Is your back issue coming from your foot? Or is your foot issue coming from your back? Ain’t no way to know until we assess! This blog post is dedicated to investigating this chicken-or-egg question.
Scroll down a little more to join me in a fantastic biomechanical nerd-out 😉
This blog post is for you if you currently have a stiff spine, stiff foot, long time back issue, old foot injury, all of the above, or are just curious about how to get your body moving more efficiently by learning about the movement relationship between your feet and spine.
You are more than the sum of your parts
I know you know this already, but it cannot be repeated enough: The body is a beautifully connected whole system, and should be considered for the whole that it is, not reduced to individual parts operating in isolation from each other.
One of my online students (a musician) recently wrote to me about how useful it has been, through doing my sessions regularly, to become more aware of all the various connections between her body parts in motion.
Like understanding that if you can’t move your big toe THIS way, then your hip is going to be restricted going THAT way, and maybe that’s why your left shoulder feels janky.
Janky: Junk + cranky. Technical term (which I stole from a client of mine, in reference to her janky shoulder).
I love discovering connections in the body, too. It really lights me up because it always leads to better flowing movement and less pain. This is the magic we tap into in studying Anatomy in Motion: How everything needs to coordinate with everything else for ideal gait.
But its not magic. Its biomechanics.
In the words of my wonderful mentor Gary Ward, creator of Anatomy in Motion: “Look for things that don’t move that give permission for other things to.”
That adds an additional layer of nuance to the stretch and strengthen conversation, doesn’t it??
And on this note, I’d like to share with you a series of video clips from my most recent Movement Deep Dive session: Foot-Spine Connections.
As the name alludes to, this session’s investigative mission is to learn if there is a discombobulated relationship between the movement of your feet and spine that could be keeping your body stuck moving inefficeintly through each footstep, with discomfort or whatever jankiness you’re aware of in your body.
Understanding this foot-spine connection is extremely useful when we are working on helping our bodies move and feel better with less pain, because it helps us to become aware of how the causative root of a foot issue could be your spine, or visa versa.
This helps us to make better informed choices about what we can focus on in our movement practices, instead of just trying random stuff and hoping for the best.
And so on that note, please enjoy these 4 snippets from the Foot-Jaw Connections Movement Deep Dive.
I hope you’ll be able to learn a little about how your feet and spine are moving, and how to restore ideal mechanics between the two structures to put more flow in each footstep.
Foot-Jaw Connections
So, how did stuff go? Did you discover anything new and useful? I’d love to hear how this little bit of movement detectivery went for you. Please write me a comment below if you’d like to share.
Obviously there is more to explore than this… But I hope to inspire you to use this way of thinking in all your movement endeavours. Think outside the box. Think of your body as more than the sum of it’s parts. Just… Think ;).
In the full session, we also explore new ways of moving that connect your feet and spine with each other to restore a more harmonious, flowing relationship. But I can’t share EVERYTHING for free, because this is capitalist America.
If you’d like to see the full 50ish minute movement deep dive session and participate along, you can find it listed HERE, along with some other faves, for $20 each.
I want to share my current exercise obsession: Single leg deadlift with a knee bend.
Uncreatively (but aptly) named, the SLDL + knee bend is exactly what it sounds like. You do a single leg deadlift, and you bend your knee.
But before I say more about how and why to do this exercise, check out the video below, and give it a try.
So… Did you try it? That was the complete (7ish min) clip of the demo of this exercise from my Movement and Strength Training Foundations class a few weeks ago.
WHY AM I SO OBSESSED?
Quick back-story, my foot has been hurtin’ since feb 18th and I haven’t been able to stand and walk comfortably since then (a journey I’ve been documenting on the Instagramz if you fancy a look).
This exercise brought my awareness to some key mechanics that my right hip struggles to perform, and now I’m walking again. Slowly, but walking. Booyah!
Many folks, myself included, struggle to cleanly flex their hips. One main benefit of the SLDL + knee bend is that it helps awaken dem posterior chain muscles (glutes and hamstrings) by systematically accessing your bestest hip flexion, on one leg.
The knee bend add-on is an amazing way to challenge yourself to maintain and deepen your hip flexion, without cheating it by rounding your back.
All-around great exercise for strengthening and improving your hip and knee flexion, and your awareness of any asymmetries right and left.
You can totally stop reading now with no FOMO, but, me being me, I couldn’t stop writing here. There’s more!
THE STEP-BY-STEP CUES:
Hinge at your hips from two feet (send your butt back to 6 o’clock). You should feel your hamstrings go on stretch. Slight pelvis anterior tilt (tailbone pointing out like J Lo, no tucking).
Shift your weight all the way onto one leg without losing your hip hinge (tucking under), or twisting your pelvis.
Reach your other leg behind you. Your toes can stay in contact with the floor for balance, or lift your whole foot off, if you’re feeling dangerous.
Keep spine completely still (don’t round), and bend your standing knee, reaching your hands to the floor. See if you can touch the floor.
I repeat: DON’T round your spine or tuck under (posterior tilt) your pelvis to touch the floor- All the bending is from your hip and knee joints. Make your leg do the work.
Straighten your standing leg back towards the start position, and stand up on one leg (with grace…)
Repeat, and enjoy the glute and hamstring burn.
As I expressed in the video clip, I didn’t think I would even be able to do this exercise on my right leg. But in the class I was like, “Oh what the heck, let’s try standing on my right foot”.
And oh man am I ever glad I tried. The rest of the day, my foot felt about 50% better.
The following day, I was actually able to walk around with minimal pain (in 5x slow motion, mind you, but still… Big success).
What is the magical power of the SLDL + knee bend? Its not magic… It’s just biomechanics accessed cleanly. But magical things happen when you unlock your missing biomechanics.
SLDL + KNEE BEND KEY MECHANICS
Ok, here’s the part where I liberate the movement nerd in me. In the SLDL + knee bend, your body needs to be able to:
Flex your hip and anterior tilt your pelvis (the hip hinge part).
Adduct your hip (the get your weight entirely onto one leg part)
Internally rotate your standing hip with a relatively balanced foot tripod (i.e. not rolling all the way to the inside or outside of your foot, or losing your heel contact)
Flex deeper at your hip when you add in the knee bend (differentiating your hip and knee from spinal motion. I think that’s what people call “core stability”?).
The reason I suspect the combination of those three hip motions (flexion, adduction, internal rotation) were so beneficial for my foot is how they contribute to opening the space where the sciatic nerve comes through in the sacral/hip area.
Look at that big green thing.
Sciatic nerve in green.
FOOT-HIP CONNECTION VIA SCIATIC NERVE
My working theory is that my foot pain (nervy, burny, tingly, throbby sensation in my heel and sole of foot) is at least in part related to entrapment and/or tension at different parts along the sciatic nerve, as it weaves its way from lumbar spine, through the hip, down to the foot.
Yup, sciatic nerve extends all the way down to your foot, changing names a few times along the way, just like in my Toronto neighbourhood, Rosedale, where street names change randomly part way down the street, making it confusing and annoying to navigate…
For me, one area of entrapment seems to be at my posterior hip joint, i.e. under my butt.
Here, the sciatic nerve can get easily squished by the hamstrings (biceps femoris) and the piriformis muscle, unless the hip can flex and internally rotate well enough to open up some space and move those muscles. Things my right hip sucks at.
Nerves don’t like when they don’t have space to slide and glide because they are squished by reduced joint spaces and muscles getting in the way.
Using the SLDL + knee bend to access hip flexion and internal rotation in particular seem to help open space for my sciatic nerve to move through, and eccentrically load (lengthen) the muscles surrounding the nerve, so it can slide and glide more freely.
CONCLUSIONS?
You should try this exercise. Just kidding. Do what you want. It’s your life, your body, don’t let me tell you what to do with it.
Disclaimer: I’m not saying that this is THE exercise to fix issues with YOUR sciatic nerve. It’s not. If you suspect you have problems related to your sciatic nerve (or any nerves) you should always be properly assessed by a movement/therapy professional before diagnosing yourself on Google and making up DIY solutions.
However, for me, the SLDL + knee bend was a big AH-HA moment. Not because it “fixed” me, but as I fumbled with the technique, I was able to observe the differences between my right and left sides.
And it was illuminating how stark the difference was… (I’m so glad I caught it live on camera).
I’ve been practicing a modified, smaller scale version of this exercise everyday, several times a day, and now, two weeks later, my foot is virtually pain free. Not 100% better, but I’m grateful that I can walk again and stand long enough to wash my dishes. My kitchen was becoming a hazardous area…
Thank you SLDL + knee bend. My butt and hamstrings have new life. And my foot doesn’t feel like a wet rag anymore.
I’m not old, but as I get older, my attitude towards exercise is changing. Having been sitting on my butt not doing anything exercisey at all for the past 2 months, I’ve had a lot of time to rethink my intention for exercise.
Yes, strength is important. Challenging our muscles intensely at times is important. But the SLDL + knee bend is not just a strength builder. Done slowly, with awareness, it is also an opportunity to observe and optimize movement mechanics.
In fact, any exercise is an opportunity to observe and optimize. And I think this is a lovely philosophy to apply to any movement practice to make it more meaningful, enjoyable, sustainable, and healthy (read more about that HERE).
Give the SLDL + knee bend a try. Go slow. Notice if you are doing cheats like me that work-around your hips actually moving cleanly. If it feels bad, or unsafe, don’t do it, and seek help to undestand what’s happening. Let me know how it goes, and if your butt loves you (or hates you) for it 🙂
FYI, the class in which I showed this exercise was of the April 2022 theme: I Get Knocked Down (But I get Up Again). We spent the month working on exercises with the intention to develop/maintain the ability to move up and down from the floor with ease and grace. Being able to deeply flex the hip and knee are a part of that.
