Sharon Friedman – Vigilance and Tranquility

Your feet have a lot more going for them in the way of joint freedom than we give them credit for and as all machines, if we neglect to use and maintain the machine will not perform well. Try this: Stand with feet at comfortable width and start to move on the floor without lifting your feet off it. You can slide them from side to side like a skater,flex the toes for grip and move like a wormusing the foot’s own range of motion, Pivot from heel to toe and so on. Move your body sideways without moving your alignment or hips and play with this. Try to rotate the body without lifting your feet off the ground and see how far can you go without hurting or loosing alignemnt. (It’s like a chain. Once one link has moved it’s share the movement will affect the next link and so on)

The same thing can be done in a squat and it’s a good balance drill. Also in the squat, extend on leg as far as it goes in all directions and keep both legs relaxed. See how the heel and the rest of the foot give you different grip of the surface and learn from it.