Episode 41 - Want a Clearer 2026? Start With These 3 Questions About Dizziness & Vertigo

Dizziness often feels sudden, but it’s rarely random.

In this episode of Three Questions, I unpack the three questions I want you to ask before blaming your inner ear or chasing a diagnosis. From ignored injuries to visual strain to how you move through transitions, we look at how the brain gathers information to decide whether you’re safe, steady, or spinning.

In this episode you’ll hear:

• How proprioceptive “blind spots” from old injuries can resurface as vertigo
• Why light, vision changes, and eye fatigue matter more than most people realize
• Practical strategies to help your nervous system feel supported during everyday movements

Whether you work with clients who struggle with dizziness or you’re trying to make sense of your own symptoms, this episode offers a clearer, calmer framework for understanding what your brain is really responding to.

Links & Resources For This Episode:
Episode 3: Your Eyes Do More Than Seeing Things
Episode 26: Vision Check: How Your Eyes Shape Movement, Strength, and Awareness
Find a Neuro Studio Teacher Near You
Connect with me on Instagram
Connect with me on Threads

Transcript

Meghann Koppele Duffy: Welcome to Three Questions where critical thinking is king, and my opinions and research are only here to support your learning and deeper understanding. Hey, I'm your host Meghann, and I'm so honored you clicked on Three Questions today. So we can start 2026 off right with no dizziness and no vertigo.

So today we're gonna explore three questions. To help you have a better understanding of vertigo, dizziness for yourself, or maybe someone you care about. So let's get right into question one. If you have experienced dizziness or vertigo, I'm gonna use those terms interchangeably, even though they probably shouldn't be interchangeable.

But what I wanna kind of think about today is rather than, is it vertigo? Is disorientation. Whether you're dizzy, disoriented, lose your place, feel like you're gonna fall, any of that, that can really apply to today's episode. So I didn't just want to like settle in on vertigo. Okay. Now that we've gotten that outta the way, let's get back to question number one.

So if you've had any disorientation, dizziness, or vertigo, or have a client that has, what has changed in your body. Prior to that episode. So what has changed in your body? And this can be hard because people want a direct cause and effect. And let me tell you in my, I don't know what have I been doing this for 24 years?

Sometimes there's like a cut and dry thing, but oftentimes when it seems like an easy solution, I find we've missed something and it'll come back to bite us in the butt later. So. Let me kinda lead the witness, if you will. So what's changed in your body? Okay, let's sit. So have there been any proprioceptive crap as I call it?

So have you had any injuries within the past year? I'm sure there's been injuries prior. Did you roll an ankle? Did you jam a finger? Is your back hurting? Is your shoulder so sore shoulder sore shoulder sore when you're sleeping? It does right below your scapular, your shoulder blade. Get a little angry when you're on the computer, but then it goes away maybe when you're doing lunches in the gym, your big toe like throbs a little bit.

But you know, when you do other exercises, it's fine. So are you dealing with any injury that you're ignoring? Yeah, I'm pointing at you. And listen, I see it all day long. I have this rule even with my family when they like ask me about something, I'm like, call me when you're ready to do something about it.

It because a lot of times people don't do anything until it's a three alarm fire. I have a rule when you have a level one of pain or discomfort, that's your brain tapping you lightly and being like, yo, I don't like it. I'll let it go, but I'm not happy about it. Is there another way we could do this?

Could you stop doing this? And oftentimes the answer in the short term is like, no, I need to be doing this right now. But as pain gets worse or chronic, uh, the brain is not tapping you gently anymore. It's punching you in the damn face. So you've heard me talk about neuroplasticity pouring. If you haven't, I say this to clients a lot.

Whatever you do the most wins. So you could be at my Pilates studio or you could be at the gym creating a new movement pattern, feeling your best pain is gone. You went to go see a manual therapist or a massage therapist. Ah, pain is gone. You're great. But then we often go back into our other movement patterns because we didn't take the time to integrate them with our other senses or do enough repetitions.

And if we keep doing that other movement pattern more, whatever you do the most wins,

whatever you do, the most wins. So let's go back to, have you had any proprioceptive crap? Here's the deal about injuries that not a lot of people make. I don't wanna say you don't know, but you probably never thought about it. Were you're injured. That was a proprioceptive nightmare before you were injured.

