The following Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Mark Sisson, and is narrated by Tina Lehman.

The importance of balance and 15 ways to enhance and preserve it.

Everything in the world is conspiring to make you fall over.

The ground can be slippery, slick, and studded with protrusions.

The earth can move under your feet.

The discarded banana peel is an ever-present threat.

Gravity itself exerts a constant downward pull, and any tissue

straying from perpendicularity with the ground feels the pull that much more. That we managed

to stay upright at all is impressive. Not all of us do. For youngsters, balance is something you

actively practice in certain situations.

It's what you do when walking along the top of monkey bars or ride a surfboard or skateboard or

snowboard.

You only think about balance when you decide to test it.

Good balance enhances your ability to move through and interact with the world.

It's essential for all of us, and especially

for athletes whose feats put them at regular odds with the forces that threaten to throw us off

balance. The older you get, the more the world challenges your balance, and when you're pushing

80 plus and a slight miscalculation can shatter your hip, balances everything. Good balance lowers

the incidence of those miscalculations. It's essential for staying intact into old age. It's good to

note that we integrate data from several different systems of the body to balance. Vision. Our visual

input provides an overview of physical surroundings.

Festibular system. The fluid in our inner ears acts as a kind of level, telling us where our

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