Week 7 Balance exercises

Exercises to increase balance and decrease motion sickness

All of the motion sickness exercises should make you slightly dizzy or nauseous. While this does not sound fun, remember the saying, no pain no gain. Unless you push your brain past its comfort point, no rehabilitation can be gained. Most people will feel the effects for 5-10 minutes after finishing the exercises. If you continue to feel dizzy or nauseous after an hour, decrease the amount or speed of the exercises for next time. Remember, start slowly and don’t overtax your system. This is a marathon, not a sprint. You can begin by trying out all of the new exercises on the first night or by choosing to only do one or two new ones a night and spreading them out throughout the week. Continue adding on to the previous weeks’ exercises and switching them up every night so that your body doesn’t adapt to one move only!

When attempting these exercises, always make sure to be holding on to something stable or to be near something stable that you could easily grab if you begin to lose balance. If you start feeling overly nauseous or dizzy, take one hand and press down on the top of your head for a few seconds or make a pair of binoculars with your hands and look through them at the ground.

Week 7:  Big Finale!

Motion Sickness:    This week we are going to work on saccades. Saccades are quick movements of the eye. For example, think about cats. If you watch them, you will see that the minute something moves, their eyes go right to it. To practice this, place two targets in front of you about an arm’s length away. For one minute, look back and forth between them as quickly as possible. The second part of this exercise requires you to rotate your head as well.

Balance: This last exercise requires a piece of paper and either a hallway or a fairly open room. Now, try to walk around while looking only at the paper. This takes the visual part of balance out and really works on improving your body awareness or proprioception system. By practicing this exercise, you should have more confidence walking around a supermarket while reading a shopping list and also more confidence walking around without constantly having to watch where you place each foot!

Good Luck!