I get asked about vertigo exercises and often people, they’re feeling stuck, they’re feeling helpless, they’re feeling hopeless, they’re feeling like nothing works. And they’re like, “Come on, just give me a prescription, give me an exercise, I’ll do it every day.” The truth is, vertigo can occur for so many reasons. And there’s so much variability in where the dizziness or vertigo is coming from that it’s unlikely that some kind of generic exercise or generic video is going to provide long-term results.
My questions for you, so that you can design your own home exercises, would be: Do you have any specific movements in life that are difficult for you to perform? Perhaps a specific bodily position that you avoid? Do you have any known triggers that make you anxious or put you into this space of not trusting your body? I want you to write those down and identify those body positions or those behavioral choices or those kinds of movements, because what we want to do is we want you to return back to completely normal and have normal balance, steady, centered neural pathways for all of your balance maps.
Now you might think, “Joey, what does that mean?” Well, vertigo and dizziness are the result of neural messages being sent between your eyes, ears, body and brain. There’s something not quite right about them. The body’s healthy, the messages are being sent, but for whatever reason, whether there’s physical damage or not doesn’t actually matter, vertigo is always a result of these error messages, these neural messages, these neural maps that don’t feel quite right, they feel dizzy, they feel vertiginous. So we want to rebuild steady ones. And in order to do that, we have to have a neuroplasticity practice, which is, it’s not the same as building a muscle, but it’s similar to the analogy of wanting to build a muscle. So having a gym practice to do repeated exercises and build that strength.
So neuroplasticity maps are physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual, which is why it’s not like a gym exercise and why it’s not generic. We’ve got to look at what our thoughts are, our worries, our anxieties, our emotions, our beliefs in each of those positions. So it might be that you’re terrified to drive or that you’re terrified to bend over and do up your shoes or you’re terrified to roll over in bed, or it could be that you’re terrified to sit down and close your eyes and meditate because you totally freak out when you’re still in your body. So that’s a really good clue to developing your own vertigo home exercise is look at things you don’t want to do and things you’re avoiding because they’re probably where your medicine lies and where your best approach to healing is move into the discomfort and awkwardness bring a lot of self-compassion, self-love, self-kindness and really befriend yourself in those difficult and challenging situations because that’s going to be bringing in that mental, emotional, spiritual support that is required so the body can relax and build new neural pathways.
I talk a lot about the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual overlay and interaction within my book, Rock Steady, which really teaches people how to heal chronic vertigo and chronic dizziness. I explain why I cannot give you a video with generic exercises and it’s not that simple. I do recommend straight up in chapter one home exercises and home exercise ideas. And believe it or not, it starts with a body scan, sitting still in your body and noticing the sensations that you notice. So if you want to learn more about the body scan, please visit my website, seekingbalance.com.au, you’ll find information about my book. There’s also a Rock Steady online program and there’s a Free Starter Kit with a free body scan audio that you can try straightaway and download. So yes, just wishing you deep and profound healing, and I hope you find the perfect exercises to teach your brain how to rewire, reset and establish a completely steady, centered, peaceful baseline again so that you can totally override and overcome your vertigo.
