Stand near a wall or a sturdy chair. Cross your arms. Lift one foot. Close your eyes. Try to hold it for ten seconds.
If you managed it easily, good. Your vestibular system is doing its job without you ever having to think about it. If you wobbled, reached for the wall, or gave up before ten seconds, you have just felt, briefly and safely, something close to what many of my patients feel constantly.
This is VeDA‘s 10-Second Balance Challenge, part of Balance Awareness Week, and I think it is one of the better tools to come along in a while for making an invisible condition visible.
Here is why I take it seriously as a clinician, not just as an awareness campaign. Every time you take a step while walking, you are briefly standing on one leg. Walking is, quite literally, a continuous series of single-leg balance moments. So if you cannot stand on one leg with your eyes open, let alone closed, that is not a curiosity. It is a signal worth taking seriously, and it is worth seeking help.
Why a party trick matters clinically
Balance is not a single sense. It is the brain combining information from three systems: the vestibular organs in the inner ear, vision, and proprioception, the sense of where your joints and muscles are in space. Close your eyes and remove vision from that equation, and the brain leans harder on the other two. Stand on one foot and remove proprioceptive input from a second leg, and it leans harder still on the vestibular system alone.
For someone with a healthy vestibular system, ten seconds under those conditions is achievable, if a little wobbly. For someone with a vestibular disorder, that same ten seconds can be genuinely unreachable, and worse, it can be a fair approximation of an ordinary moment in their day. Showering with their eyes closed. Walking into a dark cinema. Crossing a gravel path or an uneven trail. These are not extreme circumstances. They are daily life, and for my patients, they carry real risk.
The falls we do not talk about enough
Falls are frequently treated as isolated bad luck, something that happens once and is filed away as an accident. In my experience, this is rarely the full story. A fall is often the visible endpoint of a balance system that has been under strain for months or years, quietly, without anyone connecting the dots.
The consequences are not minor. Falls carry genuine risk of head and neck injury, and the fear that follows a fall often causes people to withdraw from activities that once felt safe. I have seen patients stop bushwalking, stop showering standing up, stop attending the cinema, all in an effort to manage a risk that nobody had properly assessed or explained to them.
This is precisely why the Challenge matters beyond a moment of social media fun. It gives someone without a vestibular disorder a brief, physical sense of what a compromised balance system actually feels like. It is not the same as living with it. But it is a start, and starts are how understanding grows.
Why no single clinician can see the whole picture
Since the Dizziness & Balance Disorders Centre began in the late 1980s, we have worked as a multi-disciplinary team, because balance draws on so many systems that no single professional can assess it in isolation.
A neurologist examines the nervous system. An ENT specialist assesses the inner ear. An audiologist measures hearing, which contributes more to spatial orientation than most people realise. A vestibular physiotherapist rebuilds function through targeted rehabilitation. A clinical psychologist addresses the anxiety that so often follows repeated falls or dizzy episodes. Each professional holds a piece of the picture, and the patient needs all of those pieces brought together rather than assessed one at a time by separate specialists working in isolation.
This is the model VeDA is asking us to champion this week, and it is one I have advocated for my entire career.
What you can do
Take the Challenge safely, near a wall or a chair, and only if you do not already have a balance problem or vestibular disorder. Film it, share it with #BalanceAwarenessWeek, and tag three people to try it next.
Then take the more important step. Think of someone in your life who has mentioned dizziness, a stumble, or a fall, and ask them properly how they are managing it. That conversation, prompted by ten wobbly seconds, could be the reason they seek an assessment before a serious fall happens rather than after.
For readers wanting the clinical detail behind this, including the tools and technology we use for assessment, our companion article for health professionals is linked below.
This article is for general information and does not replace individual advice from your treating health professional. If you are experiencing dizziness, imbalance, or have had a fall, please discuss this with your doctor or a qualified vestibular specialist.