what the foot Archives | Monika Volkmar Bodywork and Movement Education

A Movement-Based Approach to Treating Bunions

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.

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.

Five Books That Changed Me

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.

5 Books That Changed Me

What the Foot?: A Game-Changing Philosophy in Human Movement to Eliminate Pain and Maximise Human Potential: Gary Ward;: 9781907261084: Amazon.com: Books

What the Foot- Gary Ward

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.

Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance: McGill, Stuart: 8601409972480: Books - Amazon.ca

Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance- Dr. Stuart McGill

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.

Yoga: The Spirit and Practice of Moving into Stillness– Erich Schiffmann

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.

Loving What Is- Byron Katie

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.

The Art of Asking– Amanda Palmer

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! 🙂

Walk Your Neck Well

What if going for a walk could be an opportunity for your neck to naturally “stretch” itself? Could you “walk your neck well”?

Neck motion in the gait cycle is pretty cool. It arises out of our need to keep our eyes level (not walk with a bobblehead).

In the 0.6-0.8 second journey from one foot to the other, your neck should be able to access every motion available to it, in all three dimensions, from one end of the spectrum to the other. Unless it can’t…

That means, in the space of just one footstep, your neck will (hopefully) get a full spectrum experience from:

– Flexion all the way to extension
– Lateral flexion right all the way to to lateral flexion left
– Rotation right to rotation left

But not like a bobblehead…

VID

The cool thing is neck motion happens by virtue of the skull itself staying STILL (eyes stay level so you can walk straight), and the rest of the body articulating underneath.

This is true of animals too. Check out this owl:

The next two video clips are a brief demo of how this works in the frontal (head tilts) and transverse plane (head roation).

How did those two movements go for you? Are you able you separate your skull from your ribcage with your eyes level? (and yes I am aware I did not make a sagittal plane video…)

I call it a “whole body neck stretch”, because it emulates how the muscles on one side of the neck would naturally lengthen (and the other shorten) with each footstep. Or, in the case of the transverse plane neck rotations, more like a torquing motion, like a towel wringing out.

But its more than “stretching”- It’s specific, sequenced joint motion our bodies crave in efficient gait, obtained via coordinated whole body movement. The by-product of which is that your neck joints and tissues actually move in a healthy way with each step.

What if, by practicing gait-based movements like this, you could walk your neck well? What if you started to notice you no longer need to deliberately stretch your neck? (unless you actually wanted to)

Let me know if you find this quick video useful.

These two clips are from a Movement Deep Dive session I filmed in May 2021 for my Liberated Body all-access students. The complete 60 min session explores this idea in three planes, integrated with the whole body, down to the feet, based on the teachings of Gary Ward’s Anatomy in Motion.

PS can you tell how differently my head tilts from one side to the other?? 😅

Why Do My Knees Hurt? A 2 Minute Lesson

Knee pain sucks.

And like any other body part, it’s pain resolution is a process of restoring access to it’s complete set of options for joint motion, in correct sequencing with other body parts, in a way that feels safe.

AND… You don’t need to have an advanced understanding of joint biomechanics to do it (see the video below)

Your knee is a relatively simple, 2D joint (made complicated by biomechanists who’ve attempted to define what it does disparate of their own embodied understanding of it…)

To feel and move happily, a knee must have access to:

Flexion (bending) with femoral internal rotation, on a pronating foot.
Extension (straightening), with femoral external rotation, on a supinating foot.

All other combinations of knee, leg, and foot, will not feel happy, or be very efficient.

Here’s a quick demo you can try (this clip is an excerpt from a 60 min Movement Deep Dive I did last week on knee mechanics for my Liberated Body students):

If you don’t feel the above sequencing happening, it would not be surprising if your knees are unhappy with you

I repeat: A healthy knee must be able to experience the following things:

1) Knee bends + femur rotates in + foot pronates

2) Knee straightens + femur rotates out + foot supinates

And, if you followed the video, you’ll have the basic, embodied understanding that:

A) A pronatED foot will prevent a knee from fully extending

B) A foot that CANNOT pronate will not allow a knee to bend

My intention is to clarify and make simple the complexities of learning biomechanics, so that anyone can benefit from healthier movement. This can only be done by actually experiencing your anatomy.

In the words of Gary Ward, of Anatomy in Motion: Expose yourself to the truth of human movement, then let that experience create the learning.

When we try to understand movement ONLY with our intellect, our body doesn’t learn.

But if the body learns first, no words or intellectualization is necessary for real knowing. Words can be added later to faciliate communication (which is useful, considering all the confusion!)Remember, learning is not the same thing as knowing

I hope you enjoyed and found this mini biomechanics lesson useful! Let me know if it sparked any new understanding for you. Shoot me an email or leave a comment below.

