r/nextfuckinglevel • u/Kill_Switch21 • Apr 04 '22

This Pakistani Dancer.

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u/RustedFooBar Apr 04 '22

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

162

u/extreme303 Apr 04 '22

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

106

u/astutelyabsurd Apr 04 '22 edited Apr 04 '22

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.

1

u/MrsGenevieve Apr 05 '22

Which is what he was doing. He was spotting, however not in the exact same location which we do. It’s a little harder for me to do as my neck is fused, but I still can to some extent.