If you enjoyed today’s snippet, and want to try a full M&S class, you can try one for free here: www.monikavolkmar.com/free-class, or get access to all weekly classes and the complete archive of everything I do online HERE, in my monthly membership.
I’ve had foot pain for the past two months (since Feb 18th to be precise). It’s only in the last two weeks that I’ve been able to stand up and walk around more comfortably. I still have a ways to go for my foot to be 100% better.
Actually, “pain” doesn’t acurately describe how my foot feels. It feels like a wet washcloth that hits the floor in a heap and can’t reorganize its self, but also burns and tingles, with patches of numbness.
CT scans (ugh) and ultrasounds reveal nothing “wrong”, nor do I have visible swelling or tissue damage, so I’ve been exploring the biomechanical aspects of this issue, which my team and I suspect is probably neural inflammation.
The scariest thing about my foot situation was that my standard battery of self-assessments, which I regularly use to check in with my biomechanics, are done STANDING.
Suddenly finding myself in a place where I couldn’t stand up, I felt lost and confused about how to assess WHAT was going on with my body, and WHY I’d gotten this way.
Fast forward to March 16th.
My fellow AiM mentor and anatomy nerd pal, Margy Verba, and I decided to do a live gait and movement assessment case study (aka Nerd Out) with me as the case to be studied. We had 10 movement/therapy practitioners join in to observe and participate. It was great fun. And I learned a lot about my body.
Margy knew I had a foot problem, but I didn’t tell her that I still couldn’t stand up, which completely thwarted her plan to have me do standing assessments. Muwhahaha. But Margy’s a pro, and she modified the whole body assessment to be done seated on a stool.
It was brilliant. She even modified the foot motion and windlass assessments to be done sitting down, which I had never done before, and was impressed by the information I got from it depsite being non-weightbearing.
I’d like to share a short (2ish min) clip from the Nerd Out that blew my mind: The spine lateral flexion assessment.
Check it out:
In this clip she is evaluating my ability to hike one side of my pelvis and create lateral flexion (side bending) of my spine.
Can you see which way I struggle to hike my pelvis? And which direction I can’t flex my spine? (if you said, struggle to laterally flex left, and hike pelvis left, you are correct!)
Here’s what blew my mind: My perception of which way I could side bend more easily was not at all aligned with reality.
I thought I could laterally flex my spine left more easily, but turns out I had just found a way of cheating that movement by shifting my ribcage to the right. Can you see it? ‘Cause I couldn’t feel it until Margy pointed it out.
In fact, I’m kind of embarassed to admit it, but I was under the impression that I needed to work on laterally flexing my spine to the RIGHT! Oops.
Take a look at this photo below (a snapshot of me in the loading, or suspension, phase of gait):
Can you see which way my spine bends? And which way it can’t?
Check out how my spine only laterally flexes to the RIGHT, and never gets left.
Ideally, when we walk, our spine laterally flexes from right to left in the space of one footstep (in less than a second). If we can’t bend equally from right to left, we won’t move as efficiently, and will find alternative strategies to get from one foot to the other. But over time that compensatory strategy may result in things like, oh, I don’t know… Foot pain?
This insight led me to study more deeply the nerves that travel from the lumbar spine and sacrum down into the feet.
Yes, the nerves that keep our feet alive come out of the lumbar spine and sacrum, i.e. the lumbosacral plexus.
Divisions of the femoral nerve, eminating from L2-L4, branch off into the saphenous nerve and plantar nerves, give sensory and motor information to the sole and top of the foot.
Divisions of the sciatic nerve, eminating from L4-S3 branch off into the peroneal nerves, posterior tibial nerves, and calcaneal nerves, whcih give sensory and motor information to the heel and lateral aspect of the foot.
What if the nerves of my right lumbosacral plexus, that go all the way down my leg to innervate my right foot, are being compressed all the time, perpetually smooshed by my inability to get out of a right lateral flexion of my spine?
But me being subjective and blind and thinking I needed MORE right spine lateral flexion, I could have been making the issue worse.
For better or worse, I like to try to figure things out on my own if I can. I’m just glad I asked for help before I continued to jam my spine into a right lateral flexion for a few more months…
This split between perception and reality is completely normal.
When we have pain, we typically experience a loss of proprioception (position sensing). This is why it is so valuable to have a (or a whole team of) support person(s) who can objectively tell you what your body is actually doing, so you don’t make a bigger mess of things, like me.
Getting clear on how my spine was actually moving helped me modify my movement strategies (i.e. stop hurting myself), and things have been steadily improving. It also sparked me to learn more about the lumbosacral plexus and better understand the anatomy involved in my problem.
If we don’t have an awareness of how we are organizing our bodies in movement, we don’t have a chance at understanding how to get ourselves out of the patterns that are keeping us stuck with pain and inefficiencies. Every injury and pain problem is such a wonderful opportunity to learn.
Interested in learning more connections like this? Want help making sense of gait and movement assessments so you can help yourself or your clients/patience with more confidence?
Margy and I plan to do a live Case Study Nerd Out like this every month. Our next one is May 4th, and we’ll be working with a chronic knee issue case (not me this time). If you want to join in, the link to register is HERE.
Have you heard of the “Leaning Tower of South Padre”?
Ocean Tower.It’s not a happy story.
Officially named Ocean Tower, the unfortunate story of this premium condo building can teach us a lot about having a sustainable movement practice. Like, one that doesn’t lead to self-destruction and cost millions of dollars.
Ocean Tower was supposed to be awesome. 31 stories high. A sweet view of the Gulf of Mexico. Complete with gym, pool, and spa. Each unit would sell for ~$2 million USD. Except for one teenie tniy issue…
The foundation was shite.
In 2008, two years after constructions began, the building started to sink and lean. The whole thing shifted more than a foot. The official explanation was that the parking garage and the tower were mistakenly built connected, forcing the weight down upon the garage instead of on the tower’s core walls. There was also something not quite right with the soil quality.
In 2009, Ocean Tower was demolished because fixing the foundation would have been too costly.
Many of us are like Ocean Tower.
How’s YOUR foundation?
Hello, I am the Leaning Tower of Monika (by Lake Ontario). Built in 1989 on a shoddy foundation that began to sink and shift significantly enough to require a massive, costly overhaul by 2012.
Fortunately unlike Ocean Tower, I don’t have to abandon the project and self-destruct. I can focus on rebuilding the foundation I never had.
And so can you. And I will argue that this is where most of us don’t spend enough timewhen we have problems with pain and performance.
What do I mean by foundation?
Check out this quick excerpt from my latest Liberated Body (part 2!) workshop:
Your foundation is made up of the most basic building blocks of movement we humans can do- must be able to do, for higher level activities. The individual joint motions that, when combined correctly, become the raw material for all other movement patterns.
How well-built is your foundation? Are you missing any building blocks?
I had some foundational issues from the start:
I didn’t crawl (mom says I just wiggled “like a seal”)
I stood up and walked before 12 months
I hit my head a few times when I was very young
And those are only the things I KNOW about.
No crawling means my hip joints didn’t get to properly develop. In my infant body’s perception, I had a clump of feet-legs-pelvis-spine that couldn’t differentiate (kind of like Ocean Tower’s garage, mistakenly connected to the building’s core).
Standing up before 12 months isn’t an achievement. I didn’t “beat” the other babies in the standing race. Standing early is like ignoring Ocean Tower’s foundation problem, but saying, “fuck it, we can skip a few steps and get this tower up on time, it’ll probably be ok”.
Wrong.
And interestingly, skipping steps to get things done as fast as possible is kind of how I’ve lived my whole life. But that’s a tangent I won’t go down.
Are you searching for solutions for body problems, but feel like something’s missing? It might be something in your foundation, so basic it’s been overlooked.
Functional movement, strength training, and other modalities to educate our bodies how to “move better” and get out of pain might initially feel good. But for life-long sustainability, we need to know if we are missing any of our fundamental movement building blocks.
We all are. It’s just a matter of which ones.
Your Most Basic Movement Building Blocks
Do you like this drawing I made?
Excellent art by me 🙂 I drew this for my Liberated Body workshop participants last week
The lower two tiers are where I LOVE to play.
The building blocks: Primary motor responses (infant reflexes) and adult joint mechanics (upright gait).
When we get the foundation set right, everything above can fall into place with minimal effort.
Foundation level 1: Primary motor responses in utero
We start building our foundation from the moment we are a wee blob of cells implanted to mom’s uterine wall. Possibly even before that. And we don’t get much say in how this plays out.
In our cozy watery environment, we spend 9 months moving and developing our most basic joint motions. And it’s not random.
These building-blocks of movement are reflexive, pre-installed in our genetic code, and they serve to awaken the higher level “motor programming” needed for us to perform more advanced (but still basic) movements as infants, immediately after we are rudely evacuated into the “real”, air-based, gravity-ruled world.
But things can go wrong in utero.
You can be stuck onto the uterine wall weirdly.
Maybe there was a “kink” in your notochord.
Another rabbit-hole…
Mom could have been really stressed, or sick, and it affected you.
Maybe you had a twin and one of you crowded the other, and maybe your right arm didn’t get to move as freely as your beloved sibling’s did because it was smushed against mom’s liver. That jerk. He became a baseball pro, and you failed gym class.
And then perhaps when you made your grand entrance into air-world it didn’t go so smoothly.
Maybe you were flipped upside-down. Your head got stuck under mom’s ribcage. They had to do a C-section. They tried to pull you out by your butt, but your head was reallllly stuck under there. So they had to pull harder and harder. Then you came out with a loud POP as your skull finally was liberated. How stressful! Good thing you can’t remember (imagine that happening to you as an adult…).
