Yeah, yeah bunions are a trendy topic and I’m cautiously hopping on the bandwagon to offer A perspective influenced by my training with Anatomy in Motion (fully disclosing my biases as an instructor).
Do I have anything new or groundbreaking to add to the bunion discussion? Nope.
Do I have any revolutionary evidence or new theories to prove the causative mechanism for bunion formation? Nope.
Do I really know anything? Not really.
Wish I knew who to credit this to…
In a perfect world, we’d want to understand what factors led to the bunion(s) forming in the first place… Shit footwear? “Genetics”? Repetitive poor movement of the body above? Previous injury? Probably a little bit of everything.
Regardless of the causal factors, it should be empowering to hear that there are some consistent mechanical findings that often go together with a bunion that you can start to address right away.
First, watch this:
As I describe in the above video, a common mechanical consistency with most buniony feet is that the joints posterior to the 1st MTPJ DO NOT GAP on the medial border of the foot and, instead, the big toe joint is doing allllll of the gapping (abduction). A good strategy would be to start to redistribute the gapping of the medial border across ALL joints, not just the one MTPJ.
I think some people call that load-sharing, a term most commonly used in reference to spine motion and can describe why some people have back pain.
Much like a spine with a hinge point at the thoracolumbar junction, through which all their extension is occurring, a foot with a “hinge point” at the 1st MTPJ, through which all their pronation is occurring can lead to a structural distortion over time that can become stiff and rigid and not super comfortable.
The intention of the exercise I demo in the video is to MINIMIZE the valgus/ABduction/ER/gapping (whatever you want to call it) motion of the big toe, and MAXIMIZE joint opening at the other joints on the medial border of your foot, encouraging healthy pronation mechanics with even joint motion distribution through the entire foot.
And if you understand that as a movement principle, you can get really creative with how you go about working with a bunion, or any part of the body.
What about toe spacers?
In the video, I am using the sock-between-the-toes technique in a way that is reminiscent of a toe spacer. But this is not meant to be a passive solution, like toe spacers often are portrayed as. The goal is use the sock as a tool to re-educate your foot to move differently. Not to hold all the toes apart 24/7 in hopes it will change foot mechanics. Like putting a book under your pillow hoping to learn passively in your sleep… I WISH it worked that way.
I’m sure there is a time and a place for toe spacers as a passive tool, but I’ve personally never recommended people to use them, nor have I ever used them myself (nor have I ever told anyone to STOP wearing toe spacers- Your feet, your choice). Except for a few times I painted my toe-nails…
I find the most repulsive thing about this photo to be the choice of polish colour. Bleh.
Here’s another creative set-up one of my clients came up with to redistribute her big toe’s excessive valgus to her forefoot and rearfoot:
The band is pulling her valgus big toe into ADduction (towards midline of the body), while she pronates her foot to encourage opening of the joints on the medial border of her foot without excessive big toe bunionization (that’s totally a word). The black AiM wedge is promoting inversion of her forefoot to further encourage healthy pronation mechanics.
Want to learn more?
If you are a manual therapy or movement practitioner and you’d like to learn more about foot mechanics in gait, I will be teaching an Anatomy in Motion Module 1 seminar on Sept 22-24 2023. If you are in the Greater Toronto Area, come nerd out!
This was a quick overview, not intended to be specific medical advice. If you are looking for help for your own body, it is important to receive individualized guidance for your body’s unique issues. Get a professional you trust to assess your unique needs, or get in touch if you’d like to work together to find movement-based solutions to help your body move and feel better.
In the past couple of months I’ve seen several individuals with feet like THIS:
The above left foot is the actual imaging from one of my clients. She had a weird sportsing accident that twisted her foot when she was young and the bone got pulled into this position and no one showed her how to move back into alignment again!
Not to be confused with a bunion… This is an adducted first metatarsal, creating medial compression at the 1st metatarsal/cuneiform joint.
One of my metatarsally challenged clients has has knee pain. Another one has big toe pain. Another one has BOTH knee and big toe pain. And yet another has ankle and hip pain.
