Thank you. Okay coming at you today with just a little mini practice tutorial, another way, an invitation to explore a familiar movement via what we do with our toes. Okay so if you haven't watched this month's May's 2023 member meetup, Go and check that out because some of these instructions will be used in a different way in that call and so this is another way to kind of explore some of the concepts that I go through and Karen and I talk about and play with in that call. So we're going to come down onto your back.
And if you know that you have, you know, what someone would deem kind of flat feet, then I'm going to invite you to kind of toe heel out the feet so that you're... feet point slightly out rather than trying to have your feet dead straight ahead. Okay.
So if your feet are what some might call flat or very pronated, some might even say overly pronated. Let your feet turn out. Also if you have a hard time kind of feeling any motion up the chain with what you do with your toes, Toe healing out and having your feet turned out slightly can help with that so give it a try. Okay so wherever your feet are just take a second and kind of notice the points with which you make contact with the ground and the places where there are spaces between you and the floor. And then you're going to bring your attention into your big toes.
And I want you to imagine your big toes are even longer than what they are. And like your big toes are on a spit. So your big toes can spin counterclockwise or clockwise.
Okay and we're gonna spin our big toes both counterclockwise. Keep spinning and spinning and spinning and when you have that, when you, there's nowhere else to spin those big toes, then you'll start spinning and cranking them the other way. Spin, spin, spin, spin, spin, spin, spin, spin the big toes. Spin the big toes.
And doing this with your fingers can also help kind of conceptualize what's happening. in those big toes as we're creating motion up the chain. Now I know we can't spin the big toe but almost imagine if I was there with you and I took your big toes and I'm like turning the big toes, turning them, turning them, turning them, turning them, turning them and the legs just go to where the legs go to. So we're not, they don't have to go to the floor, we're not trying to get them to the floor.
You're going until like there's no way to turn the big toe knobs anymore. And then you turn them back the other way. Okay, just notice the movement of your legs, the movement of your pelvis, your sense in your spine of, you know, does it side bend? Does it rotate?
Does it extend or flex? Turn those big toes. Last time. Each direction, turn, turn, turn, turn, turn, turn. Even if there's no like perceptible, like if you looked at your feet, there's no like perceptible motion.
Like you thinking of turning those big toes, like really pranking on them, communicates with the system. So just even just conceptualize, really picturing your mind's eye, that's the action. And then.
Let the legs rest in center. Just take a second again notice the parts of you in contact with the ground. places where there's spaces.
And then we're going to bring our mind's eye and our attention into our second toe. So the toe next to our big toe. And we're going to bend our big toes to the right and movement will happen. It might be different than mine.
And then bend your big toes to the left. So this bend action is a yaw, okay? If a toe was the vestibule of an airplane, it would be the nose of that airplane. Yawing to the right and then yawing to the left. Set another way, the second toe yaws on the trail leg towards the big toe and on the lead leg away from the big toe.
And then we bend it towards the trail leg big toe and away from the lead leg big toe. So just yawing that second toe. And again, notice the movement communicated up into your legs, your pelvis, your spine, with this yaw or bend of the big toe. And there doesn't need to be a ton of movement. Some of us, there might be a lot, especially those of us that have like really long second toes.
But can you conceptualize in your mind's eye this action of bending or yawing the big toe or the second toe towards and away from the big toe? Okay, again, just notice how that communicates with movement and informs movement further up the chain. And then bend that second toe to bring yourself back to center. Okay great, so the last exploration we're going to do here is we're going to do both those things simultaneously. So we're going to spin or crank, turn the big toe and simultaneously bend.
our second toes. Okay, some of us might be able to conceptualize that happening in both legs at the same time. Others of us might have might find that we pick the lead leg or the trail leg and we can only focus kind of on one leg at a time.
So whichever you are is a okay. Start with spinning the big toe and then add in the bend of the second toe. And just notice what's different about combining those two, the big toe motion and the second toe motion as you move here. Spinning the big toe, bending the second toe. And maybe you notice that the second toe bends a certain way to a certain point and then the bend switches while you're still moving in that direction.
So what I'll notice is I'm gonna bend the second toe as I crank the big toes and spin them towards the big toe and away from the big toe. And then at a certain point the toe bend switches and this toe bends towards and this one bends away from the big toe. So if you notice that natural kind of change even though you're still cranking the big toe in the same direction that the direction of the second toe bend kind of changes midstream.
on each of your legs and if it doesn't that's okay too just notice what happens for you in that sense of being able to spin the big toes and simultaneously bend the second toe and again notice the movement that gets communicated up the chain And the quality of what happens in your spine, whether there's more of a quality of feeling rotation or side bending or flexion extension. Okay and then the next time you come through center, pause and just be there for a second. Again notice where you've got contact with the ground. where there are places where there's spaces between you and the ground.
Just notice what you notice. You take the legs out long. Notice what you notice here. Okay, so I'm going to invite you to over the course of this week, play with that practice, this idea of spinning the big toe. bending the second toe with the feet in some different configurations even, right?
What do I mean by that? I mean, you know, maybe the feet are closer in or further out, or maybe just the heels are on the ground. I'm still thinking spinning or bending, even though it's just my heel that's on the floor. Play with.
Some different kind of organizations with where your feet are, the position of your ankle, how far out from the pelvis the legs are. And notice where you've got the greatest kind of control and coordination when you have this sense of initiating from the toes. Okay, have fun with that.
I look forward to your comments, questions, and discoveries. Bye for now.