LIVING ON THE LINE OF GRAVITY
IS A SOLUTION
About Yoga in Balance, the Noelle Perez Lineage and Eve Johnson
What is Balance?
Balance is a revolutionary new way of looking at posture. Also called Aplomb, Natural Posture and Spinefulness, this practice aims to return us to the pain-free posture we knew when we first learned to walk. This same pain-free posture is enjoyed by millions of people in pre-industrial societies around the world, who rarely suffer back pain and remain strong and mobile into old age. Balance rests on one essential understanding: the optimum position of the pelvis. In Balance, the pubic bones face the floor. As a result, the spine easily transfers our body weight into our pelvis, and our hips are placed for maximum freedom of movement and minimum wear and tear. In Balance, our weight is in our bones. We don’t have to hold ourselves up with tight, gripped muscles. Instead, we put our bones in place and relax
Where did Balance come from?
Postural balance has always existed. It’s the natural state of humanity, before we started telling ourselves to stand up straight.
The discipline of Balance, defined as conscious awareness of and surrender to the force of gravity, began with an extraordinary French woman, Noelle Perez.
Her lifelong research into human posture started in 1959, when she spent three months as BKS Iyengar’s private student. One seminal moment: Iyengar told Noelle to walk behind Indian women, and to observe and copy them, until her shadow matched theirs.
She continued this practice of learning from people still living in Balance until her death in August, 2019, at 93 years old. Read more about her life here and the continuation of her work in Europe Here : In North America, teachers who have maintained their connection with Noelle and her senior teachers continue to spread the idea of Balance under the umbrella heading of Noelle Perez Lineage.
What can Balance do for me?
From your first class, Balance starts to relieve the pain caused by faulty posture. When the strain and tension of being held out of balance is gone, every part of the body benefits.
Expect relief from low back pain, S.I. joint pain, shoulder pain, knee pain, hip pain and foot pain. As your ribcage relaxes, your breathing will improve, and so will your digestion.
Over time you will feel more comfort and trust in your body.
Once you know what combination of misalignment and tension causes your pain, you also know how to fix it.
Then a virtuous cycle starts up.
The more you take weight in your bones, the more you relax.
The more you relax, the happier and more at ease you are.
The happier you are, the more able you are to see situations clearly and respond appropriately.
The more you respond appropriately, instead of reacting out of tension, the better your relations with other people will be.
The better your relationships with others, the happier you will be.
Relaxation leads to happiness which leads to more relaxation and more happiness.
What is Yoga in Balance?
The essential Balance practice is to find aligned comfort in five everyday postures: sitting, standing, bending, walking and sleeping. We create a single line of bone in our spine, and then we relax.
But when we come to this work, almost all of us start with harmful postural habits that we’ve had since we were three years old.
The advantage of having a yoga background is that you’re likely to be more tuned into your body. The disadvantage is that you have extra layers of habit to undo.
Unless you’ve been extremely lucky, your inner yoga teacher has absorbed harmful cues, such as “tuck your buttocks,” “keep your pubic bone parallel to the wall in front of you,” and “lift your chest.”
Unfortunately, living with your pelvis tucked and your chest lifted weakens your lumbar spine. At the same time, it severs your natural abdominal connections and replaces them with tension and gripping.
Yoga in Balance is slow, sensitive, inwardly directed work to release those old patterns and allow the pelvis to find its natural alignment.
You will feel stretched and strengthened in class, and the daily practice you learn will speed the process of coming into Balance in daily life.
Unlike other forms of yoga, our physical practice continues when we step off the mat. Every time we sit down, we have an opportunity to practice. We practice when we unload the dishwasher – both bending, to reach the lower rack, and stretching, to put something away on a high shelf.
In that sense, Yoga in Balance practice takes the whole day. But from another perspective, it gives the whole day: countless opportunities to wake up in the present moment.
THE EVE JOHNSON APPROACH
The day I met my first yoga teacher, Wende Davis, she placed me in Right Angle pose (which some call Half Downward-Facing Dog pose) with my hands resting on the top of her upright piano and ran her fingers along my spine. When she came to my upper back, she tapped and said, “That’s where your work is.”
And that’s where my work stayed for the next 29 years.
In countless yoga classes, workshops, and teacher trainings, helpful fingers tapped my back in the same spot to bring awareness into my stiff and overly rounded thoracic spine.
I was told that my tendency to round was genetic, but with practice I could slow down, or even stop, the increasing curve. The genetic part made sense because my mother and my older sister were both more rounded than me.
So, in class and at home, I worked on it. I had a daily practice of chest openers. I studied backbends. Moving slowly and with focus, I learned to lengthen my spine and draw in my thoracic vertebrae. Eventually, in certain poses, I could make my upper back less rounded.
I started teacher training and eventually gained my certification.
But helpful fingers continued to tap my spine. In deep forward bends, my back still humped. In candid photos I saw myself getting shorter and more rounded every year.
Then in March, 2016, I took a weekend workshop in Balance with Jean Couch in Palo Alto, CA, led there by Thea Sawyer’s excellent book Put Your Back at Ease.
For the first time, I learned why my back rounded and how to straighten it. I learned that posture is cultural, and that although every woman in my family had a rounded upper back, our genes weren’t the cause. Like all little girls, we had modelled our posture on our mother’s, and achieved the same results.
After two years of study, I became a certified Balance teacher. I’ve gained a centimeter in height, much to my doctor’s surprise. And my upper back is longer and straighter than it’s been for a long time.
I continue to be astonished that something so clear and so useful didn’t pop up sooner in my life, but I’m grateful that it’s here now.
And I’m delighted to be able to share the news that in posture, genetics is rarely destiny. Once we know what do, we can change our bones.
How do I find out more?
If you’re ready to plunge in, take my self-timed online Spinefulness Foundations Course. Four hours that introduce the theory and practice of Balance, plus five bonus five-minute exercises to help speed your progress.
If you’d like to experience a live Yoga In Balance class, or join a small class with feedback, sign up for a Zoom class:
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