The above two stories are actually clients I’ve worked with. But their stories were unconsidered as being relevant to their problems with pain, posture, and performance.
Consider the movements we do in utero as building the first layer of our foundation. We have little control of this, so don’t dwell on it too much.
Just be aware that these foundational movements matter because they prepare us for the next phase: The primary motor responses we develop as infants for the next 3 years of life that helps us to develop our brains and bodies in tandem.
Foundation level 2: Infant reflexes
Between 0-3 years of age we develop the building-blocks for upright biomechanics: Walking. These are our primary, or infant reflexes.
There is a reflex hard-wired in our DNA to help us wiggle and bend and twist our spines to get down the birth canal (assuming we had that luxury).
To unfurl our spine from the comfort of the fetal position (assuming we spent enough time in fetal position in the first place).
To turn our heads, extend our arms and legs, discover we have a right and left side of our bodies.
To turn over on our bellies and learn to extend our spine and head up against gravity. What IS this gravity thing and why is it so damn heavy??
To push and pull with our arms and legs against the floor and develop our wee little hip joints (unless you’re me).
To discover we have this awesome things called a big toe, and we can push it into the floor to propel ourselves forward through space.
These events happen in a stereotypical way based on genetic programming that is similar for all humans.
And eventually we get enough building blocks in place, stacked together in the correct order, to stand up and start to walk.
But not all of us are so lucky, and going back to this level to give back the movements we are missing can be incredibly powerful.
Foundation level three: Upright gait mechanics.
This is where, with gravity, we shape our muscles and bones by standing upright and bearing weight on two ludicrously tiny balancing blobs called feet.
In the gravitational field, we learn to flex and extend, rotate, and side-bend our hips, spine, arms, etc. And its not about strength- Its about discovering how our joints articulate when upright, loaded by our bodyweight, intending to move forward through space.
Its not a conscious process. Its more like a discovery of our musculoskeletal system and exploring what it can do.
However, even if we’re missing foundational building blocks, most of us still stand up and walk, and play, and exercise. And then we have accidents, injuries, and do things that distort how we’re able to move. As we age, entrpopy increases, and more building blocks go missing or put in the wrong place.
Where are the gaps in your movement foundation?
Our foundation for all movement is built on unconscious motor programming. And each level contributes to the next. And we shouldn’t skip any steps, but most of us do.
And good thing its an unconsious process. Imagine having to decide for yourself at one year old the “best” way to develop your body to walk? Imagine a one year old with the blueprint for Ocean Tower… Yikes.
You are probably missing a few important building blocks. How do we find which ones are missing and get them back? It will be super specific to your unique experience. This is why I am always hesitatnt to give specific exercises in these blog posts. Get assessed, don’t guess.
But you can consider questions like:
Did you crawl?
Did you stand up before 12 months old?
Did you have an interesting or challenging birth experience? (as the birther, or the birthee)
Did you have a stay in the NICU, pinned down with machines and tubes that kept you alive, but prevented movement?
Did you start a highly skilled movement form before 3 years old? (like all you dancers who started ballet when you were 2, I’m looking at YOU)
Did you have an injury or accident, especially before age 7, but at any age, that caused you to be immobilized, or altered how you moved, for a period of time? Like a broken arm or ankle, head accident, or illness.
Every insult to the body will cause a change somewhere. And if you change one thing, everything else has to change to accommdate that. That’s balance. Its not ideal, but it is “functional”.
We can get our foundation back by re-educating our bodies and moving with awareness, with a little guidance from someone you trust.
Awareness is hard
Knowing what your body can’t do is hard, but cause you don’t know about it yet… If you were already conscious of what you can’t do you probably wouldn’t have any problems.
The more I explore movement, the more I realize that the most value comes from re-visting the basics in more depth. Smaller, softer, subtler, more refined. Not bigger, harder, with more muscular effort and control.
When we move big and effortfully, we only reinforce what we can already do. This is why skipping ahead to strength training when things feel “off” or painful doesn’t solve an issue long term. It will not be sustainable unless your foundation is addressed.
Don’t be Ocean Tower.
Heavy deadlifts didn’t restore my shaky foundation. That only perpetuated my structure to lean and shift, like Ocean Tower, the taller it got, the shiftier it got.
When you can identify what’s missing from your foundation, and give those elements back, all your favourite higher level movements and activities become more natural and effortless, because more of your body is accessible to you.
And then, like me, you might realize that you don’t actually want to powerlift, because that “solution” was a lot of effort and kind of boring anyway. We get to ask the question, “Now that I have a foundation, what do I actually want to do with it?“. Your journey will be your own, and it may not be what you think.
And if any of that resonates with you, and you’re trying to “fix” your basic movement limitations with higher level activities, I encourage you to take a few steps back and see what could be missing from your foundation.
How to start rebuilding your foundation
Curious about what exactly I mean by “building blocks” of movement?
As I already mentioned, this will be a unique journey. You may wish to find a movement/therapy professional to assess and guide you through it.
As a general jumping off point, Gary Ward has created a few excellent online courses that may be of interest to investigate your upright joint mechanics and find what’s missing: Wake Your Body Up, and Wake Your Feet Up.
My workshop, Liberated Body, also helps you identify missing joint motions and coordinations that we need for upright gait (I teach it both online and in-person).
LB Part one is all about the level of gait mechanics: How should our bodies ideally organize for effortless, efficient gait?
LB Part two is a level deeper: How to explore the building blocks that preceeded upright gait- the primary motor responses, and then put those together in a meaningful way for effortless, efficient gait?
Liberated Body is available anytime as a home-study workshop. Part two must be done live, because I customize it to the individuals in the group, and work with you one on one to restore your foundation.
CONCLUSIONS?
Don’t be like Ocean Tower.
Its never too late to build your foundation.
I didn’t get mine right the first time, and exploring my missing building blocks continues to be an enriching part of my daily movement practice, and my life.
One of the most frequently asked question I get from clients and random folks on the internet is, “What kind of shoes do you think are the best?”. (obviously the ones that are 300 f#@*!&g dollars).
First, you don’t want to wear the shoes that I think are the best, because you’re not me.
Second, “best” is going to be different for everyone.
Third, no one can tell you flat out what is “best” for you, in any area of life, but also with shoes. Getting guidance is good, blindly following shoe advice is bad, and having a system to learn how to choose for yourself is the best.
And I have to confess that at the time of writing this, I am experiencing pain in my right foot such that I have to wear squishy slippers to not be in agony. Me forcing myself to go barefoot around the house won’t “Strengthen” my foot and eliminate the pain. Its a little more nuanced than that.
But, this isn’t about me. This is about you becoming a person who can think better about shoe choices.
So, are you wondering about what to look for in a shoe? Are you wearing minimalist shoes when it might not be in your best interest? Are your shoes keeping you stuck in pain or moving inefficiently? Read on.
Are you looking to join a barefoot shoe cult to justify your beliefs? Wrong blog post.
Are Your Shoes Working For You?
Two summers ago, I did my first ever online Movement Nerd Hangout called Are Your Shoes Working For You?, in which I presented a simple system to test the impact different shoes can have on your individual movement options.
A sneaky screenshot from one of the participants. Apparently my feet cannot pronate in my hiking boots. Sheeit!
Assuming the universal goal is “I want my body to feel WONDERFUL”, there are definitely a few key things to keep in mind when selecting a shoe.
First, check out this snippet from the shoe hangout in which I discuss the 5 things I look for in a shoe (and the whole hangout session is almost 90 minutes of shoe/foot/body detectivery, if you have the time for that).
5 Things I Look For In A Shoe
In summary:
Your feet need to be able to pronate and supinate in the shoes.
Try to choose soles that are as thin/flexible as possible but as thick/supportive as necessary.
Toe box should wide enough to accomdate the foot’s natural spreading in pronation,
Your body mechanics should not be negatively impacted by your shoes (this is where the Does My Body Like My Shoes? system comes in handy)
You must like how they look. Seriously. Live life in style 😉
The Does My Body Like My Shoes? System
Going back to point 4 above, how do we know if your body mechanics (and thus gait) are being negatively affected by your shoes?
I’ve got a super simple 3 step system you can try right now, based on the assessing motions your body needs to be able to access while you walk (Anatomy in Motion style). I actually stole this from Gary Ward. All credit to him.
Step 1: Do the movement self-assessments and get your barefoot baseline data on how your body can move.
Step 2: Put on a pair of shoes and see if your movement assessments change- better or worse- compared to your baseline.
Step 3: Categorize your shoes based on whether they mess with your body or not and choose accordingly to your goals.
You can do this with your orthotics as well to check if they are (or ever even were…) helping you.
At first I dismissed this system because it seemed too simple. But when has over-complicating things ever helped?
Want to try it? Grab a few pairs of shoes, and check out this snippet from a little later in the shoe hangout as I take the participants through the system.
The Does My Body Like My Shoes? system (patent pending… JK share this with all your friends and spread the love)
I also made a super handy workbook you can use to collect your data and categorize your shoes.Download it here.
I definitely learned something new about how my shoes are impacting my body.
For example, I learned that my favourite hiking boots actually restrict my ribcage and neck range of motion, but improve movement at my hips. And my Vivo Barefoot shoes improve movement at my ribcage and neck.
This information is useful for me to have so that I can track weird neck and ribcage symptoms (of which I have…) to whether or not I wore shoes my body didn’t like and failed to unwind with some self-care afterwards.
Knowledge is power, guys!
