Does Yoga Help Improve Balance and Coordination?
Have you been feeling a little wobbly lately? No matter your age, poor balance and coordination increase your risk for falls and injuries and may affect your athletic performance. Yoga, with its emphasis on flexibility and stability, will help you improve these important physical skills.
Becoming More Balanced with Yoga
Your muscles, bones, and joints work together with your inner ears and nervous system to provide good balance. Issues with any of these structures could lead to balance and coordination problems.
Yoga strengthens the muscles supporting your joints, improves flexibility, and enhances the brain/muscle connection. Practicing yoga improved balance and reduced the fear of falling in older adults, according to a pilot study published in PM&R. Although the study focused on older adults, yoga helps you improve your balance at any age.
When researchers tested reaction time and hand coordination in college athletes, they discovered a significant improvement in those skills in a group of athletes that practiced yoga three times a week for 12 weeks. The study results appeared in the African Journal of Biomedical Research in 2024.
Improving reaction time could help you recognize that you're about to lose your balance, allowing you to make immediate corrections to avoid a fall.
Do you struggle with balance caused by dizziness? Whether the cause is an inner ear issue, aging, Meniere's disease, benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, or another problem, yoga may offer the ideal solution. Practicing yoga could help you improve balance, movement, coordination, and focus to reduce dizziness, according to the Vestibular Disorders Association.
Helpful poses for improving balance include:
- Mountain Pose. Mountain pose may seem easy, but there's more to the pose than simply standing still with your arms at your side. The pose helps you learn to keep your weight equally distributed on your feet, stabilizes the muscles in your legs and core, and improves your posture.
- Side Plank. Turning the plank on its side means balancing your body on one hand. The pose strengthens your core, hip and shoulders, in addition to improving your balancing ability.
- Tree Pose. When you think of yoga, the tree pose may be one of the first things that springs to mind. The pose involves standing on one leg with the other leg bent and balanced against your inner thigh. The tree pose grounds you to the earth, stretches the torso, and strengthens muscles in your legs needed for good balance. Poses that require balancing on one leg take some time to master. While you practice the tree pose, feel free to hold on to a wall or chair if you start to lose your balance.
Improving Coordination with Yoga
Yoga improves your ability to coordinate your body when you walk, dance, or play sports. It does this by strengthening proprioception, the ability to correctly sense the position and movement of your body.
Poses that will help you improve coordination include:
- Cat Cow Pose. This two-part pose is performed on your hands and knees and requires coordination to switch between the two poses. As you perform the cow pose, you'll drop your back and raise your head. Transitioning to the cat pose means you'll arch your back and drop your head.
- Eagle Pose. Increasing the complexity of one-legged poses offers an excellent way to enhance coordination. As you stand on one leg, you'll wrap your arms and legs around each other in the Eagle pose. The pose is an excellent choice for improving balance and coordination. It's harder than it sounds and requires concentration and practice to perfect.
- Warrior Three. You'll need to coordinate several different body parts to effectively perform warrior three. This pose also requires balancing on one leg. As you focus on keeping your balance, you'll drop your upper body and extend your arms, keeping them parallel to the floor.
Need to improve your balance and coordination but don't know where to start? Our yoga classes will help you strengthen these key skills while improving flexibility. Contact us for information about our current classes.
Sources:
Science Direct: PM&R: The Effect of Yoga on Balance and Fear of Falling in Older Adults, 2/2016
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1934148215007510
Vestibular Disorders Association: Yoga for Balance
Mayo Clinic: Core Exercises: Why you Should Strengthen Your Core Muscles, 3/25/25
https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/fitness/in-depth/core-exercises/art-20044751
African Journal of Biomedical Research: Effect of Selected Yogic Practices, 9/10/2024
https://africanjournalofbiomedicalresearch.com/index.php/AJBR/article/view/1326