Now it might not. That's maybe that's a little aggressive. Sometimes I get a little aggressive, but there's some proprioceptive issues and it's always fascinating to me how injuries happen. So say you fall and they're like, but I fell and I broke my leg. Okay, where on your leg? Your femur or your tibia or your, uh.

Fibula. I know the bones of the legs. I swear. Oh, none of those. I actually broke my fifth metatarsal. Okay, that's the foot. Now I'm not blaming this person, but often we don't, like, I remember in college I broke my ankle. I don't remember, did I break the fifth metatarsal? Did I get a fibula? Like I don't actually remember because I was 19 playing a season of rugby that I probably shouldn't have been.

'cause like I wasn't all that good at all, but like I kind of ignored it, right? I mean, I let the brake heal first, but didn't do anything about it. So anyway. Why did that specific injury happen? Well, oftentimes, yes, the way we fall force is gonna be there. Don't come at me. I love when people start to talk to physics with me, and they've never taken a class in physics, and I'm like, well, let's chill.

But why did you tear your ACL that way? Why did this person not tear their ACL? Why did this person break their ankle and not sprain? Well, our body has a proprioceptive map and there's joints that our brain is like, okay, to move or okay not to move. And even joints that are okay to move if you move too fast or the force is too big, whew.

The brain can put the brakes. Um, I'm a Yankee fan, an Aaron judge who is so wonderful. He's such a good player. Um, he was having some injuries for his first few seasons and he, um, there was a lot of, it wasn't just Aaron Judge, a lot of these guys were tearing their obliques. Because they are so freaking strong and powerful when they swing, they almost created too much power, or they mobilized in a way their brain kind of protect them.

It would almost put the brakes on their rotation and they were tearing their obliques, right? So again, our brain is gonna pick where our injuries occur. If I took a bat to a person the same, well not the same person, different people at the same place, same force. Each person's going to have a different injury.

Okay. What's kind of cool about the body? So don't blame your body. Don't blame your injuries. Think, Hey, if I've got low back pain, my brain map, maybe sensory or motor, I'm not gonna get that in today. There's some blurriness there. Maybe my brain is confusing that joint with a nearby joint. Let's do an easy one low back.

So I want everybody to touch their low back right now. And now I want you to touch your hip joint. Okay. Now, if you're putting your hand on the top of your hip, I'm doing air quotes, that's actually your pelvis and you're actually, if you think about it, your hands are kind of around the joints of your lower back.

So our hip is deeper. It's that ball in socket. But think about like, you know, I'm a little thicker in the glutes, so if I touch my low back and like if I was in the center of my hip, those joints are pretty close. Now, excuse me. Take your hand down to your SI joint. That's where your sacrum, so slide your hand down and find your sacrum.

And then there's kind of a divot on the right or left approximately, that's your SI joint where your sacrum meets your ileum. That's the pelvis. That guy can get real cranky so people be like, oh, I hurt my low back. But then they grab lower and I'm like, that's not your lower back. It's your SI joint. Now that SI joint is very close to the low back and very close to the hip.

Now, everybody touch your pubic synthesis. Don't worry if you don't know where it is. I'll tell you it's your pubic bone and there's this little cartilage and space between, so you've got a bone on each side, okay? It's your pubic bone. You can touch it. Again, that's a joint that's not a very mobile joint, thank God, but the pubic synthesis, your SI joint, your hip joint and your lower back are all really close. So the next time you try to do one of your hip exercises, touch your lower back, touch your SI joint and or touch your pubic synthesis. You might be surprised, you might be like, holy shit, when I move my hip, that thing under my hand is moving and you don't have to know exactly where it is.

I always tell people, put your hand exactly where it hurts. And now move your arm. Now move your leg. Turn your head. Is something moving under your fingers? And they'll be like, yeah, why is my SI joint moving when I'm turning my head? Okay, there is a specific reason why, but that's not for this episode. So again, do you have brain mapping issues?

The answer is yes, yes and yes, but they might not be causing problems. Now, why this is important? Is our proprioception is one of the three neurological systems that determine balance. Those three systems are our visual systems, so our eyes taking in and processing information and giving us a picture.

