My role in the workshop is to give some hands-on strategies for increasing flexibility and resilience of the bones and muscles of the feet using Awareness Through Movement® lessons of the Feldenkrais Method® in a workshop titled Feet So Flexible, Feet So Fast. I’m excited to be part of this adventure and feel honored that Kate has included my profession as part of the mix.

I decided that a part of my preparation for the workshop would be a description of my experience while making my own shift as toward being barefoot or minimal during the month preceding the workshop. My motivation to make this change is that I have a hard time finding shoes that fit well or support the freedom of movement I know is possible in my human foot, the kind I see in my cat’s foot or my dog’s paw. That’s what I want, the resilience that comes from being close to the ground and un-mummified as so many shoe/sock combinations effectively do.

Note: I have NOT read either of the books I mentioned above, on purpose. My experiment here is to track my sensations and kinesthetic awareness of the shifts and changes in my gait as I work toward longer and longer periods in minimal shoes and I wanted to do this without prior knowledge of what it should be like. I have purchased a pair of Vibram Five Fingers, October 11, 2010, so I’m a newby just like all the folks who’ll be attending our workshop. Well, I’m not entirely a newby. My job is to teach attention skills and help others build awareness and I am well-trained to tune in to the shifts and changes in my own organization. But it will be fun to approach the workshop from this place of curiosity. A curious mind is an open mind. I invite you to comment, ask questions, share your own experience.

So, to begin . . . Experiment 1

A few weeks ago, Ray (McClanahan), podiatrist, handed me a pair of Correct Toes, his invention and his contribution to the health and wellness of anyone’s feet. I went home and put them on and wore them around the house for a while and got used to them. He had warned, and the warning on the package says, that you should build up the amount of time you wear them very slowly. Toes that have been crammed inside shoes for decades aren’t used to being spread apart. I’ve witnessed that in my own movement practice that many people have difficulty spreading their toes apart without pain.

I experienced little discomfort with the Correct Toes, likely because I’ve been moving and plying my feet and toes for years. So, I decided to go out for a walk.

I wore my Correct Toes with a pair of socks over the top of them and put on a pair of Crocs. These are the only shoes I own that the Correct Toes would fit inside and I wanted to transition, not go cold turkey to barefoot. I headed out with my dogs, a perfect constraint in that walking my dogs forces me to stop and start and go slow while they sniff their way though the neighborhood.

The first and most important thing I noted when walking with my toes spaced apart is that my sacrum was moving. A lot. I’ve had some tensions in my sacrum likely from all the sitting while blogging and writing. Wow. I mean wow. I could feel all kinds of tensions releasing. Wild to notice it as if something was dissolving. And, my sacrum became warm, my pelvis became free and the dogs and I practically skipped along.

Nice experiment for a first go round……..I kept wearing the Correct Toes at night for a few more days and occasionally during the day time. I made a point to work with my own feet and their grasping and bending capabilities over the next week.

Experiment 2:

A couple of days later, I went out walking with the dogs, minus the Correct Toes. I wore a pair of Merrill’s that were flat, no lift in the heel and no curl up of the toes. The top of the Merrill is mesh so even though the toe box isn’t wide, there was a lot of give. I had hiked in them several weeks earlier and found that my feet and ankles felt great, better than almost any other shoe I had hiked in.

Without really considering what I was doing, I began to experiment with just thinking about walking with toes spread wide. I could feel a bit of actual widening of my toes, but I focused more on holding the intention of having a wide spread foot. I shifted back and forth between holding the intention and letting it go.

After a few minutes of directing my attention and intention, I felt the same sensation that I’d felt when I had the Correct Toes on. My sacrum shifted and I felt more movement as I walked. Whoo hoo……this was becoming fun.

Now, as I’m experimenting with using a widespread toes intention in any shoe that I wear, I am noticing how tense my foot gets when my toes come close together and how much the focal point of force into the ground gets narrowed down to that place on the ball of my foot, roughly between my second and third toes. No wonder I used to have a callus on that part of my foot. When I intend to walk with widespread toes, I am noticing how much more evenly distributed the force is with each step.

In the next blog post, I’ll write about Experiment 3, getting my Vibram Five Fingers and going for my first outside walk. Another wow experience.

