Heel & Sole for Foot Pain

Release Foot Pain from Wearing High Heels and Tone the Legs at the Same Time

 Whether you experience pain in your feet or hips or lower back when you wear high heels, the same principles that will release pain will also get you on the road to better tone from all-day maneuvers and all-night endeavors in the challenging art of high heels:

Allowing the calves to unravel down through the ankle & achilles tendons

Releasing the hamstrings into the hips

You learn how to use your own actual physical heel to support the body better & relieve pain simultaneously.

 

 

 

 

It's a pretty obvious prescription

to put your feet up in order to

deal with the afflictions of 

tired, sore, and aching feet or

exhausted, tight, and straining legs.

 

But if you use a ball to cradle your calves and hug your hamstrings

rather than the typical putting your legs up the wall,

besides the obvious relief from taking a load off your feet,

the stability ball support and rubbery resilience will

assist in releasing tight calf muscles as well as straining hamstrings

because when the heels have a giving surface to sink into

the calves will be able to unravel through a spacious ankle joint

and the hamstrings - which tend to get tight down towards the knee - can instead flow down with gravity towards the stable sit bones.

This is because the heels are located along  the same backside body as the calves and hamstrings, so when the heels release and deepen into the ball, so can all the rest of the back body muscles.

 

 

Once you lie your body down and get your feet up, follow these steps for using the rubbery resilience of the stability ball to sense that same potential for supple resilience in your own body.

 

 

 

 

 

Step One:  Position the feet so that

the joints of the big toes are touching

but the heels are slightly apart

 

 

 

Step Two: Soften the tops of the feet & the toes so that the part of the foot in front of the ankle drapes forward

 

Step Three:  Press gently with the back of the heel

down into the rubbery surface of the stability ball

without tensing the top of the foot or the toes

 

 

 

Practice this while breathing deeply into the back side of your ribs as low into the floating ribs as possible. Since you're laying on your back, sense the subtle pull of gravity helping your ribs widen off either side of your spine as you breathe rather than lifting your chest or blowing out your belly.

You can place your hands on your front ribs & gently press them down towards your pelvis so you can feel the lower back ribs expand towards the surface underneath you & breathe into that space.

 

Once you have been breathing into the lower back ribs for a bit, and feel that you are relaxed in the frontal ribcage area, place your palms on your thighs to assist you in releasing the tightness of the quadricep muscles. If you spread the palms over the surface of the thighs and especially expand the thumbs, it will help you to release shoulder tension as well as softening the quad muscles.

 

If you don't have a stability ball at home or access to one at the gym or other exercise facility, you can use the edge of an upholstered chair or ottoman for similar experience.

Or you can also hang your heels off the edge of a daybed.

 

Once you've released the tension in the tops of the feet,

explored the quality of deepening the heels into the surface of the ball &

used your palms to release the quads,

sense the contact of the calves into the ball as well. 

Imagine the calf muscles separating, spreading, & releasing towards the ankle.

 

Then use the gentle pressure of your palms into the thighs to sense the femur bones beneath the quads, and gently direct the femur bones into your hip sockets using gravity to assist you. These femurs, which are the largest bones in your body,  are - in this position - at an angle in which the bones can almost simply fall into the sockets.

You can sense with your hands how and when the ball-shaped heads of the femur bones are able to drop and deepen into the perfectly dome-shaped hip joints.

All of what I have described above takes much more sensitivity than it does much of any effort.

If you'd like to explore an exercise to strengthen the hamstring connection on to the sit bones, please visit my High Heel Healing website and click on to the bar entitled Sample Exercise at www.highheelhealing.com

In my next post, I'll describe in more detail how to use the hands to help with the release of tension in the shoulders, neck, hips, and legs and how the heels of the feet relate to the heels of the hands.

 

The photos in this post were taken at SPACE in Bedford Hills, formerly known as Studio Contour.

If you live in the Chappaqua, Mount Kisko, Bedford, or Katonah area, and are interested in Pilates, please check out their website at www.studiocontour.com

You can also peruse my website for information about neck and shoulder tension release, core strengthening and core stability, how to stretch using stabilization, and how to access the power of the entire back body at www.backboneandwingspan.com

There are more postings about how to deal with the challenge of high heels in the High Heel Healing category of my other blog, Body Mind & Spine Align. Check out the Back Body category as well!

