Hello from Yarrow and You Therapeutic Bodywork! My name is Heather Alison Cook, Licensed Massage Therapist and I specialize in Massage, Myofascial work, Cupping, Hot Stones, and Craniosacral Therapy. My office is located in downtown Aurora, Oregon. It’s been a while since posting a new blog! And although I’ve seen some of you back in the office after some rescheduling due to illness, I have now made a full recovery from meningitis and being hospitalized at the end of November– that was no fun! I am feeling much better now and back in action! Feel free to book a service and get some You Time!! Hope you enjoyed your holidays and are taking it slow and easy as we get 2023 rolling!
How do shoes with a heel affect my body?
Shoes! We will talk about shoes today! How exciting! I don’t know about you but I love shoes, cute shoes, boots, sandals, you name it. I have always been a “shoe lover.” But once I realized that some shoes were causing a foot problem and other problems in my body I reconsidered what I was putting on my feet every day. So, what do shoes have to do with how my body is functioning, you ask? Well hopefully, I will help start your thinking about how your shoes may be contributing to some of your body’s ailments. Do you know that shoes can have a huge part to play in the mechanics of our feet, legs, hips, pelvic floor, and even our neck? How can this be you ask? Shoes? The things I put on my feet to keep them warm and protected? Yes. Anything we do with our body, and the ways we move our body (or don’t move our body) have a profound impact on how our body mechanics work. When movement is repetitive, this is especially true.
Do you remember the first shoes you were ever put in? I do. I still have my baby shoes. And luckily there are flats. But lots of us brought up in the western culture were put into stiff and often heeled shoes for the very first time. Sound normal? Or does it sound ridiculous? A baby/toddler in heels? A human…who is just learning to walk, in heels? Yep, a pretty common practice in western culture. Hopefully, once you read more you will start to see that almost everyone wears heels! You will start to see heeled shoes everywhere! And to be clear, I am referring to a heeled shoe as any shoe with anything greater than a zero-degree drop –as if you are standing on the flat earth without shoes; that is zero degrees. This is where our body was designed to move and function; all our joints, muscles, organs, spine, and brain are designed from this neutral position of our feet being flat on the earth. Any incline/decline in what you stand moves from zero degrees to a positive or negative number. Let’s say a regular cowgirl boot has a 1-inch heel. That means you essentially are standing on a hill/decline of 1 inch and your body will compensate for it. We first need to understand this starting point/zero-degree point. Yes, I realize many of us never thought we wore high-heels but believe it or not many a workboot, regular sneaker, a men’s dress shoe, kid’s shoe, you name it, often has a heel that can and does affect the mechanics of your feet plus the rest of the body.
Once you step into a heeled shoe, it’s like you are standing on a hill sloping down in front of you.
Imagine walking down a path that does have a slight decline. And walking down this path to the bottom of your driveway should be fine, you say? Yes, we want to be able to walk up and down hills every day of our life actually. Walking is one of the best things we can do for our bodies! Try to do lots of it on varied terrain. (And… in shoes that are good for your body!) So again, walking downhill shouldn’t be a problem, and it’s not, unless you do this every day, without walking back up the hill! Putting on shoes with heels, even 1 inch or less is like walking on this path every day, without walking back up: you just keep walking downhill! Your body compensates, which is great and this is what the body does. It compensates. However, we don’t want chronic compensation-this my friends is where the body gets into trouble. This repetitive movement of wearing heels chronically positions your feet, legs, hips, ribcage, spine, and head like it is always walking downhill. There is more pressure on the front of the foot for instance, the ankle joint is more open, the calf muscles are slightly shortened, the hamstrings are shorter, the glutes cannot engage properly, and it causes the pelvis to tilt out of its neutral position. If the pelvis tilts the spine and ribcage follow. The ribcage holds our organs, our heart: we want our ribcage in its proper position! The neck, head, and even brain change their position in space all to accommodate walking downhill. AGAIN, this is fine, we should and want to be able to walk downhill. It’s just the repetitiveness of being in heels/walking downhill, every day, every week, year after year, decade after decade. Count those steps! AND we never walk back up the hill!!!
