 |
 |
Ed Keith Hotrod@ kiva.net said: > I get to the place when I stand up to walk I cannot pick up my feet. I >do not feel stiff I just can not lift my feet. >When I do I seem to go to fast and I must watch to keep from falling. >When I get going, I do alright untill I stop again. This does not >happen all the time. >I would appreciate any suggestion. Quite some time ago the folks on this list made the discovery that blue sunglasses are a great aid with this problem, Ed. Something about the filtered color enabled better walking for PWPs. Here's my trick, something I learned in the service and which takes a lot of practice - utilizing peripherial vision - which simply means seeing something without looking at it. In the dark, with very low light levels, there is something about the makeup of the eye, which I won't try to explain, that makes it easier to "see" if you look to one side of an object and not straight at it. Practice that during the day. Don't "look" at doorways, cracks in the sidewalk, clumps of grass. Let your peripherial vision "see" while you focus somewhere slightly above the horizon. As we PWPs get further into this thing we have, we tend to develop a head down walk, looking at a spot about two feet in front of us, trying to control our mental/physical footsteps because we have become use to having our feet stop while mentally we are still walking, thus falling on our head, making us dingier than we already are. This might not work for you. All of us have a different program we follow to make things easier, some are more successful than others at playing the mind tricks that PD pushes at us. "Thinking" about doing something that we have spent our whole lives doing without thinking is a difficult task. Trying to get a cup to your mouth, walking to the bathroom, getting out of bed, these things are not what "normal" folks spend time on and few of them really understand what mental process we must go through to do the same things. Bypassing the PD signals is still a possibility. Tai Chi, meditation, whatever it takes, is a road to a slower degeneration of physical ability. It works for me, and I highly suggest that you look into taking classes, buying tapes, whatever you feel most comfortable doing. It isn't for everyone - some folks feel silly doing the exercises, others think the whole thing is stupid, so I offer it without philosophical theory backing it up. Hang tough, Ed. We have a long road ahead of us. Jerry (This space for rent)