But there is hope. All of said clients have found relief by using simple foot self-mobilizations (like the ones I share in the video below) to restore foot function, encouraging the first metatarsal to move back towards the rest of the foot (abduction) and open the compressed space.
Notice the first metatarsal bone is on an angle- The distal end of the bone (closest to the toes) pointing inwards towards the body’s midline (hence adduction**). With the 1st met sitting at this angle, you can see how it closes the space on the medial side of the 1st met/cuneiform joint, compressing the area where the yellow star is.
For reference of “normal”, in the impossibly perfect illustration below, all the metatarsal bones are more or less parallel to each other.
Self-help, self-mob, self-love<3
I made an awkward video to demo two self-mobilization techniques you can get started with if you have an adducted first metatarsal that’s jamming your 1st met/1st cuneiform joint.
Give ‘er a go:
How do feet get like this?
I know with certainty that 3 of my current peeps with this joint alignment have had a traumatic injury to the area (broken bones, sprains, etc), because they told me. But feet can gradually adopt this posture over longer periods of time as an adaptive movement strategy, possibly to compensate for something else like a knee, hip, or even spine with limited movement options/injury history.
And no… Unlike a bunion, I don’t think we can blame poor, tight fitting footwear for this issue 😉
Mobilize, then Integrate
After you’ve mobilized the 1st metatarsal/cuneiform joint, it will be essential to integrate this newly won joint motion in a functional gait pattern to teach the body what to do with it whilst walking normally.
Below is an example of an exercise I did with one client:
The band is tractioning (is that a word?) his 1st metatarsal bone laterally to gap the 1st met/cuneiform joint while he is actively weightbearing into his leg, using AiM wedges to promote healthy pronation mechanics.
In a healthy pronation of the foot, the 1st metatarsal needs to ABduct (away from body’s midline), and the 1st met/cuneiform joint will gap medially (inside of the arch stretches open).
Every time you step forwards onto one foot, a natural gapping of this joint should take place, so you can appreciate how if the 1st met is stuck compressed/ADducted it will NOT be able to open when it should, putting a handbrake on pronation, and potentially a host of other coupled joint movements up the chain like knee flexion, hip flexion, and other things that need to happen when the foot pronates (which is why this one joint not moving can contribute to a multitude of body pains).
Movement-based vs. surgical solutions?
If you’ve received a diagnosis like “arthritis”, and your foot looks like the above photos, and you are getting recommendations for surgery, and you haven’t yet tried a movement-based approach sloooowwww down.
It boggles my mind that the most widely accepted solution for a jammed/adducted 1st metatarsal joint is arthrodesis, i.e. a fusion of the joint. Because the joint isn’t moving… So let’s fuse it so that it moves even… Less…? Arg. I’m sure that there are times when joint fusions are the best solution. But I would encourage folks to at least try a promote-movement-based approach before a stop-movement-based surgical approach. What have you got to lose?
If you are a manual therapy or movement practitioner and you’d like to learn more about foot mechanics in gait and these magical movement-based solutions I speak of, I will be teaching an Anatomy in Motion Module 1 seminar on Sept 22-24 2023. If you are in the Greater Toronto Area, come nerd out!
And if you are looking for help for your own body, it is important to receive individualized guidance for your body’s unique issues. This was a quick overview, not intended to be specific medical advice. Get in touch if you’d like to work together to find movement-based solutions to help your body move and feel better.
**NOTE: Some folks may name this an ABduction of the 1st met, because it is pointing AWAY from midline of the FOOT. I am choosing to use language that uses the midline of the BODY as a reference point.
Do you have stiff, crunchy shoulders from being hunched over a computer? I do. And I don’t even have a desk job… Oh god that would destroy me. I’m wayyy too sensitive.
But sitting isn’t the real villain... A lot of my cranky-shouldered desk-warrior clients tell me it seems impossible to pull themselves away from their work and stretch because they fear not being productive and even feel guilty for taking a break to take care of their bodies. Do you sacrifice body for your work, too?
While I can’t directly help you with the self-care guilt-trip, I’d like to share an exercise with you that can help de-crunchify your shoulders, and you can even do it sitting in your chair. In fact, I did it several times throughout the hour I spent editing the video and writing this blog post, and it helped me to not feel like a complete crumpled mess by the end.
