These three are home exercises. You do them regularly, on calmer days. They never appear inside a spin log.
Mild dizziness during these exercises is expected. Severe dizziness means stop and rest. Check with your ENT, neurologist or vestibular physiotherapist that they suit you.
Brandt-Daroff exercise
Home routine for lingering BPPV, 5 to 12 minutes.
You sit on the edge of the bed with the phone held like a mirror in front of your face. In each round you turn your head, lie down on one side and hold, sit up and settle, then do the same to the other side. Choose 1, 3 or 5 rounds on the start screen (5 is the default).
At the end, the coach says most people do a set two or three times a day for a couple of weeks. Follow your clinician's advice on how often.
Balance retraining
Standing and walking drills that retrain your balance, about 5 minutes.
Your brain balances using your eyes, your feet and your inner ears. After vertigo it can stop trusting the inner ears. Each stance in this exercise takes away some help from your eyes or feet, so the inner ears have to do more of the work.
The phone measures nothing here. The coach names each stance, times the hold and tells you when to move on. You stand:
- Feet together, eyes open
- Feet together, eyes closed, with a wall in reach
- Heel to toe, eyes open, swapping feet halfway
- On a cushion or folded pillow, eyes open
Then you walk slowly across the room and back, turning your head left and right.
Stand in a corner or next to a wall you can touch instantly. Never do the eyes-closed part without support in reach, because falls are the risk here. Ask your clinician before starting balance work after a recent fall.
Habituation exercises
Graded motion exposure, retrain the trigger, about 4 minutes.
Habituation means bringing on mild dizziness on purpose, in a controlled way, so your brain gets used to the movement and reacts less over time. Sitting on the bed with the phone moving with your head, you bend your head down towards your knees and back up, then lie straight back and sit up again, at a steady pace. Choose 3, 5 or 8 rounds (5 is the default).
Do it when you are not in the middle of a spin.
Making it a habit
These exercises work through steady practice. To get a nudge, turn on the Daily exercise reminder in gear icon, Data and Notifications. See "Set a daily exercise reminder".
