How Posture Training Can Directly Improve Your Balance

I meet a lot of people who are concerned about their posture  What's fascinating is "Posture is a primitive reflex"; the primary primitive reflex needed to move through life.  Without a stable posture, we cannot move safely through life and movement suffers.

When it comes to balance, posture is directly involved.  If you're bent over looking at the floor, stooped down closer to the floor, constantly staring at the floor, you're going to end up on the floor.

There's hope!  Postural weakness can be changed, at any age.  Once a qualified trainer addresses visual problems, muscle deficiencies and inner ear dysfunction, posture will change.  Knowing where to look and how to carry yourself is the fist step to better balance.

ALERT**** Neuroscience proves that it's never too late to improve your posture and the way you move through life.  Your brain is hard-wired for survival and once your brain 'feels' safe, your posture, balance and movement will improve****

 Z-Health Practitioners are trained to identify the body systems rendered dysfunctional and activate them to be functional.   Training the vision, vestibular and proprioceptive systems has immediate results but it's up to you to do the drills to make the changes permanent.

Jammed Joints Create Weak Muscles

"Jammed joints create weak muscles and open joints create strength"~ Dr. Eric Cobb of Z-Health Performance.  This is the greatest thing I've heard in awhile.   Otherwise known as the "Arthrokinetic Response",  it's magical when you see the instant results in balance, strength and stability after "creating space" in a jammed joint.

What body parts have a high probability of getting jammed?  Yep, you guessed it:  Ankles and wrists. Toes and fingers.  Lots of joints => increase risk of jammed.

Your feet spend most of a lifetime jammed into shoes; shoes that probably don't fit correctly but hey, at least they look good!  How many women painfully jammed their feet into high heels to wear to the office?  Years and years of this unnatural demand takes a toll.    Your ankles have to bear the tremendous forces of walking and running plus any additional body weight you might be carrying.

The foot has over 26 bones and 33 articulations, each with six degrees of freedom.   Lots of tiny bones with billions of sensory receptors and neurons necessary for stable walking gait.  Moving the feet stimulates nerve endings and releases feel good juices.

Strategically moving the feet improves the brain's map of the area.  Because there are billions of nerve endings, the foot and ankle take up a lot brain real-estate.  In other words, a lot of space in the brain is dedicated to feeling and moving those parts.   One rule of neurology is the better the map, the better the movement.  Or balance.  Or strength.

It's so encouraging to hear more and more professionals talking about the benefits of barefoot training and practicing with the feet in contact with the bare surface.  Being barefoot activates sensory receptors and strengthens intrinsic foot muscles which immediately improves reflexive stability and reaction times.

Here's a great article about the benefits of going barefoot:  Barefoot Training 

You want strong legs in order to remain balanced.  Strong legs start with strong feet and ankles.  Neurons need to fire quickly between sensory receptors of the foot to the brain to the cerebellum and back.  Quickly.

Open  joints with lots of movement create strong muscle connections.  Stability.  It's called the arthrokinetic response.

Start with these lateral ankle tilts to open up the joints of the ankle and foot.

Do You Want Your Life Back???

I'm finishing up two amazing Brains and Balance classes at Sun River church in Rancho Cordova and my students are thrilled with the results.  This awesome lady explains how the class changed her life but is giving her life back!

"This class is not just LIFE CHANGING, 

it's giving me LIFE BACK!

She's been living with neuropathy for over 10 years.  She went to multiple neurologists and physical therapists who told her there was nothing they could do for her.  Discouraged,  she stopped doing the things she loved.

Through sensory activation, she's gained control of her body and is hopeful about her future.  She still has peripheral neuropathy but she feels stable and is more aware of her body and knows how to move it.

Do you want your life back?  Do you want to do the things you love again?  If so, join me in one of my Brains and Balance Training classes.  Lots of classes scheduled for spring and summer.
If you can't make classes, I can come to you for private sessions.   And thanks to technology, we can even do some training online!

Your brain controls everything, learn how to active different parts of your brain for better movement. After all, movement is life and it's time to start living.

Your brain: Use it or Lose it

A participant in my Brains and Balance Training class at The Club at WestPark in Del Webb asked a valid, common question...."Why do I need to do this vision training"?  

THE NERVOUS SYSTEM'S USE IT OR LOSE IT:
TRANS-NEURONAL DEGENERATION

The answer is simple: USE IT OR LOSE IT.  

