Practice: Wake Up Your Feet! Gentle Mobility & Flexibility

Brenda Nassali Liston

Hello, and welcome to this class. Thank you for taking the time for your body and coming into the wellness hub. My name is Brenda and I am going to be taking you through footwork. This is a class that is a nice introduction to footwork. It's a class that is good to do in the morning specifically. And you can do this seated at edge of your bed. You can do it on a stool, on the sofa, and wherever you feel most comfortable. So I would like to invite you to come and sit and find a position of comfort for you. And then once you are there, if you are wearing shoes, slippers, or socks of any kind, I will invite you to take those off including your socks so that we have access to our feet. Okay. Feel free to pause until you're ready and then we will move together. So what we're going to do to start off with is take a look at our our feet. So if you look down at your feet as they come into contact with the floor, and I want you to look at the shape of your foot, the shape of your toes, where they are facing. Just have a look at the color color of your feet because as we move, you might see a change, specifically if you are, somebody who is of Patient, descent then you will probably see a change because of circulation. 

Okay. So now bring your feet underneath your knees so in general around 90 degree angle at the knees and then find your sitting bones connected into the seat underneath you. Bring a sense of lift through your upper body and feel that that is stacked and your shoulders are relaxed. Then just relax and drape over your ribcage. And once you've done that, I want you to bring if you can your foot up onto your ankle And if you can't do this, then you can always bring it down to the floor and then you can access your feet down on the floor. So first thing we're gonna do is take hold of our big toe and then your other hand is gonna hold on to the rest of the foot just to secure it so we can move our big toe on its own. And what I want you to do, first of all, is to hold on to the toe and we're going to gently do a bend of the toe towards the sole of the foot and a bend of the toe towards the top of the foot.  

So you're bending it towards the sole and towards the upper foot. And notice how much movement you have as you do that. We are bringing motion to this toe and this joint specifically because it's very useful in your everyday life for your walking, gait, and your balance. And you've done that a few times, you're going to with the inside end of your foot facing up towards the ceiling, I want you to open your toe up in that direction few times to open and close the joint. So you're lifting it away from the other 4 toes and lowering and then doing that a few times to open and close the joint. In this open position is where we can splay our feet and have more balance when we're and standing. 

And then just like a bottle top or cork on a wine bottle, we're going to twist the toe side to side. So you go towards the right, towards the left. Perhaps you've done that a few times. We're going to go to the arbiturise and you set all the toes together, all 4, and you go to the first mid one which is bending them towards the underside of the foot, bending them towards the top of the foot. So they curl and then they splay over. I'm just doing that a few times. And then once you have done that, we're going to take each toe 1 at a time and do our bottle twist. So you twist one way and the that and sound is usually just the and is usually in places that aren't used to moving in that type of movement in that direction and so as you twist sometimes you get cracking. 

Okay. Once you've done all, we're going to take your 2 fingers, index finger and the one next to it, and I want you to place 1 in between your big toe and 1 in between the gap on the next, toe and make a little claw through. And once you've got and, as you bring your fingers down into the toe space, it's passively spreading the toes. Once you've done that, we're just gonna stay there for a moment and let them acclimatize. You can slightly twist side to side and then you can either stay here or if you can, I want you to take the other far the other two fingers and put them in the other two spaces of your toes? So then you will have a finger in between each space and if it's painful for any reason, keep them towards the top of the toes. If it feels okay, you can wiggle your fingers slowly and start to bring your fingers down right into the toe joint space and then hold on to your foot. You take your other hand around your heel and cup your heel and we're going to twist the foot like a towel. Like you're wringing a towel out in one direction and the other direction. So you go one side, other side.  

Do that a few times. Again it might feel slightly uncomfortable. I don't want you to be moving in a place of pain. Pain isn't a good, place to be in, but if it feels slightly uncomfortable or stretchy, that's absolutely fine. So please be kind to yourself as you do these movements especially if this is brand new to you. Okay? 