Our vestibular, which is our inner ear, it's these three semi circular canals with little hairs filled with fluid. So when we move our head around our brain, the sensory receptors are telling our brain which way the fluid is moving. So that's why sometimes you might get dizziness when you have, um, like an ear infection or allergies that inflame your inner ear that can affect the vestibular system giving your brain information.

Okay. So what I wanna point out is with the dizziness and vertigo specifically, they always. Yell at the vestibular system and they're like, oh, you have a, you have PPV or you have benign, um, so benign proximal vertigo. I never BPPV benign proximal vertigo. So do you know what benign means? Like no known calls.

Like basically they don't know and they're like, oh, we're re lodging the crystal in your ear, first of all. Yes, and. Okay. What that's doing, it's kind of resetting your, your visual, excuse me, your vestibular system with your proprioception and our eyes actually do what's called nystagmus. So it's almost like a hard reset of the systems.

And because the person is holding your head proprioceptively, your brain knows where they're mo, where they are moving your head to match up that proprioceptive information with the fluid in the ear. Okay. Fun fact, you only need two out of those three neurological systems to work together to be balanced.

So this is why blind people don't fall, right? They're not getting in visual information, but they're also not getting bad visual information unless you are losing your vision. So they rely on their vestibular and proprioception. That's almost why someone who's blind can sense someone moving towards them.

Proprioceptively, they might sense the air or the, um, just the force and energy you are coming towards them. They know where they are in space a lot of times based off their proprioception and their, um, head position vestibular. Okay, so going back to question number one, what changes? Did you have an ear infection?

Do you have proprioceptive crap like injuries? Do you have new habits? Are you doing new things habitually that are affecting your proprioception? Are you sitting at a computer all day hunched over with your lumbar spine inflection your cervical inex extension? So head arch to see the screen lower back kind of tucked.

Um, that is a proprioceptive. And vestibular clusterfuck, because your head thinks it's upright because it's seeing the screen straight ahead. But keep your head, everybody slouch in their low back and then lift your head up so you can see something. Now, I want everybody to touch their sternum and chin, like basically measure them out with your fingers.

Now do not change the distance between your sternum and your head and kind of extend your lower back so you're sitting up tall. Okay, so if you're watching me on YouTube, you can clearly see my head is back. It is tilted back. So vestibular system is giving, my brain head is back. However, proprioceptive and visually, my brain is like, now this head position is straight away.

I'm gonna let that just land. That was apparently, that was like a landing noise. So proprioceptive crap like injuries, inner ear infections, allergies that are affect as affecting your vestibular system, not even crystal based, new habits that are affecting your proprioception and creating what we call a sensory and mismatch.

Okay, and last but not least, where the hell are you in your age? Are you going through puberty? Okay, everybody take themselves back to puberty. Ew. First of all, what's going on with kids? I've said this before, middle school, not cute. I don't know what was going on with me in middle school. Right? It's like I look at my niece who's in eighth grade and she's like, gorgeous.

She's got this beautiful hair. She knows how to put makeup on, right? She dresses so well. I'm like, where is this awkward stage? It's not, frankly, it's not fair is what what I'm getting at. Let me get back to the topic. Are you going through puberty? Think about how much your body changed. Maybe you got breasts, maybe you developed kind of muscularly.

Maybe you had a huge growth spurt. Maybe your feet got really big, maybe your hands changed, maybe your nose changed. Maybe a lot of things changed with our body when you're going through puberty. Okay, so I see it with a lot of boys. I've seen seizures get worse. I have seen. Um, if they have like dysautonomia get worse, girls and boys.

Um, I see with hypermobile teens, a lot of problems there I've seen with autistic, um, or, uh, teens on the spectrum. And I've actually seen this with, um, people with down syndrome, our tone based off those, what would it be called? Not section like our, like where we are in our age group. I can't think of the word.

It's slipping my mind. Um, it's going to be affected. So what about pre and postnatal? Okay. We talk about people who are having babies. So pre and postnatal, your body is going to change significantly, especially when you're trying to get pregnant or at the time you are supposed to be getting. And postnatal proprioceptively.

There are huge shifts that nobody's talking about. If you work with pre and postnatal, come talk to me. Come to the neuro side. There are so many neurological shifts happening pre and postnatal that aren't being accounted for, and I could argue that a lot of the movement trainings are actually creating more proprioceptive confusion.

