'Look for opportunities to practice standing on one leg' — Scott McCredie

McCredie's new book, "Balance: In Search of the Lost Sense," is a meditation on the wonder of human equilibrium.

I was struck by the penultimate paragraph of Daniel B. Smith's August 19, 2007 New York Times Book Review discussion of the book; that paragraph follows.

From the review:

Tales of "extreme equilibrium" ("Balance" also includes unicyclists, Chinese acrobats, and an 84-year-old competitive table tennis player) provide McCredie with something of a practical moral. At the start, he proclaims his concern over "an epidemic of falls" that is "mowing down the elderly like scythes." This sounds like tabloid hyperbole until you read the statistics. By 2040, at the current rates cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 25 million people will fall in the United States each year, "resulting in eight million injuries and 25,000 deaths." To counteract this trend, McCredie suggests balance training, in the form of anything from tai chi to ballroom dancing. He even includes an appendix of balance exercises. For example: "Look for opportunities to practice standing on one leg.... Do it while you’re waiting for the bus, cooking, brushing your teeth, watching TV or any time you find yourself standing around."

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Having had several neighbors die after falls over the past few years, this advice resonates.

Where's my slackline?