Why Fall Therapy Doesn’t Teach Function
Sep 20, 2025
Why Fall Therapy Doesn't Teach Function
Falling is not a milestone. Transition is.
Many modern therapies have adopted an aggressive model of "fall therapy" — practices where children are repeatedly dropped, nudged, or forced into a fall to teach balance, confidence, or postural response, supposedly.
But here's the truth: falling is a reaction, not a function.
When a child falls, their system either shuts down or compensates — it doesn't learn. In fall-based therapy, we bypass the body's natural architecture of development. We skip over the internal systems needed for true function:
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Rotation through the spine
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Midline anchoring through vision and breath
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Weight transfer
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Skeletal buoyancy
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Functional gravitational response
Instead of fostering these, fall therapy pushes the child into survival mode — where flinching, bracing, or stiffening are misread as improvement. These are protective mechanisms, not milestones.
What Movement Lesson Teaches Instead
Movement Lesson™ teaches how to transition in and out of movement without collapse.
Rather than focus on the fall, we focus on function:
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Can the spine rotate independently of the pelvis?
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Can the child lift through breath rather than brace through force?
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Does the movement originate in the skeletal system, or is it externally imposed?
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Can the child recover to midline?
If you can't say "YES" to these questions, tell us why in the discussions.
We work through rotational transitions, not repetitive trauma.
We teach the body how to float — not fall.
We teach the body how to float — not fall.
In Movement Lesson™:
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A baby learns how to reach down and come back up — without fear.
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A child with CP learns how to spiral out of a seated position and reorganize their spine — not just tip and land.
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An adult recovering from surgery learns how to change direction without the system locking up.
Fall = Bypass. We don't teach the fall. We teach the rise.
Fall-based therapy:
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Bypasses breath
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Ignores rotation
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Collapses skeletal buoyancy
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Prioritizes compliance over cognition
Movement-based therapy (ML):
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Activates internal transitions
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Builds proprioception through opposition to gravity
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Allows learning through experience, not shock
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Establishes lifelong functional markers like head control, spinal float, and pelvic breath
"If falling taught balance, every toddler would be a gymnast. But the real function isn't found in the fall. It's found in the ability to rotate, reorganize, and rise — again and again — without trauma."
— Michelle M. Turner