In Defense of Shoes

Shoes are not necessarily good for us and when my daughter was born I was determined to have her run barefoot through life. But then reality reared its ugly head. My wife and I live in a city in the northeast—littered streets and cold winters soon put a damper on my fantasies. What to do? Pliable shoes with space for the toes to move are of paramount concern. So are having different shoes to wear so our feet don’t get used to always walking in the same sole. The more options for change and adaptation the better.
Shoes can have a profoundly negative effect on our posture and gait. Mobility in the foot is necessary for adapting to terrain and for allowing the arches to work. Stiff shoes can really restrain our feet from finding this movement; pointed shoes prevent the toes from spreading as they need to; high heels thrust our pelvis forward; high tops restrain the ankle and can affect corresponding joints such as the hip and knee; flip flops force the toes to grip in order to keep them on your foot.
We are also realists at the FitzGordon Method so when a model who wears five inch heels in order to make a living comes to us for help, we don’t tell her to change professions— we coach her in simple ways that can help the foot perform the tasks we ask of them. (For that model by the way, the prescription is an endless series of exercises from this chapter and massage so help restore foot after such intense work)
To repeat- my approach to shoes is simple. Have lots of them. I look for comfortable shoes that have space for them to spread as much as possible with each step. I try to switch them often.

New York Times Article

The blog has been out of commision for a while but I wanted to put up a link to an article about the walking program in this weeks New York Times.

Learning How To Walk (Chewing Gum Not Included)

A Path to Better Health

Interview with Bikram Choudhury

There haven't been many posts of late but I had to link to this article. He cracks me up. And, painfully, I agree with most everything he says.

Interview with Bikram Choudhury

Walk with Your Butt Out

It is important in both standing and walking to stick your butt out. This simple statement seems to go against the grain of what many people want to think and believe is correct. As a culture we love to tuck our pelvis. Maybe you hurt your back and a physical therapist told you to tuck under to lengthen your low spine; or you’ve done too many bad fitness classes at the gym, or you simply think your butt is too big. For whatever of the many reasons the vast majority of people allow the weight of the spine to fall backwards through the sacrum tucking the pelvis under and taking the femur (thigh) bones forward with it.

Standing up straight, and proper posture really is as simple as that, requires a skeletal adjustment to allow your thighs to move underneath your pelvis. This sticking out of the buttocks is actually meant to relax these muscles and help us find deeper core muscles to hold us up. We are truly a tight assed people. We grip our butts in tension and frustration, which is a natural reaction but as with everything we tend to over do it. The femur bones falling forward in space results in a constant engagement of the butt and thigh muscles (quadriceps).

When standing the quads and glutes should be working as little as possible to let important core muscles function properly. When we walk the big buttock muscle gluteus maximus works as the back leg extends backwards but it doesn’t or shouldn’t need to hold us up. Butt gripping is one of modern man’s great dilemmas.

The release of the butt goes hand in hand with a shifting of the pelvis. The effects of this shift are far reaching. As the thighs move back and under the pelvis your legs will release differently in walking and you will feel a more even distribution of energy through the foot with every step. The shift of the pelvis into proper alignment accesses the correct curve of your lower back bringing instant support to all the bones of the spine. Your shoulders will lift up and back naturally and the head will find greater support at the top of the spine.

Release your butt and embrace a whole new realm of energetic possibilities.

Errol Morris Essay

The link below is for an essay from todays Time's. I have always been a big fan of Errol Morris and now I'm really interested in the work of Paul Ekman. This covers a lot of painful and interesting ground.

The Most Curious Thing

How can walking help with Stress?

The quality of balance within an individual’s nervous system determines a great deal of that person’s character and mood. Everyone knows someone who is angry, or fearful, or bold. These traits are all manifestations of the endless dance of the nervous system as it tries to help us find center or homeostasis. The nervous system is housed in the skull and the spine taking the form of the brain and the spinal cord. The hypothesis of the FitzGordon Method is simple. Lengthen and align the spine and skull and free the nervous system to work at peak efficiency.

A balanced and aligned body relieves stress in a number of ways.