When you go to the website highheelhealing.com, sign up for future free informative guides such as this one which I wrote - it's about how to find a heel-to-hamstring-to-hip connection while sitting:

High Heel Healing Tips and Video for Fashion Footwear Comfort

Thanks so much for reading, and please share your comments, questions, & suggestions here or by emailing me at tim@backboneandwingspan.com

 

Using Relationships Between the Heel & the Arch & the Ankle of the Foot Creates Space for Pain Relief & Freedom of Movement

Principles in this lesson:

    Arc         Dynamic        Expansion

Sensitivity over Exertion     Trusting Subtlety

 

 

 

 

The feet are monumental.

Think of the architectural term ‘footing.’

How important the underlying footing is
to the entire foundation and
structural support of the building.

The feet are a great beginning place
to get you grounded
and away from flattening
any part of your body.

 

Getting grounded resonates on many levels –
physiological, psychological, emotional, psychic

The connection between a sense of well being
and having feet that are feeling and facile
and sensing instruments is immense.

The very ground of your being
and your well being
can be found in your feet.

(think of reflexology in which points
on the foot correspond to every
organ and appendage)

I have spent the last several years of my career on my knees....................

ministering to vagrant toes,

cupping in the palms of my hands
heels
that have been teetering
too high for years

lengthening and expanding countless soles
into more supple states.

 

 

 

 

 

The principle of arc is  essential here.

 

"Archetypes are types of arcs..."

  Elizabeth Andes-Bell                                                 Namaste Yoga Center

 

My teacher taught me that one way of working with archetypal imagery
is that one can separate the personal from the impersonal,
and I realized that the body itself is archetypal
in that it can be ascertained impersonally
as a brilliant assemblage of arcs and energies that extend into arcs.

 

When you take a look at the bottom of your foot,

 (or do you leave this searching solely to me and your pedicurist)

hopefully you can clearly detect three parts:
the ball, the arch, and the heel.

Although the toes could be ascertained as separate from the ball,
for our purposes,
we will include them into one arcing energetic flow.

The ball part is a series of pads,

most distinctly

the pad under the big toe

   and the pad under the pinkie toe.

Although the big toe and pinkie toe themselves are very different in size, the pinkie toe pad is about the same size as the big toe pad.

This could be an earth-shaking, ground-breaking, getting-you-to-be-ground-ed revelation, because it can lead you to using both sides of the ball evenly.

 

 

Think of how padded and sensory and

crucial-to-survival 

the padded feet of a cave-dwelling bear or a tree-climbing cat are.

Use your imagination to tap into that same quality of padding

(as opposed to pounding) whether it’s the  pavement or the park.

Also direct the arc of the toes forward as opposed to pushing the toes out to the sides.

The next time you are out on the street, see how many people walk in some degree of duck feet.

Some people, especially men I have noticed, look like their feet are as turned out as the way I was warned not to walk after ballet class.

Putting Principles to Practice

 

Sit on a chair or a bench of a height
that allows you to have your feet
comfortably in contact with the floor.

Make sure that your knees are  aligned

over your ankles and that
your heels are not
pulled back too far behind.

The lower leg should be plumb –
not angled forward or back.

Most of the time we sit with the heels
pulled too far back, causing a lot of
tightness in the shin and the front of the ankle.

After a while we don’t even realize this overworked frontal part of the body is tight.

Subtlety can be embraced as a quality of sensitive contact
             that can be sustained and refined.

If you had to forcefully push the foot down, it would wear you out, and cause tension.

With subtlety, you are learning to become useful of sensitivity and contact, and letting go of over-efforting.

You are exploring the ultimate empowerment of activating through awareness and developing an affinity for surfaces (such as the floor, which is just an extension of the earth).as opposed to having to muscularly engage.

Now, and this is subtle, deepen the contact of the ball part of the foot,
sensing what you detected when you looked at

the big toe pad and pinkie toe pad –
that these pads being of similar size,
they can be given equal contact.

The foot bar on the Pilates reformer is an excellent way to explore how

the ball of the foot deepens contact while the arcing toes flow forward.

 

The subtle deepening force of the pad part of the ball is down, but that is joined with the flow of the toes connected to the pads, and the flow of the toes is forward.

The combination of deepening down and flowing forward is an arc.

Just pushing the pads down or just pushing the toes forward doesn’t do it.

The down and forward together is what makes an arcing flow that is conducive to getting the foot out of flatness.

Heeling: If there were an action verb form
of the noun heel, that verb would be heeling.

The heel works in a perfect dynamic with the ball.