Check out this 6 minute movement exploration on Arm Spirals:
Arm Spirals is an exercise is from the Anatomy in Motion repertoire. What makes it so unique and effective is that it emulates how our arms should rotate during arm swing while we walk.
It also is not JUST a shoulder exercise, but a whole body pattern that brings to life how the upper back and neck need to move in coordination with each other for your arms to swing and rotate with ease in gait. It’s allllllllllll connected, and I explain HOW specifically it all connects in the video.
The first minute of the video describes how we’d like to see the arms rotate as we swing them, and the next 5 minutes is a guided movement exploration excerpt from a Liberated Body Workshop I taught in 2021 at Shift Bodywork in Toronto.
But that fear of lost productivity will probably get in your way of actually making time to do exercises like this and putting self-care as a top priority.
FACT: You can actually only focus on a task for ~50 minutes before your brain say’s “peace out”.
A high-performance coach client I’m working with (on his feet) told me he encourages his own coaching clients to take a 10 minute break every 50 minutes. So that fear of not being productive if you take a break? It’s actually bullshit 😉 Take a 10 minute movement break. Your productivity and your body will thank you.
What if this exercise hurts to do?
If you have pain during this exercise it is important information. Don’t ignore it.
A healthy human body should be able to move their arms like this without discomfort. Do not push through pain to do the exercise. It might indicate that you could use some specific guidance to restore pain free movement and shoulder range of motion, and I’d recommend seeing a practitioner you trust to get some individualized help.
My main gig is working with human bodies 1:1 to get to the root of their movement limitations that keep them stuck with pain and poor performance. Get in touch if you’d like to chat about receiving custom tailored guidance on how to un-stick your body with a deliberate movement practice.
I hope you enjoy the freedom and ease in your shoulders, neck, and upper back after exploring this movement with me. Let me know how it goes 🙂
Raise your hand if your neck and jaw feel fantastic right now (honestly, mine feels a little like s#!te). I am going to assume your hand is down…
I’d like to share a 9 minute movement exploration to help you find a little more space in your neck, reduce tension and gripping in your jaw, and stand with your head in a better alignment over your body. Instead of like this:
If you’re feelin’ shrimpy, clear a spot on the floor and follow along with me:
I use this exercise with my clients who have limited neck range of motion, compressed (retracted) jaws, jammed occiputs, and even migraines.
Who should do it?
Most humans who stand upright on two feet within Earth’s field of gravity will enjoy this exercise. Particularly if:
You have a forward head posture.
The muscles at the back of your neck and upper traps feel hard and constricted and tight.
Your jaw muscles always feel clenched and sore.
You grind your teeth at night.
You get muscle tension headaches.
You feel like your shoulders are always up to your ears.
You’re like me and all of your life stress manifests itself in your neck and jaw.
You’re like me and you’re constantly smiling in an attempt to overcome crippling social anxiety.
When to do it?
Anytime!I personally like to do it as part of my morning movement practice and before and/or after I do any deliberate movement/exercise. You might like to use it to break up bouts of sitting so you don’t become a stagnant clump of spineneckjaw (how I feel right now). Or use it to relax anytime you notice tension building up.
I hope you enjoy this little movement exploration and found it useful for helping your neck and jaw (and life) feel more chill.
If anything about this movement feels uncomfortable or bad in your body, don’t force through it. Not everyone needs this exercise. If you have questions, please ask!
Want more help for your neck?
You may enjoy my Movement Deep Dive session: Check Your Neck.
Learn how your neck moves in relation to the rest of your body in gait.
Self- assess your neck
Explore movements that give your neck back it’s missing options for healthy ranges of motion.
And if you’d like more personalized guidance, shoot me an email or a DM on Instagram or Facebook, and we can talk about how to get your body feeling and moving better.
Ok, I admit, the title isn’t 100% truthful… I didn’t heal my chronic pain with Anatomy in Motion.
Rather, by studying my own body in motion using the AiM Flow Motion Model of gait, I received tools to engage in a life-long journey of optimizing movement, which has led to a gradual (sometimes painstakingly so…) liberating of my body from chronic pain.