If you liked this little tidbit, you may enjoy the complete 4 day Liberated Body Workshop. More info about that here: monikavolkmar.com/liberated-body-workshop

PS I post stuff like this on my Instagram page sometimes. If you’d like to be my IG pal, I am @monvolkmar

Bunion Solutions: A Movement Perspective

Bunions are a hot issue for a lot of people.

Why do they form? What do you do about them? Can you do anything about them? Aren’t they genetic? Do you need to get surgery? What about those toe spacer things and splints?

So many questions!

I’m not claiming to have any conclusive answers (and I think the moment we conclude something is the moment we stop learning anything new).

But what I do know is that bunions can be understood and worked with from a movement perspective. That is, movement of the big toe created the bunion, why could movement not also be at least part of the remedy?

I believe movement is medicine. But too much medicince can be problematic too, can’t it?

Here’s a key thing to know: The movement of the big toe that leads to a bunion forming- toe abduction/valgus- happens at a specific moment in time in the gait cycle. Things get problematic when that movement becomes the only option your foot has and becomes a structural adaptation, ie, the actual shape of your foot changes.

The bunion itself is the solution your body found for a problem.

The video below is a clip from a Movement Deep Dive Session I did recently with some of my amazing Liberated Body students. The session was to help them understand big toe mechanics with foot pronation and supination as we walk.

I think knowledge is power… Wanna geek out?

In the video I cover:

What joint motions are possible at the big toe joint (aka 1st metatarsalphalangeal joint aka MTPJ)?
How is movement of the foot on the floor- closed chain- different than when it swings through the air- open chain?
What does the big toe do when the foot pronates and supinates?
What big toe/foot movement creates a bunion over time and when does that happen in gait?
How can a bunion be seen as an indicator to that we need to pronate that foot better?
How could this be affecting stuff above, like your neck?

When we understanding how the big toe moves in relationship with the foot and the rest of the body, we have powerful information to inform the decisions we make for our bodies everyday.

I hope the video demonstrates how the big toe movement that leads to a bunion forming- toe abduction- is a totally natural event with each step we take. We just want to have other options, too.

Interestingly, while bunions are association with a more pronated foot, the bunion may form because the foot doesn’t pronate well! The big toe abducting away from the foot was the last ditch attempt to do something that resembles pronation. I often find that if we show the foot how to pronate better without relying solely on the big toe deviating into excessive abduction, good things happen.

So if you have a bunion, maybe your big toe is just stuck in a moment in time because it only has one option for movement? What if you could show it a new option?

I think its safe to say that before electing for an invasive buinion procedure, or using a medieval-looking toe stretching devices, or shoving spacers between your toes, why not try some natural movement, first? Give that foot some of its movement potential back.

Best case scenario, you can get that toe moving again and things will feel better. Worst case, you mobilized your feet and got some extra bloodflow. Win win.

This is why I’m so passionate about the work Gary Ward teaches in his Anatomy in Motion courses. What if we could restore the movement potential inherent in our gait cycle, so that each step we take has the ability to reinforce healthy joint mehcanics? Walk ourselves well.

Want to learn more? I think you’ll really enjoy my four day workshop Liberated Body. We spend the whole of day two moving your feet 🙂 I have a live workshop every few months, and it’s also available as a home-study you can start today 🙂

In fact, here’s a story from one of my students, a dancer and yogi, who embraced pronating her feet and was able to free up her bunion:

“My most enjoyable class and the biggest change I noticed was in the FEET! I feel that I have avoided pronation like the plague which stems from ballet training for sure – but my feet, achilles, calves and even knees felt SO GREAT after that class. I purposefully went for a walk afterwards and could really feel a difference in my foot pressures as I moved. Also as I mentioned at the end of the session, my bunion on the right side felt released and not as painful – coming up to demi-pointe on that side was a breeze.”

Super cool, right!?

What do you think? Do you have bunions? Have you had a bunion surgery? Have you had success using movement to relieve bunion pain? I’d love to hear from you.

Leave a comment here, shoot me an email, or find me on the social media things you do. I’m pretty much the only Monika Volkmar on the planet, so I’m easy to find 😉

Don’t Blame the Muscles…

I recently started a small group six week program that meets Sunday mornings. I unofficially call it “Church of Core”.

Its a program designed under the premise that, being that there is so much misinformation on the internet, in the media, and from people at the grocery store on what we should be doing to “train the core”, there should be a class to help people understand the truth of how the body moves so they can make their own informed choices on what to do at the gym.

And honestly, do whatever you want at the gym. It’s all good. Do what makes you happy. Just make sure your body possesses and understands the mechanics to cope with those choices.

I wanted to share a little case study from a participant in the program who was having some issues.

