by Stefan Verstappen

Case Study   (continued)

We began balance training by having Alice support herself against a wall while lifting one foot at a time. After a few weeks Alice was able to balance without support on one foot for several minutes at a time. By the end of her training Alice's bouts of vertigo had all but disappeared and her confidence in her own innate stability and balance was such that she was no longer afraid to be out in the open.

I believe that balance drills and exercises are a vital part of the training. Vision, as man's primary sense, plays a key role in balance. When training sighted students, beginners are taught to focus on one spot during balance drills in order to prevent themselves from losing their balance. However, sight is not needed to maintain balance. This function can be adequately accomplished by the vestibular and proprioceptive senses. The key to Alice's lack of balance was that she had lost her sight later in life; her nervous system had already been programmed to rely on visual information for balance. When Alice lost her vision a large part of her ability to feel balanced was also lost. Those who are blind from birth learn to balance using the two remaining senses available and so are better able to balance and move about. Never having used vision for balance they feel no disability in this regard. Alice believed that her lack of balance was just another ability lost with her vision. She was surprised and encouraged to learn that there is absolutely no reason she couldn't learn to be more steady and solid on her feet. The knowledge that she could greatly improved her ability to learn the drills.

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A hypnotized person could hear a constant hissing sound at 230 yards, although non-hypnotized people typically could not detect the sound until they were within 30 yards of the source.

Eugene Marais, The Soul of the Ape

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Sensitivity Training

In addition to the balancing and proprioceptive exercises, Alice began learning olfactory, auditory, and touch sensitivity exercises.

Olfaction sensitivity can be improved immediately simply by increasing one's awareness of it. I suggested a training regime whereby every time Alice entered a room when meeting people and at random intervals throughout the day, she would pause and sniff the air and make deductions based on olfaction. With trial and error Alice was able to garner additional information about her environment. These included the ability to detect the sex, the approximate age of people from short distance away (for example, if that was a man or a woman who just got on the elevator), whether or not people have been smoking, drinking, working, what they have been eating, and personal hygiene.

We can tell by looking if a stranger on the street appears scruffy, seedy, or intoxicated, but to a blind person he is just another voice. The habit of sniffing people can give valuable clues to a person's social status.

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