54. How Feet Have Similar Issues as Our Jaws in Today's Culture

Imagine transforming your overall well-being by simply paying more attention to your feet. Today, we sit down with movement coach Petra Fisher, who shares her compelling journey from the corporate world to becoming a passionate advocate for foot health. Petra reveals how modern footwear often reshapes our feet and leads to common issues like calluses and plantar fasciitis. Highlighting the benefits of letting children go barefoot or wear minimal shoes, she also contrasts Western foot structures with those in parts of Asia, offering valuable insights that might just change the way you think about footwear and foot health.

Chapters

• 0:00 Feet, Jaws, and Footwear
• 7:29 Optimal Footwear for Foot Health
• 16:15 Foot Stimulation and Foot Health
• 28:07 Exploring Breath, Jaw, and Body
• 33:37 Pelvic Floor, Jaw, and Foot Connections
• 44:04 Exploring Foot Health and Movement

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

We are live. Hello everybody. Just hang on a second so we can go live on Instagram. It takes a couple clicks before it goes. There you go. Instagram is receiving it. All right, we're live on Instagram too. Let me know when yours are. Is yours working, I think?

Speaker 2: 0:20

we're good. Yeah, it looks like it's online, so exciting Awesome.

Speaker 1: 0:23

Yes, welcome, welcome, welcome. So I always have my my instagram screen next to me in case somebody asks a question so I can go on there. Uh, welcome everybody. I have a very special guest for our next duty of breathing podcast. Thanks everybody for being here. So we have petra fisher. I have been following her for a while and I always be like, oh my goodness, that's the feet girl, like she knows everything about feet. But what I didn't realize is how our feet are related to the rest of our body. Right, whenever you go to dental school or dental hygiene school, we study teeth and whenever you go to, you know, become any specialty. Usually we just focus on that and nobody teaches us how it's all related. So I am so happy to have you here so you can kind of tell us a little bit about how our feet are related to our jaws. They're so far apart. How in the world could they be related? But before we start, will you please introduce yourself?

Speaker 2: 1:27

to the crowd. Awesome. Okay, so my name is Petra. I am a movement coach. I've been teaching movement for about 10 years and I transitioned into this after being in the corporate world and having all kinds of body issues and I wanted to fix them, and that's how I discovered the world of movement, which, for me, is 100% big picture, because everything is 100% connected. And I'm extra excited to be here because, although I do focus a lot on feet because I think it's a good entry point for most people I've had my own share of tongue, tie and jaw issues and I just like it's incredibly exciting work to work on airways, and so I'm super happy to be here.

Speaker 1: 2:04

Thank you, thank you. So I'm going to start with a personal question. There are so many people out there, including moi, that we notice that they will have, for example, calluses on their feet, but it's usually on one specific spot. Why does that happen?

Speaker 2: 2:23

For sure. Well, I think that we can really like draw a parallel between our jaw development and our foot development and our jaw development. You know, we have human jaws that would have had an evolutionary history of a lot of breastfeeding, a lot of very tough foods, a lot of work in our jaws, and that would have created a face shape that is very different than what many of us experience today. The same exact thing is true of our feet. We would have been mostly barefoot for hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary history and a few thousand years ago we invented shoes. And ever since we invented shoes, we've made them narrower and cushier and stiffer, and so our feet, by spending many, many years in shoes, no longer look the way that they would have looked a long time ago and they no longer work the way they would have worked a long time ago either. So, essentially, what most of us have is some version of a very stiff, artificially narrowed foot that manages to work, which is amazing, like it's actually incredible that our bodies can do anything at all.

Speaker 2: 3:23

But we tend to load them in very particular ways because they've been so squished. So, instead of being as wide and functional as they should be, they're figuring out another workaround and a very specific small callus is going to happen. Because you have your foot has a tripod. It sort of goes from your heel to the base of the big toe, to the base of the baby toe, but what most of us have is a new type of tripod where it's narrower at the front and that narrowing is what you're seeing showing up in that callus, because it's an overload for that one piece of skin. Crazy, right.

