July 2024: Grounding through our feet

Before you read any further, take a brief moment away from the screen. Widen your attention to the room that you are in. Then, narrow your attention to the bottoms of your feet. Put all of your attention there.

What can you feel? Do they feel tight? wide? numb? awake?

Imagine that your feet are antennae, seeking into the space around them, highly sensitized, collecting information.

Imagine that your entire orientation to the world was through your feet. What would your world be? Surfaces and textures and densities. Stabilizing, balancing and mobilizing.

Our feet are doing all of these things. Human feet have evolved to be incredibly complex and capable. They are at once quite flexible (yes, even yours), quite stable (yes, even yours), and quite propulsive (again, yes <3). The bones of our feet shift between these modes depending on the task at hand – when walking, they shift between modes with each step.

Feet are highly sensitive. It’s important that our feet are able to pick up information about the surfaces they interact with. What’s happening at the level of our feet impacts the system all the way up. Unique patterns happening in the feet will show up in the hips, in the spine, even in the shoulders.

Waking up sensation and access to movement in our feet can open up a whole new world of information, balance, and aliveness.

When in your life does it feel important to practice absorption? Learning, taking in, softening, processing?

When in your life does it feel important to practice propulsion? Leverage, activation, going for it?

Your feet already know how to do both of these modes, and how to switch between them with sensitized awareness to their current environment.

Consider spending the next hour, or a few minutes here and there for the next day, checking in with the bottoms of your feet. You might find your attention there can be a natural source of grounding and presence.

Take a moment before you go. Let what’s compelling stay with you. Let the rest go.

With movement and connection.