Foundation Series: Finding Balance

This Foundation Series works from the ground up to explore what actually helps us balance.

Standing balances can sometimes feel like something you're either naturally good at or you're not. Fortunately, there’s a lot more going on than that and understanding some of the pieces can make a huge difference.

Across three weeks we'll explore the foundations that help us feel steadier on one leg: building stronger and more responsive feet and ankles, creating freedom and support around the hips, learning how to transfer our weight, and understanding how our eyes and focus affect our balance.

We’ll start at the ground, exploring how our feet and ankles respond and adapt as we move, before working our way upwards into the hips. We’ll look at the balance between mobility and stability - creating enough freedom to move while developing the strength and coordination to control that movement - before gradually putting everything together in familiar standing balances.

By the end of the series, you should have a much clearer sense of how to organise yourself from the ground up, why you might wobble more in some positions than others, and what you can actually work on if you want your balance to improve.

Of course, these are benefits that will go much further than getting better at Tree Pose.

Strong, responsive ankles and well-supported, mobile hips feed into almost everything we do: standing poses, lunges, transitions, single-leg strength and more dynamic Flow practices. They’re also important qualities for moving well away from the mat and maintaining strength, balance and confidence as we get older.

We’ll also explore drishti - the yogic practice of directing the gaze - and experience just how much changing what’s in our eye line can change what’s happening everywhere else.

This is a beginner-focused Foundation Series, but balance is something worth revisiting at every level of practice. The same principles we explore here continue into more complex standing poses, transitions and plenty of the more adventurous things we might want to explore later.

Each session stands alone, so you can join at any point, although attending all three will allow the ideas to build progressively.