 

The bottom of the heel deepens down – it’s not a press – you do it much more with your sensitivity than with any forceful exertion –

if you feel your calf engage or tighten up,
release any sense of needing to effort, and instead. send softening messages to the heel and breathe.

The expansion of the bottom of the heel is combined
with feeling the back of the heel  expand  equally to both sides.

As I mentioned before, most people push the toes out to the sides to some degree which doesn’t allow the outer heel to activate and participate in a widening expansion that leads the whole foot into un-flattening.

Once the two halves of the heel are sensitively exploring expansion, then you can imaginatively extend a talon-like energy from the Achilles tendon.

If imagining a talon seems strange, it may interest you to know that the word for heel in both Spanish and French is talōn.

You make the same arcing flow with the three-dimensional heel as you did with the ball-toe part of the foot.

The heel deepens down

(as well as wide, just like you even-out the big toe pad and the pinkie toe pad)

and then by extending a talon-like energy back,

the resulting flow is a combination of down and back which is in balance with the down and forward flow of the ball-toe.

These two arcing energies and contacts,
in opposing directions,

but in a balanced symmetry,

create together a lengthening of the entire sole of the foot and brings into play

the arch

which is the triumverate element in between the ball and the heel.

 

   

  You don’t have to do “exercises” to get
  a springy arch.

  The dynamic between
  the arcing forward energy of the ball-toes  

  and the arcing back of the heel-talon

  creates

  a buoyant lengthening lift of the arch.

 It's like a wave that swells from underneath in order to crest.

 

 

Let’s define dynamic for our purposes.

 

 

 

Dynamism has to do with energy, force, and motion.

The dy part of dynamic could convey a sense of

two, as in dy-ad, or di-alogue or di-gital.

When the two directional forces between the front of the foot and the back of the foot are equalized and in balance and harmony, that is a dynamic.

Feeling mostly the heel, or mostly the toes is not so dynamic.

It is only within the interplay of dynamic 

between the ball-toes and the heel-talon

that the arch arises.

 

If it still seems strange to you
to imagine a talon-like energy
extending off of the heel,
look at your Achilles tendon
 and the way it is very much
like the talons on this turkey foot
 (minus the claws of course).

 

There is a verse in Lao-tzu's Tao-te Ching that says:
One gives birth to Two.
Two gives birth to Three.
Three gives birth to all things.

I look at this birthing as being in the foot. We perceive the foot as one thing, but one becomes two once the ball-toe and heel-talon become a dy-namic. The interplay between them creates the third element of the arch.

The newly-birthed triumverate feet then become informative for all of what is structured above them.

This foot composed of three elements relates further to what is central: the ball-toe relates to the pubis, the heel-talon relates to the tail,and the springy, buoyant arch relates to what is between the pubis and the tail: the springy, buoyant perineum, or pelvic floor.

 

 

 

Extending a talon-like energy off of
each heel becomes triumvirate with
extending a tail-like energy off of
the actual tiny tail bone.

 

 

 

The ball-toes deepening down and forward assists the pubis to emerge out from being tucked under tight groin muscles – the pubis can come forward in liberation for the pelvic floor or perineum to expand, but the pubis, like the ball-toes, does not move forward in flatness. It arcs out by releasing down and then coming forward from underneath.

Once the feet expand, then all above can begin to come into play:

the shins can spin, the calves can unravel, the hamstrings can gently activate and tether up on to the sit bones, the femurs can deepen......

and the spine which has three elemental curves to it just like feet, can begin to unwind, because the spine senses it's arcing relationship with the ball, arch and heel.

 

Undulating soles support a serpentine spine

 

 

 

Truthfully, there are times
in my teaching that I repeat the terms
talon and tail so often that I almost
want to change the name of my business to
Backbone Wingspan Talon and Tail

 

 

This information was originally presented and published on Oct 10, 2008

in my first blog originally entitled Pilates Iconoclast - Tim Driscoll

 

Credits:

Cat's Paw: morguefile

Building: publicdomainpictures.net

Seen At 11:00 PM on CBS 2 New York: High Heel Intervention - Ways That Foot Pain from Wearing High Heels Can Be Handled

Seen At 11:00 on CBS 2 New York: High Heel Intervention

 

"There's no denying that shoes are a coveted fashion item for women.

They are also the one thing that they wear that can cause some serious discomfort. But whether it's an injury or a more serious foot problem, there are effective ways that women can enjoy pain free pumps."

