Balance Board
activities are also useful for all learners, included gifted thinkers,
reducing stress while improving focus and concentration for more difficult
or complex tasks.
How does the Balance Board Work?
To understanding how
the balance board works, we first need to understand why our sense of
balance is important. Most of us don’t even think about our sense of
balance because it is so natural and automatic. It isn’t until we are
injured, sick or have indulged in a few too many drinks that we notice how
difficult it is to keep ourselves steady, keep our surroundings still, see
clearly, and know just where our body parts are in space, at any given
moment. When our sense of balance is inefficient, all our attention needs
to go to what our physical body is doing so we don't fall over and hurt
ourselves. If we can not move appropriately, quickly enough or even slow
enough, we loose our balance (this sense of stability) and we fall down.
We all know about the earth’s gravity and it’s effects but many of us
have not connected it to the stability and efficiency of how we move
through space and organise the information we receive from our senses.
The five senses that
we are all aware of are only apart of the body’s way of receiving
information from the outside world. We need to look a little deeper to
become aware of the systems that actually take this information to our
brain so it can be organised in some fashion to make sense of all this
incoming information.
Let’s take an
orange for example: we see this round orange coloured object; we smell
it’s sweet smell; we feel it’s texture and how it feels when we apply
pressure to it; we can feel and hear the sound it makes as we cut through
the peal and we can taste its flavour. Somehow we have to put all this
sensory information together to make sense and remember that all this
together makes an orange.
If we can not
organise this experience in our brain, we can not remember what an orange
is, what it tastes like, what colour it is, what it may feel like and what
it may even look like. This sensory integration is directly related to the
same mechanisms that tell our body/brain where we are in space and how we
are relating to gravity. As we move through our day, we are constantly
organising our movements on a moment by moment basis. The information from
our skin receptors through touch, temperature, pressure and movement by
our feet, hands, and the rest of our body, as well as, information from
our eyes and ears is picked up and sent to our brain through two very
important systems. These two systems are the Proprioception sense and the
Vestibular sense.
These two systems
feed our brain with the information it needs that gives us our sense of
balance. Let’s look a little closer at just what these two systems are.
Proprioception or
Proprioceptive Sense is the unconscious awareness of sensations coming
from our joints, by way of proprioceptor receptors in the fluid, muscles,
tendons, and ligaments surrounding our joints. These sensations travel to
the brain similar to other peripheral sensors, such as touch, hearing and
sight. From this information we sense the position, location, and
orientation of our body to our surroundings, and the movement of the
different parts of our body.
This is where the
Vestibular system becomes involved. We start to organize this system when
we are 5 months old in utero. The Vestibular system is one of the first
sensory systems to fully develop because it needs to control the sense of
movement and balance. There are several small organs involved in
vestibular sensation and from them we gather information about the
head’s position relative to the ground. These are the most sensitive of
all the sense organs and they lie in the Mastoid Bone (the lump behind the
ear lobe) and are part of the inner ear. As we take in information through
these specific organs in the inner ear, it goes to the control station
(the vestibular nuclei) in the brainstem. Then the parts of the brain,
involved with stored movement patterns, monitors and makes corrective
adjustments to our different muscles by telling them when to tighten and
when to relax and, very importantly, it tells our eye muscles how to move
so we look in the right direction. All this happens instantly and
automatically so we don’t loose our balance or stability.
When we stand on a
balance board we can feel sensations (information) travelling up our body
from our toes, through our joints to our brain by way of the Central
Nervous System. We can notice our stability and symmetry between the two
sides of our body. When our balance shifts, from moving any part of our
body or start letting our minds drift, we immediately become aware of the
change because the balance board moves under our feet. We can then feel
our body automatically making corrections so that we do not fall off the
board. We quickly become aware of how safe or unsafe we feel when we are
faced with the challenge of standing still on an uneven surface.
Normally when
standing, walking or doing other activities on solid ground we are not
aware of all the decisions our brain is continuously making on a moment by
moment basis. It is only when we are feeling clumsy, dizzy, sick, or have
a physical problem that we notice how difficult it is to keep our balance.
We are also very adept at developing compensation skills on physical,
mental and emotional levels. Sometimes we adapt by holding our head to the
side, tightening certain muscles around our joints, not breathing,
limiting the directions our eyes look, or perhaps using physical apparatus
to aid us in our day to day lives. This often comes at a heavy price.
On a physical level,
we may be living with such symptoms as nausea, dizziness, adrenal
overload, low muscle tone, tension, pain, or many others. On an emotional
level, we may suffer from low self-esteem or feelings such as a sense of
loss, sadness, depression, frustration, desperation, anger, and even
hostility. On a mental level, we might feel confusion, disorganization, an
inability to hold a thought, memory loss, an inability to have a clear
mind, and/or disassociation.
Doing Balance Board
activities trains the whole sensory system by working with the
proprioception and the vestibular systems. These key threads in the
neurological web of our brain are the mechanism whereby simply standing on
the Balance Board, or using the balance board in combination with other
sensory or cognitive training tools, activates our entire brain and opens
up our sensory channels for more efficient learning. When we stand solidly
on the board, we are using and training both hemispheres of the brain
because it is impossible to stand firmly on the board using only one
hemisphere at a time. The result is that information taken in, while
standing on a balance board, is learned faster, retained longer, with
better comprehension. When both sides of the brain are working together,
the ability to process, file and store information is more efficient. A
session on the balance board leaves the brain in a more organized state.
Origins of Balance Board Work
Dr.
Jean Ayres, Occupational Therapist, with extensive training in
neurology. She pioneered Sensory integration Therapy. Ayres determined
that certain vestibular disorders are associated with learning
disabilities which helps us understand why working on Balance Board
improves learning abilities.
Dr. Frank Belgau, Vision Perception Specialist, uses the
Balance Board to improve vision and reading abilities. He realized that
the sense of balance is closely connected with eye movements required for
reading. As a vision specialist he found significant gains in visual
skills and reading ability with the use of the Balance Board.
Nancy Rowe, Speech Therapist, advanced Dr. Belgau’s work
beyond vision therapy to such diverse applications as improving hearing,
teaching the deaf to speak and enhancing the neurological functioning of
Down’s Syndrome children. She has created exercises for improving fine
motor skills affecting both hand-writing and speech, for training
sequencing skills affecting both motor and cognitive ability and for
increasing the capacity to maintain self-directed attention.
References:
Ayres, A. Jean - Sensory Integration and the Child 1979
Belgau, Frank A. - Learning Breakthrough Program 1983
Calvin, William H. - The Throwing Madonna 1983
Fisher, Anne G.- et al Sensory Integration: Theory and Practice
1991
Lane, Kenneth A. - Developing Your Child for Success 1991
Rowe, Nancy W. - Neuronet: A Framework to Automate Vestibular
Processing Oct. 31, 1994
Turning
on the Light Learning Centre
Kelowna, BC