• When the body has core tone, you will be less fatigued at the end of the day.
• When the muscles of the pelvis and abdomen are properly stabilizing the spine and trunk, your nerve pathways are at their most open and free.

A great deal of the brains “nutrition” passes through the cervical spine (the neck). When the head sits properly atop the spine the front and back of the neck are even in length and tone, the brain feasts with every breath.

The Psoas Minor

The psoas minor is an interesting muscle, if it is in your body at all. Most anatomy books refer to this muscle as devolving and claim that only fifty percent of people have one.

But a few years back while attending a workshop with one of my favorite teachers Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen (bodymindcentering.com) she said that in forty years of working with people she had never met anyone who didn’t have a psoas minor. That was good enough for me and I proceeded to teach accordingly often referring to the dichotomy between what Bonnie said and what the books said.

Fast-forward a bit to another workshop with Bonnie. While doing a partner exercise with one of her teachers we began talking about the psoas minor. She had had the exact response as I did when Bonnie said that everyone had a psoas minor until she went to a cadaver workshop where she mentioned this to the instructor. They checked all thirty-nine cadavers and only one had a psoas minor.

This again threw me for a loop until I was reading something by Tom Myers (anatomytrains.net) that referred to a fascial connection through the diaphragm, iliopsoas, piriformis and the obturators. He mentions how this connection would be responsible for the energetic feeling of the psoas minor being present and this is likely what Bonnie was referring to.

It is all so fascinating and confusing isn’t it?

Walking Wrong

You Walk Wrong

Here is a link to an interesting article in New York Magazine. While it has some good things to say it fails in many ways to get at the crux of the issue it is discussing. Shoes per se are not bad -- it is walking badly in them that is the problem. The genius of the MBT shoes that are referred to in the piece is that Karl Muller, their inventor, looked to the Masai tribe for inspiration. What is truly inspiring about the Masai is their extraordinary posture. Energy moves effortlessly through their bones because of their skeletal efficiency. I would hazard that they would walk as well in just about any shoes.

When people find themselves with pain in their heels while walking, it is less about the foot than it is a result of poor weight transfer through the bones of the entire skeleton. If our posture doesn’t translate weight and energy efficiently through our entire body, then walking barefoot or wearing shoes is not going to make a difference.

The feet are the all important base of our bodies, but they are often unable to do their job properly due to what is going on above them, not because of what is wrapped around them. And believe me, I am no fan of shoes. As a yoga teacher and creator of the FitzGordon Method Core Walking Program (www.fitzgordonmethod.com), I am barefoot as often as possible and always wear high quality sensible shoes. But so do countless people who suffer with terrible foot and joint pain.

Sternbergh refers to an article that reports “natural gait is biomechanically impossible for any shoe-wearing person." I would respectfully disagree. Most of us don’t walk well because we have never really been taught how to walk. There is no question that we can walk well in shoes. Check the bottoms of yours. If you walk well, they will wear out on the outer heel and the inner ball of the foot. If they are, like most people, worn on the outer heel and outer ball of the foot, it has nothing to do with the shoes themselves. You simply need to learn how to walk.

Walking is Falling

Walking is a nervous system response to falling. It’s way less active than we make it. A body in the flow of gravity is constantly falling through space and being caught repeatedly by the firing of the psoas muscle with every step. It is a beautiful dance that occurs deep in the core of a healthy body. As the body pushes off of the big toe to complete the footfall the brain registers that you are about to fall forward and basically tells the psoas to catch you.

Preventative Medicine

Over the last twenty years mind/body practices and alternative therapies have moved closer and closer to the mainstream. Today, yoga centers rival gyms for membership. Walk past many parks in the early morning and you are likely to see groups of people doing tai chi with its beautiful flowing patterns. Disciplines that integrate these practices into our daily lives have paved the way for a new field of integrative health. Better self-awareness is a key to the future as we confront an ever more certain health care crisis. At The FitzGordon Method we offer people the message that the more we know our bodies and the way they work, the easier it will be to stay out of the doctor’s office. A taste for softer and more reflective exercise has fueled this interest. As our health care costs soar and the crisis looms larger upon us, preventative medicine must become the paradigm for the next century.

