My day to day job is working to help people move better by understanding their body and how it SHOULD move and why theirs isn’t moving like that.
One of the biggest things I get is a disbelief as to the importance of the feet in relation to other bodily pain along with a complete lack of knowledge of the beautiful complexity of the foot.
Leonardo da Vinci said, "The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art."
It seems a real shame that someone who died 503 years ago understood more about the masterpiece of evolution that is the foot than 99% of the population today.
The human foot should do two thing, that’s it. Pronate and supinate. But that’s very rare that someone has the ability to do either.
In pronation, the foot is lengthened and widened and becomes a mobile adaptor to shape shift over uneven ground, it’s the moment the tissues get to be loaded and lengthened to allow them to spring back and move the body to the next stage of the gait cycle
In supination, the foot shortens and becomes narrower and becomes a ridged lever to allow for all the bones to lock together to push off and propel ourselves through space.
This video shows a client who’s ankle and leg has become stuck in an internally rotated position (turns inward) meaning that it is already too far in to allow a proper pronation of the foot and therefore has no ability to supinate back out to neutral and find its centre.
Supinating a foot requires a very specific thing to happen in the foot, including the big and little toe knuckles staying grounded. If this doesn’t happen the foot and ankle will just roll to far in and out and there will be no articulation and movement between those 26 bones and all 33 of the joints that make up ONE FOOT.
Teaching this foot to supinate and to find the talus (a bone in the foot) back towards its home point drives the entire leg up to the pelvis via the knee to straighten and turn out too.
Watch as I say to straighten the knee, the ankle and leg turns out more. The knee turning out is intrinsically tied to straightening knee.
Unsurprisingly when we had gone for a run before we started doing work, this client was unable to extend her left leg. Which was throwing off her hair and putting extra pressure into her right knee (which was what she came to me for)
So if you look down at your feet and think they look “flat” or you have been told you have no arch, drop me a line, I fucking love feet (not in the weird way) and would love to help you re-find your centre and understand your feet that much better (and perhaps just get outta that pain you have too)
Come see me for all you needs by dropping me an email on wibbs@mandukyayoga.com or just booking directly at www.mandukyayoga.as.me/121
Also Make sure you go buy Gary Ward’s book “what the foot” and check out his trainings, they are game changers www.findingcentre.co.uk