So again, pre and postnatal, huge shifts. And last but not least. And I didn't mention in puberty increased testosterone, estrogen levels changing, and let's talk about menopause, or when people have a decrease in testosterone. Think about the way your skin changes your muscles. Skin does not get tighter as we age, unfortunately.

So all these things I just said are going to affect your proprioception. If your skin is looser than it used to be. Significantly, that is affecting your proprioception. If your muscles are not as, um, I don't wanna say tight, aren't responding the same way again, there could be a skin problem, our largest sensory organ, right?

That might be diminishing the sensory input that we're getting from weights or whatever we're doing. Affecting that. Our brain's like, we don't have to recruit that many muscles. Okay? Think of if you've just finished a chemo treatment or you're on a medication, that the biggest side effect is neuropathy.

It affects the nerves. My God, my dad, while he was going through chemo, was supposed to put his hands and feet on ice packs to help preserve the nerves so he didn't get neuropathy. But in his defense, it's very uncomfortable and he's dealing with some neuropathy issues and I'm like, should have kept your fate on those ice packs.

And he was like. He would never tell me to shut up, but he did give me a look. So think of all these things. So when you have vertigo or dizziness, don't just go straight to the doctor. I want you to think about all these things because they are huge factors and they are huge factors. Lemme tell you, I deal with a lot of people who have gone to everybody, vestibular specialists, neurologists about their dizziness, vertigo, and stuff like that, and doing.

Neuro studio proprioceptive work, they're better. I had a girl who was not even able to drive. I gave her an aboso insole, which is proprioceptive. Insole, had her put it on her sacrum, down her pants while she was driving. Um, and specific exercises so her brain knew specifically where she was in space when she was driving.

Okay. Why her sacrum? That is a very, an area, very dense. Um, so our, the back of our neck. It's while you ever see me with a towel on my neck, kind of rubbing it, rubbing the back of your neck, rubbing your sacrum, okay, around the SI joints and the bottom of your feet. So those are high areas of Proprioceptors giving our brain sensory information.

Now, if our brain is not getting sensory information, if you can't feel those areas, like if you have no sensation at your feet, insoles, nothing is going to help that per se, at the bottom of the feet. But we don't stop. A lot of my clients who have no sensation at the bottom of the feet, we work out with shoes on and use sensory input from the top of the feet, which improves their proprioception of the feet so much that they're moving better and they actually get improved sensation everywhere because they're actually creating new neurogenesis, new nerve conduct, new nerve connections.

You can build nerves, builds um, blood flow nerve supply. Throughout our lifetime. It is possible, but you've gotta be able to do those things and make sure the brain's getting information. Okay, so question one was a big one. It had kind of three parts. What changed in your body prior to the dizziness? What was the proprioceptive stuff?

Was there any injuries? Are you going through a specific phase or change in life? Puberty, pre and postnatal. Starting menopause. Finishing menopause. Becoming an an, an older. Age where your testosterone drops significantly, or a phase in your life where testosterone increases significantly. Do you have any new habits?

Are you having allergies that are affecting your vestibular system? All these things matter Question two, how are your eyes functioning? You know, I was gonna go there with the eyes. Come on. How are your eyes functioning? I'm not talking about just seeing friends. Don't talk to me about only a 2020 vision. Like were you wearing glasses? Yeah. I'm like, well, you don't have 2020 vision.

Eyes are not just for seeing. I mean they are, but there's a lot of other things going on. Are you light sensitive? Okay, this happens. It's worse as we age now, everybody always blames aging, but aging to me is not a death cent. I mean, something we all have to do. We all will die. We have, what do we all have to do?

Pay taxes and die. But getting older doesn't mean that things just have to fall to shit. I mean, most people's eyes get worse because they overuse them and strain them through a lifetime. Like how many of you are doing beautiful eye mobilization exercises and giving your eyes a break? Right? Think about it.

When would you go to the gym and bust your ass seven days a week? The same workout? No. You need recovery. Hello, eyes and I talk about it. I did a visual episode. I can't remember which episode it was. Joe, help me out. What was the episode where I talked about ways to give yourself visual rest that wasn't just sleeping?

Okay, so light sensitivity. So a lot of people get dizzy or have vertigo when they're changing positions or getting up or rolling outta bed. Is it dark in the room? Is it light in the room? Does your vertigo kick up first thing in the morning when you're opening your eyes and have an adjusted to the brightness?