The Psoas as Pulley

Mechanically the body is a series of arches, hinges and pulleys.

The psoas fits in the mechanical model acting as a pulley as it curves over the front rim of the pelvis on the way to the femur. This serves to multiply the force generated when the iliopsoas contracts. Its alignment determines whether or not it can be employed this way successfully.

The power of its psoas is based on its placement. In and of itself the psoas will not live where it should. There are muscles that, when properly toned, allow the psoas to be perfectly positioned. When in this position the psoas provides powerful support for the spine all the way up to the head.

The key again is its proper placement. In physics, pulleys are pretty simple systems design to make lifting a supporting easier through the intervention of the pulley itself. A 500lb weight is not coming off of the floor with just my hand lifting it, but if I tie a rope to it and run that rope through a pulley attached to the ceiling, the weight will come off of the floor rather easily.

It is important to note that the psoas attaches on the back half of the inner thigh. If you are standing with your feet parallel, not too far apart, and your thighs back and under the pelvis you should have the sense of the psoas connecting to the inner thigh which will be in the back half of the body. Turn the feet out, tuck the pelvis under moving the thighs forward and see where the connnection of the psoas moves to. It goes to the front plane of the body. When this happens there is no longer any tension created by the pull of psoas over the rim of the pelvis. As a result you don’t get benefits that could be derived from the support that could be offered by the pulley action of the psoas.

As a simple test see if you can feel the difference in the spine with the butt tucked under and the feet splayed out versus the sticking the butt out and turning the feet in. There should be two very different feelings as a result. Try to tune in to which is more supportive.

Another Link

Not a lot of blogging lately as we wait for the second child to arrive but hopefully you will find this fun.

Swan Lake

Links

Here are a few youtube finds that are fun to check out.

Seven Year Old Gymnast
Here is a seven year old doing things that seven year olds shouldn't be able to do.

Crazy Handstands
Just like the title suggests.

Canadian Gymnast
Jackie Bender in a quasi arty compilation of amazing movement. Check out the head jumping thing.

Walking and Breathing

The psoas major is the main muscle of walking, an action ideally initiated deep in the core of the trunk. The psoas connects the spine to the legs attaching on the lower spine (T12, L1-4), before crossing the rim of the pelvis to attach on the back half of the inner thigh. The psoas if properly aligned is capable of supporting and moving us through space. Its downward pull on the front of the lower spine allows many muscles at the back of the body to lengthen and tone upwards providing support for the head at the top of the spine. When walking it is the work of the two psoas muscles moving in opposition that stimulates a natural and healthy rotation in the pelvis and throughout the spine. Most people use their big thigh muscles (quadriceps) to pull them through life but if everything works according to design the psoas is generating our movement and many overworked muscles get to relax.

The diaphragm, a dome shaped muscle at the base of the ribcage, is the essential muscle of breathing. When we inhale the diaphragm descends allowing air to be drawn into the expanding lungs. At the base of the pelvis three layers of muscle support the weight of the organs. These pelvic muscles and the diaphragm work synergistically. With each inhalation the diaphragm and pelvic floor should lower and with each exhale they should rise back up moving the contents of the trunk with them. Add to this up and down movement the rotational possibilities of the psoas and every breath and every step we take can tone and massage the entire contents of the trunk.

There are also literal connections between the psoas and the diaphragm. There are two tendons for the diaphragm called the crura that extend down and connect to the spine right alongside the psoas connection. One of the ligaments of the diaphragm (medial arcuate) wraps around the top of the psoas. Finally the diaphragm and the psoas connect through fascia, the webbing that encases the entire body. There is a particular fascial grouping that connects the diaphragm, psoas and other hip muscles.

The body is a machine designed to work very specifically. The relationship between these two titans of walking and breathing cannot be understated. Health in one can and will encourage health in the other.