Speaker 1: 3:56

Oh my gosh, that makes so much sense.

Speaker 2: 3:58

Yeah, yeah, it's not rocket science. You don't see it until you see it, and then you're like, oh my gosh. So I don't know how much you know about my recent life, but I've been traveling in Asia for the past two years, and it's super interesting there because, although the people that we met, who are local, typically don't actually do a lot of walking, they maybe don't have the world's healthiest feet, but what they do have is wide feet because they have been in flip-flops most of their lives or barefoot, and so the difference between the way Western feet look and the way that Indonesian or Sri Lankan feet look is just it's stunning. It's stunning.

Speaker 1: 4:31

Wow. So what is your recommendation for children? As soon as they're born, when is it okay to start introducing shoes?

Speaker 2: 4:42

Ooh, I don't know about the wins in the whole thing, the way that I think about footwear and you know it's going to depend on where you are in your personal life and journey but you want footwear that lets your feet work as much like feet as possible without also hurting you. So for babies there's a really clear path forward because they can be barefoot a lot and ideally barefoot on texture, and we should talk about texture. It's very interesting when it comes to feet. But then when you start buying them shoes, it's really optimal if you buy them wide, totally flat, totally flexible shoes and that will let their baby feet grow into happier, big feet. So you're just not constricting their feet all the time. So that's what I would be thinking about with a child.

Speaker 2: 5:22

Now, if you have an eight-year-old, they probably are still pretty resilient and rubbery at that age, so you can probably transition them pretty quickly into a more. They're called a minimal shoe. It's usually the term barefoot shoes, minimal shoes, even transitional shoes, are terms you might hear. So it kind of it's going to depend. So if you're 80, you might not want to go to a very flat, very flexible shoe right away, but there's step down shoes which are the transitional shoes. If it's a child, I would maybe go for it and see how their feet respond, and then there's a whole spectrum of choices kind of in between, depending on your age and what state your feet are in right now.

Speaker 1: 5:55

And you can find minimal shoes for all ages.

Speaker 2: 5:59

Yes, 100% so. On Instagram, anya from Anya's Reviews is a really great shoe review resource. So the hard thing about minimal footwear is finding it, because most of it's sold online, because it's not yet super mainstream, and until more of us are realizing that our feet need to have different footwear, it won't be mainstream. So it's online shopping, and no one loves shopping for shoes online. I don't love shopping for shoes online.

Speaker 2: 6:25

I get it, but people like Anya are doing a really good job of creating information resources. They do a lot of shoe reviews. She even had a meetup a live meetup in Chicago this year where you could go and like try shoes on in person. That's amazing, super cool. Yeah, she's doing awesome work and I think she's planning one for next year too, but I don't know where that's going to be yet. So, and I have resources on my website of other reviewers as well. So there's quite a few barefoot shoe reviewers and there's quite a few Facebook groups are good too. So Anya's got a good group on Facebook. I have a group on Facebook where people talk about shoes a lot as well and you kind of trade recommendations.

Speaker 1: 7:07

So what you want to be thinking. I can tell you what you want to think about in a shoe and then after that to find the right model for you I can give you some tips as well.

Speaker 2: 7:11

Perfect, do you mind going ahead and sharing your Facebook group name? Oh yeah, for sure, mine is move better, live better.

Speaker 1: 7:14

Perfect. Yeah, we got a question coming in over here and he says what do you think of Crocs and these big, fluffy, puffy slip-ons?