Twist and shout (ow)

Nancy (not real name) is a dancer in the program. We had just finished day two, in which we’d explored sagittal plane spine movement and stability, and she asked me if we were going to look at rotational movement next, because she was having some issues that and she had a big dance workshop weekend coming up. I said, yeah, come early to church next week and we’ll take a looksie.

Nancy’s primary complaint was that left ribcage rotation caused a straining painful feeling through her left side from her pelvis up to her ribcage. This is obviously an issue for a dancer because rotating is kind of a big deal in a lot of dance movements. She got the same symptoms with right pelvis rotation- Pain and tension through left obliques. So it’s not just a left spine rotation issue, its a transverse cog issue.

In AiM, “cogs” refers to the role in gait of structures moving in opposition against each other, like turning cogs. In gait, the pelvis and ribcage have a cog-like motion in that they should always oppose each other’s movement in all three planes of motion: In normal walking, when the the pelvis rotates right, the ribcage should rotate left.

In the case of Nancy’s symptoms, it was not just a ribcage rotating left issue, but an issue with any part of the gait cycle in which her left leg is forward (pelvis right) and her upper body is swinging to the left (ribcage left).

It’s nice when things make sense like this because they sure as hell don’t always do.

Her chiropractor identified that her issue was her left external obliques. Let’s look at why her obliques might be complaining about this rotational pattern.

Obliquing, long and short

If we’re going to blame a muscle, it stands to reason that we should know if its sore because of concentric shortness/compression, or it is locked long, under eccentric load.

Left ribcage + right pelvis rotation will lengthen the left external obliques, as the left EOs rotate the spine to the contralateral side

So, we could infer that the muscle is not happy with being loaded eccentrically to decelerate left spine rotation.

In the case of many muscles strains, the tissues have become locked long and because they are already loaded and lengthened they will have trouble decelerating joint movement because they’re already stuck doing that all the dang time.

In Nancy’s case we want to know WHY left spine rotation has become an issue to manage. Why are the obliques being lengthened all the time? Perhaps there is something NOT happening in this rotational pattern that the left obliques are picking up the slack for?

Time to stop thinking about muscles

I’m not telling you what to do, but muscles are confusing and chaotic. Looking at joint motions makes things much less noisy.

To quote Gary Ward, “Would you rather look at 13 muscles that connect to the knee or look at the 4 movements it can do?”.

I’d rather work on 4 things than 13, personally.

What stood out in interviewing her body was that her right talus was positioned internally rotated, everted, and could not externally rotate and invert. The chances of her right foot being able to supinate were pretty slim. This turned out to be key for helping her access left ribcage rotation with much less discomfort.

In the Flow Motion Model™, whenever the talus goes right, the ribs and spine go left, and when the talus rotates left, the ribs and spine go right.

This is because the rearfoot and pelvis always move in the same direction in transverse plane in gait (in all planes, actually), and recall that the ribcage and spine always oppose the pelvis.

So we could infer that the ribcage and spine should always oppose the talus*.

Therefore, if the talus can’t go right, another structure might have to go right MORE in order to accomplish every phase of gait in which the right foot supinates (and that’s most of the gait cycle, FYI).

In Nancy’s case it seemed to be the spine/ribs trying to rotate excessively to make up for a lazy right talus. And what might get tired of decelerating this motion over and over? The left external obliques.

Supinate the shit out of it

So we got Nancy’s foot to experience supination with her foot tripod grounded on the floor. With a little nudging and wedging, her right talus obliged and started inverting and externally rotating. Sweet.

We then integrated it into a pattern that required her to do left spine rotation and right pelvis rotation (we chose right propulsion phase). What was cool was that as long as her right foot was supinating, she could access left spine rotation with almost no discomfort.

When she retested her rotations there was significantly less discomfort than before. Her right talus was also sitting less everted and internally rotated at rest.

The entire process took about 20 minutes. Then we hugged and went to church.

*Talus and ribcage always oppose… Except for that fraction of a second in which gait is homolateral!

Conclusions?

Few things, I guess:

Learning to work with the FMM and AiM philosophy makes connections like this possible.
Blaming muscles for issues doesn’t provide enough useful information. I was not thinking about what muscles were tight or overworking of facilitated or inhibited while I was working with Nancy (which would have driven me crazy back when I used to do a ton of Neurokinetic Therapy® testing). Saying “it’s my oblique that’s the problem” doesn’t tell you why. Muscles react to joint movement. The answer will show in the structures, their position, and the movements they can and cannot do.
Thinking about her oblique pain in terms of concentric muscle action might not have led to the same resolution, but thinking eccentrically made a lot of sense in this case.
The “talus drives the bus”, and its useful to know how movement of the foot affects movement up the chain.
Knowing how to palpate the talus is a useful skill (that I didn’t have until very recently, thanks to “Foot Dating” on an AiM course).
It really is true that one of the most powerful experiences for the body is just to help the feet to experience true pronation and supination.