Of course there are other things to consider. Like if you have a dropped metatarsal head. Or a neuralgia. Or a bone that sticks out more on one side and rubs. Or an open flesh wound. But this is a nice starting point.
But the most important thing has nothing to do with the shoes you’re wearing…
Because if your body can’t move well, there’s not a shoe in the world that can teach your body to move differently. Only You can. And it helps to know if your shoes are in support of that trajectory, or against it. (And by “support” I don’t mean orthotics, in case that wasn’t clear…)
In addition to using my ultra-sophisticated shoe-choosing system, it is important to:
Have strategies to proactively make your body robust to any shoe you choose, and
Help you unwind after wearing crappy shoes.
That’s called “doing the work”.
Doc Martens, Chuck Taylors, and Vivos… All impact my body mechanics differently, and my work is to get my body to a state of unfuckwithableness to all shoes
Don’t outsource your personal power to the Shoe People
Repeat after me:
From this day forth, I am an empowered shoe-wearer. I solemly pledge to do the work necessary to become more resilient to all shoes. I will not blame my shoes for my body’s issues. I will then make informed decisions about my shoes from a place of logical reasoning.
Deal? And be OK that this might take a while. I’m not sure how long it will take me to figure out why my right foot hurts, but I’m committed to the process, and until I feel ready, imma keep wearing my slippers.
And now, because I know you’re still going to ask about minimalist footwear…
I want to tell a story about a client of mine (who will remain anonymous).
She is one of those barefoot idealists. I’m all for barefoot/minimalist shoes… I just wish my body could tolerate them.
And I wish her body could, too. But she’s in a bit of denial about that.
She had a pretty gnarly ankle injury when she was young, and when I assessed her, that poor foot was holding a dramatically caved in (pronated) posture, and could not supinate (create arch).
She had tried switching to minimalist shoes because she read it was the magic fix for all foot problems. I’m sure you’ve heard that rhetoric, too.
She also became one of the loudest proponents for minimalist shoes, going as far as to be a retailer of a prominent barefoot shoe company and posting videos of her doing barefoot running and hiking on her social media.
Thing is, she still had ankle problems.
After 4 sessions, we saw some nice changes in her ankle, but she asked me, “Do you think I should stop wearing minimalist shoes? Are they holding me back? Because… sometimes I think they are, but I love the idea of being barefoot”.
And my honest reply was, “Yeah they might be preventing you from making progress, and the only way to find out is to try not wearing them for a while and see what happens”.
Do you think she stopped wearing them? No…
Note that loving the IDEA of something doesn’t mean that it is something you should or can do. I love the idea of being able to eat 15 cookies everyday without consequences. But I can’t. Because that would be ignoring facts.
I haven’t seen her since, so I don’t know if she’s still having the same trouble with her body.
But what I’d like your to appreciate is that sometimes our bodies are NOT robust enough to tolerate minimlaist shoes, but maybe one day they could be.
When I tried to wear barefoot shoes, I quickly noticed that my right leg could tolerate them, but after 20 minutes of walking, all my left leg symptoms flared up.
All that to say, beware the loudest preaching people on social media, because what worked for them might not actually be working for them. OR they have some financial/emotional investment and aren’t being honest with themselves. Also, they are not you.
On the flip side, I have had a client switch from wearing heels everyday at work to rocking Vibram Five-Fingers, and noticed a huge reduction in her plantar fasciitis.
You can also check out an Instagram post recently by my pal from the UK, Helen Hall, in which she did some objective(ish) testing of how different pairs of SOCKS influenced her running mechanics , using her fancy shmancy force-plate/treadmill 3D analysis set up.
So I’ll leave you to make your own informed choices.
How to become robust to every shoe?
Ongoing commitment to getting your body moving more efficiently, and not just your feet. Because your feet have a movement relationship to every other part of your body, and without that relational harmony, a localized foot-centric exercise might not have the desired global effect.
And you’re in luck, because helping people (and their feet) move more efficiently is what I’ve dedicated my life to 🙂
A good place to start is my 4 session online workshop, Liberated Body.
I created Liberated Body to help you get to the source of your body’s problems so you can move and feel better (and wear all the crappy shoes you want).
I guide you through a step by step process to identify your body’s restrictions and give you back the movements it is currently missing.
You can participate anytime, at your own pace. Go HERE to register for the home-study (which I also help you through along the way in real time from the comfort of my couch. Thanks internet!).
Conclusions?
Just three.
Be honest with yourself.
Don’t believe what people say on social media about what you should do with your feet/shoes/life
Do the work to make your body robust to all shoes and make more informed choices.
Fitness goals…The only good reason to have them is so you can stop having them.
Why not skip to the part where you just stop having goals?
Trust me. I’m a fitness professional 😉
This January, while everyone else is making resolutions, doing some version of a “kickstart-being-healthy-in-30-days-fitness-challenge”, would you like to join me in my Anti-Fitness Challenge?
Free yourself from the expectation of getting fitter and healthier. And discover the joy of honest movement. Free from “shoulds”, and “have-tos”, and “I’m-bad-if-I-don’ts”.
Reclaim permission to move without needing it to be intense exercise. Without needing to get something out of it.
Reclaim movement free from utilitarian function.
What would that feel like?
Welcome to anti-fitness livin’.
But without fitness goals won’t I become an unhealthy slob?
I’m not saying become a blob.
I’m inviting you to become more aware of your unconscious motives for exercise.
Having goals for your body can be useful in that they can set a direction. But what if you’re going the wrong direction? Are your fitness goals ones that You came to on your own, that are meaningful for You?
I’d much rather people have no clear goal at all than to have blindly adopted a goal that was someone elses’ idea.
Not goals you picked up from Mom. Or your evil ballet teacher. Or the bullies you thought were your friends in highschool. (Oops I’m talking about myself…)
Remember that the person pursuing the goal has more value than the goal itself. In the process of working towards the goal, the goal setter ought to exist. The goal shouldn’t stifle your existence.
It’s quite possible that most of your fitness goals got accidentally chosen for you, without you knowing it. Think about that…
Can you think of one goal you had/have for your body that came uniquely from You? Or has every goal you’ve had for what your body should be able to do, feel like, and look like come from an external source?
Your parents. Friends. Social media influencers who really do care about you living your best life (as long as you’re wearing their clothing line…).
Everyone’s got “fitness shoulds” they believe and preach. But shoulds and goals are not the same.
You should be X% bodyfat to be healthy.
You should work on mobility with this or that trendy stretching routine.
You should build muscle mass, especially your butt.
And you should wear a particular shoe (or no shoes) while doing it all…
How do you know these “should-ers” aren’t just propagating the fitness goals (i.e. shoulds) THEY originally bought into, which gave them a sense of control by manipulating one teeny variable in the ever-increasing entropy of existence?
If you’ve ever felt out of control because you gained 5 pounds and can’t bear to face the world out of fear of being judged as a failure, you know exactly what I mean.
This January 2022… Just. Stop. Fitness. Goals.
And discover who is this You that keeps making fitness goals?
Screw that “new year new you” crap. This year, remember You. The original You. Untarnished by the opinions of others.
Everyone is trying to convince everyone else to care about the things they care about, which might not actually be the thing You care about.
And then we feel bad for not caring about the things that we feel we’re expected to care about. And then we feel worse for failing to to accomplish goals we don’t actually care about. Ironic, isn’t it?
Just admit you don’t care.
In the words of my spirit animal, Richard Feynman:
“You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you want to accomplish. The others’ expectation of you is their mistake, not your failing.”
What if every fitness goal we’ve ever had is based on a learned moral judgement that isn’t true? “If X is right and Y is wrong, I need to get to X because I don’t want to look wrong”. That says nothing about whether it is healthy for you.
But what if trying to be “right” and “healthy” is making you unhealthy and sad?
What if my “healthy” decision is actually your “wrong” decision? What if my “wrong” decision is the best thing YOUcould ever do for yourself?
For example, I read a book recently that advised to eat a lot more vegetables (among other things). I already eat a lot of vegetables. But I started believing I needed more instead of asking if it was true. It kind of hurt my guts, but I kept going with it. I got more and more obsessive and orthorexic. I started avoiding social situations in which I couldn’t follow the author’s specific (unreasonable) guidelines, because I bought into his version of “healthy”.
But for someone else, getting a little more interested in eating vegetables might be the switch they need.
Can you see how we just can’t compare ourselves with eachother?
No one can tell you what is best for you. We have to figure out our unique version of health, fitness, and whatever else, or we can get swept away in the flood of shoulds and expectations and comparison.
What hidden motives lurk in your background?
The first point in the Anti-Fitness challenge is to consider that every fitness goal you think You came up with on your own might actually something you picked up (like that particular virus that shall not be named).
The second point is to look into whether your fitness goals actually have nothing to do with fitness, but you’re telling yourself, and everyone else that they are?
That’s called confabulation. And we’re all doing it.
I’ll illlustrate this fitness-confabulation-theory using myself as an example (I’ve been an expert confabulator all my life).
Until age 25, I don’t think I made one single self-aware, self-sovereign choice for what to do with my body. (I’m still not sure I’m able to think for myself, but I’m working on it.)
Here’s a short list of the things I did and the hidden motives I had for them:
When I was a wee lass, my parents put me into gymanstics, soccer, swimming, dance. None of it was my original choice. In the end I stuck with dance, but not because I loved it. I wanted to quit when I was 14. I stuck with it because I felt guilty about being a quitter. (that said, I do appreciate and feel very fortunate for being exposed to a variety of movement forms. Thanks, for realz, mom and dad.)