Speaker 2: 7:27

Yeah, they make me sad, I'm not going to lie. Let me talk about what allows a shoe to let your foot function well. So you basically want a shoe that does as little to interfere with foot mechanics as possible. So the first thing that I would probably look for is a wide toe box. So that's not going to work if you get a wide width regular shoe. Because of the way they're shaped, a human foot should kind of fan out the whole way, and even a wide regular shoe is gonna pinch in at the front. So that pinching in is part of what's causing those calluses to form and it also is going to be related to plantar fasciitis, to bunions, to neuromas, to hammer toes. Like 90% of the foot issues people are getting are happening because of that narrowing.

Speaker 2: 8:10

So number one is a wide toe. If you have a wide toe you can deal with a lot of other things. Number two is you don't want to have a raised heel, and when I talk about raised heels most people think I'm talking about high heeled shoes. But actually almost every shoe that you get out there in the store has some amount of heel raise and what that does is it pushes your body forward all the time. So that means too much weight on the front of your feet. So once again you got your plantar fasciitis, your bunions. That's overloading and you also mess up your walking. So when you walk you should have a leg that travels behind your body and every step. And if you have a heel in your shoe your leg can't travel as far and that means some carry on consequences to your hips, to your pelvic floor, to your spine. So yeah, it's crazy.

Speaker 1: 8:53

It's crazy. I'm just thinking, like everybody you know with hip replacements and knee replacements, how much of those were impacted by their shoe choices throughout their whole lives.

Speaker 2: 9:07

Yeah, and it's. You know, it's like studying nutrition, right, where it's so complex and so multifactorial logic says that if you have this mechanical issue happening at the ground so that's where you connect to the ground it's going to have a bigger impact on the top of your body than the lower part of your body because of acceleration. So even like this much heel is going to impact. You know how your neck feels. It's crazy because you can give yourself whiplash every time you take a step. It's not mini whiplash, but mini whiplash for 40 years is a lot of whiplash. So heels you want to be in a zero rise heel. So those are the two I think non-negotiables. Then you get into probably your best piece of wiggle room is how thick and stiff the sole of the shoe is. So when you first start being barefoot, transitioning, you probably want some cushion in your sole because it can be painful to change your shoes and your feet. You know you wouldn't go to the gym and try to bench press 400 pounds right, like that would be dumb. You wouldn't go and expand your jaw in one day like you're great. You have to adapt. So that's the piece where people struggle and most people either overdo things or underdo things, because it's a learning curve and you are an experiment of one when it comes to this. But your cushion is your best friend. If you have to, you know, go for a long walk on pavement. You don't want to overexpose your feet to too much loading. So I usually suggest that when people start out, they find themselves a cheap, very minimal shoe and something called an ultra or a lens shoes. So the brand is ultra a, ltr a. They're wide toed, they're low, zero drop they're. They're also super cushiony, and lens is like that, but not quite as cushiony. And then you've got a pair of shoes for when you need squish and a pair of shoes for when you're feeling really strong, and then you can kind of wiggle back and forth between them. But the one thing you're probably not going to ever want to do again is wear your old shoes, because they will unlikely be. You won't want to. They're not comfortable anymore. I haven't forgotten the question about the Crocs, because I know they are very comfortable. Crocs are going to fall into this kind of gray zone where you know, like I wouldn't go on a hike in your Crocs, they're not a horrible shoe to wear because they're not very raised heel, but they don't really let your feet function. Your feet should work when you walk. They're not supposed to be slapping the ground, like you know I don't know a dead fish. They're supposed to be functional and moving and I can talk about what your foot should do, and I'd like me to. So Crocs okay, I'm just here to listen. I love it, amazing. So, yeah, so a Croc is not going to be your optimal shoe for coaxing out the movement that you want to get from your foot, but in a realm of you could do worse. For sure, you could buy Manolo's and have a worse shoe, but I would not you know, full time be recommending Crocs.

