, or even diagonally into a pose and then out of it.
Another element may be turning. So you could first look in differentdirections. You can change that sensory information, but you could alsoturn your entire body while in a balanced pose. This could be somethingthat could make it a little bit more similar to what, how balancehappens in real life
And maybe playing a game of following a verbal directional cue. So withthat reach, for example, maybe people could reach forward or reachsideways. I don't know. You might think, "No, that doesn't sound likeyoga to me. I don't wanna do this at all." Or you might think, "Okay,maybe I'll try one or two of those."
And
I created , an
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asana class and excerpts with three of those inside the Enlightened YogaCollective. So if you're interested and want to see how I would do it,you can check out that.
Also, we don't talk about progressive changes in yoga very often. Wejust do one thing and then keep doing that same thing, I think. But y-
For someone with very poor balance, just having feet closer togetherwould be the starting point, or maybe one foot in front of the other,what's called tandem standing could be a starting point. Uh, startingwith a fingertip on the wall, but moving away from that. But at the sametime, maybe someone needs to go from holding dancer pose to touching thefloor and coming back up, right?
So let's think about how we could also progress our balance poses andjust
our asana as in, as well. And I know that might rub some people thewrong way, the idea of progressing and regressing, and I totally getyou. But I'm thinking about it purely not like this is better, that isworse, but really purely from a physical capability point of view.
And
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knowing that physical capability can lead to those better quality oflife markers that we're talking about, like reducing your risk of falls
And something I always like to say is notice the wobble. And like thewobble is the balance. If you're wobbling, that doesn't mean you'redoing it badly. Y- your body is doing what it's supposed to be doing.And don't worry, you're not the only one feeling wobbly. We all are.
So in summary of today's episode, a few things that we've touched on isfirst of all, that balance is not one thing. It's a dynamic process andit emerges from sensory information, motor responses, cognition, thetask, and the environment.
Balance does on average decline with age, but there's a lot that we cando to change that, and a lot of balance actually remains trainable
Though it's difficult to say yet whether yoga and particularly justholding tree pose will reduce falls, though we probably can't say that
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based on the evidence, we do know that exercise programs in generalcontaining challenging balance and functional exercise can reduce falls
And if nothing else, I hope you've maybe l- you're leaving today'sepisode thinking, " Maybe I'll, I'll explore some different ways oflooking at balance and actually moving well in balance."
And if you want to explore it more, you can check out the EnlightenedYoga Collective. Members receive facts to share with clients, pra- apractical teacher cheat sheet on all this stuff that we've been talkingabout, class themes and progressions, balance sequences, and a fullasana class.
So just check out the links in the show notes. And with that, we willconclude, and I hope you have found this interesting. Like I said fromthe beginning, I learned a lot while doing the research on this and itwas different to what I expected to learn. And I'll probably stop sayinga couple things, and I'm gonna add a few things into my own teaching
So keep questioning,
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keep learning, and I'll see you next time.
Speaker: Thank you for listening to the Enlightened Anatomy Podcast.We would be grateful if you would leave a review and a five-star rating.Be sure to tune in next time for more science-based knowledge to getenlightened and help others
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