And then you can keep on your heel and then with that hand that's holding on to the toes I want you to circle around the top of the foot. 

And as you circle, let your toes bend backwards and forwards towards the top of the foot towards the sole of the foot and then change direction and the other way. Good. A couple more here and then you're going to release the toes. Put your foot back down so you're level with the feet and take a look down at your feet and see if you notice any difference between your left and your right foot. The one that you've worked on and the one that you haven't. Maybe they look the toes look further spread out on the foot that you've worked and the other one. And you might see a color change. So because working on our feet brings circulation down to the ankles and to the toes Because I have black skin, I won't see a change. 

But if you have white or lighter skin, you probably see a change in circulation. And you can put your feet further out if you need to see them. And let's take a spread of the toes and a closing of the toes. So as you put your feet out, Wellness to splay them wide and then come back together. I'll show you the underside of my foot here. So toes are going wide and then drawing in. They're going wide and then closing back in. So as they're in contact with the floor then, see if you can spread them on the floor and then draw them back in.

And do you feel a difference? Can you see a difference between the worked foot and the non worked foot? This is a good exercise for active toe opening. So we did passive toe opening with our hand and the foot, and this is actively working there those same muscles to open and close. Okay. Let's leave up there and come to our other side. So you bring your foot up onto your thigh, ankle on your thigh or you come down towards your foot. You can do all of these movements like this. We can bring your foot onto your chair and do it that way whichever is the most comfortable for you. We're gonna start with the big toe and you bend towards the sole of the foot and you bend towards the top of the foot. 

So it's a curling under, opening out of the toe joint. After you do a couple of loads, you're going to open towards the ceiling and close towards the other 4. And open and close. So you're increasing the toe joint space between your big toe and the one next to it. And then what we're gonna do is our bottle twist. So our cork twist one way, the other way. Again, stay in the range of comfort with this movement, And then let's go to the other 4 toes. You take hold all of them at the same time. 

We bend them towards the top of the foot towards the sole of your foot. And then once you've done a couple more of those, we're gonna take each toe and at a time and do our cork twist side to side. The other one going through all 4. And then we'll take our 2 fingers in between the first and second joint space and just hold on and twist a little bit side to side to open up that joint space. If you want to, if it feels comfortable, you take the next two fingers and slot them through slowly wiggling. So you're doing a little finger wiggle and going down into the joint space. Hold on. Take a hold of your heel. You cup that and then we're going to start with this with a twist like we did on and other side. So you twist one way the other way and it's just like you're wringing a towel so they're going in opposite directions. And the hand is holding onto your toes. 

It goes one way. The hand is holding onto your heels. So the hand that's holding on to your toes goes one way. The hand that's holding on to your heel goes the other and then you twist side to side. Can you see the skin moving on the underside of your foot and on the side of your foot? 

And then keeping hold of the heel, you're going to then circle the toes and the top of the foot the the forefoot the front and of your foot. And there you go the other way. Good. Once you've done that, we're going to release. Bring your feet back down. Level with each other and do you now if you spread out your feet, do you now see more of a balanced color from left to right? Do you see a difference? Just noting that if you do see that, that's a very visual benefit of what you've been doing and maybe visually you can see more space now on your working foot than there was before. And we'll just finish with our active toe spreading. So you spread wide and then you come back in And you spread wide and come back in. 

Spread out and you let the toes relax into the middle. 2 more. And if it helps you can do it with your hands. Sometimes that does help you find the toe movement. Last one. Spray it out, come back in and then relax your feet. I hope that that has helped you connect to your feet. Please do this if you can, daily. 

You can do this to start off your day as soon as you whip your legs out of bed. Why not take a moment to do 1, 2 of those exercises that you've just done with me or later on in your day, find this video and do it along with me. And thank you so much for joining me in this practice today. Remember that you are strong and resilient and the small things matter. I'll see you soon.