You’ve likely noticed that this blog is a little bogged down. Sorta rhymes and I like rhyming, so keep watching for more. Never know what’s in store. Anyway, I digress. I began this blog to write out the thoughts I’d been collecting for a book, which became an e-book and then morphed into this blog, and now we’re back to the e-book stage. So……stay tuned. Hoping for a January 2011 release.

In the meantime, I’m shifting the focus to walking. Women who walk. Women who walk fast, slow, languidly, quickly, women who walk with purpose and dreams, women who carry inside them all the memories of good, sorrowful, poignant, hurtful, yummy, and, and, and….the list goes on of the memories that live inside each of us. Those memories go with you on a walk. They color and flavor your every step and your every interpretation of what you see.

Also, to put in a plug for my new gig at Edge Performance Fitness. Edge is not your average gym. In fact, it’s about as unaverage as you can get. Inspired by Kate Fischer, woman of extreme vision, Edge is really a place to come and get an unusual gym experience. If you’re sick of the big screen TVs blaring and the spandex pick-up scene, well……this might just be your sophisticated alternative. You can go to their website and learn more, but just know it’s hard to feel it unless you’re there.

I am at Edge on Wednesdays giving Feldenkrais® lessons on how to take care of yourself while you’re keeping fit. Think of it as building foundations for fitness. Email me to schedule, kim@kimcottrell.com. Edge Members get 1/2 price lessons for July and August so get on over here!!

And, super fun for me . . . I’ll be doing a 2-hour workshop at Edge on September 12, 3-5, Feldenkrais Foundations for Fitness. $25 for non-members, $15 for members.

It’s a new day, a new moment, a new second. Let’s seize as many of them as we can, what say you?

And, now to the walk . . .

It’s a good thing, because the island isn’t very big. It fills up with a thousand cars and you can imagine how the traffic jam doesn’t please the locals much. Never mind that by noon the cars are gone and the berry pickers show up to spend their money. Seems like a win-win to me.

I’m not planning to do the Flat this year, despite my many hours getting ready. When I walked the second and third 8-miler this year, I knew this was my year to kick back and enjoy my coffee. Oh, I’ll be out there again, and I’m still walking. But, my walking is taking many other forms. Up hills, over dales, staircases, neighborhood walks. Tomorrow I’m walking our extinct volcano with my littlest dog.

How did it go for you? This readiness? How are you feeling? So what if you “only” walked 10 miles. That’s a huge distance and nothing to be sneezed at, is it? If you walked 5 and then ended your training, that’s 5 more miles of distance and how many miles logged on your feet? It all adds up.

No matter what, you’ve become a person who walks.

Pushing through the pain is disrespectful and detrimental to our goals and our well-being. However, regardless of how much we are aware that we’ll get farther if we take it easier, it’s irresistible to push. We’ve been conditioned and taught to not pay attention to the physical self. Often, we are dissociated and not in touch with our own experience.

Pushing through pain is compulsive.

In my worldview, pushing is over-rated. We’ve pushed ourselves our whole lives and where did it get us? We need to ease off and back up to get where we want to go. We need to find the respect for ourselves that lies hidden behind the history of our actions. Dust it off and come at the project from a place of paying attention, having fun, and relaxing.

Who cares how fast you walk? Who cares how much you weigh? Neither of these things makes or breaks a walker. I’ve seen skinny walkers drop out, I’ve seen heavy walkers sail through, I’ve seen fast walkers get injured and slow walkers surprise themselves. Don’t get me wrong, I’m speaking in generalities. There are thoughtful, fast, skinny people, and checked-out, slow, and heavy people. Slow people can be skinny. Fast people can be heavy.

What is most important is that the tactics match and support the goal of being out there for the distance and for completing the event. If that is the goal, then everything else becomes secondary and respect for the self becomes primary.

Over the many weeks and months of training and getting ready for our relay event, we captains passed along the information we’d gleaned from walking the marathon and the training program we’d been part of then. The young woman did her own thing, not really training for the event, seeming to scoff at only 5 miles. Her first leg she finished in seeming comfort, but by the time her second leg rolled around, she was lying on the floor of the suburban, nauseated and very uncomfortable. When I quizzed her, she reluctantly admitted that she hadn’t been drinking any fluids. Looking back, I wonder if she was bothered by the thought of peeing in the woods or using the port-a-potties along the way.