Speaker 2: 11:55

Then the final kind of two pieces so thickness of sole and stiffness of sole can go together. So if you have a very stiff sole, what you're not going to get is a lot of movement through your foot, and so one of the things that should happen in your foot is, as your leg moves behind your body, your big toe should. Can I even show you? There's the camera, it's all backwards. So your big toe should be able to bend or extend, and that's part of what should push you up. That's part of what takes your leg behind your body. So when you have a very rigid sole, your big toe doesn't have a chance to do that and many, many people are going to find that their big toe has stiffened up. And so when your big toe can't do that, your body has to compensate for that lack of big toe extension and it will often do that by rotating. So you're going to get this rotational aspect, an over rotation in your gait, where it's either your spine over rotating or your foot over rotating.

Speaker 2: 12:46

And once again we're looking at bunions. Because the bunion is happening because you're pushing off the big toe joint sideways, diagonally, rather than straight forward. I mean that's one of the reasons for a bunion. So you probably want some flex in your sole just so your foot can roll and so you don't lose your big toe mobility. And you can lose your big toe mobility permanently and that's a big problem because then you can never get back to the place that you would be if you had that big toe moving. So that's a medical condition. It's called hallux rigidus. There's also an interim condition called hallux limitus, and if you have that you can definitely still work on it and regain a lot of mobility, and I definitely that would be a top priority for working on, if that's something you're experiencing.

Speaker 1: 13:31

And is a test of that. If you put your your just foot flat and you try to lift your toe up, is that what you're supposed to do, because I've seen people doing that. Yeah, yeah, I do that all the time.

Speaker 2: 13:35

Daily. I lift my toes daily, so yes and no. So lifting your big toe, you know, like kind of go, like that is a test of mobility, but it's also a test of um neurology, like can your brain even do that? And of muscular strength, because this gets me something different than that. So this is, this is passive range, because I'm pulling on my finger. This is active range because I'm lifting my finger up. So here my muscles are working, here my other hand is working.

Speaker 2: 14:02

So big toe range of motion should be there's an argument about it. But 45 to 75 degrees is what most people say. I believe 65 is probably about right and you might be able to lift your toe only 30 degrees, but to get it to 65. So I think if you can get it to 65, then you're good. I do think that striving to have your active and passive range similar is a really good movement goal, because some of the joint research says that your injury risk is greatest when you have a big gap between your active and passive ranges of movement. And that's one of the reasons that yoga injuries happen is because people will stretch into really big pretzels without being able to control the range. So you want to control the range if you can, but I would say big toe, range of motion at all is what you really want.

Speaker 1: 14:49

Perfect. So we're starting down here. We're going to get to the jaw everybody. We're starting on here because, first, I want to understand exactly how are we supposed to be walking. In myofunctional therapy, a lot of times we'll have the patient walk back and forth. Usually we're looking for toe walking, we're looking for, you know, foot pronation so we can refer. Of course, we don't treat any of this, but we refer these patients to a physical therapist or somebody who can help them. So in order for us to understand how all of this is related, it's important for us to first understand what is it really supposed to be happening whenever we are walking, so when somebody is still walking or, have you know, have fupination, these types of things. Um, okay, in your field of work and your experience, how can you relate toe walking to you know a problem? What's usually done?

Speaker 2: 15:48

So I'm not super super up on toe walking, but my biggest understanding is that's kind of neurological like for whatever reason, your body's decided that it doesn't really like using its feet, and that tends to be a child thing, right, Is that? Is that correct? So one thing that we know for sure is that our feet are very sensory organs.

Speaker 2: 16:05

There are a ton of nerve endings in our feet and this is actually really cool. I just learned this exercise. I don't remember the name of the woman I learned it. Who teaches it? I think it's Holly Hunter. It's really cool.