We already know that if you don't move a body part, you lose the ability to move it. 

You know if you don't strengthening your legs, your legs get weak and you're more likely to fall. 

The same "USE IT OR LOSE IT" principle applies to your brain and nervous system called "TRANS-NEURONAL DEGENERATION"

A healthy brain needs fuel and activation.  If you don't activate the entire brain, neurons die.   

Activating your senses is the only way to "use" your entire brain.  Not playing crossword puzzles and brain teasers.  You need to stimulate your senses.

 

Vision is the #1 input to the brain and vision is a brain-wide event.  In other words, when you do vision training, you activate all the lobes of the brain in order to see and process what you see.  

The cool thing about sensory training is the neurology rule, "Neurons that lie together, fire together".  This means that as neurons die because of lack of fuel and/or activation, the dying neurons influence the ones next to it.  The good news is this lie together/fire together principle works the other way, too.

As you activate neurons through sensory input, the neurons positively influence the neurons next to it.     "Hey, I'm moving, move with me", said the vision neuron to the pain inhibitor neuron.  IN other words, when you activate the visual neurons, they activate neurons that turn off pain!

If you're in chronic pain, get your eyes moving.  

As for improving your balance, the eyes muscles are innervated by nerves that go directly into the brainstem; areas of the brainstem that affect posture and balance.  It's complicated but what you need to know is that training the eyes activates neurons that DIRECTLY influence upright posture and balance. 

The moral of this blog: 

"If you don't train the sensory systems, half of your brain is dying"~ Kelly Ward

 

If you want to move, stay balanced, prevent a fall, have great vision and live independently, you'll do drills to activate the most neglected and least understood part of the brain; your sensory cortex.

Never TOO old to IMPROVE Balance, Posture and Movement: 92-year old with Scoliosis, Kyphosis, and slight Dementia

Several weeks ago, a 65 year-old man contacted me about working with his 92 year-old father.  He told me he wanted his father to get strong and stay out of the nursing home for as long as possible.  One of his main concerns was his father being able to get up from the floor.  He also stated that he wanted his father to continue with the training schedule of three times a week that he was currently doing with the physical therapist.

He was switching from a well-known Physical Therapist to my services because insurance no longer covered his father's treatment since there wasn't anything physically wrong with him.  This was fantastic news to me because the work I do is equally as good yet much more affordable for out of pocket training.  As I began to explain the neural input training I do, he stopped me; he had heard of me and knew his father was going to be in good hands.

Brain-based Training Results In Better Movement and Posture

When "Frank" came to his first session, he was stooped over and relied heavily on his walker for mobility.  I started with senior fitness tests and then did a thorough neuro-assessment; testing his vision, vestibular and peripheral nerve function. As a Z-Health Neuro-Performance Coach, I am constantly assessing and reassessing to discover what type of input training works for him.

All this sensory input stuff was new but Frank went along with everything and would smile when there was a big difference in his reassessment; nothing compared to his smile after he reached down to touch his toes after sharp/dull sensory input testing! When we started, he was 6 inches from touching his toes. After several sensory input tests, he was touching his toes and smiling ear to ear.

Frank is Latino, 92-years old and he has slight dementia so there's obviously some communication challenges but he's a go-getter and does what I ask after some explanation.  Not surprisingly, he struggled with the cerebellum drills but the pay-off was outstanding; he stood up without using his walker and this time, he was beaming smiled ear to ear and said, "Yes!".   That was session #1.

Nine sessions later, Frank is standing taller, getting up powerfully, moving easier and walking more balanced.  We've practiced getting up from the floor; the first time Frank cussed me but the second time was much better.  Now he's practicing kneeling exercises so being on the ground isn't as threatening to his brain or his body.  

Before session #5 at his home, Frank's caregiver told me he fell last night. Before I could say "uh-oh", she told me his son said that by the time he could get to the room, Frank was up and sitting on the bed as if nothing happened!  She said "I don't know what you're doing but it's working!".  

I am so proud of Frank and the huge strides he's making in our training sessions. Through ongoing sensorimotor testing, I've identified what areas of Frank's brain need more activation than others and I  consistently training the neural inputs (vision, vestibular and peripheral nerves) for improved motor output.   

The results are phenomenal; his stooped posture is standing more upright, his right-side scoliosis is becoming less evident and he's stronger and more stable.  This man is 92-years young and he's thriving with neural activation.  It's never too late and you're never too old to improve your balance, strength, posture and coordination.