would a Power Dodge be legal in situations where you can't use a Free Action?

[Plane]

To use Insubstantiality as an example. Normally this takes a ready maneuver to switch on or off (as Powers 154 clarifies, not sure if basic set talked about it) but if you take Reduced Time +20% then it can be activated or deactivated once per turn as a free action at the start.

There is a situation where you lose the ability to do "free" actions: the "lose your balance" results (#7 on B556, 9/10/11 on B557) which explicitly notes "not even a free action". This however DOES allow you to make Active Defense rolls (at -2)

I don't know how much this would normally affect things since if you crit-fail during your turn, you're already past your "start of turn" so you wouldn't be able to switch Insubstantiality on/off until the start of the next turn anyway, at which point the crit-fail limitation would expire...

Powers 167 lets you switch insubstantiality on or off at times besides the start of your turn though (in response to an attack) but if you can't do free actions during this period, should you be able to use an active defense which involves activating a "free action" switchable ability?

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edit: another situation this question could apply to is spellcasting.

B363 says that Talking is Free Action which would imply that if you lose your balance, you can't talk until your next turn.
B364 also mentions that free actions are also used to maintain a psi, maintain a spell, drop something or crouch

If you can't talk, then would that mean (even though active defenses ARE allowed at -2) that during a lost-balance second you can't use a Blocking Spell unless your skill was high enough to cast spells without speaking?

More importantly: when you maintain spells as a free action, do you need to be doing that free action EVERY second, or just during the turn where your previous interval expires and you spend more energy to keep it going?

As for psi, I don't know if that might be a remnant from 3e, but in 4e with it being based on advantages, is that basically whenever you'd do things like "spend FP once per minute" or "roll IQ once per minute" to refresh an ongoing psi?