Semantics aside, I am delighted to have been invited to speak with Anat Cohen, a yoga teacher and movement researcher in Israel, for her interview series, “How They Healed”. She asked me to share my story about how I got myself out of chronic pain and dance injuries, and specifically how Anatomy in Motion helped me.
Check out the interview here:
I found our conversation to be thoroughly enjoyable. Probably because I got to selfishly ramble on about my life and all sorts of nerdy and esoteric topics that are dear to my heart, like:
– How reframing our relationship with pain as a great teacher is a key part of healing – How getting stronger is not necessarily going to cure pain – How discovering and studying Anatomy in Motion was a game changer for understanding how to heal my body – Why optimizing gait matters – What my recent experience with foot pain is teaching me about myself in other areas of life beyond the biomechanics – And why we need not to fear valgus knee and foot pronation
And more 🙂
Much of the work I share online, in my Liberated Body courses, my blogs and videos, on the Gram, are a dissemination of what I’ve experimented with, failed at, and learned from, in my journey of healing my own injuries and chronic symptoms.
My hope is that through my constant bumbling and failing through life, and movement, you may find some small insight into your own process of healing with movement.
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.
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.
In my 3 Essential Tools resource (a must-read for budding Movement Detectives) I extolled the importance of continous learning. Education is truly one of the most valuable tools for helping our bodies move with more ease and less pain. If you don’t know what a healthy body should be able to move like, how are you going to get yours to move better??
Education comes in so many forms: Attending courses and workshops (online and in person), diploma and degree programs, working directly with mentors, doing independent research, and reading. If you’re me, lots and lots and lots of reading.
I confess… I have a reading problem.
Not that I can’t read well, but that I have a tendency to get so stuck into reading a book that I might shirk my more pressing life resonsibilities. This can get me into trouble when I actually have important shit that needs getting done. Adulting is hard sometimes…
That said, some books have literally changed the trajectory of my life.
Has that ever happened to you? After reading a book, something actually woke up in you that forever changed how you think and engage with life?
It’s rare… Most of the time, embrrassingly, I struggle to summarize just three key take-aways after finishing one chapter. Reading a LOT of books clearly doesn’t equate in me actually absorbing the content.
And then there are some books after which the trajectory of your life shifts a few degrees.
Have you heard of the 1 in 60 rule in aviation? It states that a one degree change in direction can result in a disproportionately large shift in final destination: Each degree off over a distance of 60 nautical miles translates to 1 nautical mile off course. Think about the crazy implication this has for where you might end up… A completely different city, or country, or even continent!
Some books push us that one degree (hopefully in a meaningful direction…). How amazing is that?
So I’ll stop blabbering now, and get to the point. I’d like to share five books that stand out in memory as having changed the trajectory of my life. I don’t expect that they’ll have the same life-changing effect on you, but one of these titles might lead you somewhere new that you wouldn’t have explored otherwise.
Well of course this is at the top of my list. I don’t know who or where I would be right now had I not read this book. Is has had the largest impact on both my professional and personal philosophies for working with human bodies in motion, including my own.
WTF is a mind opening read that made me question the conventional fitness and therapy paradigms around stability and core training, foot mechanics, and the utility of stretching. Like the tagline says, “A game changing philosophy…”. This book also led me to take the plunge and take the six day Anatomy in Motion immersion course (7 times…) which at the time was a big financial investment. Now, I am working with Gary and Chris of AiM as both a mentee and mentor to help other AiM students learn more deeply.
Here’s a story I’ve never told here before: When I was 21 and getting hamstring rehab, my physiotherapist lent this book to me, and it was the inspiration to create a program to help banged-up dancers with back (and other) problems build strength and prevent injuries (The Dance Training Project).
This is the book that first got me interested in learning about my own body. Up until then I’d never given much thought to the notion that I could have any effect on changing my reality. This book inspired hope in me that, with this new information about how the spine works, I could take responsibility for my back problems and get myself well. Honestly, I haven’t referenced this book since I was 21, though I’m sure there are some excellent golden nuggets to review. But the biggest thing I got from this book was the sense of empowerment that came from learning something new about my body that I previously had zero awareness of: It woke up my inner Movement Detective.
