FootFreedom

Here’s something which could make a difference to your health & wellbeing

Enjoy! InJoy!

Video from KarmaTube

Yesterday, I was wrtiting about inspiration.

The day before, I posted some foot exercises and got some emails about how difficult

one of the foot exercises is. It involves learning to control our toes independently.

“Soooo hard!” some say.

Gosh, this is the reason we need to begin practicing such things.

According to som medical statistics, newborn babies have8 times more

control over their feet than do adults…

It’s a basic ‘use it or lose it’ scenario. What with keeping our feet restricted

in the fixed area of limited motion that shoes provide for …how many hours

of our lives? It’s amazing that we can do much of anything with our feet or toes…

However, those that practice acheive some pretty astonishing feats (no pun intended!)

Witness this amazing guy who will show you how to change the brakes on a car…

using only his feet!

 
Be Inspired!

=0)

“What you can conceive, you can acheive.” Napleon Hill from Think and Grow Rich.

As some have said before us:

“The poor man says, ‘To see is to believe.’ While the rich man says, ‘Believe it and you will see it!’”

And it’s not only regarding money!

Listen, all you out there who are going into criticism, cynicism, etc. (‘isms & schisms’ as Bob Marley used to say) upon reading this, all we say is, “Check out the data on the Placebo Effect.”

Go on, do a Google search and you’ll find a ton of stuff- hard science data and otherwise….

Pro and con.

Let’s face it. You’re reading this because you’re interested in foot health or foot self-care or have some sort of foot complaint which you’d like to resolve once and for all. Right?

Does that cover everyone here?

Apologies to anyone we might have left out.

Let’s cut to the chase:

Are we willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish our personal health goals?

Whatever they might be??

If so, then it’s important that we leave no stone unturned until we’re looking at the change we want to be.

Hey!

You got anything better to do while you’re waiting for things to improve?

That said, today’s post is about the uses and benefits of a tool called Inspiration.

Most of us reading this have figured out via direct, personal experience that when we’re in a bad mood, more things go wrong during the day than when we’re in a good mood or feeling neutral or happy.

OK, it’s definitely our perception (is there anything else?) and it could0 also be the actual events that occur (that clerk really did say that totally rude thing to us, didn’t she?”) as well.

So, since our moods affect our thoughts and our thoughts (i.e. perceptions and our comments about those perceptions) affect our actions & experiences and our experiences affect our moods, etc., etc. it can be of great service to ourselves to expose ourselves to a frequent flow of inspiring concepts, thoughts and ideas (are those different names for the same thing? I’m not sure right now.)

In simple laguage, “We need all the help we can get!”

If we want to succeed at anything. Why not utilize all assistance available at any given moment??

Really, unless you’re involved in an experiment to see if you can sail solo around the globe or something similar, why not get all the help you can to grease the universal wheels of manifestation and deliver the goods A.S.A.P.?

Point is:

The more we can influence the content of our conscious & unconscious thoughts, the more we can affect the results of our moods and actions and experience.

One of the best ways to re-inforce any message is through repetition.

We want positive, creative inspirational thoughts, so we listen to positive creative inspirational ideas

as often as possible. (one hour per week is an insufficient amount to counterbalance the effects of the 21st century. More like one hour or more per day.)

Hence this post on Inspiration.

What is inspiration?

an English dictionary defines inspiration as, “The process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially something creative.”

If one considers postively affecting one’s health and body as a creative act, than the more inspiration to do so we can get, the better!

Pour it on, keep it coming!

Turn every experience into a precious and priceless moment, no matter how much it sucks!

Ok Sorry! Getting a bit carried away there. Apologies if I appeared to be floating off into Ideal Land…

But you get the drift of things, yes?

SO one of our favorite ‘Inspirers’ is a gent named, Bob Proctor.

An elder statesman of the motivational category of educators,

Bob’s been at it studying and teaching the principles of success

for over 50 years.