Does it happen when it's dark in the room? Does it happen when it's bright in the room? Do you ever roll over in a bright room and get dizzy? You could. What if you are light sensitive? Okay, so light sensitivity matters. What if you're having difficult reading like, ah, I can't see. Oh my God. Like the cutest thing, Brian, this year for football had to get readers.

So when he's, he's the offensive coordinator for his team, so he's got call the play, he's gotta look at the field, but then he's gotta look at his play sheet, A call sheet, and he was saying he was having trouble. So he got these readers and oh my God, he got the readers. I was like, seriously, the ones that hang and they like magnetize, so they hang on his neck and he just clicks them together on his face.

And I'm just like, are you 85? Um, no offense to 85 year olds. And he was like, what? What? I'm like, oh my God. And then he like wears them low on his nose and looks up. It's like so stinking cute. But anyway, do you need readers? How are your eyes adjusting from near to far? If your eyes are having trouble adjusting near to far, you've gotta do pencil, pushups or put your thumb out there.

Work on your convergence and divergence. Don't just do the in work, the out. Also, every day, go out your back door, front door, look at something, let like an arms distance away, and then look as far away as you can, wait till it comes in focus. Then a drill I do in your backyard, whatever you're looking at, walk towards it until it becomes in focus so you can see it clearly.

Then back away again. Get closer, back away, get closer, and stay focused on it. Then jump to the thing closer. Back to the thing far. Challenge your eye's. Ability to see something close and see something far. Okay. Also, do you get ocular migraines? Like moi... I got really, really, really, really, really bad vertigo in my mid thirties.

Like bad, had trouble kind of walking in a straight line could not drive at all. Um, and it, the cause was actually ocular migraines. And guess what? The solution was not doing visual exercises or vestibular training. It was remapping my proprioception. Going back to question one. Now, I have always had a shitty vestibular system since I was a kid.

I used to get very boat sick. My family was never allowed able to do boat trips. We did whale watching once and I puked the entire time, and everybody's like, oh, that poor green girl. I was like the witch from Wicked. Um, it was in, well, it's up there, no Cape Cod. And it's funny, I think that's where my love affair with Oreos came into play because on the boat I could not keep any food down.

I was vomiting nonstop, and a woman gave me Oreos and it was the only thing I could hold down. So that's where my love affair of Oreos started. Okay. So I really rely on my visual system. I'm always looking around. Even when I'm working out, I often need a visual representation. I have to check myself in the mirror.

I've gotta lift my head and look. I need visual assurance of where I am at all times. Okay? This is why when I've had a few drinks and you know, the alcohol affects the vestibular system, but maybe my eyes aren't as crisp, I might be a close talker, I might bump into you. I always drop my drink, um, because I can't rely on my systems as well.

So when I started getting ocular migraines, it took my strongest system away, my visual system. Okay. And my body was like, no clue where you're at, girl. And when I had my first bat of vertigo, I was actually in a Pilates class lying on my side. And when I sat up. My visual, vestibular and proprioception all gave my body a different signal.

Okay? My eyes were not able to adjust. My eyes were still stuck where I was before. And when my body moved, my eyes were still stuck and the room started spinning to the point where I sat down on the ground 'cause I freaked out. Okay, so if you've had a vertigo episode, you know what I mean? But then after that, once that bout kind of cleared up, it just felt like I was in a video game, okay?

At the time, this, I didn't lean into these proprioceptive issues as much until it really happened to me. I was doing everything I learned in school, the textbook stuff, visual vestibular, you know, tuning into proprioception, but I was making a lot of assumptions. But by remapping my hips, remapping my shoulders, making sure my shoulders, my spine could stabilize when I move my arms, my shoulder could stabilize when I was moving my spine and vice versa.

Huge, huge difference. Okay. I also am not basing this just off my experience. I don't do that shit. I base it off research literature and the clinical experience that I've had in my studio, right. So thinking about your eyes, what is your eyes deal? What do they like doing? What don't they like doing? And this is gonna lead us into question three, which is gonna wrap a bow around this shit.

How are you supporting your brain and body during transitions? And are you giving your brain enough information? So think about when we get one of those vertigo or dizziness or disorientation spells. It's when we turn, we roll over, we stand up too fast, we move, it's all transitions. So are you supporting yourself through those transitions?