This book denotes a major pivot in my life: The moment I learned what it meant to feel “good” after moving my body. I was 19 or 20 at the time, and decided on a whim to take a yoga class. It was the first time I actually breathed while moving- What a concept. It challenged my body in a whole new way comapared to my dance training. And after the class, something felt very different. I was used to feeling broken down after dance and exercise, but that day I left the studio feeling clear headed, calm, aligned, and “good”. I didn’t know what good actually felt like until then!
Intrigued, I went to a local indie bookstore, and this book jumped off the shelf at me. The first section the author’s story, his journey into yoga and meditation. I had never considered trying meditation before, and I gave some of his exercises a try. It was a gradual shift, but this was my initiation into observing my own thoughts, and that movement could feel restorative, not punishing. I began willingly observing myself. Slowly, I started to value awareness and self-inquiry. I don’t know if this book is anything special compared to other yoga books (haven’t read other yoga books), but it was the exact book I needed at that moment in time.
This lovely book gave me practical tools that helped me reduce my neuroticism to a level that made my life much less sufferable. In her book, Katie outlines “The Work”: A four-question process for investigating the sneaky beliefs and thoughts that are keeping us stuck in the same old cycles of emotional reactivity, and holding us back from evolving in all areas of life.
I remember the first time I used her framework I immediately felt as if a weight had been lifted. I realized for the first time the depth to which my unconscious belief-systems were ruling my every thought and decision, repearing the same behaviours over and over. I can’t recommend this book enough for anyone looking for a structured, systematic way of compassionate self-inquiry.
Amanda Palmer is a musician who began her performance career as a “living statue” street-performer (and made more money than she did at her “real job”). Her story has nothing to do with the body, but it heart-warmingly covers important themes common to all humanity: Defning your personal version of success and marrching to the beat of your own authentic drum. The courage it takes to risk being vulnerable. The value of human connection, and nurturing relationships (which I often still take for granted). The magic that can unfold when you put your trust in people and life and your intuition, even when things are uncertain. That sneaky little “fraud police” character within that can sabotage us from taking action towards our dreams. And so much more (in fact, after reading this book I was inspired to start writing my book Dance Stronger).
Disclaimer: These books probably will not change your life. Don’t get your hopes up 😉
I think books find their way into our hands at the exact time we need them, for eactly where we are in our lives at that moment, for the exact lessons we personally need to learn. Life works in mysterious, magical, and serendipitous ways.
It is 100% possible (more like, probable) that you could read one of the books and get absolutely nothing useful from it. Boring. A waste of time. And that’s ok 🙂
Anyway, I’d love to hear if you’ve read any of the books on my list, and then what the top five books are on YOUR life changer list 🙂 Because I can always use more book recos.
*BE AWARE: Some of the book links are Amazon Affiliate links, which means that if you click through and happen to purchase one of the books, I get a microscopic % of the profits. I’m not doing this because I’m a greedy-pants person, but because every litte bit helps support me spending hours of my time writing this blog. I am ever so grateful if you do wish to purchase one of these books, that you choose to go through one of my links, and help support me writing more for this blog (and simultaneously divert some $$ from Amazon into my pocket). Thank you! 🙂
Why should you stretch? I don’t know… Maybe you shouldn’t. But maybe you should! I can’t possibly tell you what you should do, because your body knows way more about itself, than I know about it 😉
Stretching and flexibility seem to be the universal go-to solutions for pain and tightness.
Sometimes, especially if you’re me, stretching makes things feel worse.
Being more flexible doesn’t make you a better person.
Most people (including me) could save their future-selves a lot of time and money and suffering by asking, “why is it tight??“, before scrolling through Instagram for fancy stretches (probably demonstrated by a very attractive-looking, half-naked person with thousands of followers and a free ebook)
After writing part one, the question I got stuck on was why do we silly humans stretch in the first place? This question took me to some interesting existential spaces which may not be useful for 80% of you. Whatever. For the other 20%…
…Why Do We Stretch?
