BodymindResources.com

Class 2 Theory

 Click on the Scientist to move to the Lab portion of Class 2

   Recap of Class One

     The difficulty people find in performing the exercises of class one vary tremendously. When I first created it, I thought I was choosing very simple very basic beginner stretches to help prepare people for structural realignment. I quickly realized that a lot of my students found these stretches quite difficult indeed. Their spine was afraid to let go into the stretch. Because their muscles were still holding, as they went to stretch them, it would cause them discomfort. They were afraid to do the stretches for fear of injuring themselves. Now I'm the last person who would want you to go against your own discretion and injure yourself. I would like to impress upon you, if you are in a similar boat, that you really must slowly work your way into these stretches. If you are scared of stretching too far to fast, then have a chair handy that you can prop yourself up on if you are feeling too much discomfort.  Do not allow yourself to be in full out pain!  In most cases, the client has to learn through experience that their spine is capable of stretching and lengthening. And yes, with any exercise program, you can injure yourself if you are not careful. But if you really are in pain, can you afford to do nothing? You will have to work through it somehow. Just take it slow. There is no race. I will still be here to help you a year from now if it takes you that long. Let's really do this. If you are feeling too much discomfort, slow down. Better you do that than get fed up and stop altogether. If you need help finding another way, write to me and I will help you. I'm happy to. OK . Onto Class 2 The Feet!

Class 2 The Feet

     Let's talk about the feet. They are really very special. Your feet are the first part of you to hit the ground. Everything is built on top of your feet. Your legs, abdomen, spine, ribcage, neck and head are all built on top of your feet. Therefore your feet are the ones who have to balance out any structural deformities that your upper body cannot. 

  For instance, if you do not breathe in such a way that allows your rib cage to remain up and open, it will collapse and your breathing will become shallow. This shifts your head forward which shifts the entire weight of your body forward. In order to balance this out within gravity and keep you from falling forward in everything you do, your body has to give you a sway back and allowing your abdomen to protrude forward so your mid to upper spine can lean back. Your pelvis is attached at the bottom of your spine and must spill forward to further balance out these distortions. Then, finally you notice that your weight has had to shift to the balls of your feet. The feet are your last defense to combat a structural distortion. Any gravitational pull the upper structures cannot compensate for has to be dealt with by the feet and when the feet can't bear the load, you wind up flat on your face. This makes the feet very important!

     Due to the fact that most people have no conscious control over their relationship with gravity, the feet of most people are severely overworked ; sometimes to the point of nightly cramps and charley horses. Now as you can see, the feet are not separate in any way in your body. As shown in the above paragraph, distortions in the feet are always part of a full body chain of distortions. It really doesn't matter how you choose to see it. You could say that because the feet are messed up, the entire body built on top of them will be messed up. Or you could say that because the upper body is messed up, the feet will be a mess from trying to balance it. Which came first? The chicken or the egg? It doesn't really matter. In order to realign the upper body, you will have to realign the feet. In order to truly align the feet, you will have to realign the upper body. That is why I gave you a general full body set of exercises last week. If you continue these as we go through each part of the body, you will achieve full body releases faster because you will be treating the body as what it really is...a whole.

     In order to understand the feet, we must understand that the feet do not start at the ankles. Think of the feet as your entire lower leg from the knee down. I say this because that is truly the way it is. The largest muscles responsible for operating the foot attach to the bones of your upper leg and some of them even cross the knee joint.

Take a moment to look at the structure of the bones of your lower leg. Remember bones are attachment sites for muscles. The two main bones of your lower leg are the tibia and fibula. They start at the knee offering a broad area for the attachment of lower leg muscles and eventually become the ankles down near you feet. Beneath the ankles you have the bones of your foot. The names don't really matter, but take a good long look at how they appear and are put together so you will know what you are feeling with your hands later in the lab section of the class.