Speaker 2: 16:15

So you've got a ton of nerve endings and they don't get a lot of stimulation in your regular life because we've got these big comfy shoes on. So what you can do is you can get yourself, you know, those coconut um mats that you can use in front of your door, those bristly coconut mats, and all you do is you spend like two minutes a day wiping your feet on that mat, like so scraping along, scraping the bottom, scraping the arches, scraping the sides, and what that does is it gives you so much nerve stimulation and your body and brain get to know your foot better and any kind of over reflexive action, such as, potentially, toe walking, starts to calm down because you're giving those reflexes some feedback all the time. So I would definitely consider that if you're working with someone who's toe walking, just to give them a lot of feedback. But I would do that for anyone Like I don't own a mat right now but I really want to buy when we're traveling still I'm like, oh, can I do it? Should I do it because I really want. But it also works. If you have a you know a gravel pathway or a you know a carpet, you can just kind of slide your foot on the carpet. You're going to give yourself a ton of feedback and it's really easy, like it doesn't take much time, anyone can do it.

Speaker 2: 17:17

And the other thing I would think of for toe walking is just straight up texture. I would be. You know, can they walk? Can they roll on a ball? Can they walk a step on a ball? I've got my youtube is petra fisher movement also and I've got a foot mobility exercise on there where you're just stepping on a ball for 20 seconds the different parts of your foot. It's so easy and such a great exercise so you can go and grab that if if want to explore. So I would be thinking texture and nerve stimulation for walking.

Speaker 1: 17:44

That makes so much sense to me. When Zoe was younger from like age four to age nine I think it was she would not wear socks. She just became super sensory and I you know a lot of kids that we see are more sensitive to textures and clothing and these things. And I remember taking her to an occupational therapist that recommended these bristles that you brushed your feet with. I was like, oh my gosh.

Speaker 2: 18:09

I didn't even think of that.

Speaker 1: 18:10

Yes, 100% neurological. That makes so much sense.

Speaker 2: 18:14

I have one more really cool thing to say about that. I'm sorry, I just have to say it. No, please. The other thing that happens and I've heard about this for years before, but that I'm sorry, I just have to say that. No, please. The other thing that happens and I've heard about this for years before, but I didn't realize it with feet. So if you don't stimulate those nerves for many, many years, your brain doesn't hear from them for many years. You know what you do. You get rid of those nerve endings, your brain stops being able to feel them. So as you get older, you suddenly have a real risk of neuropathy, not because of diabetes or whatever, but because you haven't stimulated those nerves in so long. And then, once you have less foot feeling, you have less capacity to walk well, and that raises your falling risk, which, as you may or may not know, is a huge risk for older adults. So you really want your neurology to be working well, and that means, at the very least, texture and sensation inputs.

Speaker 1: 18:55

So is it safe to say that we should recommend everybody to be wearing minimal shoes whenever they are out and as soon as they walk into the house? Better to be barefoot.

Speaker 2: 19:04

I mean, that's 100% what I recommend. There's a very few exceptions to that. It just to me it's a no brainer. You want to find the right minimal shoe for the person. I would say. One exception might be somebody with a lot of diabetic neuropathy who doesn't feel well, but even then they can go into one of these transitional shoes. The only thing, the only caveat, is that you know a shoe alone is not going to fix everything.

Speaker 2: 19:28

A shoe gives you an opportunity for change, but many people will transition to shoes and three years later they'll be like oh look, now I have plantar fasciitis. It's usually because people don't like doing the exercises and the work that let them take advantage of it. You know it's. You've got to have that adaptation time and again. The parallels to your mouth are so close because what you know, I imagine there's some sort of retainer that you have to wear after you do a bunch of of. You know, palatal expansion, because otherwise things are going to want to revert to. Yeah Right, you know your body is very adaptable and you have to have mechanical inputs all the time. But just changing the shoe shoe, it gives you a space to move into, but if you don't learn how to move. You don't reawaken those patterns, then you're going to have a hard time using that to its full advantage perfect.

Speaker 1: 20:08

Uh, some time ago I was. I was interviewing one of the doctors on airway circle and they mentioned to me how the roof of your mouth could be related to your feet. So if somebody has a very high vaulted palate, usually they have high arches. Oh, interesting, it's so interesting. Just this week I saw two patients like that. They had very high arch palate and high arches on their feet. What does it mean to have high arches? Is there something specific? And then we can talk about people that are flat footed also the two extremes.