Despite our incredible cortex, opposable thumbs, and abilities to think, reason, and create cool shit, at the base, we humans are wired just like any other animal- With massively over-riding instincts, beyond reason, for sex and survival.
So I got to wondering: Do animals stretch?
Apparently they do, and they do so involuntarily, typically accompanied by yawning in the transition from sleep to wakefulness.
When animals “stretch”, it is referred to as pandiculation, and, according to THIS serves as a way to:
“reset the central nervous system to the waking state after a period of sleep and prepare the animal to respond to environmental stimuli”…
and,
“to maintain the animal’s ability to express coordinated and integrated movement by regularly restoring and resetting the structural and functional equilibrium of the myofascial system...“
A fancy way of saying, “keep shit moving good, like it should”.
Now please enjoy these animal pandiculation videos:
And here is a very satisfying video of a lion yawning:
If you want to read more about pandiculation and how modern humans are using this “primal” wisdom to “reset” their systems, and develop “natural” mobility, go right ahead. I’ve got nothing new to add to that conversation.
My mind wants to know: At what point did humans stop instinctively, pandiculating, and start stretching deliberately? And why? Was this a useful and necessariy transition?
When did the yawny, morning system-reset, become a form of remedial therapy (one that many of us feel guilty about not doing)? Or a means of control? Or a show-offy thing to post about online and have competitions based around?
Yoga competitions still baffle me.
An amazing show of discipline… But I am perplexed by the existence of competitive yoga. Next we’ll have competitive meditation and I will lose all hope for humanity.
Is the move from casual, instinctive pandiculatory movements yet another sacrifice of our evolution from quadruped to biped?
We suppressed our pandiculatory instinct, but gained rocket ships. I’ll leave it to you to judge that however you like.
Did our technological prowess hit a tipping point at which we were able to live with less physical burden? A point at which, with less manual labor, stretching had to become a compartmentalized “thing” to make up for the lack of general movement?
Some people say stretching originated in ancient Greek and Roman times, as a means to train their soldiers.
Or do the origins of modern stretching date back to ancient India, before yoga turned commercial, when it was a means to prepare the body to sit more comfortably for extended periods of quiet meditation (non-competitively…)?
At some point, did stretching became a “thing” to do in addition to living, because we started setting lofty goals for living that were beyond the capacity our bodies currently had?
So could it be that we use stretching to serve the ambitions of our higher brain- the frontal coretex? Whether that be to sit for 12 hours per day to build a piece of life-changing software: Stretching as remediation for sedentarianism (not sure if that’s a real word).
Or whether that be to run a marathon: Physical preparation; preventative care.
Or to get out of the physical pain caused by either of the above: Damage control; emergency care.
I guess it doesn’t really matter. Because its not even about stretching per se, but consciouly noticing when you’re neglecting your body’s needs for healthy movement and responding with the right action. Which may or may not warrant stretching.
Let’s get personal
Let’s make this less about humans, generally, and more about you. Why do YOU personally stretch?
If you keep asking “why” enough times (usually 7 is enough), you can get to the root of any question. So I invite you to try this exercise with me:
Ask yourself, “Why do I stretch?“. And don’t think too hard. Just write the first things that come into your head (below are my answers, yours will hopefully be different, because you are not me):
Monika, why do you stretch? (and let’s just assume for now that I actually stretch)
Because it makes my body feel good. But why?
Because my body feels crusty on days that I don’t stretch, and I like not being crusty and in pain. But why?
Because I’ve had injuries and accidents that have distorted my posture and movement potential, and I need to do something daily to balance things out. But why?
My body is healthier and functions more efficiently when it is more balanced. But why?
Because I’m not in pain, and I can participate in my life without distraction or fear or frustration. But why?
Because life isn’t about being stuck at home shackled to my couch, or bed, passively watching TV, drained of energy. I’ve got stuff to learn, explore, and share, and I need my body to be able to cooperate. But why?
Because my body is a vessel for me to live life in a way that is meaningful to me, participating with my highest values, part of which is that I genuinely love the feeling of moving for moving’s sake.
Ahhh there it is at #7: I want to be free. Free from pain. Free from restricted movement. Free to explore. Free to learn. Free to enjoy moving. Free to participate with my life and what fulfills me in it. (I guess my workshop is called Liberated Body for a reason).