CBS 2's Kristine Johnson reports

In this segment is

a podiatrist who performed a shoe intervention on one of her patients

juxtaposed with

me working with a client from Mind Your Body Fitness and

performing with her aspects of the High Heel Recovery

I've developed over the past two years.

 

In comparing intervention to recovery......

what I sometimes say is that 

High Heel Recovery is not about abstinence!

 

Also check out my new website at www.highheelhealing.com

Tim Driscoll, Backbone and Wingspan®

Backbone and Wingspan founder and owner

and author of this weblog Heel& Sole for Foot Pain

as well as his other blog:  Body Mind & Spine Align

is located on the Upper East Side at

Mind Your Body Fitness

1370 Lexington Avenue @ 90th Street

and at Studio Contour in Bedford Hills

 

Tim can be reached at 212-647-8878

Read Some Great Press

 

 

 

 

 

and

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See the Website: Backbone and Wingspan

Backbone and Wingspan LLC

 

Email: tim@backboneandwingspan.com

 

Spring Forth into Summertime Stilettos or Sandals: The High Heel Recovery Clinic Principles Serve Your Feet In Any Shoe

The principles within the High Heel Recovery Clinic can assist

a better support and foot-function in any shoe in any season

on any street in this city!

 

With the feet first approach of

Backbone and Wingspan in Manhattan,

we seek to treat the feet that follow fashion!

Although there are many women who wear high heels

in any neighborhood in New York City,

there are certain areas where the businesses or shops are such that

you see more high heelers than sandals or sneakers

depending on the season.

Warmer weather is here, so whether you choose shoes with a heel or

opt for strappy sandals or even flip flops, now's the time to treat your feet

to the principles that will better support them in your shoes!

 

I shot, edited, and even annotated a video with Gail Giovanniello,

owner of Mind Your Body Pilates and Fitness on the Upper East Side in February.

As you watch, you can also read the annotations to absorb the key catch phrases to think about not just if you attempt the exercise we go through here, but what you can think about whenever you're walking and feel a strain from your footwear: heel-to-hamstring-to-hip is the key.

High Heel Healing with Backbone and Wingspan at Mind Your Body Pilates and Fitness

 

  Mind Your Body Fitness 

1413 Lexington between 92nd & 93rd and

1370 Lexington between 90th & 91st Streets

The increasingly-revered hands-on, informative clinic that I offer from time to time helps fashion-conscious women survive screaming heels not only day-to-day, but in avoiding serious long-term health risks. In the next post you can see a segment shot for WCBS News at 11 also in February in which I work with a woman who has a hammer toe. She told me and the producer before the shoot that many of her freinds had opted for surgery for foot problems and/or given up heel altogether.

My belief is that if you change the support system in the body and begin to use the heel of your foot in a different way when you're in you shoes, that you may be able to avoid surgery - or throwing out all of the high heels you love.

 

The High Heel Recovery Clinic received national recognition in a CNN.com Health article entitled

"Women risk snapped ligaments for shoe fashion"

CNN Health reporter Madison Park interviewed a High Heel Recovery participant who was thrilled with the results of her participation in the clinic: "Forlines changed her posture and weight distribution on her feet,".... (which prior to learning the principles offered in the workshop) ..... used to ache immediately after putting on her red glitter Christian Louboutins."

The clinic teaches women how to strengthen what's wobbly and release what tends to tighten from teetering in the current fashion trend toward shoes  with staggeringly high heels. If you are interested in future clinics, please go to my new website specifically for feet:

www.highheelhealing.com

and sign up for free informative guides in the opt-in email box....

Tim Driscoll, Backbone and Wingspan founder and author of these posts,

is a foot alignment expert

which you can read about in some of the postings, particularly the post entitled

"Footing" from the High Heel Healing category of his other weblog: 

Body Mind & Spine Align

connected to the back body work he performs one-on-one.

See Tim's previous post on:

Intricate methodology and detail about foot alignment

and its effect on the entire body

 
For more information about
Backbone and Wingspan®

please peruse the website and press page at
www.backboneandwingspan.com

or go to the events on the

Backbone and Wingspan Facebook Page

Please call 212-647-8878 for more information

or email tim@backboneandwingspan.com  

 

 

 

 

For Foot Pain When Wearing High Heels Here's A Downward Dog to Save Your Own Tired Dogs

In several of the press mentions the High Heel Recovery Clinic has received,

including this in the Thursday Styles section of The New York Times: 

"When the Dogs are Barking Are high heels getting you down? Have foot pain? Sign up for a high heel recovery clinic ($20) at which women do heel-on-ball exercises designed to strengthen hamstrings and core. The next will be held at 7 p.m. July 26 at Backbone and Wingspan"

The feet are sometimes referred to as "dogs".

