Posture 1: Feet You Can Walk On - How To Change Your Foot and Toes Alignment and Placement In Standing and Walking Way

The feet you walk on are the very foundation of your postural edifice. Building up a good posture is akin to building a tower of building blocks, you must start at the base, your feet. The fitness industry tries to convince us that feet need to be strapped in the latest, most expensive and most advanced technologically cushioned trainers. But do we really need them, or could they weaken our feet? This Hub explains how the foot is designed, with its very own natural cushioning and bouncing mechanism. It explains why the foot is designed that way, and how you can improve your posture, balance, strength and endurance by using your feet to their best God-given potential as prime weight bearers of your body throughout its challenging life time.

To familiarise yourself with your body, to free it from its dilemmas we can, together, re-build you from scratch, starting at the base with your feet. Please don't misunderstand me, this has nothing to do with "body-building" as in weight lifting. Instead you will learn to align your body efficiently against the constant downward pulling force of gravity and change the way you carry yourself to become more comfortable in day to day activities.

Your feet are the most important part of your posture since they carry the rest of your body. Take your shoes off and stand on the floor with bare feet. Now try to spread your toes as far out as possible. Make them look like ducks' feet. Now make a footprint to see how you use (or misuse) your feet.

Stand with your feet parallel and look down at your feet. Which picture do they resemble?

I see joggers jogging their ankles into the ground because they don't realise that they have fallen arches (flat feet). Then they complain about pain in their knees. Later on in life they need hip-replacement operations.

Let us have a deeper look at the structure of your foot to better understand why people suffer unnecessarily. Even if you have chosen picture 2., the normal healthy and centred weight distribution on the feet, as resembling your foot print, I strongly advise you to master the Toe Alignment move for maintenance, simply to prevent future problems.

The main body of your foot is, like your hands, made up of fan-shaped bones spreading out towards your toes. Your toes should be aligned as a continuation of these fan-shaped bones. Not many feet are shaped like this because we wear ill fitting, mass manufactured shoes. But that's another hub, all about shoes, bunions, hammer toes and all sorts of foot problems shoes can cause.

Brain Training

The funny thing is that when people make an effort to spread their toes, they often open the palms and spread the fingers as well. This is because the brain is more familiar with sending messages to the hands than to the feet. When the toes are asked to spread they follow a movement pattern the brain already knows from when it send messages to the fingers to spread. It is as if the fingers are trying to teach the toes how to do the job. The brain is such a clever organ (pardon the cliché) that it will use what ever information is already stored in its memory bank to cope with a new task.

1. Place the right foot on the ball of the foot so that it is 'turned in', with the big toe pointing inwards.

2. While keeping the big toe firmly in place (you might need to use your hands to keep him there), bring the heel inwards and down onto the floor until the foot is parallel as on the last picture. Now the foot is correctly aligned for most efficient weight bearing.

3. Keeping the toes spread and the heel on the floor, bend your knee slightly while aligning it centrally over the foot.

4. Now slowly straighten the knee. You should feel a lifting of the longitudinal arch (the inside of the sole) and a lot of strength coming into the outside of your ankle and shin.

5. Repeat from No.1 above two or three times with the right foot until you can feel it working. Aim to keep the toes fanned out.

6. Shake the foot loose as if throwing off a large boot.

7. Repeat with the left foot.

1. Hold onto something and stand on the ball of your feet, turned in, with your big toes close together.

2. Slowly bring the heels together and down onto the floor while keeping the tips of your big toes in place.

3. Now bend the knees while aligning them centrally over the feet.

4. Straighten the knees. You should feel a lifting of the arches and a lot of strength coming into the ankles and the sides of your shins.

5. Repeat from No.1 two or three times and shake loose.

Now let us take s look at the bottom of your feet.

Just like a kitten's paw, the sole of your foot has pads for shock absorption. There is one large pad under the heel, two pads form the ball of the foot, and you have a pad under each toe. The areas that don't touch the ground form the feet's arches.

Click edit above to add content to this empty capsule.

In addition, practice the Arch Lift as shown here. Try to pick things up with your feet to develop the right muscles for restoring and maintaining your arches.

You could do the above moves every time you take your shoes off, or when you are waiting for the kettle to boil, or while you are brushing your teeth, or when waiting for something to download on your computer. There are numerous situations where you can fill time by training your body. In this way, what you learn here becomes automatically incorporated into your daily habits.

Exercising under water is even more pleasant and beneficial.

As you continue doing the above moves as part of your daily dressing and grooming routine you will soon discover that your feet will gain further mobility and strength. You will become more grounded, confident, and gain much improved balance. What has confidence to do with my feet? I hear you ask. Well, in body language, someone who is well grounded literally "stands his/her ground" and is not so easily pushed over.

In the next Episode of the Easy Fitness series we shall continue the upward journey with new moves for the Ankles and Knees.

You can leave a comment or ask a question which I shall be glad to answer if I can.

How to make more money with Adsense

You too can JOIN HUBPAGES and get paid for what you've got to say.