Long story short, when it seemed as if she really needed an ambulance, she struggled through that leg with a couple of others accompanying her so she’d have support. She must have begun drinking then and by the time her third leg came around she was doing a little better. How close she was to needing medical assistance, we’ll never know. Likely not too close or she would have required help after she finished the second leg of her part. And, it should be noted, she refused all help, therefore our remaining option would have been to wait until she passed out and then seek help. Moral of her story: don’t drink liquids, become dehydrated.

Some years later, my aunt and I were on a rafting trip through the Grand Canyon and one of the other passengers was a young woman from Japan. She was embarrassed to wade out into the water and pee there, as we had been instructed to do. Her strategy was to pee in the port-a-potty our guides brought along and to not drink fluids all day so she could last until they set up the toilet at the next campsite.

Unfortunately, the Grand Canyon is hot, very hot. Even though it was September, we were sweating and most of us were not used to the climate, thus we sweated even more. After the third day, when we were hiking on a side-trail in full sun, I was over-heated myself but drinking water like it was kool-aide, I looked at this young woman and noted that her lips were white. She was shaking as she took a very small sip of her water. I urged her to drink more and later I spoke to the guides. They talked with her and it seemed to help since she looked better by the next day. Then the guides told the story of a woman on one trip who didn’t drink anything and they had to stop the trip while they gave her first aid with IV fluids. There was no way to call for an evacuation because the radio reception was limited in the bottom of the canyon. The entire group was forced to wait until the woman recovered before they could move on.

The Power of Fluids
If I have scared you, perfect. That’s my intention. You might limp through a half marathon or longer distances without adequate food, but you will not finish one without water and electrolytes. Let’s just lump water and electrolytes into a category we’ll call fluids. Things that do NOT count as fluids during training are coffee, tea, coke (any soda for that matter), or energy drinks with caffeine. Fluids are things like water, sports drinks, juice that’s been watered down (if the juice is too strong, you might get sick because of the high sugar content), and other electrolyte-laden drinks.

I don’t want you to drink because I suggest you should nor because it’s the thing to do. I want you to experiment and learn to listen and manage and monitor your own system. I want you to notice how you’ve been feeling with your current water intake, drink more, see how that feels, take in less and see if you still have enough oomph to make it comfortably. I want you to make comparisons so you really have the answers to the questions of how much water, when, and why.

While you’re readying for the big event is the time to investigate and explore all the options and nuances of what to fuel your body with and how to manage your energy level. That is the time to pay attention to your unique biology and give yourself what you need to take care of yourself. Training and participating in long distance walking events shouldn’t feel like a sacrifice, except for the time you spend away from your family. You shouldn’t need to collapse after the event. While you’ll likely be tired and sore after the event, you should bounce back within 6-10 hours and certainly by the next morning.

And now, to the walk . . .

And then I blurted. Truly. I did. I’m a blurter, just like Vice President Biden. I love Biden, not just because he’s a blurter and he is, but because he’s trying to make life better for those of us who don’t have as much as the next guy. Anyway, the point is, I blurt. Not as much as I used to when I was a kid, but enough to get in trouble now and then. I used to go into hiding after I blurted, especially if I thought someone was mad at me or hurt. I felt awful and just got the heck out of the way.

When the conversation turned to how great one woman looked because she’d lost over 20 lbs, I blurted, “I hope your self-worth isn’t attached to how much you weigh.” And, immediately I began ruminating, because that’s what blurters do. We blurt and then we ruminate. We spend a zillion hours ruminating over what we said and why and how it sounded and who agreed, disagreed, or objected. And, I’m still ruminating which is why I’m writing this piece, so I can ruminate until it’s done and put it out here and say it and be done and move on.

Photo courtesy Photos8.com

I blurted because of all the women I know who think there is something wrong with themselves. Because I want to take out a billboard and say, “Let’s love ourselves. Let’s be kind to ourselves. Let’s stop apologizing and beating ourselves up.” I’m reading The Tao of a Woman by Michele Ritterman and in it she talks about self-improvement. She says that if you are on a self-improvement mission, then first you must come to a place of self-acceptance. And, I’ve heard it a different way. Another time a psychologist asked a group I was in to think of all the things we wanted to change about ourselves and implied that wanting to change yourself is an act of violence toward yourself.