Then, in highscool, I felt pressure to join the curling team because on of my best friends was the skip (look it up) and I wanted to be worthy to be her friend. And I feared that any time I spent not around her was time she would forget about me and make other friends, and I would be all alone… Ahh teenage angst. So I pretended to like curling, but it wasn’t MY self-sovereign choice. It was a choice based on fear of abandonment and moulding mysefling into who I thought she wanted me to be..
I picked up guitar (a thing you do with your body, even if not “exercise”) because I wanted to look cool. People who play guitar are cool, right? It wasn’t MY choice. I picked up the belief that being cool is important. But I actually found the lessons stressful because I didn’t deep down want to play guitar. The body positioning also flared up shoulder pain. So why would I keep doing something stressful and painful? Looking cool is important. Obviously.
I joined the weightlifting club in grade 9 because I felt I had something to prove. I wanted to be “different”. Turns out weightlifting is actually pretty boring and no one cares.
I joined the cross-country running club because there were some popular people in the club and I thought I could be popular, too, by association (but I didn’t inherently enjoy runnning. I’m no Helen Hall…).
Later in university, I started running againto prevent myself from getting fat. Running what I used to was to make up for all the crap I was eating, to calm my anxiety about being “too fat” to be a dancer.
Then I started high intensity interval training (HIIT) when running didn’t “work”, because I read in a book that “women should do treadmill sprints, not lift weights, to achieve their best physique, because squats and deadlifts build too much unsightly muscle bulk”. The book was written by a man… So I adopted some random man’s expectation for what I should look like and do with my body. And then I pulled my hamstring. Doh.
After university, after quitting dance, I started powerlifting because I wanted to be perceived as someone powerful and capable of success to compensate for years of feeling weak, and “failing” at my dance career. It had nothing to do with “fitness”.
Then when I started learning about corrective exercise for pain, I naiively bought into everything I was told would “fix” my pain: You need to stabilize your core. You need stronger glutes. You need to stretch your hip flexors. I did it blindly and rationalized it was working (even though I still felt shitty). I became an advocate for neutral spine and glute activation drills, but in reality I was trying to find a sense of control.
Worse, I wanted to convince everyone else to care about being in control, too. Because that made me feel more in control when everyone adhered to my definition of control and life could be predictable and stable.
Kind of like being in prison…
Guilt. Worthiness. Needing to look a particular way… Do any of those sound like joyful reasons to move?
Not ONE single thing on this list is something I did for ME, uninfluenced.
Not one thing was for the joy of movement. Or was linked to something that genuinely fulfilled me. It was all about meeting expectations. Control. Appearences.
This is NOT the kind of state one ought to be making goals from.
I don’t know about you, but I’m no longer comfortable making goals drenched in expectation.
Any goal set out of expectation or shame will eventually lead to duress. Injuries. Deep fatigue. Sadness and depression. A sense of being lost and confused…
And I am sharing this with you today because when I realized the extent to which I had given up my right to choose for my own body, and convinced myself so thoroughly that I even liked it that way, it came as a shock.
It felt… gross, to recognize that lack of self-respect. To realize that I couldn’t identify ONE thing I’d done with my body that was for Me, by Me.
The movement practice I developed based on AiM isn’t something I do to please anyone. Not as an exhibition to post about on social media. Not to control my weight. I do it because it makes my body feel good. It satisfies my soul’s curiosity for learning about movement and anatomy. I am genuinely a nerd about it.
In fact, in my early days of exploring AiM people said that what I’m doing is weird, and that I should stop.
One colleague actually went out of his way to sit me down privately and tell me that people don’t understand what I’m doing and it is off-putting so I should consider just doing what everyone else is doing in the gym, and stop doing this AiM stuff so that I’ll fit in.
And he claimed to be saying this because HE CARED ABOUT ME.
I don’t know what he actually cared about, but if he truly cared about Me– the being who wants to explore and learn- he wouldn’t have tried to place his goal of fitting in with everyone else onto me.
So you know what I said? Thank you and fuck that.
THAT’S when I knew I had found something that was mine to explore for Me.
And I’m not sharing this because I think YOU should do AiM, or care about moving efficiently. I’m not trying to sell you on any movement form or value system or eating more vegetables.
I’m trying to sell you on YOU.
That’s what the Anti-Fitness Challenge is all about.
How would you move if it wasn’t about exercise or fitness or how your body looks?
What fitness goals are leftover when you drop all expectations?
Do you have a hunch about what that might look like?
I once asked this question to a client and she started crying. The idea that movement could be something enjoyable, non-utlitarian, wasn’t something she’d felt since she was a kid. Me too…
I think rediscovering the joy of movement is something we are deep down longing for permission to do, but there’s so much fear that moving for the sake of moving is a waste of time. Why would you move if there was no external goal? If there’s nothing to get out of it?
Maybe because you love yourself. How about that part?
On that note, if it vibes with you, I invite you to my life’s mission: A commitment to an awareness of when I feel an outward expectation for what I should do with my body- How it “should” look, move, be. And just say… Fuck that.
Pause, and before going for that run, picking up that weight, kicking up into that handstand, ask:
Is this Meaningful?
Is this Enjoyable?
Is this Sustainable?
Is this Healthy?
And make a self-empowered choice for Me, by Me.
Just some thoughts today 🙂
The Anti-Fitness Challenge might be something I formally put together. But mostly, its for me. Because i need it. If you’d like to do it with me, shoot me an email and maybe I’ll put some structure to it. Could be fun? (probably not…)
After last week’s free Movement Nerd Hangout:Get Your Shoulders Off Your Ears, I experienced an unexpected and pleasant shift in how my creaky ol’ neck felt. So today I’d like to share a snippet from the session with the exercise I’m curretnly obsessed with, in the hopes it is helpful for you, too.
99.9999999% (not an actual statistic, don’t call the fact-police) of folks I’ve worked with need this movement at some point of another (but be fore-warned: Some people DON’T need more neck decompression! So if it feels bad in any way, please desist).
First, why should you care about neck compression/decompression? Specifically, compression of the occipital-atlantal joint (OA joint). Check out this quick intro snippet from the hangout that explains in a nutshell:
Ok, so OA joint compression can make your neck not feel awesome, limit range of motion (think, shoulder-checking whist driving), and isn’t very aesthetically pleasing (not that that really matters). Other considerations:
Blood supply, and therefore oxygen, gets to your brain through there
Spinal cord passes right through the occiput’s foramen magnum (“big hole”)
Cranial nerves pass through there, too (compression of which can make you feel all sorts of “off”)
Headaches- muscular tenstion and pressure-related can stem from OA compression
Reduced pumping of cerebrospinal fluid (which has ramifications for the health of your nervous system)
Some may experience depression (in my Upledger Craniosacral Therpay training we were taught that OA compression is a component of some presentations of depression that don’t have a clear root in chemical imbalance or trauma)
Via whole body movement connections, restriction at the neck can impact on EVERYTHING else: Feet, knee, hips, back, shoudlers…
The space between the occipital bone and the arch of atlas is what we’re looking to open up
The next snippet is from the part of the hangout in which the audio quality went to shit.
Fear not. I’ve made subtitles and some sketchy video edits that I hope are helpful for you to follow the instructions effectively to participate along!
Give my current exercise obsession, supine neck decompression, a go:
This movement is inspired by the work of Svetlanta Masgutova, through the training I have been doing in her MNRI curriculum (Masgutova Neurosensorimotor Reflex Integration). The intention of this exercise is to decompress and elongate the back of the neck with an extension through the spine.
Did you try it??? Go do it now before reading more 🙂
But now this brings us to a wee little problem. This is an example of looking at one part of the body in isolation.
Isolation and integration: When does neck decompression happen in connection with the rest of your body?
There is a specific time and place for every single joint motion.
The next step we need is to integrate WHEN and HOW this motion of neck decompression fits in with every other body part. So you’re doing the “right” motion, but are you doing it at the right place and time for your body to move most efficiently?
For example… Can you answer these questions about how your neck and your body should ideally move together?
What does the rest of your spine do when your neck decompresses? (flex or extend?)
What do both your feet do when your neck decompresses? (pronate or supinate?)
When you bend your knees,what is themost efficient thing for your neck structures to do? (compress or decompress?)
Understanding these connections between your neck and other distal parts of the body are what help us take an isolated neck exercise, and use it as a whole body learning experience.
The problem is, our bodies might have gotten so far off course that its a challenge to know what is “right” and “wrong”. Where’s North and South on the map? Wait… Where’d my map go!?
Well, I happen to teach a handy map of the human body in motion in my Liberated Body workshop (you’ll be able to answer all three questions above after lesson two and feel the benefit of a more coordinated, connected body).
Having a map of how the whole body moves, as an interdependent system, is what helped me get my body out of pain. I wish the same for you. That’s why I put Liberated Body together. And you can do it online with me without having to brush your teeth.
So if you’re keen to learn more about whole body movement beyond this one little part of your neck (and how this one little part of your neck has HUGE influence on the rest of your body), sign up for my upcoming workshop Nov 17th.
But even if you don’t join in the movement goodness, give this neck thang a try. Maybe commit to practicing everyday, and see how it feels for your whole body. I’d love to hear what you observe 🙂
A FINAL THING TO REMEMBER… This disclaimer about the neck decompression exercise:
There’s a lot of important tubes and structures (nerves, blood vessels, lymph, etc) housed in your neck. Be gentle. Don’t force things. Harder is NOT better. Go small and smooth and quietly. Use only 20% of your total strength. Use the effort you’d use to pat a kitten. If something feels bad, don’t continue. If things hurt, get help from a professional. It is IMPOSSIBLE to know if this exercise will be useful for you through the screen, and I am NOT a medical professional telling you that you MUST do this exercise to fix your neck problems. I cannot give you specific medical advice. My intention is to share a movement that may inspire you to take better care of your body and find new ways of moving it. I am not claiming this WILL FIX YOUR NECK. Just to be clear… 😉 Use your common sense, and do this at your own discretion.