Speaker 2: 20:50

Yeah for sure. So I don't know how it relates to the jaw, because that's cool, but when you think about your feet, so your feet have a ton of bones. It's like 26 bones and 33 joints or something like that. I always forget the exact number. Those are there to allow a lot of mobility and what your foot is supposed to do in walking, when you hit the ground with your heel and you are supposed to strike on your heel.

Speaker 2: 21:14

For walking, your foot should be fairly rigid. It should be twisted up into what's called a rigid lever supination, and it's twisted and rigid as you travel over your foot. As your foot, kind of like, goes underneath you on your step, your foot needs to soften and relax and that's a shock absorber. So your pronation is there to absorb shock so it doesn't travel right into your knees, basically. And then, in order to push off, you want your foot to be rigid again, because, of course, it makes sense to push off with something hard instead of something floppy. So your foot should go through this twisting, untwisting cycle on every single step and that's your optimal thing.

Speaker 2: 21:50

What you get when somebody has a high, stiff arch is somebody who has stiff, weak feet that have found it most effective as their compensation mechanism to kind of semi solidify into a high rigid shape. And what you have with somebody who's very flat footed is they found it's most effective for them to sort of solidify into a squishy flat, flat shape. So I'm a squishy flat person, my boyfriend's a high arched person and the solution for both of us is to get more of the other movement pattern, because you need both. You don't get one without the other. And there again I have a really recent YouTube on my favorite exercise to help restore both pronation and supination. It's the same exercise for everybody.

Speaker 1: 22:27

That's convenient, yeah, so you can check that out. That is amazing. We have the queen of one of the queens of my functional therapy here, sandra Colston, and she is asking how, if we're working on on posture, so how are your feet related to, maybe, your posture? We're getting up there y'all, oh that's really interesting.

Speaker 2: 22:48

so there's a lot of ways to understand posture. I, off the top of my head, would say that number one is if you're not getting, I'm gonna. I knew I was gonna do this. I always have to stand up and demonstrate at some point during a call. So there's sort of two basic mechanics. Let's see how you start. So I was telling Renata when we started that my internet at home died and I had to rent an office space at the last minute and I'm so sorry it's not more beautiful in here, but I'll do what I can and you can try this. You can totally try this.

Speaker 2: 23:23

So if you're standing, if you're standing and you want to move forward in space, if you lift one leg in front of you and want to put your foot down in front of you, you can straighten your leg. You can do whatever you like. What do you have to do to get that foot on the floor? Try it and look at your body. Now maybe you've leaned forward into this kind of diagonal. I can't think of a different way to do it. You lean forward and what that is is a fall. It's a control fall, but at a certain point you're falling. Yeah, so that's okay, that's that's part of walking, but it's not all of walking. So the other alternative way to get around is you stand on one leg, so my other leg is free, and instead of using my front leg to move, I'm going to use my standing leg. I'm going to push backwards like I'm rowing a boat, and here my leg goes behind me, but my upper body stays nice and vertical. Can you see that? That's a little different. Yeah, so that's called posterior push-off and it's basically your standing leg doing the work to move you instead of your throwing yourself forward doing the work to move you. So you can and should have both of those things in your walk Like that. You know it's okay to have momentum and spring in your walk, but you probably don't want to be throwing yourself forward in every step, and that's that whiplash I was talking about before. So when it comes to posture, if you're constantly whiplashing yourself, that's going to be one of the big drivers of hyperkyphosis, of that like overly curved upper back, because you're constantly throwing yourself into that position. And I know that tongue ties affect that too, because when I had my tongue tie release, that was what I noticed the most was suddenly upper back. So that was really cool.