I’ve been working with women around issues of self-image for close to 15 years and the issue of liking yourself comes up over and over again. A personal shopper in LA told me that she was getting her PhD so she could work with women around issues of how they dress themselves. She said they came into the store and into the dressing room and bought clothes based on how much they disliked themselves and what they wanted to cover up. She wanted to help them dress out of love for themselves.

And, I’m pondering beginning a walking program for women who’ve never walked and for whom to walk further than to the car or around the grocery store is an unimaginable feat. I’ve been thinking how to market and talk to them about health without making it about losing weight or about having one more thing to feel bad about.

And, my blurt included the outward expression of my inner heart that carries the hurt of my own experience and of others I know and love. Women who didn’t like themselves, didn’t feel okay about themselves, who didn’t know they could do things in their own way. Women who deserved more than to be measured by their size.

I blurted because there are so many things to think about when someone says, “How much did you lose? You look fabulous.” But no excuses, no raining on someone’s parade, no intentions of shushing someone. Simply the uncontrollable overflow of decades of rumination on a topic that might never be solved.

And blurt or no blurt, get thee to the walk . . .

.

A couple of months ago, I started having pain in my left ankle when I took a step. It wasn’t too annoying and I carried on with my half-marathon training walks. I got tired after a walk, but recovered quickly. Gradually, over the weeks and as the mileage increased, the pain intensified and it didn’t go away so quickly. My ankle began to hurt when I wasn’t walking. I began to wince when I took a step.

Then, two weeks ago, I realized my world had reduced to thinking of my ankle. It bothered me and I iced. I took an anti-inflammatory and iced again. I walked and iced. I iced and rested. Still I hurt. I iced. My ankle winced.

Yesterday, I went to the chiropractor and she looked at my foot and ankle and decided they were a little off, but mostly she was impressed by how twisted my sacrum was. After she did some gentle manipulations, I left the office feeling like something was really different.

As I walked the dogs this morning without a limp, I recognized that I had over-focused on my ankle. So much so that I hadn’t noticed that I’d quit moving my hip when I took a step. On the right side, my hip swayed when I took a step and on the left it was as if I had a leg that didn’t bend. With my sacrum untwisted, I could step down and sway to the left when I stepped on that foot.

The experience made me think of being in a stepfamily when things aren’t going right. Naturally, I focused on the  stuff that irritated. Often, I’d try to see if I could better the situation. Nothing changed. In fact, it often got worse. I hurt. I winced. It was not fun.

My world narrowed down to focusing on the irritations. They seemed huge and painful and they grew more and more irritating. Thinking of ways to make irritating things better took up a lot of time in my life. I became exhausted and unhappy. When I finally let go of even thinking of those things as irritating, when I finally paid attention to the other equally important things in my life, especially the ones I had control over, the pain went away. Almost overnight.

That was the same story with my ankle. When I stopped holding my left leg still when I took a step, my hip swayed and the pressure on my ankle decreased. I’m not as uncomfortable. I can feel the looseness and flexibility in my gait. There’s still a twinge or ache as the new pattern settles in to something more familiar, but the pain is about ten percent of what it was.

It was a good reminder for me to hold things gently, including the pain, especially the irritations.

It’s when you get out of the car and stand and walk among the giants that live along Northern California’s coastal mountains that you find trees that make everything else seem minute and meaningless. They tower up to 350 feet tall and they shelter up to 1700 species. They hover and they protect. They aspire and they drink. They stand tall with integrity, until they can’t any more.

The trunk of a redwood is made to withstand the wind, until it’s roots give way. They don’t have a deep root structure, but the roots can spread 100 feet. Thus, they have a good center of gravity, remaining stable and sturdy until they can’t drink more and their roots become weak. Then, they lose hold of the ground and their grip falters. The next high wind catches their top and pushes them into another tree, or another tree falls taking them down with it.

A tree only partially fallen will still survive and continue growing out of the part of itself that has fallen. It is so filled with tannins that the insects can’t and don’t eat it. The great trees drink and drink and drink, up to 100 gallons per day. And, then they turn around and give back up to 500 gallons of water into the atmosphere. They withstand an incredible amount of abuse, even extensive fires. They stay focused on the sky.

