Reduce your fear of falling; practise empowering natural movements daily
My long-term client, Marie recently sent me the photo for this blog. I love her expression! You’d never think she’d just slipped and fallen down. She said she was relieved she hadn’t come off worse, but you can see from her expression she clearly had the confidence in her body that she was capable of falling well and even seeing the funny side afterwards! Her comment was, ‘think I still have to practise NOT falling down!’.
The fear factor
Fear can be a powerful emotion, which helps keep us safe, but conversely, can stop us from doing things in life. Over the decades we build up emotional and physical layers, like the skins of an onion, from our experiences, both good and bad. These layers can change the way we see life and affect the way we move. They ‘shape’ us!
Trying something new and challenging can bring up fears related to previous experiences that cause our body to go into protection mode. Our main instinct, after all, is to survive. Knowing whether this ‘protection mode’ is helping us or hindering us, is key.
When I was in pain and feared many movements, one of the main things that scared me was falling and damaging myself more. I was in my early 40s and previously very active, so feeling fear of basic movements I had taken for granted, something I knew elderly people often felt, made me feel like I’d skipped forward decades and that scared me more!
Feel the fear and do it anyway!
This is the title of an incredible book by Susan Jeffers and has helped many people to move forward.
One of the ways to work with our fear of falling, is to set ourselves up for success. Improving your confidence in your general movement ability leads to being more relaxed in our movements and giving us great confidence to try new things. Instead of finding ourselves frozen in unexpectedly difficult situations, like suddenly slidy or icy surfaces, stepping on to a moving platform (e.g. a boat), having to climb over or go under something that’s fallen across our path or harder challenges, we feel capable and even confident.
Knowing you have techniques from practising relevant movement patterns and feeling confident that you could cope, if indeed you did fall, allows you to feel the fear and do it anyway.
Natural movements daily can help prepare your body and mind
Here are some natural movement patterns to think about adding into your day, as well as some Reclaim Movement resources to help get you started. Consistency is key, so integrating these healthy natural movements into your day so they become habits will mean improved strength, mobility and increased confidence in your general movement ability. We all want that, don’t we?!
Make the distance to the ground seem less
If we never get down to the ground, we can start to only feel ‘safe’ when we’re completely upright. The ‘distance’ to fall to the ground becomes more daunting. By getting down to the ground daily we learn to safely ‘concertina’ the body using a variety of techniques, so we can get our body nearer to the ground more efficiently to reduce the impact.
We get stronger and mobile by practising getting down and particularly by slowing down your descent. When we resist the pull of gravity as we lower our whole bodyweight with control, we’re doing ‘eccentric muscle training’ i.e. where we use the muscles as ‘brakes’ to help control our fall. This way of training our muscles is often overlooked or rushed through and yet, it’s key for a ‘safer’ landing.
Become great at getting off the ground
You know you’re getting old when you fall down and wonder what else you can do while you’re down there!’
As you’ll see in the next paragraph that’s actually something I would advocate too, learning to spend time on the ground, but we can avoid ground time as a fear of not being able to get up again can develop. Practising ‘get ups’ also gives you the confidence in your strength that you’ll be able to get up yourself just by using your arms and legs. I see improvements in this area with my clients and I know it means they are getting stronger, and more importantly it makes them feel great.
Make the ground your friend for life
Spending time at ground level also makes the experience of being there more familiar and therefore less intimidating. This is often something that in our modern world with chairs and sofas to sit on, raised beds and so on, we rarely need to do. But these also come at a cost; not factoring ground time into our daily life, reduces our ability to get up and down and feel comfortable being at ground level.
For ideas on how to get started, sign up here for my FREE E-book, ‘Making the ground your friend for life’
Get used to being nearer the ground
When we have to pick things up from the ground, or do tasks that require us to be nearer the ground, we often do so by curving the spine to lower hands on outstretched arms. This is not a bad thing to do in itself and is great for spine mobility, but if we do it every time, we’re not getting the movement in the lower half of the body, particularly the hips. Instead, we need to about ‘mixing up our movements’.
For some suggestions on how to pick things up from the ground by using a variety of patterns to get low - see this post on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CZAE26SFxWr/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
When you notice you’re doing something that avoids you getting low down - like using the hand-held hoover, when you could use the dustpan and brush or asking someone else to get that thing that you dropped, remember that you’re missing an opportunity for beneficial movement.
Barefoot time
Allowing feet (incredibly complex structures) to move the way they were designed by being barefoot is, in itself, a great way to improve mobility in all the structures of the feet as well as strengthening both the feet and ankles. It also stimulates the nerve endings on the base of the feet to improve their connection with the brain, a key pathway that informs the rest of the body how it needs to react to what’s happening underfoot. When we always wear shoes this connection can become reduced as the signals are being dampened by rigid and thick soles.
To ensure we can balance well, we need the brain to respond to have lots of information to react and respond accordingly.
Barefoot or minimal shoes work with your body. You can read more about barefoot shoes in another blog: ‘What’s all this barefoot shoe business about?’
Check in your balancing skills daily
This is the main skill that most people are aware we need to avoid falling and the beauty of it, is that there are opportunities to add in balance practise all day long. Always standing to put clothes and shoes on and aiming to add on extra seconds you keep the free leg in the air each time. Notice which leg you go to first instinctively and instead start on the other (and likely less capable side - we always tend to go automatically to our easier side). Add in single leg balance breaks whilst waiting in queues or for the kettle or a pan of water to boil.
If you find it hard, work on technique starting with balancing on the spot movements such as in this Reclaim Movement YouTube video: ‘7 BALANCE tips and exercises to practice every day to prevent falling as you age’
Walking off the beaten track
We tend to fall when we’re already moving and most often when we’re walking. Learning to walk well can help us avoid falling. I will talk more about walking technique in next month’s blog, in anticipation of National Walking month in the UK in May, so watch this space for more.
There are lots of movements to help improve walking technique, but a great way to improve our adaptability when we’re walking is to ‘mix up’ (you can see a common theme here!) the terrain you walk on. Adding in undulating paths, going ‘off-road’ and onto more varied surfaces will all help you to build single leg strength (as walking is predominantly an ‘active’ single leg balancing exercise), hip mobility & strength to allow the leg to clear obstacles in our path. Mosts importantly, you’ll also help reduce your fear of falling by challenging yourself with controlled increases in height and complexity.
Rocking around
Moving on the ground (as we did when we were children) is a great way to get your body used to the feeling of the ground and used to moving into positions you might suddenly find yourself in if you fell. Rocking is the perfect example - it increases the mobility of your spine, whilst strengthening your core and as you practise with your head tucked in, your body is used to doing so to protect it if you fall. It’s also a liberating feeling to rock and roll on the ground.
Jumping isn’t just for kids
This might seem an unusual suggestion, but jumping doesn’t have to be down from a great height, you can start on the spot, then moving on the flat from one point to another & when your confidence increases, starting to jump down from low surfaces. Being used to taking impact through the feet and learning good technique to absorb the force can be the difference between a hard landing that is more likely to cause injury and a softer, bouncy landing using those ‘concertina’ skills you’ve been practising getting down and up.
Move more, feel less fearful…and you’ll enjoying moving, for life!
All these natural movement skills are possible to practise in daily life, without fancy equipment and will not only benefit your confidence to avoid falls, but also increase your general mobility, strength and add different natural movements that may surprise you as they’re also fun - and that brings even more advantages!
