Why is Balance Important? It’s Not What You Think!

Better balance makes our movements feel effortless, fluid, steady, and secure—like skipping across a river on rocks without stumbling.

Better Balance Makes Our Movements Steady and Secure

Achieving Balance in the Body

A key player in body balance is your fascia, which is a connective tissue web surrounding muscles, bones, ligaments, organs and cells.  This suit of tissue supports balance through the correct amount of ever changing tension, pushing and pulling as we move. The adaptability of your fascia  results in mobility and stability coming from length and balanced forces, not sheer bulk. Think of fascia like a suspension bridge, which achieves stability through the correct amount of  tension in the cables unlike solid, compression-based structures.

Buckminster Fuller, an architect, coined the word  “Tensegrity” to describe this idea: a structure balanced by tension, not compression. In our bodies, the body-wide web of fascia acts similarly, giving us internal length, strength and flexibility by balancing tensions. 

Traditional methods of exercise focus on muscles, levers, and mechanical movements. This often overlooks two way lengthening and balancing tension, leading to potential injury. Tensegrity, however, encourages us to sense and respond to our body's adjustments as it moves omnidirectionally.  Developing an awareness of moving from lengthening in two directions cultivates a more adaptable, graceful and responsive body.

Tensegrity principles teach that adjusting tension in one area affects the whole body, promoting structural integrity and reducing risk of injury. When we do omnidirectionally movements the fascia lengthens and opens. Many disciplines such as  martial arts, yoga, dance, and Rolf Movement® teach movements that help open the fascia and build balance. A good example of such movements would be Lord of the Dance (as shown in the photo) or Long Inside Line (as described on page 47 in the book Moving Into Alignment). 

Lord of the Dance

In Rolfing® and Rolf Movement, we focus on movements that balance tension by lengthening and creating space within the body, emphasizing ease rather than force. By embracing this Tensegrity approach, we cultivate balance, fluidity, and strength—moving with grace and responding more easily to the world around us.

Learn more by clicking on this YouTube link to see Tensegrity in Action.