They don’t lean on another tree unless they are injured. What looks like dereliction and waste is aging and decaying and breaking down. It is a dynamic process. What is left is used and reused and incorporated with the next need. There is nothing wasted, nothing is left out of the process.

In comparison to the redwoods and the animals we’ve observed along our journey, we’ve seen places where humans have altered, meddled, muttered, sold, twisted, shaped, extracted, taken, bought, owned, parlayed, and moved, all in the name of progress.

And, what of our human-ness, or our role in the family, is there something we can learn about sustaining it? How can we go about our day, our life, our humanity, with some sense of using and replacing and symbiosis, so that there is some sense of the ebb and flow that naturally to this life?

For my own part, I had no idea I was raised by a conservationist until we drove down the northern California coast right into the Mendocino Headlands, saved in 1971 by two women who knew that if the area wasn’t protected it would be built on by an overly eager developer who saw a chance to make a dollar. Thinking back, I remember my father preaching the rules of being in the out of doors. He said we should not litter, that we should take things out with us even if we didn’t bring them in, and we should always, always, always leave a place better than when we found it. Hmmm, could that be my penchant for picking up the litter and organizing a clean-up in my business neighborhood?

And as the road winds up and down over the mountains and valleys, my thoughts follow in their own up and down pattern. Connecting this to that and the other thing to that thing from long, long ago. Such is the way of learning. We see, we observe, we take in, we incorporate, assimilate, integrate. And, somehow, if we’re lucky, something in our pattern changes and we find ourselves more comfortable, with less struggling, less of whatever is too much and more of what is not enough. Here’s to the learning.

Oh, Vera, we love/d you. Thank you for having the vision to create this amazing linear park on the east side of our Willamette River. Every time we walk out here, I feel much appreciation that we have the opportunity to use this part of our city.

Inspired . . . oh yeah!

And now, to the walk . . .

Cross your right arm over and take hold of your left shoulder. Cross your left hand to hold your right shoulder and loosely hug yourself. Notice that your elbows come close together and might even be one on top of the other. Begin to move your crossed elbows toward the ceiling. Do this many times and notice what is moving. Are your shoulders moving? Does your sternum move? Let your whole back participate in the process.

A version of this lesson can be found in this excellent movement guide.

Now, rest in sitting.

Next, move your crossed arms toward the floor. Exaggerate the feeling of slumping by increasing the motion of rounding in your shoulders and low back. Do this slumping movement that brings your elbows closer to the floor, do this many times. Find a way to make the motion smooth both in the taking your elbows toward the floor and bringing yourself back to sit in a more neutral posture with a loose hug. Then rest.

This time, take your crossed elbows to the left. It doesn’t matter how far you go. What matters is that you’re going “in the direction of.” Do that many, many times and feel how the movement is asking your spine to turn and rotate. Notice how far you can turn easily and comfortably. Rest in sitting.

Resume taking crossed elbows to the side, but this time go to the right. Once again, it doesn’t matter how far you turn, focus on the smoothness and quality of movement in your spine. Pay attention to whether you’re slumping while you turn or whether you’re over-arching, either of which might interfere with free movements of the spine. After many turns and a sense that you can go smoothly to one side or the other, rest in sitting.

Finally, connect all the points by taking your crossed arms in a circle. Continue hugging your shoulders and moving so that your arms go up and to the right and down and around to the left. Make a few circles clockwise and a few counterclockwise.
Resume sitting in the chair with your hands lightly resting on your legs. Where is your sternum pointing at this moment? Has there been a small shift in your posture, one that you can distinguish from your previous observations while you were sitting?

Do this lesson a few times during the week to increase your awareness of where your sternum is when you are sitting and moving. Then, when you get out and walk those long distances, you’ll be able to notice if your sternum is slumping. If you find it falling, gently point it in the direction of the sky.

Standing up straight is not the same as lifting your sternum skyward. Moving your sternum is a subtle way of insisting that you bring your attention to an idea of your sternum pointing upward and forward, as though someone had hold of your shirt and gently pulled you along.

Note: It’s all too easy to lift the sternum by pushing forward on the mid-low back. That use of the back muscles to keep one in an upright posture is one that creates a great deal of tension and contractions in the mid-low back, and if this pattern becomes chronic, it can create many imbalances in the way the spine can be use in all activities. The next movement lesson included here will help you integrate your upper body with your pelvis.