Balancing Poses in Yoga: Benefits for Total Hip Replacement and Beyond

When you practice balancing poses in yoga, whether on two feet or on your head, you strengthen muscles essential for the stability of total hip replacement. Balancing challenges your ability to focus, react to fluctuations in your body, and maintain your center of gravity. It is a mental practice as much as a physical one.

Benefits of Balancing Poses in Yoga

When you practice balancing, you:

• Improve brain health
• Reduce your chance of falling
• Maintain physical coordination
• Improve your reaction time
• Strengthen key muscles that support your hip joint

Balancing helps keep the brain healthy. It improves memory, hones proprioceptive skills, and strengthens regions of the brain responsible for balance and orienting us in space. Plus, the focus required when we balance quiets the mind’s activity. This is yoga!!

Yoga Balancing Poses and Your Hips

As we lose our ability to balance, our stability diminishes, putting us at risk of falling. Hip osteoarthritis is usually accompanied by chronic pain, reduced muscle strength, and reduced ability to perform daily activities. This includes balancing, which is why a yoga practice that includes standing poses—and especially balancing poses—helps keep the key muscles responsible for our stability strong and reduces the risk of falling.

Studies show that balancing improves physical coordination and reaction time. On the yoga mat, you have a safe and controlled environment where you can practice balancing. Take advantage of this safe place to experiment and hone your balancing abilities. Finding your balance on the mat will translate to better balance in the world.

When you practice balancing, you strengthen key muscles that support your hip joint. In truth, when you balance, you strengthen muscles that provide stability throughout the body, including muscles that support the hip joint. Consider a pose like Half Moon Pose (Ardha Chandrasana). The standing leg has strong outward rotation, which strengthens the external rotators. The standing leg also has hip flexion, which strengthens hip flexors and the hamstring muscles. All these muscles play a role in supporting the hip joint.

Balancing Poses—Off the Yoga Mat

Take your balance off the mat! You can practice balance almost anywhere, like in line at the grocery store, while doing dishes at the kitchen sink, or when standing on your deck taking in the view.

Consider how standing on two feet in Mountain Pose (Tadasana) is a form of balancing. It may seem simple, but all you need to do is introduce some minor variations, and you will begin to challenge your balance:

• Try standing in Mountain Pose with your eyes closed. Focus your attention on how your weight shifts under your feet and how your body is constantly finding its center of gravity.
• Try lifting your heels to shift your weight slowly onto the balls of your feet. Can you balance on the balls of your feet for a few seconds?
• Try closing your eyes AND balancing on the balls of your feet. Notice how much we rely on our eyes for our sense of balance.

Balancing After Total Hip Replacement

As you move toward more challenging balancing poses following a total hip replacement, start small, experiment with the easier variations, and watch how your body and mind respond. And don’t be shy about using props. If you are unsure of your balance, have a countertop, chair, tree, or grocery cart nearby to hold on to.

“Balance is not something you find, it is something you create” – Jana Kingsford