Whenever we encounter him, he’s always entertaining and always

has a new twist on something we ‘already knew’ but which we might

have also maybe ‘temporarily forgotten’.

Anyway, he’s got some great videos which he’s recently produced and

posted on one of his websites. If they’re still posted when you read this,

You can access them by clicking here

It’ll ask you to enter your name and email and you can always cancel anytime you like and they’ll not send you anything. That I know for sure because I’ve done it before and Bob’s company shares with us a high level of integrity regarding privacy.

But you know, the videos are so cool that even if it meant getting one more email in our spam folder

a few times a week, it would be totally worth it. The videos are that good.

What videos?

These videos

Also, right now.

yes, right now while you’re reading this, take a nice, deep breath and inhale

and imagine as you exhale, you’re sending your attention all the way down

to the soles of your feet.

Now keep your attention on the soles of your feet and feel the skin there…

the temperature, the texture, all the sensations your feet can convey.

Take a sort of impression of your feet touching whatever they’re touching.

OK now inhale again and imagine your attention or energy travels up from your feet to a spot a little below your navel and a bit in front of your spine or backbone.

Breathe in one last time and imagine that spot fills up like a small balloon the size of a grapefruit.

Exhale and relax.

OK

That’s it for now. three breaths.

Watch Bob Proctor now.

You’ll be glad you did.

Peace & Love

Patricia Cramer & John Crutchfield

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Hi There Y’all!

Here’s an article which supports what we’ve been teaching collectively since at least 1994.
You can ditch (as in toss out) your orthotics and exercise in a way that supports optimal foot suspension. Meaning that when we exercise in a specific way, we strengthen and tone and actuall ‘Switch on’ the muscles necessary for proper and optimal foot suspension and create healthy, well-balanced arches and consequently elimainate flat feet.

For those of you who haven’t attended a FootFreedom! Workshop or any of the periodic classes in Structural Foot Balancing we offer, the concept of ‘Proper foot support” via shoes or any other artificial implement such as custom or OTC (over the counter) orthotics/arch supports is flat out illogical and definitely NOT in alignment with the results of simple human anatomy and biology.
The deal is that our arches are formed and maintained by using the muscles which originate at “the anterior protion of Lumbar vertebrae #5″ this is specifically the psoas muscle and is intimately controlled , according to chinese medical knowledge, by nthe kidney meridian or kidney electrical circuit.

This, then proceeds along a ‘muscle train’ to a few other muscles (if you’re interested, we can cite those for you, just comment or email us and we’ll post the info) which then terminate along the medial portion of the foot (the ‘inside of the ankle’) and wraps around the foot to attach to the distal end (the long end) of the metatarsals (those long bones of your feet.)

The point is that our arches are the product of something lifting them up -from the top. NOT something which is non-existant ‘pushing’ them up from below….That’s unnatural! OK?

It’s really simple when you ‘do the math’ and apply your own innate logic. Think about this.

To reiterate, it’s about our muscles being engaged and toned enough to hold up our metatarsals and cuneiform bones to create a medial arech, NOT about something artificial pushing up underneath our feet….

Orthotics are like learning to depend upon a crutch!

Why would you want to do something like that when you can do it yourself and actually dance barefoot rather than avoid it because “I need my orthotics?”

OK So that said. here’s a link to an article just released today on the Daily Mail, a place which sometimes seems like a Hollywood Gossip Column for the UK.

Here are some exercises from the article which are awesome for improving foot arch intergrity

and muscle tone (all components of building healthy and balanced arches.)

Some of them might seem difficult or even impossible! BUT what we’re doing when we do these exercises (or at least attempt them on a daily basis) is building new motor skills-basically creating new motor connections in our brains. SO, like learning any new motor skill (playing piano, tennis, golf, whatever) it takes time and repetition-the rule of thum for neurons (i.e. brain cells) is: neuron that fire together, wire together…so for those of you reading this who are interested in building or maintaining healthy foot arches, here are five exercises which can support you in doing exactly that!

