Last week we started talking about improving our balance. Let's delve in a bit more!

Righting reflexes or reactions are what brings the head into alignment with the spine, or the whole body into alignment with gravity. These righting reactions are controlled by the numerous sensory organs in the neck muscles (muscle spindles), balance organs of the inner ear, and the eyes.

Last week I talked about selectively eliminating the optical righting reflex (closing the eyes). How did that affect your balance?

Today, I want to address the role that the neck plays in the orchestra of a balanced body.

If your neck is habitually tense or you hold the head in a misaligned position, the nervous system gets used to this imbalance and stops informing you about the problem. This imbalanced position affects the sensory organs of the neck and the inner ear, and changes your righting reflexes. If a teacher corrects your alignment, the correct position - more often than not - will feel wrong to you, because you have gotten used to the incorrect one.

We do a variation of this in the beginning of the class when I ask you to rock your head side to side to find balance - usually, by the end of our opening sequence, most heads have rolled back to their original - and imbalanced - position.

A balanced neck position will not feel right until you have readjusted your sensory organs - including your eyes.

When you look forward in front of you, do you feel as if the eyes are on the same level as each other? Check in the mirror to see if your feeling and fact are the same.

While you look forward, can you also observe what is going on next to you?

Hold the arms out to sides, and move the fingers. How far back can you hold the arms and still see the movement?

Balance on one leg and notice your eye movements. Do you fix your eyes on an object to help you control your balance? Move your eyes around and see what happens.