A few weeks ago I went on a canoe trip with my dad to the beautiful Kawartha Highlands Provincial Park.
View from our canoe-in campsite aka no trace of humanity… Take me back!
On the 2.5-hour drive, my dad told a story about “that time I had car trouble and blah, blah, blah…” (you know the kind your parents tell that you smile and nod through, but aren’t actually interested in?).
To my delight, his story contained an unwittingly wonderful insight from a Toyota dealership mechanic explaining why we get injured, and a simple heuristic for how not to.
Turns out listening to what your folks say is useful sometimes.
To get started, we need a basic primer on how the brakes work in hybrid/electric cars (trust me, this is going somewhere…).
The Problem With Regenerative Braking
My dad has a hybrid-electric car. A Toyota Corolla, to be specific.
Hybrid vehicles are built with mechanisms that make you morally superior save you fuel and battery life beyond all those other gas-guzzling, Earth-poisoning, death-mobiles.
One such mechanism is called regenerative braking.
What is regenerative braking?
Unlike conventional friction braking systems, which work by physically clamping the wheels to stop them from turning, regenerative brakes work by running the wheels “in reverse” to slow the car down. Simply taking your foot off the gas pedal initiates the regenerative braking mechanism. Additionally, the resistance created by the motor charges the battery. Cool, right? I thought so!
But here’s the important part: This mechanism causes the car to slow down a lot faster than a non-hybrid/electric, and so you don’t need to step as hard or as frequently on the brakes.
Just a little tap, taparoo.
Apparently some regenerative braking systems as so highly sensitive that just taking your foot off the gas pedal is enough to trigger the brake lights.
Sounds like a win-win-win, right? Saves your brakes the wear and tear, preserves the battery life, and gives you more miles per gallon.
But… And this is an important but. There is an ironic darkside.
A lot of hybrid and electric car owners (such as my pop) find that their brakes are actully wearing out in spite of using them LESS. What the heck?
This is when my ears perked up in my dad’s boring car story. Wait, what? Why would brakes wear out if the system is set up so that you use them less??
Use it or lose it
The “use it or lose it” principle is usually discussed in the context of the brain, neuroplasticity (the brain’s capactiy to re-wire neural circuits based on new inputs) and body- If you consistenly stop exposing a particular set of neural circuits or body parts to stimuli, your system interprets there is no need for them, and you “lose” access.
Or remember Wolff’s law. Bone remodels and lays down new cells based on the forces imposed upon it. This is why after a bone fracture force needs to go through, i.e. bear weight on it, it to stimulate new tissue development and heal.
This is also how bone spurs develop- Muscles pulling excessively on a bone will stimulate it to grow.
Basically the same thing that happens when you wear a pair of pants that are too tight, and by the end of the day they stretch out a little and fit a bit looser, based on the forces of your body on the pants.
This is also part of why some folks get osteoporosis. Lack of weightbearing exercise with high enough forces to stimulate bone to grow. If you don’t use it, you lose it.
*NOTE: See a completely unrelated story about a 97-year-old-woman and her osteoporosis at the end of this post.
The remedy for use it or lose it is to start using it again (and this becomes harder and more daunting the longer you wait).
What does this have to do with brakes?
Apparently, the use it or lose it principle applies with regenerative braking. Because the system is set up for inherent disuse (ironically positioned as a key benefit), the brakes are prone to corrosion because they don’t get used often enough.
You’ve seen how a bike chain rusts and stiffens if you leave it out all winter. Use it or lose it.
If you don’t deliberately “exercise” the brakes frequently and forcefully enough, when the time comes you actually DO need to hit them hard, say, to avoid running over a kitten, those rusty rotors might fail under the new load.
Don’t run over kittens. I just started fostering this cat. Look into her eyes and solemnly swear you’ll take care of your brakes.
As the mechanic at the Toyota dealership told my dad’:
“If you have a hybrid car, you won’t be using the brakes as hard. You don’t really use them as much as you would in a regular car. So what you kind of have to do once in a while is deliberately brake really hard to make sure they aren’t getting stagnant from disuse and accumulating corrosion”.
All I could think was, well isn’t that just how bodies work…
Bodies get “corroded” from disuse, too, and then wear out “suddenly” when exposed to a demand they weren’t adequately prepared for.
Or, as Gary Ward expresses the equation: Injury = You + Rate of change
What do you think? See Gary’s IG account @garyward_aim for more nuggets like this.
Another example you might relate with…
Were you super excited to get back to working out after a year of lockdowns? Did you mayyybe go back to your prior routine full-force like no time had passed? But all year long you didn’t once “tap the brakes” to keep all your body parts moving? (as a bodyworker/trainer, I saw a lot of this in 2021…).
And how many other so-called “syndromes” and “diseases” might actually have roots in disuse? Some types of arthirits? “Frozen” shoulder? Ankylosing spondylitis? Is disease the reason for disuse? Or is disuse the cause of disease? How do we count our chickens and eggs??
I’m not a medical professional, just a lowly bodyworker, and what I observe is that many labels are nothing more than fancy ways of saying, “a thing that stopped moving and now hurts and we’re not sure why…”. (and I also recognize that many labels are genuinely useful and liberating).
So if the problem is that you just stopped moving it, maybe try… Moving it? Sensibly, of course (that’s where people like me come in to help ya).
And much like the regenerative brakes on your uber-efficient hybrid/electric car, nothing seemed wrong, until…
It just came out of nowhere!
It didn’t come out of nowhere. You just weren’t aware of how little that body part was actually moving prior to the issue.
Disuse is a perfect set up for corrosion, mechanical damage, and malfunction of the non-moving parts. For your body, and your brakes.
Ankle sprains are a good example. Lots of people have sprained at least one ankle.
If you spend most of your life never exposing your ankles to the demands of ankle-rolly bumpy terrain, the soft tissues supporting your ankles (muscles, tendons, ligaments) are just like your car’s disused brakes: Slowly “corroding” away from disuse, but you don’t even notice because it’s so gradual, and you never put yourself in situations in which you even need to know your ankles exist, let alone use them in a challenging situation.
And then, one fateful day, whilst out walking your beloved pooch, you randomly trip, roll over your ankle, sprain your deltoid ligament, and realize how cushy your life has been.
Did that injury really “just come out of nowhere?” Or were you setting yourself up for it for years because you didn’t ever deliberately use the structures that would have (should have) checked your ankle from rolling over and causing damage?
Look at all those amazing ligaments (ie “brakes) in your ankle and foot! Use ’em or lose ’em.
How many of our injuries that just came out of nowhere are the result of the “regenerative braking paradox”?
Joints act, muscles react
I am reminded of Gary Ward’s second big rule of motion: Joints act, muscles react.
And how are muscles reacting? To decelerate excessive joint motion away from center.
This is why his work centers around helping people discover the eccentric loading (the muscle contraction as it lengthens) of their muscles to manage (slow down) joint motion. This is akin to “tapping the brakes” at every joint in their body, to check excessive motion that could end up in an unsafe, potentially harmful range of motion. Like in our ankle sprain example.
If you can teach your body to move based on the joints act, muscles react thought process, then you are keeping your intrinsic regenerative braking system responsive, healthy, and on-point.
I encourage you to read more about this, and the other 5 big rules of motion in Gary’s book,What The Foot.
Conclusions?
I LOVE that what I anticipated would be another boring “that time the car broke down” story actually turned into an amazing analogy for how to keep our bodies resilient and healthy.
If you don’t deliberatedly use all the bits and pieces you are built of with enough frequency and force to keep them at peak function, you risk losing function of said bits and pieces. This has been my general movement practice philosophy for years, and I was tickled that it has a parallel in an area I know nothing about: Car brakes.
If you don’t use the brakes often enough to know if something’s not functioning well, you’ll never even know there’s potentially a problem.
Do you deliberately use your ankles often enough to know they can manage a roll?
Do you explore using your wrists often enough to know they can support you in a fall?
Do you purposefully flex your spine often enough to trust it can tolerate sneeze #55837? (apparently the average person sneezes ~70000 times in their life… Don’t ask me if that’s an accurate stat)
A car’s brakes manage it’s motion, just as our body’s soft tissues are like brakes that manage our skeletal motion. A movement practice based on “joints act, muscles react” trains the body to effectively decelerate potentially threatening wayward motion. This is NOT the same things as stretching and strengthening.
I am also reminded of how counterintuitive it can be to know how to care for ourselves…
Did the folks who built regenerative brakes intuit that they would create the disuse problem and lead to many cranky customers wondering why their brakes were shot even though they barely used them?
Did the folks who built the comfiest, thickest-soled, most ankle-supportive shoes ever intuit that it could cause a disuse problem and the plague of immobile ankles and feet? “But I never DO anything extreme to cause damage and I always wear my orthotics! Why are my ankles so shit?” (that’s exactly it, my dear…)
If only our bodies came with a user manual, and a well-informed, honest mechanic from the dealership…
Well, fortunately there are people in this world who are dedicated to helping you write your own body-owner’s manual.
People like me. And I am just one of many.
My aim is to empower people to learn about their bodies so they can rely less on therapists. And at the very least, be able to better communicate with them so they can get the collaborative care they need.
In fact, this is the most frequently reported benefit from my Liberated Body students: “I can communicate with my physio/massage therapist/chiropractor better now and it feels more like teamwork than blind faith”.
