STEADY ON

Can you correct a lifetime of imbalance with a quick stroll on a slackline? Sally Singer tries to straighten it out.

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AROUND THE BEND Having good balance is increasingly seen as a harbinger of good health as we grow older. Pablo Picasso, Acrobat, 1930.

On a rainy Saturday last summer, I can be found paddling out, popping up, and generally hanging ten—goofily, shakily, semi-triumphantly—in a skylit East Village walk-up. It is as awkward a fitness challenge as any I could imagine—“Everything just feels unnatural when you start surfing,” says the beneficent Aaron Thouvenin, cofounder of Surfset NYC—and one that involves a mad combination of focused gaze, core strength, explosive leg work, and yogic breath work. The persistent wobble is wildly and weirdly terrifying. But what is there to be frightened of when one is straddling a piece of wood strapped by bungee cords to three Bosu balls? The ocean is miles away.

What scares me is falling. I will probably never wallow in open water for hours, watching for the moment when I can glide miraculously from my belly to something like a push-up to a stable foothold on the slender fiberglass of a surfboard. But what I desire is to be as confident standing on my left foot as my right, to no longer fear the balancing postures in a yoga class, to be able to ride the subway without clinging to a pole.