     The joints of your knees, ankles and toes are basically hinge joints. This means they are only capable of two real motions - flexion (Pointing the toes downwards/bending the knee) or extension (raising the toes up/straightening the knee). The other joints of the foot that lie between the ankle and the long toe bones are gliding joints and and are capable of very minimal movement. Gliding joints are bones that are really only attached by cartilage. They are barely joints at all. They can just lightly glide in any direction, but only a very little bit. However, when you have many gliding joints together, such as in the foot, they can provide a decent amount of mobility. The hinge joint of the ankle allows you to point your toes down ( as when you step on the accelerator of a car) and it allows your to point your toes up ( as in the opposite action). Any other movement of the foot (side to side, diagonally) is provided by the gliding joints beneath the ankle in the foot.

     Now that we know what the joints do, we can see how chronically tense musculature can inhibit movement in the lower legs as feet. Lets look at how it's put together. Generally, the lower leg operates the foot and there are three main compartments of musculature : the anterior (front) compartment, the posterior (back) compartment, and the lateral (outer side) compartment. Click here to see a picture. We will discuss the actions of these compartments generally. Please know there are exceptions to this, but we are going to say that each compartment performs one main action on the foot. The posterior compartment points your toes down ( as when you step on the accelerator, the anterior compartment lifts your foot up at the ankle ( as in the opposite action) and the lateral compartment moves your foot out to the side laterally (as in away from your body). Take a moment to look at the pictures of the musculature of the lower leg. Can you see how much larger the posterior compartment is? We use these muscles every time we take a step. These muscles help us with forward movement. All the muscles in all of these compartments are constantly fine tuning themselves to keep you from falling flat on your face. They are constantly reeducating themselves to have different resting lengths based on your body's needs.

Take a moment to look at the musculature on the bottoms of your feet. Can you see how thick and layered it is? These are just more muscles designed to keep you from falling down. They are your very last chance to grip the earth and stay upright. On most people these muscles are very tense due to being overworked from structural distortions higher in the body. Click here to see other pictures of the musculature of the feet.

     The connective tissue of the area, as always, plays a key role in keeping the area stuck and chronically tense. Remember there is a layer of connective tissue directly under the skin. There is also a thick layer of connective tissue covering each muscle. If you have tension in the muscles of your foot or lower leg compartments, you can almost guarantee that the connective tissue of the individual muscles are stuck together. This means that all these different muscles are unable to function independently of each other which means less stability for you. These muscles need to be agile and capable of quick adjustment. We are going to begin unsticking these muscles today. This will give you a real sense of security when you walk. You will be that much more stable. 

     Another issue to point out is that of shoes. While doing some postgraduate work in Hawaii several years ago, I had the opportunity to work on people who had lived there most of their lives. Their feet do not look like those of most people. They are pliable, well hydrated, and broad. They are not clammy and tight like most feet you encounter. This is because they spend a great deal of their life with their shoes off walking on uneven surfaces as our body was always intended to do. Wearing shoes is like wearing a cast on your foot. It limits mobility and is just asking for tense hardened connective tissue. There is a particularly thick layer of connective tissue covering just under the skin and before the muscles on the bottoms of your feet. This layer of connective tissue is called the  plantar fascia. Some people can develop a condition called plantar fascitus in which the plantar fascia becomes inflamed. 

Let's look at why this happens. 

     When a person wears shoes all day, the bones of their feet are restricted from movement. The connective tissue never gets to move or stretch, so it hardens. Then, all of a sudden, they take their shoes off or use shoes with different arch support. This places an uncontrolled stretch on dangerously shortened stuck plantar fascia. Instead of stretching to the new position, it begins to tear and inflammation sets in. Such people complain that the first few steps of the day after they get out of bed are very painful in the soles of their feet. This is unnecessary. You can easily acquire movement in your feet and you can easily get rid of plantar fascitus.

     It is imperative to the well being of our body that we regain the flexibility and functioning in our feet. We can regain the buoyancy of our youth. The feeling of growing older in the body is simply our own neglect. It is unnecessary. Feel great. Let's go to the lab portion and I will show you how. Take this class seriously. Your whole body is built on top of it! Onto Class 2 Lab