Novel Input

Our feet are incredible in so many ways.  One of the biggies is that during the gait cycle each foot is a rigid lever and then a malleable support.  They vacillate between the two functions within seconds, over and over, every step we take.  As we push the toe off the ground the gorgeous spiral of the foot locks the bones into place, allowing us to put tons of force through the leg and propel us through space.  After heel strike, the bones unwind and conform to whatever surface we are walking over.  

But, what surfaces are we walking over in today’s urban environments?  Flat ones.  Thats what kind.  The road is flat and the floor of your house is flat and most trails are flat.  So even if we have removed our feet from the foot coffins  (ahem, I mean traditional shoes) our foot is still constantly interacting with flat surfaces.  

Think about the environments in which our beautiful feet evolved.  As our ancestors became bipedal they were walking across the Savannah, over pebbles and rocks and nary a flat surface in sight. Every time the foot hit the ground, each of the 33 joints in each foot were aligned slightly differently to accommodate varying terrain.  This allowed more proprioceptors to be fired, more nutrients to flow to the joint and increased blood flow. The foot was made to move in all the planes. These days, we limit foot movement first through shoes and then with the actual ground we walk on.

As I have transitioned to barefoot shoes I’ve found so much pleasure in hiking on uneven ground.  Its like giving myself a foot massage every time I take a walk.  I seek out rocks to step on and my feet love it.  It's a virtuous cycle.  My feet have become more flexible, thus able to walk on more varied terrain.  The varied terrain feels great and I seek it out.  It in turn moves my joints,  and creates more flexibility and strength.  Hooray!

Give it a shot!  Start slow.  Foot rolling first.  Then smush a hard ball with your feet.  Then, with thick socks, walk on smooth rocks for a little bit. Keep working up and soon your walks with be your very own foot masseuse, available wherever there is a rocky trail.

Violet Chachki and Community

 A year and a half ago I left the Pilates studio I been working in for 8 years and opened a very small studio of my own.  I have loved most aspects of being independent and running my own business.  What I found what I missed most was daily interactions with a bunch of smart bitches.  We could chew on our current obsession with glutes, confer on a challenging movement or talk through our own movement issues together.  

Since then I’ve looked for a group of people who want to talk about about the shit I want to talk about.  Basically I want to talk about movement, but I wanted to talk about it from the bottom up.  I wanted to throw out ideas for exercises, have others try them and see how they felt on other bodies.  I wanted to have a place to bring the challenging movement issues that I don’t understand and see what other perspectives were out there.  

Ive searched extensively among the barefoot people. I found a lot of Bros.  I loved the range of the groups I found, with many people from different arms of fitness coming together, runners, weightlifters, pilates, and yoga. ( yay! New perspectives!)  But as I joined the communities online I found a ton of talk about shoes.   (Important but pretty boring once you’ve found a good pair of shoes). I didn’t find a ton of people looking to engage about movement.  I found some people who most definitely did not want to engage about their own privilege. (Boo.)  I left those communities pretty quickly.  And then, deep in the lockdown, I was listening to Violet Chachki on the Bald and the Beautiful podcast.  Ms. Chachki was describing how she wasn’t seeing any of the glamorous, vintage drag wanted to see out in the clubs.  She came to the conclusion that if she wanted to see it she had to create it.  And it was fierce.  So, I'm not seeing what I want to see in online communities.  Im going to se if I can create a place to nerd out and talk about the body from the ground up.  Come on in.  But lets keep the shoe talk to a minimum.