Toenails - windows into health

Now, this is interesting. If you have a weak stomach for gory photos, or tend to freak out when you read about diseases, click on the links with caution.

http://www.aafp.org/afp/2004/0315/p1417.html
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/nails/WO00055

Both in the article and in the slide show the doctors are looking at fingernails, which grow faster than toenails, but toenails can also be a way to get a picture of overall health. Considering that toenails do grow so slowly, it can be a bit like looking at trunk rings to get an idea of the health history of a tree.

What an amazing tool!

Not to mention that the shape of the feet say so much about a person, their health, their state of mind and what kinds of footwear they choose.

Daily dance

I was told once by a client that I was "The Mary Poppins of Pilates Instructors." I never quite got what she meant by that until now. As a teacher I give exercises and workouts, but my idea of a lesson learned is one that's internalized. You take it home, you play with it, you make it fun.

Now I get a dose of my own lesson, hopefully with a little something sweet to make the medicine go down.

I went back to the doctor a few days ago. He and his assistant seemed very surprised at my recovery so far. I think that it's partly that I'm a trainer, so I tend to be fit. I've also learned a decent amount about nutrition, cook and eat well (for more on that, check out my other blog!). I am a novice in the art of homeopathics, but am discovering that they are potent and useful. In addition to all that, I am into gravity. It's my friend and I use it. I don't fight it. There's nothing that can get a person to stand up better than being on speaking terms with what my daughter calls "the force that makes you fall down and go boom on your tushy."

This is how I got both of my drains out after only one week out of surgery, I think. I am still extremely limited in what I'm allowed to do, but I did discover that I can sweep the floor thanks to a little footwork.

(Yes, if you were wondering, I am standing on one foot while taking this pic with one hand. That's just how stable I feel now without the extra hole in my middle!)

So, the thought for the day is to check out gravity and how it works with the body. You don't have to be an athlete or even especially fit, and although it's a nice thing to do, you don't even have to make a special time or space for it. Gravity is everywhere and suffuses everything we are and do. See what it does and play a little. 

Feet from square one

http://uvaendurosport.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/less-from-your-shoes-more-from-your-feet/

This is what I work on with people. We isolate all the muscles that mobilize the toes, especially the big one, and trace them up the arch. Then we go through the joints of the forefoot into the ankle. We explore how the ankle works, then we get it to move. We find the calcaneous, the bone that drops down to make the heel and we release the stored up tension that builds there from heel striking. Then we build strength throughout the foot, and up into the body so the client can go out and have fun on their feet without pain.

I will be back at The Body Gallery starting at the end of August. Just drop me an e-mail if you are interested in working on your foundations.

As I feel more human I think more about my feet. Even at this stage of healing I seem to be able to stand very steadily on one foot without the usual wiggle up top. Even on my weak side! Good sign.

For those of you who are just tuning in - last week I had long-awaited surgery to stitch up an umbilical hernia and rectus diastasis. In other words, like many older women who have had kids, my body didn't bounce back and instead got a hole in it where none should be. See yesterday's post for more on that.

I can't use my abdominals for anything...I can carry only up to 10 lbs, which is less than my knitting, so this is good. Meanwhile, I've discovered that snagging clean laundry between (clean) toes and tossing it up on the bed makes it possible for me to fold clothes. I can now officially say that child-proof drawer-locks are completely accessible by foot. :-)

Bit by bit.

New Chapter

Last Wednesday I finally went in to get my umbilical hernia fixed after about 2.5 years of waiting.

When our daughter was two, I had trouble with pain in my middle and couldn't recover my abdominal muscles, which is a big deal for a dancer, runner or Pilates instructor. I visited a doctor who told me that I still had a split and that I should see a plastic surgeon. I visited one who told me that not only did I have a big diastasis split but that I had an actual hernia in my belly button. It was small, but still it was there. She thought that the hernia was the cause of my discomfort. The surgery was extensive with a long recovery and I needed to not be nursing anymore. So I waited.

Then during a rehearsal last year I suddenly came down with a bout of nausea. I ran to the mirror. Something was pushing out of the skin of by belly button. Ugh. So I pushed it back in and felt better almost immediately. Time to get this fixed. But there was no time for a 2 month break. So I continued to wait.

Our daughter is about to start kindergarten this August and will be five. Most of my clients are taking some kind of break in July and our friends will be around to have our daughter over for playdates. My parents booked a flight and a long stay. We found a nanny.

The repair of my umbilical hernia and rectal diastasis was done last week. Insane. Intense. I hope never to have to do this again and I just can't believe that some women do this simply for aesthetic reasons. That's some dedication to the mirror.

Now it's not quite a week later and I can nearly stand up again. When the doctor stitches up the two split halves of the rectus, not to mention the hernia repair, you wind up curled like a shrimp. Ow. I won't go into the more gory aspects of it, but the first week is nasty. I heal pretty quickly, so although it's not quite been a week, the first drain came out yesterday and I feel more human. Yesterday's visit included to the doctor's instructions to "start standing up." Easy enough for him to say. So that's what I've been doing all day yesterday and today - putting my hands to the sides of my ribs and trying to stand, breathe and think all at the same time. That's about all I can cover with my available brainpower.

Starting from scratch.

I'm dreaming of the day I can lay down, do some deep core work, warm up my legs and then get outside to feel the ground with my feet again. The doctor assured me that in three months that my abdominal muscles will work so much better that I won't need the extensive preparation I've had to use for the last 5 years to avoid hurting myself. I hope so.

Today I skirted the "no lift, no push, no pull, no carry" clause by tossing clean laundry onto the bed with my toes. Ha. I did fold with my hands, though.

One step at a time.

