Ten Ways to Fix Your Feet

Your feet are everything!

I don’t have good feet. I’ve taken them for granted, stuffed them in shoes that have squeezed my toes, and thought I needed to just have a “good pair of shoes.”

I’ve grown two bunions over the years, due to my natural flexibility which makes the tissues around my joints, in this case my toes, unable to keep the joints from moving too far and too fast. As a result, my big toe knuckle has become a “ bunion” which doesn’t hurt and is functional as long as I do my foot exercises. I know I can prevent any further deterioration because I understand how to keep my foot working functionally. 

Sadly, our feet are one of the most neglected parts of the body. Encapsulated in what anatomist Tom Myers called, “sensory deprivation devices” or “leather coffins,” they lack healthy stimulation of a bare sole, on bare ground.

We may run, we may walk, but if done within the confines of a shoe then our whole foot acts like one big joint instead of the many that move in tiny ranges to let the foot adapt and shape to the ground and then, like a spring, stiffen and propel us forward.  Unfortunately, the foot which has a brilliantly sophisticated design is stuffed into a shoe and the whole forefoot starts to act like one big toe. You should have a similar range of movement through your forefoot and toes as you do through your fingers. Truly an example of use it or lose it.

There are over 7000 nerve endings in the bottom of each foot. They sense temperature, pressure, force, heaviness and vibration. Without a diet of these sensory messages, our feet either collapse for lack of stimulation or stiffen like boards because the brain no longer can understand the scanty messages it is receiving and decides that if it can’t organise the movement it will lock things down in the form stiffness.

Ten ways to love your feet:

1. Stretching and strengthening the foot can engage some of the receptors in the foot.

2. Other ways to stimulate those receptors in the cells of the muscles and connective tissue would be to use vibration, either standing on a vibration plate or shaking the foot. We often start my classes by doing a full-body shake.  Clients love it and are left tingling from head to toe. This movement helps to discharge muscular tension in the body.

3. Stand in cold water…your feet may cramp but it will help to push the blood out of the tissues and then when you get out the blood will return creating more blood flow and flexibility in your blood vessels. Believe it or not your flexibility also has something to do with the flexibility of your veins.

4.  Massage of the foot with a variety of implements from a small ball (don’t go for hard, you can damage your tissue) to a spiky ball, a broom handle or as we do in class, your hand.

5. Sticking your fingers between your toes and squeezing your toes with your fingers and then your fingers with your toes. After you are done, look at the foot you just worked on and stand on it and feel the difference between that side of the body and the other.

6. Lift your toes. Focus on lifting and spreading all five toes from the joints where they meet the foot.

7. Scrunch a tea towel under your foot. Make a fist with your foot and have the toes pleat the towel under your arch. Do about six swipes in and then swipe the towel the other way by scrunching the toes and then extending them.

8. Stand on the outsides of your feet and feel the outer edge press into the floor, then stand on the inner edge of the foot and press that edge into the floor. Go back and forth a few times

9. Stand on the front part of the foot, let your heels get light.  Then stand with your weight closer to the heels. Notice which you prefer?

10. Finally stand up on your toes..slowly. This helps to strengthen the toe muscles and lower leg muscles which are important for stability and walking.

Love to know how you enjoyed this series, just sprinkle a few of these exercises into your day on a regular basis and start to notice the changes in how you feel. 

If you want to see this work in action make sure you sign up for my newsletter (below), and check out all my courses and free materials at my online studio, and find something that will work for you.