And you might be like, how the hell do I support myself? Alright. Well, what are the three systems that determine balance and we want to match up and not disagree with each other in a big way, our visual, vestibular, and proprioception. So let's start with, to me the easiest. So right now, if you're driving, don't do this.

But what I want you to do is before you move your head, I want you to look, let's move our, we're gonna move our head to the right. So before we move our head, maybe just touch your chin so your head doesn't move, and just look your eyes to the right. Let your eyes settle in on a target, and then turn your head to what you're looking at.

Take your eyes back to the left target. Let your B brain take in that information and turn your head towards that visual target. So what we did, we jumped our eyes. So we did a saka, then we turned our head towards the target. Saka again to the left, turned our head. Okay. What's cool is we did a aka, but then we get a vestibular ocular reflex.

So the beauty of this one, we did a akat, so we did an eye exercise. We held our head, so our brain knows that we're not moving. Just our eyes moved. Head did not move. We know it didn't move because our vestibular system didn't get any information, nor did proprioception. We jumped our eyes. Now our eyes are gonna stay fixed on that target, and we're gonna turn our head so that our targets in the center of our visual field.

That's what's called a vestibular ocular reflex. Let me explain. Our eyes are now on that target, so you can keep your hands on your chin or your head vestibular. When we turn our head, our brain is getting information from our inner ear that we turned our head. And if you're touching your head. Or you've got a towel around your neck, you get double whammy, you get proprioceptive information.

So our eyes are staying fixed. And our visual, excuse me, our vestibular and proprioception just turned sensory match. Jump our eyes. Turn our head. Okay, now, when I had really bad vertigo, when I was in it. I didn't like doing that drill. I liked using what's called VOR cancellation. That's basically turning the head and the eyes together.

But hold on, don't do it yet. Here's the problem. Often when people have bad vertigo, their VOR cancellation is messed up, so I'll always assess people when they turn their head, either their eyes go way too fast and can't settle on a target, or their eyes are like super damn delayed. It's like, hello. And often when we just turn.

So say I'm, don't say I tell you to turn to the right. Well, what's the destination? When we turn, we don't know the destination. So what I always tell people to do is consciously turn your whole body to the right without turning your head. So I like to touch my sternum in my head, so I'm just gonna turn my whole body to the right.

I see my, my, uh, model of a spine over there, so I've got a destination for my eyes. Now I'm gonna come back to center. Once you know the destination, now I want you to turn your head and eyes to the destination together. Go stay there now. What were you looking at before I was looking at my computer. Turn your head and eyes to the original.

Let it settle. If that makes you dizzy, touch your lower back so your brain knows that your body isn't moving in space, you're not walking, you're not falling. So touch your lower back. And I like to, I'm spreading my fingers like I'm playing the piano, touching a few vertebrae, so touch that. Remember your destination.

Turn your head and eyes to it. Oh, it felt so much better. Head and eyes back. I didn't get dizzy before, but it just felt less alarming when I was touching my lower back. You can also touch your belly. Touch your belly. Don't pull it in, just hold it. Head an eyes to your target. Head an eyes back. I like touching the lower back better.

What about you guys? Okay, so setting our eyes first. Say you're going to stand up. You can do two options. I don't like people looking up and then moving towards it. The reason being, when people look up, they often move their head. So these are the two options I like. Don't drop your head, just look down.

Gaze down, move towards your target and stand above it. Then once you're standing, keep your hands on your body and then just lift your gaze. I'll say it again. I'm sitting. My feet are on the floor. I'm not doing it. You're gonna just keep your head where it is. Gaze down, like not aggressively, just gaze down.

So I'm kind of looking on my floor. I'm gonna move towards it. Leaning forward and just standing above it. Keep looking at the target. Then once you feel settled. Your feet are grounded. Sometimes even tell people to touch their body, top of their shoulder, touch your pubic bone, just touch your body at joints and then just lift your gaze.

The other one, a lot of my MS clients like this because they have, sometimes they don't have great sensation in their feet, so we do VOR cancellation. I do head and eyes up, move towards your target. Okay. Now what I find is there can't be a big pause, so I don't know. You remember the movie Little Mermaid Don't Ask.