This is important, because advocating for our health is not easy when we don’t know anything about the thing needing fixing, leading us to naiively believe that we need to come back to the friendly chiropractor to get our neck adjusted every week for the rest of our lives… Don’t buy it.
If you’d like to learn more about how your body is built to move so you can systematically explore and prevent the disuse problem discussed in this blog post, I recommed checking out my online course Liberated Body.
Liberated Body is a series of four movement lessons based on the teachings of Gary Wards’ Anatomy in Motion. You’ll learn how your body is meant to move through the gait cycle (how you should be able to walk), and then compare whether or not YOUR body can access all those mechanics correctly.
Check out Liberated Body HERE. You can do it as a self-study, or look for the next live (online) workshop date.
Or whatever. Just make sure you keep tappin’ those brakes ahrd every once ina while to make sure they still exist.
*THE STORY:
If you have osteoporosis, can you improve your bone mass? Some people say that you can’t, you can only slow it’s wasting. I thought so, too. But then one of my clients told me a story about a 97 year old woman she knows with osteoporosis who made it her mission to build her bones back. Apparently she did exercises for 3 HOURS DAILY (I forget if it was for a year, or less), and when she went back to get her bone density tested again, it had gone up! I think only by a few percentage points. But how inspiring is that? And honestly, if you’re 97, you’ve definitely got the time and no excuses to commit 3 hours per day to rebuild your bones. And now the running joke when she says something can’t be done is, “Just put in 3 hours a day”. No excuses.
So, your trainer/physio just told you you have an anterior pelvic tilt that needs to be corrected because it’s bad. OMG. You’re doomed! Right? Or… Maybe not? Is an anterior pelvic tilt actually bad? And posterior tilt good?
On the left: Anterior pelvic tilt (tailbone lifts up) On the right: Posterior pelvic tilt (tailbone tucks down)
Repeat this as your mantra: There’s no such thing as an inherently good or bad movement.
Have you ever been told that you have the dreaded “anterior pelvic tilt”? And it’s the cause of all your body’s problems? I have. And I believed it, too.
Most of us have been taught that some movements are universally “bad” and we need to fix them. Anterior pelvic tilt is nothing more than three words describing a movement a healthy body should be able to do, not a life sentence to pain, misery, and moral judgement.
Don’t listen to Dr. Google
I did a Google search for the neutral term “anterior pelvic tilt” and the first result tells me it’s something I should care about correcting! WHAT??! What if I didn’t even know what a pelvis is, and now the first thing I’ve learned is that mine might be wrong…
Just check out these results from the frist page of Google:
If you’re a pilates teacher no doubt this was drilled into you
Just a sampling of fix-yer-dang-pelvis-AT fear-mongernig from first page of Google
Contrary to what you may read from Dr. Google about fixing your pelvis AT, any movement we avoid (deliberately or unconsciously) will limit us. Labelling movements as “bad” and avoiding them, our bodies will, ironically, become less free, less efficient, less flowing (and less fun!).
Pelvis anterior tilt is but one example. Another one is foot pronation. So is shoulder blade (scapula) protraction.
I, Monika (trust me, I’m a movement proefessional), hereby give you permission to do all of those things with your body, not that you need permission. In fact, I ask people to reclaim these “bad” movements in my Liberated Body Workshop.
Does an pelvis anterior tilt need correcting?
Now you know: No. Your body needs to be able to do an anterior tilt well, and do it with every step you take.
And there’s more to an anterior tilt of the pelvis is more than jamming your tailbone up to the ceiling. If it hurts your lower back to do an anterior tilt, you’re probably doing it wrong. Don’t avoid it, learn how to do one well.
Why?
You need an anterior tilt to load your extensor chain (glutes and hamstrings).
You need an anterior tilt to absorb shock through your hips and spine with each foot step.
And, you even need your pelvis to do an anterior tilt well if you want your jaw to be able to decompress. (Do you wear a night guard for bruxism? Hmm, maybe you’d like to assess your pelvic tilting as part of a hoistic strategy?)
The idea we need to “correct” a pelvis anterior tilt because it is bad and causes back pain is just an idea that is based on an incomplete, compartmentalized understanding of the body in motion. We can do better.
The truth? We need to be able to do an anterior tilt WELL just as we need to be able to do it’s opposite- posterior tilt, well. BOTH matter for the health of your hips, spine, and well, your whole body (and your life).
Think of it this way: If you could only choose to turn left or turn right for the rest of your life, which direction would you choose? Is one better than the other? Or would you like to do both? If Zoolander taught us one thing, it’s the pain of living a life with only the option to go right.
“I’m not an ambituner… I can’t turn left”
Case Study
A few days ago I worked with a client with lower back pain. He is a former high level curler 🥌. His back pain feels worse when he does a pelvis anterior tilt.
Traditional thinking would have us believe that we should avoid anterior tilting his pelvis like the plague and get him to squeeze his butt and tuck it under, right??
Not so fast…
As you’ll see in the video below, he actually has HUGE amounts of pelvis tuck-ability (posterior tilt). Wayyy too much. And you’ll hopefully see how it is dragging his spine backwards behind his feet and into a ton of flexion.
I’d also like you to observe how his pelvis anterior tilt pushes his whole torso forward, like a tree tipping over, putting his head well in front of his feet. This is the movement that is flagging up his back pain because he is shearing forward from one segment in his lumbar spine, instead of evenly articulating across all joints to make a healthy extension.
Check out the analysis I did below: Pelvis tilts BC (Before Cogs)
https://youtu.be/5rlDViqaTtM
If you’ve been studying the newly released Anatomy in Motion online course from Gary Ward and co.: Closed chain upper body biomechanics in motion, then in the first chpater you will have learned that for healthy spine motion in upright gait we’d like to see your head stacked on top of your pelvis when it moves into AT and PT. Not swaying you forward and back like bamboo in the wind.
We call that stacked up pelvis on ribcage on skull organization on-axis. I also like to call it a shishkabob. Your spine is the stick. Mmm… Kebab…
In my clients’ case, his entire torso is being pushed forward by a pelvis anterior tilt, which shows us a few important things:
a) This person is not able to access an actual pelvis anterior tilt (and therefore there’s nothing to “fix”, it’s a movement to re-discover!)
b) This person probably has a imitation in intervertebral articulation into spine extension, which is needed to keep his head over his pelvis (actual movement between each individual joint in the spine, instead of being a tree trunk) This is important for spine health. And for giving the abdominal muscles something to do. Want abs? Add being able to anterior tilt to your list.
Now check out THIS second video, which I took after doing 10 minutes of corrective exercise to help him and his body re-learn what both pelvis anterior and posterior tilts with proper spine articulation feel like.
Pelvis tilts AC (AFTER Cogs)
https://youtu.be/EbxkPxqsMmo
Can you observe the cleaner pelvis and spine articulation, and less forwards/backwards swaying of his whole torso? He also reports no more back discomfort. Booyah!
What did we do?
Cogs: Our favourite exercise in AiM world. Which I’ve written about before.
Check out THIS video of me doing some floor cogs for an example of what I took my client through (or learn more in day 1 of Liberated Body with me :)).
And I can’t say enough about the Upper Body Biomechanics in Motion course, which has an amazing section on cogs if you’re an uber nerd and want the technical details.
Such a good course! I’m biased and I strongly recommend 😉
Now, what is important to understand is that in the AFTER video, my client is not consciously trying to do “good” pelvis tilts because he now knows what it should look like.
I’m not saying, “Hey Bob, based on what I told you about pelvis motion, can you make that happen with your mind-power?”
I’m asking, “Hey Bob, show me what happens if you ask your body to tilt your pelvis both ways without over-thinking how you’re doing it”.
Can you appreciate the difference?
This is a representation of his body having better unconscious access to a new way of moving that takes LESS control, less forcing, less micromanaging, and less energy. More likely to happen naturally in each step.
What are the take-aways?
If anyone tells you that a movement is bad, don’t believe them. BUT, sometimes movements can become unhealthy- asymmetrical, excessive, too small, too slow, too fast, unorganized with the whole, etc- then we need to re-train the bdoy how to perform it, coordinated with the rest of the body.
Whhile a pelvis anterior tilt was a trigger for my client’s back pain, the “fix” wasn’t to eliminate pelvis anterior tilt from his life. The problem was that he couldn’t do one at all, and was shearing from his spine too much, instead.
Too much posterior tilt can be just as much of an issue as too much anterior tilt. My client in this post is is case in point.
We need our bodies to be able to access both posterior AND anterior tilts of the pelvis. Remember Zoolander.
The better we become at observing movement, the better was can get at finding solutions that help us reclaim our options for moving better.
So… how well can your pelvis move? 🤔
Want to learn more?
Movement myths abound in the worlds of fitness and therapy.
Knowing what a human body should be able to do and having a safe, non-judgemental space to explore how your body moves so you can understand what healthy movement feels like for you is so important for getting out of pain and optimizing performance.
Want to learn more about optimizing how your body moves, based on gait and the teachings of Anatomy in Motion? This is the kind of things I help folks with in Movement Detective School .
If you’re ready to stop wasting time with generic exericses and stretches, and you’re serious about learning how to undo the patterns you have adopted over the years due to past activities, sports, repetitive postures, injuries, and accidents, I’d love to work together on that 💪
I’ve dedicated the past 10 years of my life to learning how to get my body out of pain by exposing it to the truth of how our bodies move in gait, and I have so much about that process to share. Shoot me an email if you have any questions 🙂
This is chapter 1 of The Movement Detective Manifesto, the “textbook” I’m creating for Movement Detective School. Want a PDF version of this blog post? GO HERE. Print it out or put it on your e-reader, because eye strain due to screen-time sucks!
Here’s an obvious and undeniable fact about life: You’re going to feel pain and that will suck.