Is this the answer you came to as well? You want to set your body free? Not just because pain is annoying, and it sucks, or you want to be more flexible, but because your body is your vessel for participating in what is meaningful to you?
I think this could be a universal principle. Humans just want to feel free. Physically, existentially…
Note here that I’m not saying stretching will help you find meaning in life. If only it were that easy… Remember, I don’t really like stretching. But I know my reasons WHY I’m doing what I’m doing with my body, so now I can choose wisely what I do with it.
Stretching may or may not be part of your process, but let’s put stretching aside momentarily and look at the question: What does it actually mean to set your body free?
What if discipline is real freedom?
When people say things like, I want my body to feel “free” and “more open”, what does that mean? What are we trying to set our bodies free from? And what does a free body feel like?
Do you want to be free from restricted body movement? Do you want to be free from how you restrict your own body’s movement?
Is freedom to be able move the way you want to, when you want to, free from worry? (like, if you ever wanted to try a handstand without fear of breaking your money-maker…)
Do you want the freedom to NOT move the way you want to? (like, to sit on a plane for 10 hours, or sit to meditate, and not be crippled afterwards)
Does freedom mean the courage to take up a new, random sport, or go for a difficult hike, and trust your body has the basic body mechanics to perform it without injury?
Speaking of basics, is real freedom is having the discipline not to skip past the basics? To put in the tedious, not so enjoyable work now that you know will bear fruit later.
Maybe freedom is having more options for how to move because you put in the basic, foundational work. You can’t paint a masterpiece without doing the rough sketch, first.
Maybe you don’t have the goal to build a skyscraper, but if you limit yourself to building a foundation that will only support a bungalow, you only have that one option. And one option is really no option. And who knows if you might change your mind about wanting that skyscraper 10 years from now?
My favourite definition of freedom so far is from Krishnamurti’s book Think on These Things. I feel that his definition applies particularly nicely to the body, too.
Per Krishnamurti, freedom means (his quoted words in bold):
Not to want to BE anything more than what is. To be free from ambition.
Acceptance of whatever our bodies are experiencing without needing to immediately fix it, or solve the problem. Freedom to sit with the problem long enough to understand it before trying to solve it. Not seeing the body’s limitations as a reason to condemn onesself, but as something to be curious about and explore.
A state in which we are are not acting out of fear or compulsion, not needing to cling to a sense of security or protection.
As it relates to stretching, sometimes we compulsively stretch tight muscles out of fear, because it makes us feel like we’re doing something useful when we don’t know what else to do, because we lack information. That’s what I did with my hamstring. It ended badly.
Not to operate based on traditions or do something just because other people are doing it.
Many sports/movement forms have a traditional way of doing things- Stretch a certain way, warm-up a certain way, not so much because it is useful, but because it’s how it has always been done. Beware tradition.
To be able to understand who you are, and what you are doing, moment to moment.
Being present with our bodies. Moving with awareness, not just mindlessly going through motions. And knowing why you’re doing it. If you understand who you are and what matters to you, you can link any movement practice to your highest values.
And, freedom isnot just to be able to do or say whatever you want, or go wherever you wish, but to understand what is happening, and why.
Paradoxically, setting the body free isn’t about doing whatever you want to do with reckless abandon, ignoring the facts (yes, you are free to run that marathon, but what is your body saying about that, really?).
Freedom isn’t ignoring and outsourcing your responsibilites to your body, even though it might feel that way. It’s about disciplining yourself to understand the real demands your body has. Asking, is this right for me based on my body’s current state of affairs? Have I done my foundational work? Do I know why my knee hurts, and am I ignoring it? And putting in the time to do the work to get things moving well again.
Freedom might be taking ownership of our bodies needs- When taking responsibility becomes not what we feel we have to do, but what we actually want to do, and find delight in it, for it’s own sake.
But I don’t want to take responsibility, that sounds like no fun
I 100% relate. Every year at tax time I just want to ignore my responsibilities. I may have learned how to take responsibility for my body, but I’ve got other problems…
Taking responsibility of our body’s needs for healthy movement initially feels like no fun- even scary- because it means looks at how you’ve failed to pay attention to your body. It means seeing just how long you’ve been going in the wrong direction, and how much work it may take to correct that.
