Why don’t you try this? Go to a big park (preferably where you can track your steps). Blindfold yourself and walk. You will be able to walk and you will also feel you are walking straight. Open the blindfold and track your steps. You’ll be surprised to see that you have walked in a curvy circular kind of pattern. Interesting right? Why did this happen?

We walk in a straight line because our body is balanced. Our body maintains balance by coordination of three things:

• Eyes – that set a reference point and walk in line towards that point.
• Ears – Our inner ear has a very fine balancing mechanism.Eyes and ears together fine tune our balance.
• Muscles, joints and ligaments – send our brain a sensation of balance.

All three together  keep our body perfectly balanced.

When we close our eyes our brain receives incomplete signal on balancing and therefore we are unable to walk straight.

Got your answer! Now think about why you moved in curved manner? That has an interesting explanation for that too. Human body is slightly asymmetrical, which means weight is unevenly distributed on left and right side. Usually, right side is slightly heavier than the left side. When blindfolded, heavier side exerts little extra force to tilt towards one side. When our eyes are open, they do not allow slight unevenness of the body to come in the way of perfect movement.

Now answer this Can we back walk in a straight line?