To B(union) or not to B(union) that’s the question….or is it.

Bunions

Yes I know it’s Sunday morning and most people are weirded out by feet especially before 8am but come on, hands up, who has a bunion??

Whose big toe is pointing inwards rather than forwards??

I have worked with numerous clients who struggle with bunions and pain around their feet and toes which the medical teams have said….”SURGERY….ITS THE ONLY OPTION…..CUT THAT FUCKER UP!!!”

Ok maybe they didn’t use that language or shout it but that’s their basic gist.

Far to often the idea is just to cut and shut things which don’t look/feel right…but what if that bunion is there for a reason?

The body is bloody clever and will not do things without a good cause or reason and when it comes to the feet, they are no exception. 

The big toe (along with every other stucture in the foot) should constantly be moving in 3 planes of motion throughout the gait cycle. There should be up and downy movements, left and righty movements and round and rounds movements (those aren’t the technical terms) 

So what if you hurt some part of the foot and it stops moving properly? Could another part of the foot start to have to move more to make up for the lack of movement in that part?

Well yes. 

The movement seen at the 1st toe joint is actually an exaggerated version of what should happen when our foot pronates (which it should do every step we take) but due to issues within the foot or body is unable to stop doing it. 

If your foot cannot probate, your body may well try one or more of a bunch of things to try to get the same loading of tissues that is required for effective efficient movement…and abduction (the big toe moving towards the second toe) is one such option it can take. 

It’s like it’s trying to say “LOOK IM PULLING THIS FUCKING TOE IN THIS DIRECTION…WHEN IS THE REST OF THE FOOT/LEG/BODY GOING TO FOLLOW!!!!”

Without use understanding the 3 dimensional movement of the foot and working to improve how the foot moves as a whole, cutting the bunion back and just pulling the toe straight NEVER gets to the root cause of the issue. So guess what, the toe returns back to the same space again asking the same question

“SERIOUSLY GUYS….LOOK IM PULLING THIS FUCKING TOE IN THIS DIRECTION FOR A LEGITIMATE REASON, LISTEN TO ME THIS TIME…WHEN IS THE REST OF THE FOOT/LEG/BODY GOING TO FOLLOW AND GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK FROM DOING ALL THE PISSING WORK DOWN HERE!!!!”

So the moral of the story is that your body is WAY cleverer than you are. Admit it, accept it and begin to learn from it. 

A bunion is there to tell you something needs to change in the way you move your feet and body. That pain it’s causing is asking you, not so politely, to take some interest in understanding how this wonder of evolution that we stroll about in works and functions and to give it some better inputs. 

If you have a bunion and you have been told that it needs surgery, before you go down that route, hit me up, surgery should always and only ever be a last resort.

Let’s work together to make you feel better in your feet so you can spread the word and we can take a whole heap of pressure off the NHS by stopping do so many needless operations. 

Remember I work in person and online both equally successfully so no reason to not let me help you learn more about your feet and get them moving better for less pain. 

Improving posture and gait in traumatic brain injury…using Anatomy in Motion.

The wonders of understand the human body and movement through the lens of @garyward_aim and his anatomy in motion lens.

This week I started working with a client who suffered a traumatic brain injury after falling three floors  from a roof.

The Left Hemisphere Traumatic Brain Injury left him with Right Sided Ataxia (A Loss of the ability to coordinate muscular movement )along Painful and slow walking for 21 years.

When we explored what his feet were doing on the floor, how he stood and walked there were some pretty key things happening that would affect his balance. 

Getting his foot tripod on the floor was a big one and allowing the joints to move as they have evolved to suddenly have him a strong, deep grounded sensation. 

He could also actually balance on his foot which he said he hasn’t since his accident. 

If a brain is to maybe relearn lost movements, perhaps we need to change the lens through which we rehab them. 

Gary ward has 5 big rules, one of which is that rather than looking at the body in a way that muscles move joints, we get the joints to move the muscles. 

How does that even work?? We all know that the muscles pull on the bones to move the joints right??

Well perhaps yes, while we are working out, trying to get fit and strong, but in gait, as we walk, no. 

Take 20 seconds right now to stand up, close your eyes and just observe yourself in space. 

Observe how you cannot stand still.

Observe how you drift forward/back/left/right

All without having any control, your joints are moving/swaying/falling with gravity and you muscles are reacting to hold you upright.

This is the same principle we put into practice when working with our lens turned to see through anatomy in motion.

If someone, say this clients, balance/gait is hideous and we just say it’s due to his accident and tough shit, but don’t dig down, we are doing ourselves and them a disservice by not looking into some fundamentals of how perhaps we are reacting with our environment 

This clients feet, had compensated to his new way of walking such that he was on the outside of one foot with his toes gripping the floor, holding his tripod away from the ground.

The optimal tripod is when we have out 1st/5th metatarsals and our heel all firming connected neurologically with the ground. If just the big toe rather than the metatarsal head is grounding, it can throw the whole body off.

Because of this, he always felt as if he was standing/walking on a thin blade of his foot, Making walking, standing balancing feel off balance, uncomfortable and unsafe.

By allowing the bones to move the muscle, using AIM wedges, by getting the client to relax and try to do less, the foot bones did the only thing they could really do and following the joints shapes they have.

As the joint surfaces in the foot glide over one another properly, the muscles attached to them will have no choice BUT to lengthen, causing them to slow the movement and pull those joints away from their end range.

This is really where, in this kind of brain injury, I would suggest the best changes can be made. By not making the body try to move but by allowing the body to move itself so that all those tissues are just lengthen to slow movement down naturally to return it to centre. 

And what seems to be even better is that, perhaps, even in a brain injury where the movement has been lost for 20 years, that very movement is actually hardwired in and when it feels that ability to pass through centre, to both lengthen and contract properly, the brain grabs hold of that movement and says “I’m keeping that”.

Efficient movement is hard wired into us, efficient movement is less energetic meaning we would have more for over endeavours, evolutionary speaking. 

If we can have a body that wants to stand upright, stacked on its axis’ properly then it gives the greatest amount of of opportunity to both lengthen/contract, flex/extend, rotate left/right and always return back to centre. 

As if I wasn’t already aware that Gary Ward’s anatomy in motion model was the best through which to view human movement, working with a traumatic brain injury that’s 20 years old and seeing such a marked change and have the client also immediately notice it too, just puts the cherry on the cake. 

If someone with a traumatic brain injury can begin to move and feel better within 90 minutes, perhaps you can too. 

Why not get in touch to start your own movement journey to move with less pain, more confidence and a far greater understanding of your own body and how to move it better in the future yourself.