The body will adapt to walking downhill all of the time
Imagine really high heels, like 4-inch high-heeled shoes. Put them on in your mind’s eye. How do you feel? Do you feel like you are on a steep hill going down? Like you want to fall forward? Yes, this is normal! Our bodies have to adjust everything to walk down a hill. We lean back, our quadriceps on the front of our legs get used a little more, there is a different force in the knee joint, our pelvis tilts, etc. We put undo stress onto joints, asking more of some muscles and less of others than would occur on a flat surface. So now imagine standing barefoot on a wood floor. The feet would be at zero degrees inclination. Ideally, the ankle, knee, pelvis, spine, ribcage, and head would also be in a neutral position. This is where the body moves from best, where it was meant to walk from, every day, every step. We can still take our feet, knees, and hips and hit the mountain trails but if you are already wearing heels and hitting the trails there is even more unnatural forces on the joints and muscles. Due to modern living, repetitive movements and wearing heels since we started to walk have shaped our bodies into the way they are today. They have adapted to the many things we have done or not done throughout our lifetime, including wearing heeled shoes. When we frequent a position the body accommodates to make it easier for us to do that position. Our body is always trying to help us out! (Thank you body!) BUT, if we never give the body zero or uphill it thinks we don’t need those muscles or joints to move in those ways and we essentially lose function in those parts. Sometimes the spine or the discs between the vertebrae are being crunched right where they meet the sacrum/SI joint/pelvis from the chronic tilting of the pelvis, sometimes the chronic pressure from being forward on the ball of the foot, creates nerve pain or damage, sometimes the cervical spine/neck has issues because the head has had to chronically tilt out of neutral. The chronic positioning of the body AND the lack of other movements is what causes some of the mechanics to go awry.
Putting on heeled shoes is just one part of the shoe dilemma. An ideal shoe would have a zero drop(no heel), it would be flexible so all 33 joints of the foot could articulate, and the toe box would be wide enough to accommodate all of your toes to separate and be as wide as they were meant to. I will discuss these other components of healthy footwear and its mechanics in another blog. But right now let’s just stick to the heels-non-heels conversation.
I used to wear boots with heels on them. In fact, all of my shoes had some sort of elevation and I started having hip and pelvic floor issues. I learned that my footwear was a big contributing factor to my body not functioning optimally. Along with changing my shoes to a minimal type of shoe, one with the above-mentioned, zero-drop, wide toe box, and flexible sole, and doing some corrective exercises to undo the chronic positioning, I managed to heal my issues and get stronger in a more naturally aligned way. Corrective exercises can look like physical therapy exercises at first but you can also learn how to move better during the day and avoid other chronic movements that contribute to foot, hip, knee, neck, and other issues.
Bodywork can help with changing of habits
I hope this is starting to make a little bit of sense as we lay the groundwork for more shoe discussions. I have studied biomechanics for many years with Katy Bowman and used to teach her courses and classes. She is an expert in biomechanics and natural movement. and always recommend to my clients to look at her website Nutritious Movement http://Nutritiousmovement.com for lots of great information to help your body. I don’t teach classes anymore but am always happy to help my clients start to see how they are moving or how they might move their bodies better. Getting regular myofascial work while changing footwear, doing the corrective exercises, and changing old movement habits is how you will see the most long-lasting improvement, if not full recovery.
So the shoe saga will continue! Next time I can discuss more how thick, overly-built, and stiff shoes or shoes with pointed or narrow toe boxes affect our walking, pelvic floor, and more! So stay tuned! Anya’s Shoe Reviews http://Anyasreviews is a great resource to help decide which shoe is best for you. She reviews all the greatest minimal-type shoes that are out there. Looking forward to seeing you in session and answering any questions that I am able to. You can schedule a massage, myofascial, craniosacral, or cupping session at Yarrow and You Therapeutic Bodywork. Thanks and now I am going to go take a walk, hope you do too!