In The Brain that Changes Itself  Norman Doidge writes about a scientific experiment that has changed the way neuroscientists now think about the brain.

Cheryl Schiltz was a woman who had lost her vestibular sense, her sense of balance, as a side effect of an overdosage of antibiotics. She was told she would never get it back.  What she wasn’t told was that her life was ruined. 

As she struggled everyday to hold herself up, she could barely think. She couldn’t function. She went from a career as an international sales rep to living on disability checks.

As Doidge points out:“An unspoken and yet profound aspect of our well-being is based on having a normally functioning sense of balance….When we talk of “feeling settled” or “unsettled,” balanced “ or “unbalanced”, “rooted” or “rootless,”  “grounded” or “ungrounded,”  we are speaking vestibular language, the truth of which is fully apparent only in people like Cheryl.  Not surprisingly, people with her disorder often fall to pieces psychologically, and many have committed suicide.”

Cheryl was told this was permanent because, until recently, neuroscience has conceptualized the brain as a machine. If you damage one part of it that part simply stops working.

More and more, however, neurosciece pioneers are proving that the brain has remarkable regenerative powers if you know how to tweak them.  One of the pioneers in neuroplasticity is Paul Bach-y-Rita.  Using skills he had developed as a neurologist specializing in rehabilitation, he built Cheryl a helmet that was able to re-wire her sense of balance through her sense of taste. With this she was able to use her tongue to sense electrical currents which told her where she was in space. With twenty minutes of  daily standing practice, wearing this helmet, Cheryl was able to gradually recover a sense of balance and well being.  Most remarkably, she was able to recover it permanently, without the continuing use of the helmet.

This experiment raises all kinds of fascinating questions about neuroplacticity.  But for me it raised an equally  important question about balance.

As Doidge pointed out, the vestibular sense is a sixth sense that we don’t know about until we lose it. Except that we’re in the process of losing it right now.

The vestibular sense deteriorates, like all senses, with age.  And as it deteriorates so does our sense of well being.  The gradual, unspoken loss of our balance  is “normal” to us.  As  is a culture centered on manufacturing a million different kinds of crutches to distract us from the constant, creeping, unspoken sense that we are gradually losing control of our bodies, and as a result, our minds.

But what if it wasn't normal?  What if we collectively exercised our sense of balance with the same obsessiveness we use towards dental hygiene, or cardiovascular health?

 This is of course what they do in China, if you've ever seen pictures of people practicing Tai Chi, or standing around in all kinds of weird positions in Beijing park. What those people are doing is nurturing their chi, which is the physical energy one develops primarily throught the vestibular sense.

For years I’ve been practicing an extremely simple, but challenging Chinese standing meditation called Zhan Zhuang.  And one of the things that struck me after my first few months of practice is that I had no idea how crappy I was really feeling until my sense of balance improved.

As my practice continued, I realized that I had no idea how good I could feel until I began cultivating my sense of balance beyond the norm.

Like all exercisers, particularly in a culture that isn't really interested in your weird, mysterious Chinese exercise, I've let my routine fall. 

But here's the great thing about balance exercises. Unlike  cardiovascular, or muscle building exercises, you never entirely lose the balance skills you've mastered.   Once you’ve recognized and developed this sense it stays with you.  As the overused,  but poorly understood cliché goes, it's like riding a bike.  Once you’ve found your center, even if you don't become a world class gymnast, you don’t forget where it is.  Just like once you’ve heard music, you don't forget music exists.

Once you’ve made the connection between being physically balanced, and being emotionally and psychically balanced, that connection stays with you forever. You’ve taken a small step towards changing your brain. And once you put the process in motion, your brain pretty much starts changing itself. 

Although the cool thing is, it’s mostly changing itself back to what it was.