Protect Yourself from Falling Down

If a fall can harm a body, just think about what it can do to the mind. That angle didn't sit well with our esteemed national newspaper nannies, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

“Research shows that people with FOF, regardless of whether they have experienced a bad fall, are more likely to become deconditioned, depressed, and socially isolated,”  - Daphne Miller

Falling Safely

I’m a Pilates regular and have attended a forum conducted by a physical therapist on how to fall safely.

It’s possible on one cold morning, I tripped on a loose sidewalk brick and went down that I had absorbed the therapist’s lesson subconsciously.

As the therapist had advised, I rolled onto my side to avoid impact on my head and elbows. But I was also wearing a heavy down jacket that must have helped cushion my fall.

More serious was the butt tumble I took sliding down the narrow wood stairs in my old Capitol Hill home. But nothing can be done about a sore coccyx. I laughed off the event.

Many remote islands off Ecuador’s coast are composed of famously uneven black volcanic rock full of fissures.

It Doesn’t End There

Only naive and innocent souls dare negotiate such surfaces without fall prevention equipment such as solid shoes or boots and, ideally, walking sticks.

I lost my balance and ended up horizontal on the ground – the hardest ground I’d ever met.

Reflecting later, I thought back to my last inglorious fall when trekking after those wondrous out-of-this-world creatures who somehow managed to live on the perilous Galapagos terrain.

The shock of the fall resonated in other ways. I had to admit there might be limits and acknowledge them. Not fearfully but watchfully. With a smile.

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