On request, The Queens Park monthly Saturday Morning Feldenkrais on Jan 14th will be on the theme of FEET. It came up in the break this month because so much is going on with people’s feet, from crossing toes and over-pronation to plantar fasciitis. Interestingly, every lesson we do does in fact impact on how you use your feet. If you study with me, you may well have noticed because I often start the lessons standing to feel exactly that: how your feet meet the ground. But in doing that weare not just finding something out about your feet. We are noticing how your weight drops down through the bones into the ground. It happens to do that through your feet. So how your head, shoulders, spine and rib cage are will make a big difference to where the weight is over your pelvis and then that plus what your pelvis does will make a big difference to how the wieght is transmitted thorugh the sacrum and hip joints down your legs and through your feet into the ground. Try just moving your head side to side and you will see. Its not rocket science. Or try bending/shifting your back/ribcage and see, or move your pelvis somewhere – anywhere – and listen to you feet. Very early on in my practice I had a woman come to me who wanted to run a 10k in 2 weeks time but her ankle was hurting. She had been to the podiatrist who found an issue with the way her foot planted but the orthotics hadn’t helped. I had time for two sessions with her and we spent most of that time with her ribs. Her foot planted differently and she ran her 10k without pain. Of course it wasn’t the end of the story. That would be maybe too good to be true, but it was an encouraging start after a bit of toing and froing and working more with the habits of twisting and bedning she had, the foot issue went away.
But on 14th Jan we WILL just look at feet and how we can influence the way we stand from the bottom up so to speak. After all, there are 26 bones in your feet and after shutting them up in various types of footwear ( no doubt some of it pretty dodgy in our teenage years at least – and that goes for men as well as well as women) we can lose track of the amount of mobility and sensitivity that they can have, the subtle ways they can adjust to the ground and the very important sensory feedback they give us so that the musculature of our legs and indeed whole back can anticipate and adjust for standing, walking, running and so on. We will do some hands-on work for ourselves ie how to use touch to mobilise your own feet – and then a classic Awareness Through Movement lesson using the wall as a floor.
If you want to come you need to book as space is limited (see my schedule page for details) – but I can always do another one.