Day One of “5 Days of Foot Love” Series

Day One:
If you’ve been with me a long time, I bet you knew this would be the first tip I’d share. I have different ones to come, but I’m so passionate that this is incredibly helpful for ANYONE and EVERYONE that I wanted to put it here first.

 
If you’ve taken my Roll into Relaxation Workshop you’ve heard this story, but I’ll repeat for those that haven’t.

 
About 4 or 5 years ago, my feet decided they didn’t like what I was doing to them. I was teaching 11 classes a week and really pounding them down.

 
At some point they rebelled and refused to carry me anymore. I was in so much pain I’d have to crawl to the shower in the morning. Then I’d tape the heck out of them to barely make it through class. I went to doctors and podiatrists, and no one could help. So I researched on my own, and found a woman selling a product that would fix my feet- supposedly…

I was desperate. So I ordered the $65 product, but didn’t really expect much out of it.

It came about a week later. I popped in her video and went to town on my feet with her “foot wakers”.
Amazingly, 15 minutes later, my feet felt fantastic. I walked around immediately without pain. I was ecstatic! The bones and muscles in my feet had been pounded and shoved around for years. When I stepped on the foot wakers, I heard popping and felt shifting as everything fell back into place. I was sold. And my love and interest into body rolling and myofascial release techniques was formed.

 
Not all rolling equipment is created equally, so click the links in this article to be taken to the tools I recommend.
I roll every day in some way. It’s easy to do and your feet (as we are specifically speaking of feet today) will thank you!
Using the Yoga Tune-up Therapy balls is quite intuitive really, and I want you to think of it as such. You can’t really go wrong with where you place the balls on your feet. So just get a pair and go. But here’s a super brief and basic way to get you started.
Place the ball on the ground and begin with sustained compression. Pick a spot on the bottom of the foot- gently press down and hold there. Breath is super important. Your nervous system come into play, so you need to relax. If you are on your feet all day and they take a beating normally, this can be uncomfortable. Breathe…

 
Once the area starts to loosen up a bit, you can move your foot side to side or front to back over the ball. You choose how much pressure. If you have plantar fasciitis, the photo above is the perfect placement for reaching that tissue and getting it to relax a bit. After that, just move the ball around from spot to spot doing the same thing. It’s that easy.

 
Wearing shoes every day/all day, isn’t in our best interests. But it’s kind of required for most jobs. It’s up to each of us individually to do the work to release and reset all those bones and muscles that have been squashed into heels and tiny fashionable shoe boxes our whole life.

 
After rolling your feet, you’ll notice not only that they feel better, but also that they feel more grounded and connected to the floor. Your calf muscles will be looser and allow you more flexibility too, as the muscles under your feet extend up the leg. So doing this 5-10 minutes a day will help in more ways than you think.

 
This is just an extremely short intro into rolling, but it’s my number one tip for this week because it can do so much for you.

Here’s to happy feet in 2017!