Brenda Nassali-Liston
Hello. Welcome to the Patient Care Network Wellness Hub. My name is Brenda, and this is a partner, practice. So you can do this together. And I have Adam here to help me to demonstrate that with you today. So we are going to start. You can either be upright standing like me or seated, and you can do this side by side. We start if you're standing with your feet facing forward, your pelvis stacked over your feet with the spine long.
And if you're seated like Adam is, find your weight into your sitting bones equally with your spine stacked and long, and your knees are gonna be facing forwards, feet facing forwards. Let's all just take a deep breath in and then breathe out, come down to land a little bit more into the supporting surface underneath you. Okay. We're gonna start with the big toes by lifting them off the floor. We're trying to do that individually. Toes are gonna stay down and you're gonna pick up the big toes. Hold them there for a moment and then lower them down. Now you might be thinking how nothing happened.
They didn't lift or they went way, way. Don't worry because if it's not happening yet, then we are sending that brain pattern down to the feet. And as you work on these exercises, it will start to come. So you lift. If it's not there yet, especially if you're seated or if you're, standing, standing you can lift your big toes actively off the floor a bit more and then hold them there when they're up and lowering down. So you can do that as well, Adam. You can reach down to your toes, pick them up, hold it there, and then lower down. And then once you've built up the stretch doing it, that way you can come back to the version that we're doing now.
So if you come back into your seated position, lift and lower. Okay. And then we'll do the opposite of that. And I invite you whenever you need to to use your hands to lift and then allow them to lower. So big toes are gonna stay down, and you lift up the other 4 on their own. Hold them there for a moment and then lower down. And then again lift and lower. If you're standing, and again, lift and lower.
If you're standing, keep some softness into your knees so you don't lock out into the knees, but you keep that sense of balance with some softness behind your knees. Serity that we have in our fingers is available in our toes so we're gonna try that now. So you start by lifting your big toes, Keep them lifted and have the next pair and the next pair and the next until all 10 toes are up and then from there, you're gonna come down from the outside in. So little toes come down then the next pair, the next pair, the next pair. And, yes, it is really odd if you've never done this before. But see, how you go, can you lift them individually? Lower them individually or they may be coming up 2 or 3 at a time for now, and you'll work on that scale again. So going big toe out to little toes and then coming down little toes all the way. Okay.
We'll leave that there for today. I want you to practice that in your own time. You know, take that into your everyday, and it will get better. It will get easier. Okay. So now we are going to do a, a foot press exercise for the tripod of the foot. And so you want to think about the base of your big toe, base of your little toe, center of your heel. And those are the 3 points that we're going to press down with into the floor on both feet.
So as you breathe out, press down through the base of your big toe, base of your little toe center of your heel. And as you do that, can you feel your arches lifting up out the floor and then lower down. Go again like that. So as you press, you should feel your feet activating and shortening. So this exercise is actually called short foot because as you activate, it shortens your foot. They come in from the heel to the toes, the heels to the center. And as you relax, they wind it up. One more like this.
Good. You can probably feel that. It really does work for me to make myself. Fully relax. And then we're gonna both come up to standing. So that's a short foot exercise. If you do it a little bit, it helps you in your upright balance. So if you come to stand on one leg as you activate into the floor of the tripod in that way, not as strongly as we just did it, but a little bit, then it's gonna help balance.
So this is the interactive partner element of practice. So you're gonna start opposite each other, and I want you to do a toe tap. So actually, if you take one step back, you're going to send one leg forward, your opposite leg to each other, tap the toes and come back. And then go forward tap and come back. Back. Pause there. If you need to, you can both be by a wall and holding onto a wall or holding on to something for your balance or one of you if you need to. So you're gonna tap and down, tap and down.
We're gonna do 4 of these. So this is 3, 4. On the 5th one, you're gonna stay connected and balanced. So use your right foot connection down into the floor. Hold. 2, 3, 4. And this is a great song if you're new to it, just come back to it and come down. Okay? We're gonna start that same side that you just finished.
Tap and, 3, 4, and 5. Hold. See, we're doing the same side. 3, 4 and come down. Okay. Opposite side to start. Tap 1, 2, 3 and 4 And now fold. Keep your feet connected, press into your tripod, open up to the ceiling and then come down.
And same side again. At 1 and 2, 3, 4 and 5. Fold, lengthen up 2, 3, 4, and then come down. Shake your legs out and I hope you enjoyed that especially that partner element is a great way to just bring some fun that will play into your practice. Thank you for joining us today and remember that you are strong and resilient as small things matter. See you soon.
