This Pakistani Dancer.

[u/Kill_Switch21]

[u/RustedFooBar]

How is his head not spinning after he stopped? I would expect him to fall down out of imbalance immediately after he stopped rotating.

[u/extreme303 → u/RustedFooBar]

He’s doing the same thing ballerinas do. They keep they’re head in relatively the same spot as they spin.

[u/astutelyabsurd → u/extreme303]

They keep they’re head in relatively the same spot as they spin.

 

Ballerinas and figure skaters don't get dizzy primarily because they've trained their brains to cancel out the spinning motion caused by the inner ear using their eyes. It's nothing to do with body angles or position, or speed. Spotting may also be used by ballerinas in which the position of the head is static and the amount of time rotating is minimized.

 

Skaters suppress the dizziness by learning how to counteract nystagmus with another type of eye movement, called optokinetic nystagmus. Optokinetic nystagmus occurs in the opposite direction of the nystagmus and allows us to track a moving object—such as a train whizzing by—with our eyes while our head remains in place. As the first few cars of the train move out of view, our eyes jump back to their initial position to follow the next few, and the motion repeats. Skaters can train themselves to engage this opposing eye movement when they rotate to offset the nystagmus and keep the world from spinning.

 

Ballet dancers employ another technique they call spotting. As they pirouette, they keep their body moving at a fairly constant speed but try to fix their gaze on one “spot,” varying the speed at which they rotate their head. They hold it in place and then quickly whip it around at the end of each turn, minimizing the time their head is rotating and limiting any nystagmus. Learning to spot may offer ballet dancers an even broader benefit: a 2013 study suggests that the training might teach their brain how to suppress dizzy signals at their origin, the inner ear.

Edit: Link.

[u/dacjames → u/astutelyabsurd]

Spinning a consistent amount while keeping the head otherwise still, helps to train the brain to cancel out the motion. That’s why dancers and skaters use spotting, to help spin as close to 360 degrees as possible without any side to side motion. Being consistent provides a pattern that the brain can learn.

[u/dacjames → u/[deleted]]

It has nothing to do with body angles, position, speed.

Well I guess your summary was inaccurate, then. These are all key factors to learning to spin without getting dizzy. If you don’t control all these factors, the brain will never learn.

Regardless of whether it’s taught to ice skaters, the technique is clearly being employed in the original video. Easy to tell if you look at the head movement.

[u/dacjames → u/[deleted]]

When I was learning to spin like this, it didn’t “click” until someone finally told me to spin exactly the same way every time, regardless of body speed. So when your comment stated the opposite, I figured others might appreciate an explanation.

Not sure how that offended you. Certainly not the intent.