This post is part of a series celebrating the release of Building Balance in Your Body & Life, my new 30-lesson audio course on Insight Timer. If the ideas here are interesting to you, consider joining the course! If you are an Insight Timer subscriber you get this course as part of your subscription. If you want to buy it à la carte, you can register at the Insight Timer web site. Thank you for supporting your body your life and my work.
Imagine approaching a new bridge that crosses high over a rocky river. It’s just been built with all the latest engineering: thick steel cables suspend from solid towers which support a sturdy concrete deck. As you are about to drive onto the structure, the lead builder leans into your window and says, “Yep. We gave all our attention to building this baby. Except for the foundation. We didn’t do much with that.”
How enthusiastically would you take a drive across this bridge? How much trust would you put in its strength and stability?
In human body architecture, our foundation is our feet.* Our modern life-style and culture, however, is anti-balance and anti-feet. Not only does modern life pay little attention to our foot foundation, it actively encourages us not to use it.
The design of your feet is amazing. With 26 bones, 30 joints and more than 100 muscles in each of them, they are genius engineering in motion.
Not only can feet be agile and versatile – doing everything from tap dancing to rock climbing – they are strong. According to the Ultimate Podiatry clinic, on average, your feet absorb a total force of 26,000 pounds every day ~ that’s the weight of 2 African elephants! The amount of force your feet carry increases drastically with things like wearing heels or performing high-impact exercises, like running, jumping or leaping.
Your feet are designed to move on soft, uneven surfaces. Think of any natural terrain – rocky and root-y trails, bumpy grass, soft sand – and you will note that none of them is even and flat. By walking almost exclusively on human-engineered, hard, flat surfaces, your feet do not get the mobilization, stimulation and strengthening they need.
What’s more, most of us have been wearing shoes since before we could walk. Shoes severely restrict the movement in our feet and heeled shoes (which is pretty much all shoes, even sneakers and “flats”) pitch your body weight forward and out of alignment. Modern sedentary culture, with all its elevators, escalators and moving sidewalks, discourages walking in favor of speed and efficiency. All these cultural norms weaken the intricate musculature of your feet and stiffen their joints and connective tissue.
You might have tremendous chest and back strength, six-pack abs and sculpted shoulders, but in order to move with grace and balance, you have to find the foundation of your feet. Here are three things you can do right now.
Three Ways To Wake Up Sleepy Modern Feet
1. Go barefoot.
Walk around barefoot as much as you can. While some foot conditions (like plantar fasciitis) need to heal with the support of shoes, most feet need to be bare more. Spend at least 15-30 minutes every day walking in barefeet. Extra bonus points for walking on soft carpet as well as hard floors. Extra extra bonus points for walking barefoot outside on soft, uneven surfaces!
2. Move your feet in lots of ways.
All those bones and joints in your feet love to move. While you’re going barefoot, also move your sweet feet in a variety of ways: do some heel raises, rock side to side, put a towel on the floor and pick it up with your toes, lift your toes, balance on one foot. Move your feet in as many ways as you can!
3. Massage your feet (and spread your toes!)
Take some time to massage your feet and ankles. The end of the day before bed is an excellent time to get some thick lotion and massage all parts of your feet: your heels, arches, balls, toes. Use the strength of your thumbs to slowly run along the tops and the bottoms of your feet. Spend extra time in any places that are tight, tender or sore. Pull on each toe separately and if you can, slide your fingers (if you’re massaging your left foot, use the fingers of your right hand) between your toes to let them open and spread after being squished in shoes!
Your feet are your foundation. They are strong, mobile, flexible genius structures of engineering. Allow them to support you by using them that way! (And join me in my Building Balance in Your Body & Life course today!)
* I recognize that for differently-abled people, this may not be the case. For purposes of this exploration, I am looking at the design of the upright standing and walking body.