No Water? No Paddleboard? No problem!

discover the original Tuning Board™,

the ideal balance board for yoga.

enjoy all the benefits of sup standup

paddleboard yoga without the paddleboard.

The Tuning Board is an instability resistance training device.

We typically do yoga on a firm, unmoving surface. But, what happens when we do postures on an unstable surface?

Doing yoga postures on a moving plane provides an extra level of awareness and training to a yoga practice. Using such a surface is referred to as instability resistance training (IRT).  

IRT has been shown to improve balance, proprioception, muscular cocontractions and joint stability, in other words, improved strength, coordination, integration and responsiveness of joints and muscles.

The Tuning Board is a professional quality balance Board ….

· Suitable for personal or professional use;

·  Safer and more stable than any balance board on the market;

·  Gentle, constant, stable motion allows for movement in any plane;

·  Sturdy construction, high-quality long-lasting materials;

·  The engraved design on its surface evokes the 8 cardinal directions;

·  Feeds a fluid sensory experience into the yoga practitioner’s standing body;

·  Centering and grounding are interwoven with movement;

·  The experience is that of a continual gentle dance with gravity.

In all of its possible uses, the Tuning Board….

• Helps to free obstructions and open the body to the flow of life and energy;

• Facilitates movement into the deepest areas of our human experience;

• Brings us into the present moment;

• Promotes a conscious felt experience of the unity and integration of mind and body;

• Enhances the intimate relationship of structure, function and experience;

• Is a feedback tool that reveals patterns that would otherwise go unnoticed and unchallenged.

• Articulates and accelerates re-patterning;

• Is a doorway into creative process;

• Promotes the alignment of the feet, ankles, knees and hips in the vertical posture;

• Increases the mobility and fluidity of the spine;

• Improves grounding by increasing responsiveness of feet, ankles and lower legs;

Yoga Teachers and Yoga Therapists:

You Can use the Tuning Board with Your clients to:

Get Them in Their Bodies

• Invite fuller embodiment and kinesthetic awareness;

• Restore a client’s ability to use their own body as a primary resource;

• Improve the ability of clients to self-calm when anxious.

Connect Them to Their World

• Train clients to simultaneously maintain internal body awareness and groundedness while fully perceiving and being present in their environment;

• Encourage clients to be aware of and enjoy the safety and wholeness of the present moment;

Invite Transformative Movement

• Restore the flow of movement and energy through the body and whole person;

• Help clients become more flexible and resilient;

• Encourage creativity and increase confidence through the somatic integration of....
           stability and movement;
           tension and release;
           discomfort and flow.

More About Using the Tuning Board in Your Yoga Practice:

            Yoga is a choice. Every time we decide to practice yoga we are valuing ourselves by making a constructive affirmation to mind and body. It takes certain courage to make such a conscious choice. The practice of yoga can very quickly show us limitations that we don’t see or often would rather not admit. The beauty is that it also shows us a way to transform those limitations by engaging as fully as possible with the asanas. In addition to meeting the task of executing the asana the Tuning Board adds another level of challenging balance while working the posture. In this way an unstable surface engages us more fully.

            Yoga can be many things to many people. Any one of the meanings it holds for us can occupy a central theme in our practice. For example, yoga can be an affirmation of health and wholeness and of living an embodied life. It can motivate us to open up our bodies to allow a freer flow of prana (the breath of life) to move through us.

            For some, coordination is an important reason that brings people to yoga. When we stand in mountain or tree poses, for example, we continually make fine adjustments in the field of gravity. The moving plane of an unstable surface accelerates our responsiveness to making adjustments in gravity and takes us deeper into the patterns in the body. Many of those patterns  keep us from a fuller expression of yoga.

            A complement to coordination that also brings meaning to people in yoga is a quest for greater symmetry in being able to execute yoga postures equally on one side of the body and the other. There is a balancing of right/left strength and flexibility of the body as well as a right/left integration of neuromuscular function from performing yoga poses on both sides. In a pose like trikonasana it can become quite clear which side of the body executes better than the other. This awareness gives us the opportunity to work intelligently and improve both sides equally. A very enriching sensation accompanies the practice of seeking symmetry in a yoga practice.

            Meaning in yoga can be about centering, the organization of the body around a vertical center line as in the vertical alignment of the body’s principle masses (the pelvis, thorax, and head) over the feet. Centering can also refer to the mind’s awareness. We can use our practice to stimulate our imaginations to visualize and sense the space around us and the lines of force and movement that the asanas generate. For example, imagine you are standing on a beach or wide open field. Let yourself see and feel lines of force radiating out from you in all directions, front and back, to the sides, above and below. Now imagine lines of force from all those directions converging on you at the heart chakra or any chakra of your choosing. We might begin by imagining this kind of mind and body centering in tadasana, mountain pose, but any posture would suffice. This is a practice of incorporating our internal and external awareness, what happens inside and outside of us and how the two relate.

            We could say that in its essence yoga is about presence, a statement of our being, of how we exist in the world and what that means on a personal level. Existentially it might stimulate the profound question, “What does it mean to be human?” From this perspective, yoga can mean a practice or discipline that integrates the body and the mind in the here and now. Executing asanas brings us to awareness of what we are thinking and feeling. It necessitates our being able to sense the space around us, what is happening inside us and how they interact. Quickly, insights emerge into how our bodies feel when we participate in the postures. We also soon see how we relate mentally and emotionally to limitations and breakthroughs that challenge and reward us to strengthen and change from a yoga practice. We more clearly see how our minds work with regard to ourselves. Do we become harsh and self-critical? Do we realize patience and self-compassion?

            Of all the ways that yoga has meaning for people there is one that we all encounter and cannot avoid. Yoga is a paradox. This is not strange to those who practice the yin and yang of yoga. Moving through asanas embodies the yin of receiving sensory information from the body and the yang of activating motor responses. In the mind it is the coexisting opposites of focused concentration and open spaciousness of a conscious yoga practice. There is probably nothing that demonstrates this exquisite synchronicity of opposites more than the paradox of motion and stability in dynamic balance. Balance as dynamic means that it is not a fixed state. Its stillness is always in relation to fine adjustments in gravity. Finding that exquisite balance between the motion of a growing posture and the grounded stability of a strong core is a very alive, coordinated and integrated experience. We can find this from the very beginning simply standing in mountain pose and throughout all the standing postures.

           Doing balance asanas on the Tuning Board demands a greater sense of presence and awareness. From the swaying of the body, sensory information travels from the bottom of the feet and other areas of the body to the brain which activates motor responses that maintain equilibrium. The Tuning Board accelerates this deepening into what the mind and the body must do to work with a posture. A subtler level of coordination, integration and responsiveness are evoked. With that comes a deeper sense of understanding of what a felt experience of embodiment is like. As a result there is a quickening under the feet accompanied by greater proprioceptive stimulation and returning motor responsiveness. As the brain and spinal cord become more deeply involved, the sense of presence, of awareness, is heightened.

            Yoga carries an inherent sense of enrichment and accomplishment. There is a joy in learning to move parts of the body and aspects of the mind together as one. Awareness of body sensations and spatial perceptions supports important skills for monitoring internal experiences and personal relationships. Yoga instills confidence in movement of the body while helping calm the mind and emotions. One does not need to use IRT for all of one’s yoga practice all of the time. But, using the Tuning Board can hasten all of the beneficial meanings discussed above.

Read also "Dancing with Gravity: Using the Tuning Board to Promote vertical embodiment Resources and Vertical Integration"…

…an article by Darrell Sanchez, Ph.D. and Vivian Gettliffe published in the 2016 IASI Yearbook of Structural Integration