Use Your Toes to Protect Your Knees

Use Your Toes to Protect Your Knees

When there’s a problem in the knee, there are probably imbalances in the feet.  My friend had no complaints about her feet, but when I watched her move I could see that, especially on the side of her knee surgery, she wasn’t using the full  articulation of her foot.

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Shoes and Scoliosis

Shoes and Scoliosis

Ballet flats aren’t cute on a misaligned foot. If the foundation in the feet doesn’t support the body above, another region of the body will take on the responsibility for support—a knee, a hip or even the shoulders. Misalignment leads to more misalignment, and more tension.

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Posture and Procrastination

Posture and Procrastination

I don't think the earth feels equally solid to everyone, or even equally solid to anyone from one moment to the next. In this moment, I only seem to be relaxing. In fact I'm in a state of procrastination and my to-do list looms in the air about three feet away.

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Morning Posture; Morning Attitude

Morning Posture; Morning Attitude

I also know that moving stiffly--ambulating with the bare minimum of joints engaged--becomes a habit that can’t entirely be blamed on my bodily tissues. Habits take place in the brain. The more often I move stiffly, the more familiar and less optional that way of moving becomes. I can choose how I move.

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Minimal Shoes and Biofeedback

Minimal Shoes and Biofeedback

If our hunter-gatherer forebears wore simple hide foot coverings or, depending on the weather, went barefoot, wouldn’t shoes that are barely there be good for us too?
Well, not necessarily, because “we’ve paved paradise and put in a parking lot.” We walk on flat, smooth, unyielding surfaces, whereas our forebears walked on grass, dirt, sand and gravel…

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Wake Up Your Feet!

Wake Up Your Feet!

If you’re thinking that feet are my favorite subject, you could be right. I definitely think that adaptable, responsive feet are a vital component in healthy posture. By adaptable, I mean feet that are able to move--not just to take steps, but also to spread and clasp, to wriggle and writhe and bounce. They can sense the ground and respond to it…

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Foot Support for Artistic Expression

Foot Support for Artistic Expression

Finding the sensation of healthy support from his feet made a lovely difference in Eric’s life. In the accompanying video this musician/songwriter shows how his musical expression changes depending on how he lives in his feet.

Your body can move around in the world without your being fully present in it. You may have good body awareness in general but lack presence in specific parts or areas of your body. In the video, Eric speaks about “finding his cuboid.” He’s referring to finding awareness in a specific region of the foot that activates better organization of the entire lower extremity. For more about foot organization, see Know Your Feet, my online workshop.

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Foot Massage

Foot Massage

That may not be true for everyone, but for sure, foot problems stop you in your tracks. As a Rolfer® and movement coach, I’ve seen too many miserable feet and the problems they’ve transmitted to the bodies above. So I’m motivated to share anything I come across that might help my readers care for their own precious gravity negotiators.  Feet, with their 26 bones and 33 joints and countless soft tissue springs and pulleys, are perfectly designed to negotiate uneven surfaces. When they don’t get to do that—when they’re constantly shod and subjected to flat, hard surfaces…

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Core Support, Kneeling and Stiff Toes

Core Support, Kneeling and Stiff Toes

What follows is my response to a letter from someone who had difficulty kneeling on a yoga block as shown in the abdominal core lesson of my DVD. I know that when someone raises a question, others are likely wondering the same thing…

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