Balance Blog

Centering and Parkinson’s Disease

October 23, 2014
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Balance Training

Last Friday I had the privilege of co-teaching the Parkinson’s Disease Movement Lab with Pamela Quinn at the Mark Morrison Dance Center in Brooklyn. I shared the centering exercises from Ki-Aikido and we explored how an awareness of moving from center stabilizes balance. Participants were immediately able to make the connection as they experienced a marked improvement in their postural stability – whether sitting, standing, or walking across a room. We also played with the effect of centering on speech which, like balance, can be undermined in Parkinson’s.…

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Neural Knitting

September 30, 2014
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Balance Science

In 1906, the father of modern neuroscience, Sir Charles Scott Sherrington, described the central nervous system as “an organ of coordination” that “knits together” the many separate systems of life into a solidarity – a coordinated response of the whole. Shin Shin Toitsu is the Japanese name for the style of aikido I have practiced and taught for over thirty years. Translated into English it means “heart, mind, and body threaded together as one.” The words echo Sherrington’s — the recognition not…

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