If that causes a feeling of overwhelm, you’re not alone. The overwhelm is just a sign you don’t have the information you need to make your first step in a new direction. Get to learnin’!
But its not easy… I had a client tell me that he spent 40 years of his life deliberately dissociating from how his body felt so that he could keep going, doing the things he loved to do, ignoring he was in pain, until one day, after starting to work with me, it became clear that this strategy was no longer going to work, and the reality of just how much work lay ahead of him set in.
OMG I’ve been a bad friend to my body.
Fortunately, I’m pretty good at making befriending-your-body-again process fun (or at least not awful). He is currently doing great. Learning new things about his body every day. In much less pain, able to do the activities he loves with more enjoyment and skill than a few years ago.
A less positive example is a personal training client I had a few years ago. She would ignore when her elbows hurt, yet continues to ask me to put exercises in her program that make her elbows hurt.
She’d say, “it’s fine, I can just work around it”. Even though this was keeping her stuck with sore elbows, she would rather pretend things are ok than understand the root of why her ebows hurt. Her biggest fear is that she’ll stop being able to workout, so she’s clinging to her pushups, and rows for dear life, while the pain is still only tolerable, and not crippling. Ironically, this is the fast track to not being able to workout.
We eventually stopped working together when it became clear that I was not going to enable her. In the end, she confessed that she didn’t believe there was hope that she could ever get out of pain because she was “too old”. She believed she was stuck the way she was, with hurtin’ joints, for life, and that was that. And what could one do or say to change her mind?
Maybe show this amazing video:
And on that inspiring note, perhaps you’d like to sit with these questions:
Why do you stretch? or if you don’t stretch…
Why do you feel like you should stretch?
What does taking responsibility for your body look like for you?
What are your excuses to not take responsibility? (and “I’m too old”, isn’t allowed)
Stay tuned for part 3, which will be a lot more practical, and less philosophical.
Friday March 19th was the March edition of my monthly, free, Movement Nerd Hangout. Our topic: Make Pals With Your Pecs. (scroll to the bottom to watch the session recording).
My finest work yet (see more of my face superimposed on anatomical images on my Instagram account: @monvolkmar)
Those pernicious pecs get blamed for causing a lot of trouble for our posture and shoulder health. In therapy world, most of the solutions involve stretching pecs, digging into the pecs with a ball, and other “myofacial release” strategies.
Back in the day, I used to do a ton of pec stretching and ball rolling and it didn’t change one single thing about how my body felt. Nothing changed until I began to pay attention to the actual motion of the bones and joints that the pecs connect to and manage:
Clavicle (collar bone)
Scapula (shoulder blade)
Humerus (big ol’ arm bone)
Ribcage (and by virtue of that, the spine)
As per Gary Ward’s second rule of movement, joints act, muscles react, we need to show those above bones how to move across their entire spectrum, in all three dimensions, if we want the muscles to do something.
We need real articulation between bones to generate an actual lengthening of muscles. And by virtue of Gary’s first rule, muscles lengthen before they contract, we need a muscle to first lengthen in order to generate it’s best contraction.
Bones moving= muscles get to do something.
Muscles getting to do something= happy body.
It is with this paradigm- what I’ve learned from studying Anatomy in Motion, that I set out to guide a movement-based query into your ability to access three dimensional lengthening and shortening of the pectoral muscles, via actual motion of the structures of your shoulder girdle.
Since I began working with my body in this way, I haven’t done a traditional pec stretch. They usually make my hands go numb… Instead, I simply make sure all my joints can do what their articulating surfaces are set up for, and the muscles seem to take care of themselves.
Anyway, here’s the replay of the full session. Follow along and let me know how it goes 🙂
If you enjoy this style of movement session, you may also like to participate in my online workshop Liberated Body. Its a study of how the human body moves in gait, through 4 exploratory movement sessions, based on the teachings of Anatomy in Motion. I run it live every so often, but you can start learning now by doing it as a home-study, at your own pace.