Power Walking

This is pretty cool.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/02/08/knee-brace-electricity.html

Squidoo

We have begun exploring assorted social networking sites to get out the word on walking. Squidoo is an amazing place where people can really spread the word about what they are interested in. Check out our "Lens" on walking.

http://www.squidoo.com/fitzgordonmethodwalkingprogram

Instincts

There is an interesting instinct inside of us all. It is an instinct for normalcy. Whoever you are and however you hold yourself in space, you need to accept that as normal or correct. Our heads would explode otherwise. If everyone walked around processing the mess that is our body we’d all be barking mad. Instead we accept our patterns as normal so that we can get through the day.

Even though you understand that there is a tilt your head, you don’t really beat yourself up about it. You just get it, my head tilts. It is an innate acceptance that we could use more of in our emotional realms.

The flip side of that is as adults we can say I’m not going to keep these patterns. I’m going to accept that my nervous system tells me this is right because it needs to get through the day but I’m going to try to retrain the nervous system.

Retraining the nervous system takes a full two years. It takes two years for a new pattern to get introduced into the nervous system effectively. It’s a pretty literal thing. The body needs to repeat a pattern for a very long time to fully integrate it into the body.

How do you sleep?

The position that you sleep in has a great effect on how you feel during the day. The best of choices is to sleep on your back with no pillow. No pillow? A lot of this stuff is about ideals and it would be best if you lay on your back without a pillow to elevate your cervical spine too much. If you sleep on your side, you do want a pillow but not one that allows your head to tilt incorrectly in either direction. There is much more involved with proper sleep position but to start just tune in to what you do and try to notice if it has any bearing on how you feel when you wake up.

Let us know what you find.

Walking- Who Am I?

It is a simple fact of life that no two people walk alike. I recall an interview with Dustin Hoffman in which he explained how he couldn’t find the character for Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy until he found his walk. Our walk defines us. Our sense of self is as manifested in how we move through space as it is in our DNA.

Perhaps more than anything else, the main goal of the FitzGordon Method is to help you get to know yourself. Let’s start with a simple question: do you know how you walk? Do you understand the way you move? Is your gait fast or slow? Is it easy or aggressive? Not until you can identify these traits can you try and understand why it is you have them in the first place. Our program is about unlocking your patterns by first identifying them and then making an effort to change them, to take on new patterns by choice.

So then, the first order of business in the FitzGordon Method is to acknowledge that you have a walk all your own. Once you’ve accepted that fact, you can begin to get to know it. One way to do that is by looking at the way others walk, examining the myriad differences in step and gait and posture. This will help you gain a clearer picture of your own movement patterns.

The Psoas and Flexion

The Psoas is the body’s main hip flexor which is why it is the main muscle of walking but it plays a deeper maybe more important role as a flexor. Flexors are muscles that bring one body part closer to another one. Flexion’s relationship to the nervous system is through our fear response. Our sympathetic nervous system, the system of excitation, from which stems our flight or fight response, manifests through flexion; like all animals in the wild when startled or afraid we automatically react. The psoas is involved in each of these reactions.

Watching Walking

Most of us are not taught how to walk. We simply stand up sometime between nine months and a year and a half and begin walking. We get plenty of positive reinforcement but not a lot of instruction.

Start watching the way people move down the street. You can learn so much from watching the way people walk. And if you are lucky enough to be spending time in a park these days, watch people run. It is scary but can be incenttive to learning how to move better.

Compensation

The body is designed to work and walk in a specific pattern but it doesn't take much for it to lose its way. Even in utero events are conspiring against us; positioning in the womb, birth trauma, and our first breaths can affect our movement and posture long before we have control of our own destiny. Add to that the day-to-day reality of a life lived amongst others and machines and it becomes easy to see how our aches pains and injuries make finding ideal alignment difficult.

If your car gets a flat you are not going to go very far because the other tires can't get invloved to help. The body doesn't work in the same way. For example, if the inside of the foot falls into disrepair the outside of the foot will begin to help and you will keep on walking. The problem with this is that the outside of the foot is then compromised in its original purpose, because it has now taken on two roles instead of one.

