BEWARE OF HEAD MOVEMENT
Restrain it while walking. Use your eyes instead.

If you are concerned about falling, one of the best things you can do to prevent them is to learn to control when and how to move your head. In particular, do not move your head while walking. Turning for instance because someone greets you will result in disaster too much of the time unless you stop moving before turning.
When we are younger, we get accustomed to moving our head around while gazing all over the place and not losing our balance. When we are older, head movement often makes us disoriented. We are definitely more susceptible to dizziness. The causes differ: inner ear issues, postural hypotension, poor sight, bad habits. It therefore is very helpful to become more deliberate in how we move our head and instead use our eyes to reduce our fall associated risk.

  • Turning the head makes many people dizzy. A common fall scenario occurs when someone calls your name, you turn to look to see who, you get dizzy and you fall.
  • Tilting your head up to look at the sky or the top shelf in your closet can make you lose your bearings so badly that you fall. I heard of 2 closet falls in one week among my students once. And falling over backwards has happened to more than one person after they looked up at the sky.
  • Tilting your head down while walking is dangerous: Looking down at the floor in front of you is awful for your balance.
  • Looking down at the floor when walking is very common: I have noticed this causing dramatic unsteadiness in my mother in law when she was living with us. When she would tilt her head downward to see where to walk, her body became so unstable that she would have fallen if no one was supporting her. If on the other hand she held her head in an upright position her weight would be steady and strong. It made a huge difference.
  • The bottom line: Keep your head in an upright position as much as possible. 

Wise Rule: If you need to move your head,
always hold onto something first.

Substitute head movement by instead using your eyes to improve your balance and safety, especially walking without tripping.

Eye muscles can be broadly separated into 1) those that help to focus sight and 2) those that roll the eyeball in the eye socket. We can use each attribute to help us:
  • When you find yourself disoriented, focus your eyes in the direction you are facing and often the disorientation will disappear. Focus on a small, stationary object. When utilizing the muscles that focus, keep your eyes and head stationary. The muscles that are working “zoom” in to see as clearly and in as much detail as possible.
  • Move your eyes instead of moving your head. Face straight ahead. Do not move your head. Instead, roll your eyes so that you can see in a downward direction. Then continue back to the starting position by shifting your eyes back to where you see straight ahead. So if you want to see what is near your feet as you walk, keep your head upright and instead try seeing by shifting your eyes downward. 
  • Where to look when you walk becomes suddenly easy if you take head motion out of it. Practice moving just your eyes: from straight ahead to in front of you on the floor and back again. It takes less than a second to shift from one to the other. Then predominantly look straight ahead and shift down occasionally as needed for a short moment, then back to straight ahead.

Train yourself to move your head and body at different times instead of together. Use your head (and eyes) to anchor yourself as you move your body. Then keep your body motionless as you then shift your head.

I have noticed a curious thing about some people who come to me complaining about feeling dizzy. Often as I speak with them I observe that they express themselves by moving their head a lot as they talk. Learning to control head motion will help reduce the dizziness directly.

The Building Better Balance DVDs include much instruction on how to use your eyes to steady yourself. It is emphasized in all 4 of DVDs of the series. A special feature on the Balance Basics DVD includes specific details on how to use your eyes to keep yourself from having a fall.

Published April 5, 2021.