When was the last time you gave your feet some tlc… and nope I am not talking about a pedicure. I'm talking about toe stretches, toe yoga and earthing.
Our feet serve as an important component of our body. They are the base that carry our wonderful bodies around day to day, but how often do you give your feet a stretch?
Did you know, each foot is made up of 26 bones (so for both feet that's a quarter of all the bones in the body) and a combined 100 muscles, tendons and ligaments, which make up a super strong foundation.
Think of the most sophisticated suspension system in a car and you will still not be close to the profoundly advanced sensory system we own with our humble feet. Information about about our terrain is gathered by 200,000 nerve receptors in our feet. These are used to soften and stiffen our feet and joints, plus alter our posture as protection against injury.
Pretty cool right? So our feet deserve some attention.
And one way we can ensure we are looking after feet and creating a strong, wide, solid base is through simple toe exercises.
I invite you to take your shoes off and stand up. Soften your knees and with your eyes closed, bring attention to the soles of your feet. Notice all the areas in contact with the earth - the pads of your feet… the way your weight is spread across all ten toes and your heels… two thirds of your weight in the front of your feet and one third in the heels.
A simple toe yoga exercise you can try whilst brushing your teeth or apart of your morning routine. Is to stand tall and begin wriggling your toes, then curl your toes as if to pick something up and release - repeat a few times. You can then start playing around with trying to lift up just the big toes and then reverse by lifting up all of the small toes whilst pressing down with the big toes. These are some of the movements we explore in the Earth section of a Fawe movement class.
Don't worry if this feels quite challenging at first. In our everyday modern lives, moving our toes and feet like this is not usually apart of our everyday routine.
Have fun exploring the range of dexterity in your feet and see how training and mobilising your toes can have an impact on your other movement practices. And by all means after a good feet work out, take your gorgeous toes to the spa too.
If you would like to explore more about re-wilding your feet and how that can improve your posture and performance in running etc, I would highly recommend checking out the master and all round awesome guy Tony Riddle. I was super excited when he released his book called 'Be More Human' - I honestly haven't put it down!
Enjoy your tlc for your toes. To discover more practices you can try and home, plus book and podcast recommendations, you can sign up to our Fawe newsletter.
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