But don’t let that depressing introductory sentence get you down (please keep reading, it gets better, I promise) 🙂
In fact, pain is an amazing mechanism that has kept me alive long enough to write this, and you to read it. Imagine not being able to feel pain. As delightful as that initially sounds, think of how easy it would be to die.
Congenital insensitivity to pain is just that. While extremely rare, sadly, many individuals stricken with it tend not to survive the bonks, burns, and boops of childhood. In this regard, pain is actually our ally. We shouldn’t want to live completely numb from it.
This brings me to the topic for today, and my biggest, burningest question for the past 10 years: How does one get out of pain?
At age 22 I was quite sure I was on the fast track to getting a hip replacement in my 40s, and I wanted to know what to do to prevent that future from becoming my life. I just wanted to enjoy walking again.
And you know what, I succeeded. Walking is my greatest, simplest joy. I’m pretty sure my right hip will last the rest of (or at least most of) my life. How did I do it?
Is there a “get out of pain” X-factor?
Why do some people succeed at getting out of pain, while others don’t? Why are some people crippled by it ’till the end of their days, while others make “miraculous” transformations, bouncing back stronger, fitter, better than before?
Take Tiger Woods for example. He’s faced multiple serious, career-threatening injuries, and then came back to totally crush his competition. What makes him so special? (hint, it is not because he’s a wealthy celebrity).
There are obviously a mind-breaking number of factors involved. Some we can control, many we can’t.
But the “x” factor, so to speak, is one that we all actually have power over: How we consciously respond to our pain.
This is where I think things get interesting. And tedious. And nuanced.
For example, most commonly, folks will respond by trying to ignore their pain. Why? Lots of reasons.
Maybe because they genuinely don’t have the resources (which was once my case as a poor student). Or perhaps because they are afraid that acknowledging the issue makes it too real (and reality is a drag, I know). Or because “I don’t have the time for this I’ll deal with it later” (and if I wait long enough maybe the problem will resolve on it’s own?).
But ignoring pain has a cost. Like, an actual costs-you-money cost.
“…total financial cost of pain to society, which combines the health care cost estimates and the three productivity estimates, ranges from $560 to $635 billion... the annual cost of pain was greater than the annual costs in 2010 dollars of heart disease ($309 billion), cancer ($243 billion), and diabetes ($188 billion) and nearly 30 percent higher than the combined cost of cancer and diabetes.”
Yikes. That’s fine for the folks who do have liberal amounts of cash to throw at their pain. And there is no shortage of therapies, surgeries, and drugs promising relief (which may or may not relieve anything).
Sadly, less affluent, desperate people can go into massive debt paying for pain solutions. Some people will develop debilitating drug dependencies, out of no fault of their own (which costs them even more later in the arena of mental health support).
Then there are the DIY-minded types of people who, rather than spend all their money (like a sucker), search the web for low-hanging fruit: Generic exercises on Youtube for x, y, and z. Consumer-grade gadgets like lasers and massage tools. They might even deep dive into what specific foods to eat to fix their pain (an anti-inflammatory, fish-oil-based, gluten-free, dairy-free, zero-fun diet).
But here’s a cautionary tale: A gentleman I met on a course watched a video on Youtube about how one’s ankle can get “stuck” and cause problems for the whole body. So he got the bright idea to DIY it, and used a sledge hammer to “knock his ankle free”. Needless to say, that made things worse. DIY is admirable, but not always effective…
The frustrating thing is that despite all these efforts, clever tactics, and dollars spent, none of the above can guarantee you’ll actually even get out of pain. Why the heck is that?
Here’s a weird question that I think neatly states the point of this manifesto…
Is Elton John the kind of person who can get out of pain?
On the morning that I’m writing this, I saw this post from Elton John (age 74!) reshared on Facebook:
“At the end of my summer break I fell awkwardly on a hard surface and have been in considerable pain and discomfort in my hip ever since. Despite intensive physio and specialist treatment, the pain has continued to get worse and is leading to increasing difficulties moving. I have been advised to have an operation as soon as possible to get me back to full fitness and make sure there are no long-term complications. I will be undertaking a program of intensive physiotherapy that will ensure a full recovery and a return to full mobility without pain..”
Read that last sentence again: “will ensure a full recovery and return to full mobility without pain”.
Those are confident words. What do you think makes Sir Elton so sure of his success?
Think of another 74-year-old you know- Your lovely, retired, elderly neighbour, Gina. What if Gina fell and needed hip surgery? Are her chances higher or lower than Elton’s to “return to original performance” in two years? (and by the way, 2 years is a period of time considered to be a minimum standard for completing a healing process, in some therapeutic communities.)
First, let’s state the obvious. Elton John’s got the cash, and really should have no excuse to fail from the “buy-pain-away” perspective.
He can clearly afford the most expensive, highly qualified rehab team in the world. He isn’t shackled to a blue-collar day job, so he can dedicate every minute of each day, and all his natural physical resources towards rest and recovery. He has a team of people who can do things for him so he can let his body heal.
So what hope is there for Gina next door, living on a wee school-teacher’s pension? Or even yourself- What chance do you have if you don’t have the financial, temporal, or physiological resources to get well?
Well I have a potentially bold statement to make: Having wealth as vast as Elton John cannot guarantee you will heal from pain. In fact, it might even get in your way unless you are the kind of person who can heal.
Elton John is obviously a crazy talented, successful musician with near-infinite resources to devote to getting out of pain but is he the kind of person who can do it? I guess we’ll find out in 2023 (and I personally think he is, for reasons you’ll read about further along).
I argue that low economic status is not a good enough excuse for being stuck in pain. I’ve witnessed people in meager financial situations get well, without spending even 0.0001% of Elton’s budget. And I’ve witnessed wealthy people spend far too much money on therapies and get zero relief, but keep spending anyway, simply because they can.
In his book Behave, Robert Sapolski investigates the correlation between low socio-economic status (SES) and poor health.
Summarizing the SES/health gradient situation, he writes:
“…the ‘socioeconomic status/health gradient’, in culture after culture, the poorer you are, the worse your health, the higher the incidence and impact of numerous diseases, and the shorter your life expectancy”
But how does one explain this phenomenon? I think what Sapolski writes next is interesting and empowering:
“…it’s not so much being poor that predicts poor health. It’s feeling poor- someone’s subjective SES (e.g. the answer to ‘How do you feel financially when you compare yourself with other people?’) is at least as good a predictor of health as is objective SES.”
Whoah. So could it be that how you feel about your ability to get your body out of pain is the “x-factor”? Not money? Not education? Not access to healthcare?
Could it be that what it really takes to get out of chronic pain isn’t something you can buy: It’s how you are.
Meet Person 1 and Person 2
There are two kinds of people (regardless of socio-economic status):
Person 1: Wants to stop feeling their pain, right now.
Person 2: Want to become the type of person who can get themselves out of pain, now, and in the future.
As the cliche goes, Person 1 just wants the fish. Person 2 is willing to learn to catch their own fish, even though they might have to start with a stick with a string tied around it, DIY-rod humble beginnings.
Person 1 is into immediate gratification and fast results without considering long-term consequences.
Person 2 accepts the need to make changes to their most fundamental lifestyle habits and belief systems. And in my humble observation, Person 2 is the one who succeeds in freeing themselves from chronic pain in the long-game, where Person 1 fails to accomplish anything sustainable or healthy.
Ironically, Person 2, while less likely to have vast amounts of cash to inject into the problem, is more likely to solve it. Why? Because they have no other choice. They can’t fall back on money to fix something money can’t actually fix: Who they are.
The irony is that having lots of money gets in the way of healing because Person 1 can feel very productive throwing money at their body’s problems, but they are still Person 1 with the sole focus on not feeling pain (i.e. distracting oneself).
Person 1 will almost always live with a degree of pain because they haven’t learned the skills and characteristics, or put in the effort required to truly liberate their body. And no, being very good at ignoring something is not the same as freedom from it.
Person 2 is an empowered, independent person, with a DIY spirit. I call person 2 the movement detective.
This manifesto is an invitation to discover, cultivate, and master the inner discipline it takes to become a movement detective in your own right, and take ownership of your path out of pain.
I hope to empower you to consider the value of this path, regardless of economic or educational status.
Its not about the things, its the person
Most people in the movement and therapy world aren’t talking about the inner discipline required to get out of pain. Most people are touting their specific things: Exercises, modalities, gadgets, pills, surgeries, orthotic devices, courses, and diets.
Most people are blaming external things like their mattress, job, and non-ergonomic chair, instead of putting the onus on the person laying on that mattress, working that job, and sitting in that chair.
Yes, all of the above matter, but the tool will only work in the hands of the person who knows how to use it. No one thing is guaranteed to work, unless you are the kind of person that thing will work for.
And that’s not something you can buy, thus I have nothing to sell you but on the power you have within yourself. Or maybe one day I’ll endorse a chair…
I’ll wrap this chapter up by saying that this manifesto is for you if you’re curious to learn what this process of learning how to trust Yourself to look after You looks like. To cultivate a state of sovereignty. Maturity. Physical mastery. A realization that how You are is the only way your body (and your life) can be.
So what about Elton John? I personally think he is Person 2- a movement detective. He just seems like a man with a vision, doesn’t he?
Stay tuned for chapter 2 in which I’ll unpack what it means to be a movement detective, share some practical strategies, and tell some stories I think will convince you that movement detectivery is a worthy, fulfilling path.
PS What’s Movement Detective School? It’s where I hope to empower you to learn how to use gait-based exercises as part of a holistic, individualized, healing movement practice, so you can rely less on other practitioners to “fix” you.