This kind of compensation is going on all over the body, but it doesn't need to be a bad thing. Think of yourself as a detective. Start to explore the way you walk and try to think about why things are moving the way they do. Does one arm seem to move more than the other while you walk? In your best posture is one shoulder lower or higher than the other? Can you think of why this might be?

It is very easy to go through life accepting your posture for what it is. You can walk the way you walk and reach your dying day without much trouble. But you can also rebuild your self in an image of your choice. We can learn to undo many of the compensations that have brought us to where we are.

It starts with simple awareness. Begin to take note of where you ache, what moves where. What seems right and what seems wrong? Most interestingly, begin to watch those close to you. You are your parents and siblings. Take note of the similarities and differences. Begin to watch strangers as well. Try to see how they move and try to develop a sense of what seems right and wrong. Get to know yourself and the deeper meanings of the body will be revealed.

Six Packs

The cultural arena of our body is a fascinating one. We have so many compensatory patterns due to the way we feel and look. We tuck our pelvis because we think our butt is too big, we hunch our shoulders to hide our breasts or lean over constantly because we don’t like being tall. There are many more to add to this list but I am really fascinated by the desire for six pack abs. Our society lives in worship of the sit up or crunch, thinking it is an express train to beauty.

The rectus abdominus is a pair of muscles runs up and down connecting at the pubis at its base and the sternum and three ribs at its top. These are the muscles we refer to as the “six pack”. The body has interesting and different ways of compensating for dilemmas of length and space. The length of span between the pelvis and the ribcage is really too big for one long muscle to provide support. As a result we have tendinous insertions that fall between what are actually ten small muscles. We really build ten packs but we only see six of them.

This pack is formed when we make these individual muscles big enough so that they essentially pop out from the tendons that surround them. Muscle is designed to stretch while tendons are not. While this might look good to some, I’d like to take a moment to explain the nature of what is happening to your muscle. Blood flows through muscles, passing through and around the endless number of fibers that make up an individual muscle. The way we build muscle is by creating micro tears in the muscle fibers and as they heal or repair the body overcompensates in a way, replacing the damaged tissue and adding more, for protection against further damage. As we continue to build a muscle, the fibers need to have somewhere to go and they begin laying down on top of one another. As more mass develops the layering becomes denser. At a certain density blood flow will begin to become inhibited.

There is nothing wrong in making this choice to build hard muscle. It is just important that we have a clear understanding of the consequences of the actions we take.

Walking Dogs

The genius of cross training is that you work the same muscles in different patterns and along different pathways. The muscles required in chaturanga dandasana in yoga are different from the muscles used in traditional western push-ups. It is great to work on both.

If you want to build dynamic strength and stability in your shoulder and rotator cuff, I highly recommend getting two dogs. They should be a minimum of 60 pounds as adults and it is imperative that they be poorly trained.

You will be amazed not just at the way they will be able to yank you to and fro but at they way your muscles will work to stabilize the body against these forces.

Good luck.

Who Am I?

Who do you walk like? Do you know? We learn in a number of ways but a young child does much of its learning by imitating the people around them. And that is not always a parent. It could be a sibling or even an aunt, uncle, or grandparent. I think we imitate most those we bond with. Unfortunately, Uncle Jimmy might have a winning personality but he could also have been in a car accident that left him with a limp for his young nephew to emulate. If you have parents or siblings that live in the same area as you, you should hang out with them watch the way they walk. If you have home movies I suggest you go watch those and see where you come from, who are you and why do you what you do physically. Become a detective of the body and start to decipher the history of your patterns. Let us know what you find.

Walking...

Our move from being quadrupeds to bipeds has not been an easy one. Our Genus, Homo Sapien Sapien (the one who knows he knows) is only 200,000 years old. In the grand scheme of things we are babes in the woods. The problem is that modern man doesn’t walk any better than his primitive ancestors.

The move from down to up has brought a whole host of problems that haunt us each day. Our relationship to gravity, nature’s most powerful force, has been rearranged. Throw in the fact that we learn by imitating the poor posture of our parents and just for good measure add the rise of technology and the addictions to our desks and sitting for terribly long periods of time. It is a wonder we can walk at all.