Well.... real dogs are well-behaved

when you teach them how to "heel"..... correct?

 

Here are some of the

fabulous high heels present

at the Backbone and Wingspan

High Heel Recovery Clinic

in July.

 

Attendees lined their heeled dogs against the back wall during the final part of the clinic lightly leveraging the backs of their shoes against the baseboard.

This contact-into-surface helped these high heelers feel how their high heeled shoes could help them feel the expansion of their own flesh-and-blood heels in a backwards direction. We teach this expansion of the heel of the foot backwards in order to get the bulk of the body weight off of the overtaxed front of the foot.

 

In the yoga classes that I take on the Upper West Side at Namaste Yoga Center, my teacher, Elizabeth Andes-Bell uses the baseboards along the walls in downward dog.

This helps people to understand how not to push the knees back or jam the heels down, but to expand the heels back and to get a connection of the powerful hamstrings up on to the sits bones.

Yoga enthusiast or not, you can use a baseboard to explore a different downward dog than you've probably experienced before. Teaching an old dog with a new trick can assist  in alleviating some bad bad bad habits so those tired ol' dogs of yours can heel themselves in a way in which you feel alot less discomfort, high heels or not.

 

Place your heels on the baseboard along the wall

Use the baseboard to give you an approximation of what your heel height would be like in your pumps

 

The downward dog pose gives you the chance to look through your legs to be able to ascertain the alignment of the foot, especially the heels.

 

Remember that you want to gain access to the outer edge of the heel

 

The parts of the foot  that tend to get overburdened are the big toes - find instead the direct opposite:

the outer edges of the heels

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don't push flat down into the baseboard with the heels -

instead,

Send the energy and the reach of the heels in two directions:

back behind you into the wall above the baseboard

as well as down into the top of the baseboard itself.

Deepen the contact of the underside of the heels into the top of the baseboard

and also

Reach the back of the heel into the wall above the baseboard.

This is not a push, it's a sensitive-to-surface back-and-down arcing direction

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sensing the support and structure of the baseboard relates to your body how to counteract the effect of the high heel of your shoe shoving your own heel up into the achilles and the ankle.

Instead of your shoe jamming you up and forward, you learn how to lever the heel back and down.

 

Speaking of the action of levering,

one woman I work with mentioned to me that she feels that this levering of the heel back and down feels to her like she's cocking the hammer back on a revolver - the hammer on the gun pulls back and down with a spring tension

This cocking image can teach you the way you should use your heels when you wear your shoes:

your heels should expand back and down;

you use the baseboard and the wall as surfaces to give you the sense of direction that you want to get used to sending your heels in -

rather than the heels getting shoved up and forward in your shoes, you lever those heels back and down.

Once you ingrain this feeling in your body,

you can strut in your heels as if the backs of your feet are like two readied revolvers -

rather than the high heels shooting all your weight into the front of your foot,

you can keep the heels cocked back constantly,

and the spring tension that would relate to the way the hammer on a pistol or revolver works......

..........................................would be akin to your achilles tendon working with a spring-loaded sensation

 

Here's a video I shot with Gail Giovaniello of Mind Your Body Fitness

on the Upper East Side of Manhattan which is where I teach in the city.

The exercises show the resilience and buoyancy the body receives

in using a heel-to-hamstring-to-hip connection:

Foot Pain: Length Up the Back of the Leg Takes Work & Weight Off the Feet and Toes

 

 

 

 

 

You can read more about how to find the

heel-to-hamstring connection

while in a sitting position in the guide:

High Heel Healing Tips and Video

for Fashion Footwear Comfort

Sign up on the home page of my website:

highheelhealing.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course the surest and fastest way to understand 

both the leveraging of the heels and

the tethering of the hamstrings

is with some one-on-one

hands-on support!

 

 

 

 

Tim teaches at the Upper East Side studio Mind Your Body Pilates located conveniently close to the Lexington Line 4,5, & 6 Trains at 1370 Lexington Avenue between 90th and 91st Streets

and he also teaches in Bedford Hills at Contour Studio

Call Tim at 212-647-8878

and ask about his new client introductory special!

 

Tim Driscoll  Founder & Owner    Read Some Great Press

Backbone and Wingspan® Website

Backbone and Wingspan LLC