If you are truly lost or disoriented at night staying in one spot and waiting for rescue makes sense. But it is pretty rare for anyone having a reasonable level of field experience to be entirely disoriented and unaware of the general lay of the land even in conditions of near total darkness.

I've never been in conditions where I simply had to completely stop. Even in complete darkness, in a cave, it is possible to keep moving very slowly and remain both oriented and safe.

The two skills you need are: a practiced sensitivity and willingness to take your time and use all your senses to develop a picture of what is around you; patience and a willingness to advance in stop-sense-move cycle.

In no-light conditions where risks are high it might take a while to get a feel for your surroundings. And you move by crawling a meter or two at a time before stopping and repeating the cycle. Full-moon, clear conditions, and flat ground with no danger and you move at a trot. Stopping just once in a while to listen and look.

The biggest obstacle to this sort of thing is the unwillingness of people to stop, calm down, and use all their senses. Training can start by taking people out into the woods. Having them lay down and create an inventory of things they sense. A very slight breeze carried the scent of flowers. And when the wind shifted a bit we could smell pine resin.

Staring up at the sky we could see the dark outline of tree branches against the sky and tell the tree was not a pine.

After a while we heard the slight sound of water, an armadillo rooting around in the leaf litter was quite loud. Over time it is easy to start to paint a picture of the landscape around us for a considerable distance.