Check it out the full article here

Peace & Love

Patricia C. & John C.

“What do you think of living ‘orthotic-free’?”

That was the question Patricia Cramer, a friend and holistic health educator and bodyworker asked me one day during a massage appointment in early summer of 2003.

Without a second thought, “Definitely!” blurted out of my mouth.

Having dependent upon my orthotics since 1983 and totally finished with having to choose footwear dependent upon whether they fit my orthotics, I was definitely OVER that phase of my life and longed to move on….

Patricia worked on my legs, hips and feet in addition to sharing with me a new (for me) way of standing on my feet and being in my body in general…and amazingly enough, my heel pain which had recently returned after being gone for a number of years, was gone! I actually felt balanced and good in my feet.

The pain remained gone for around two weeks and when I returned for another appt. with Patricia, I asked if she would work on the other foot as well…she did and, pain-free once again I was back at work for another few weeks…

Thinking about this, and encouraged by Patricia, I gradually learned to stand using a more efficient approach than I’d developed over my life to that point and low and behold, I found the courage to let my orthotics go and when I returned to SF to work again, I’d been off my orthotics for two weeks (and pain-free, mind you) and excitedly asked Patricia where I could learn the work she’d used on me as I thought it would be of great benefit for many of the clients I’d been seeing…

“I think we have a class at the World School beginning in a few weeks.” she said. I enrolled and within the first day, as if a giant light had been turned on in my head, I realized that, not only did I understand the approach (it was being taught as a therapeutic bodywork approach in which a massage therapist would apply the various techniques to a client on a massage table) I also realized that, if we, as bodyworkers want to ensure our clients’ success in resolving those persistent issues which many suffer from, we could see faster and more certain progress (‘more bang for the buck’) if the person suffering from the foot condition would actually participate in their own healing by doing a bit of the massage work on their own feet everyday.

Long sentence, I know…

The point is that, we’re walking around on our feet everyday and those puppies are taking all the shock and impact of each step (often up to 2+ times one’s body weight on each foot per step) and our body and the muscles of our feet in particular are responding with contracting to counter the shock of impact and increased weight.

This is how our feet and toes have come to look and perform the way that they do today…

SO we began to develop the self-massage approach which has become today the FootFreedom approach to self-care.

The good news is that after I began to work on my feet daily, invested a bit of daily attention to how I stood, sat and walked, my orthotics became a thing of the past within a few weeks and by September 2003, I found myself at a concert where I danced for 4.5 hours BAREFOOT no less (the first time in my life I was able to do so!) and the next morning the only pain I had was some sore muscles in my upper legs from dancing so much!

(and the smile that seemed to be permanently plastered on my face due to liberation from those orthotics!) (“Free at last! Free at last! Great God Almighty we’re free at last!” my feet seemed to be singing….)

SO the point of this post is to say that today, I’m 100% orthotic-free. I did it and you can, too!

If you’re interested in living life orthotic-free, the best place to begin is to learn how to do this yourself. Take your fate (and your feet) in your own hands and get moving…you, too can be dancing with a smile on your face and wearing whatever footwear you choose soon!

Your feet might take longer to correct themselves, but if you’re persistent everything is possible…

Begin Here:

Check out the FootFreedom DVD or download the FootFreedom video or attend a FootFreedom workshop.

Just get moving and eliminate your complaints.

Remember:

Practical Action = Positive Results

Thanks for reading this and keep a positive attitude!

Success can be yours!

Cheers!

John C.

Alice J. describes her experience using FootFreedom to eliminate her chronic foot pain once and for all.

Mare M. share yet anotherFootFreedom success story!

Christina B. with another FootFreedom testimonial

Mare M. shares another FootFreedom success story.

Laura H. enjoys the benefits of using FootFreedom on her feet!