She like comes out of the rock and flips her hair. So I tell them, kind of head an eyes up, move towards it and I give them a cue. Basically, we don't wanna change the distance between your chin and your crotch. So as soon as head and eyes go up, crotch follows it. Okay, that's gonna help them get lift from their hips.

So I'm not using a foot base cue. They don't have good sensation in their feet, and when they do, their brain has trouble processing it. So you can pick a target, move towards it and stand above it. Or you can do head and eyes up and move towards it. You can really do anything you want. The key is setting your eyes and then moving your body towards it, above it to the left of it, to the right of it, whatever you're doing.

Option two, put your hand on your head. Okay, so don't change the distance between your elbow and your visual target. So let me explain. So when we turn to the right, can everybody see their elbow and their peripheral vision when their hands on their head? As you turn to the right, you're gonna start looking at different things, okay?

But I want you to make sure that that elbow doesn't get closer to your nose.

So as I'm turning, I'm not doing this, see, elbow got closer to my nose. I'm using my peripheral vision, so I move my body with my head. That's really using proprioception and vestibular system to guide us, and the eyes are just gonna follow along. So first option, we set the eyes. Option two, let the eyes do whatever the heck they wanna do, and just use vestibular and proprioception.

Touch your head, touch your pelvis, touch places on your body so your brain knows where the hell you are in space. Okay, and the last tip I'm going to give you with your transitions is ground yourself. Where are you before you move? When you're in bed, feel your body on the bed. Where do you feel the most pressure?

Create more pressure there. Say you are standing or your feet are on the ground. Notice how you're connecting to the earth. Try to push down in your feet and maintain that pressure. As you stand up, try to increase the pressure. Try to not increase the pressure, so you're using pressure as an indicator of movement.

This is really helpful. So say you have dysautonomia pots, hypermobility. A lot of people, they get super dizzy when they stand up, or again, when you have pots, your heart, your blood pressure drops significantly. Okay. Our, it's almost like our brain feels where we are when we're sitting, and then between sitting and standing is like, where the hell did they go?

It's almost like you disappear. And then when you're standing, your knees are locked out, your brain goes, whoa, how the hell did we get there? Alarms? And then it's going to affect our autonomic nervous system. Okay? So if you are one of those people, you gotta set your eyes first, set your eyes, and if you're not sure where to set your eyes or if that's problematic, there's probably some visual stuff and that needs to be addressed.

But if you have EDS or any sort of hypermobility, your visual system, you need to make that a priority. You need to use your visual system, your peripheral vision, and fill sensory gaps with your visual system to improve your proprioception. We don't ignore proprioception. Okay? That is key. Once you stand up, if you feel a little dizzy, hold yourself.

Ground yourself. Push into something. Push into the wall. And say, I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm standing here. I'm not falling, and I'm not telling you to say I'm okay. I'm okay to like trick your brain. No, it's auditory feedback. It will only work if your brain actually feels that you are safe. Okay? So don't just say it if you don't feel safe.

When I stand up, I might feel disoriented. I'm gonna push myself into the wall or push down in my left foot as much as I can. I'm gonna touch my shoulder and say, find a visual target and say we're okay. We are here in space. We move through space. I know that was alarming, but we are okay. You are okay.

Your brain doesn't think so. We've gotta tell it. So to finish up today's episode, if you have any dizziness or vertigo, I want you to ask these three questions. What has changed in your body, proprioceptively? What phase of life are you in? It needs to be addressed. What are your eyes doing? What do they like?

What don't they like? Is light a factor? Am I having trouble seeing? Am I getting migraines? And number three, how are you supporting yourself with your transitions? And based off question one or two, I'm going to suggest you use proprioception or the visual system to fill the most sensory gaps before you transition.

Talk yourself through what you're doing. Specifically, if you roll over and you get dizzy, well maybe set your eyes first. Let the body adjust. Don't just roll over and pray for the best. You will get dizzy, you will, you will have a vertigo bout, and that will set you back, and I don't want that to happen to you.

So I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I hopefully are feeling less dizzy, more clear, and ready to start this year. And again, thank you guys all for listening to the first 40 episodes, and if you haven't, go back and listen to them. I'm still working on this, trying to get better as a podcaster. Um, so there's always good information.

Sometimes I ramble, sometimes I lose my point, but I am always a hundred percent Meghann. So enjoy and I'll see you next time.