More on the effects of commercial shoes on children

Basically, that the arch is decreased, that range of motion lengthwise is decreased, and tibio-talar range of motion is changed in the shoe.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17353125

Someone finally did a study on kids and what happens when they wear shoes

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3031211/

It has officially been found that the speed of a child's gait decreases, they tend to heel-strike, their stride length increases and they lose motion in their feet and efficiency in their gait when they wear shoes.

More goodness in there - they noticed that increased cushioning doesn't necessarily decrease shock absorption.

Human Impact

Just a quick post before I go back to my evening chores to mention 350.org. A while back I started seeing interesting Facebook posts and tweets from one of my favorite political and cultural thinkers, Naomi Klein, who is a board member of this group. Now, to be honest, I don't know much about them yet, but the videos of their past actions and their promotional pieces were just amazing. The basic message is that the safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 350 parts per million. We are now currently at 392 ppm and have work to do. Clear. Concrete. Succinct.

What I really like is that they've gone local by empowering people to start their own chapters and create changes where they live. Now let's see where it goes.

So go look at their web site. Read about their next action on September 24, which they're calling "Moving Planet." If it makes sense to you, go for it.

The meaning of being barefoot.

We feel all the bumps and sharp edges of the ground under our feet. Things stick to our soles. Our skin is permeable - we sweat through our feet and the substances we encounter on the ground move through our feet into our bodies, for good or ill. We have to watch our step. At the same time, the sensual feeling of the ground is unlike anything else. Bare feet rely on strong muscles in the legs to work well so that we can fully feel the adaptive surfaces of our foundation.

Our feet connect us to the ground. They are our portal to the earth and all that's in it, which has pros and cons. One of the nicest places to step are the bumpy ramps at crosswalks. They're almost like reflexology patches provided by the city. Sunwarmed earth or asphalt are lovely surfaces, but in the cracks and on the edges, shards of glass from past auto accidents cluster. Being barefoot requires that I get to know my surroundings intimately. I've seen lines of dying rats trailing away from buildings into the gutters. That is one stretch of street where I always wear shoes. I also know where the fun hill is that's completely smooth and warmed whenever the sun is out.

I'd much prefer to dodge obstacles and to carry a first aid kit with me than to have my old back pain return, a sign that I've again lost my sense of gravity. I prefer to know, to be connected.

We live in a world in which our experiences are constantly mediated, no matter what our class, race or age. Most people I know were brought up to feel that any unmediated experience was uncomfortable or even dangerous. Removing your shoes is a gesture of humility and even poverty. In a yoga or dance studio being barefoot is a way to give respect to the earth and to the practice. A person whose shoes are off seems immediately more human, more intimate and physical.

When experience is mediated we lose touch with cause and effect in the world. The softness of our structured, corrective, padded shoes doesn't let us feel the impact of our bodies on the earth. For me, removing them is a small way of taking responsibility for what my presence does to the world.

A new blog. A new post.

This blog goes along with a journey I've taken over the last year or so when I started to take off my shoes. I was one of those kids who was taken to what my mother called "The Orthopod" at a young age. The doctor always looked alarmed before he prescribed some correction - bars for my turned-in legs, big, clunky, protective clown shoes for my very flat, pronated feet. As a result, my legs and feet did not develop correctly. I found some help through ballet and eventually danced professionally, even after arthroscopic surgery on a chronic sprain which probably could have been avoided with better foot and leg development.

When I went back to school and stopped dancing constantly I had foot pain again. I visited Dr. Valmassy, a podiatrist at St. Francis Sportsmedicine. His response was to laugh at my feet and exclaim,

"You're a dancer?"

He made what he called my "skis," which cost about $300, then clapped my feet into supportive, cushioned sneakers that cost about $100. As a result, my feet hurt even worse whenever I'd take my shoes off.

I developed a long term back injury that lasted about a decade, which I can now directly trace to a lack of tone and efficiency in my foundation - my feet and lower legs. My knees always felt like they were on the verge of pain because my lower legs would go into spasm.

I became a Pilates instructor in 2003 because it was the only thing that seemed to help my pain. I continued to dance and choreograph.

Pregnancy and motherhood are always big shifts in mindset, I think. In my case I believe that I became a more independent thinker. I've always been a problem-solver, but felt as if I had to keep up with what everyone else was doing around me. In the isolation of early motherhood groupthink became much less important to me. It's never something I've been good at, anyway. So why bother?

Way back in the early years of my back injury, my first Pilates instructor, Elizabeth Larkam, gave me a series of exercises that mobilized my ankle joints. Back then it made no sense to me to connect my core and spinal functionality to how my feet worked, but after watching how my feet loosened and became stable, adaptive platforms during pregnancy, I took another look at those ideas. It was especially interesting to me because all my back pain actually disappeared during those nine months, while the ligaments and muscles release to accommodate the changes that happen during gestation.

Five years later, I've left all my supportive shoes behind and spend a lot of time toning and releasing my feet, ankles and lower legs. After years of hearing doctors say that my flatfootedness and pronation were irreversible, I now have strong, flexible arches on feet that stand securely in neutral.

I am creating a movement practice that connects the feet and how they interact with gravity and the ground to the core and the rest of the body. I recently completed a mentorship with Elizabeth which explored training people out of their shoes, and into a healthier gait. Workshops and writings to come...here's where I intend to think out loud and perhaps to hear what other people are thinking about. It's an odd feeling to go off on my own and to find out that plenty of other people are now on that same path.

I'm also a barefoot/minimal shoe runner, which is another amazing topic for another time.

So, welcome.

If there is anyone out there interested in this same topic, who manages to find this quiet place in the din of the blogosphere, please feel free to share your own experiences here.