When I can’t sleep, I turn around and sleep “upside down” - moving my pillows to where my feet were beforehand, and my feet to where my head was beforehand - and I stick with that for a week or so. It gives me a week or so without insomnia and then wears off, so I have to turn myself back around for the next 7-12 day period.
Admittedly this could just be a me thing, but let’s put our faith in this method and let the power of placebo effect take hold. Boom, minor bouts of sleeplessness are cured.
What are your own examples of this?
Seeing a horizon can fix short-term balance issues, or temporarily relieve long-term issues like labyrinthitis/vertigo, because it feeds the secondary ocular-vestibulo brain bit and gets you back settled and leveled. Unless you’re drunk or damaged, it’s a neat trick.
I’ve heard this before - I thought it was just looking into the distance. You’ve reminded me to try it though. I went from perfect vision to rather short sighted throughout my life so far 🫣
You don’t have to see it clearly, just see it. And you can be fooled, too, by level lines that look like horizons: the corner between wall and ceiling in a room with slight contrast in paint colours can light the reflex and calm the spin. This is stone-age lizard-brain stuff so it doesn’t have to be perfect.
I think it’s the same thing that lets a chicken or an eagle track a spot while turning.
I caught a virus at college that was going around. They didn’t try to trace it but like a dozen of us who met during treatment all suffered damage to our vestibular network in one or both ears and were staggering about until this secondary thing took over full-time. The damage is permanent but this reflex thing keeps us vertical. It’s really astounding.