Speaker 2: 24:58

So, number one if you don't have hip extension then you don't have that posterior push off and walking, and if you don't have a big toe that extends, then you don't have hip extension because your toe is going to get in the way. So I would say you know it's foot and hip like they're. You know they're even closer than foot and jaw. Of course they are, because also that supination, pronation, that's rotational, that goes through your ankle, your knee and your hip and your pelvis too. So you that that's a very close I would say. You know hip and jaw and pelvic floor are super tied to feet. Jaw is also tied to all of them, but it's at the upper end of it also this, this, this carry-on effect.

Speaker 2: 25:36

So then, if we're talking more about posture and again this is this is less direct related and more you know, you're going to see these things tie together.

Speaker 2: 25:43

The other thing that you're going to see, I think in 90% of humans that I've come across, is as a result of that heel chew and probably as a result of sitting in chairs a lot too, we tend to stand pushed forward. No-transcript hurts, it sucks. So getting your hips over your heels is a big deal in terms of your loading for your upper body and so of your posture. Also, because one of the fixes for this, or sorry for this, is this, this rib lifting, and we can talk about that in a second too. But what's happening when you're standing forward like this is you are putting a lot of load on your forefoot, so once again, we're right back into bunions, plantar fasciitis, metatarsal pain, because your foot needs to be mobile and not being squished by your body weight all the time. So getting your weight back is a huge deal, and guess what? I just made a YouTube about that as well. You guys are in luck because I've been on.

Speaker 2: 27:04

YouTube recently. So I would say those are my biggest kind of foot posture connectors, but there could be other ones.

Speaker 1: 27:11

That is incredible. Do you ever suggest orthotics?

Speaker 2: 27:18

Maybe that's a solid maybe. I think that orthotics probably have a role to play, but I think they tend to be over prescribed and I'm I'm a movement coach, not an orthotic prescriber. So, uh, this is a lay person's opinion. But, like many kind of races or aids, orthotics are, um, an immobilizer that will weaken you over time. So if you need an orthotic for support for six months, that's different than saying, oh, I'm going to get an orthotic and use it for the next 15 years. So many of my students have had orthotics and have kind of weaned themselves off orthotics through strengthening work, through mobility work and through alignment work. So you have to want to do the work, but I'm not a huge fan.

Speaker 1: 28:05

There's a place for them, but perfect to breathe, learn, love and evolve. Has another incredible question. She says I'm curious about foot patterns and breathing inhale and exhale and how we can find ease in our jaw to open up the breath okay.

Speaker 2: 28:20

So I'm not really familiar with a foot pattern breathing connection, so I can't really speak with that very well, I think it is an interesting thing to think about, but do you? Know, anything about that?

Speaker 1: 28:33

no, so maybe you can please report back.

Speaker 1: 28:37

Oh yeah, um patrick mckeown, who teaches aeyko breathing. You know, usually we'll check by walking. You can count your steps whenever you're breathing, so I will teach you guys how he does this. You breathe in very slowly through your nose, inhale, then you're going to hold your breath and you're going to start walking and counting steps to see how many steps you take until you feel the urge to breathe again. As soon as you feel the urge, you let go and you start breathing again, and that is called a control pause. That control pause is supposed to start getting longer and longer as you practice this. And what are you doing? You are allowing your body to hold on to more CO2 pressure in your lungs. The more CO2 pressure that you hold in your lungs, the more oxygen is actually released from hemoglobin into your organs and your muscles. So I'm curious for everybody to check their control pause and report back to us. You can just write in the comments, it's going to stay saved. Report back to us. What have you guys felt?

Speaker 1: 29:43

Most people, you know, in the beginning it's like seven steps and they feel the urge. You're not supposed to wait until you can't wait anymore, because if you wait too long, usually those people will go. You know you have a rescue breath because you waited too long and your body is like, oh my gosh, I need more air. So it's super calm. Think about the monks whenever they are meditating and how, whenever they breathe, nothing moves. You know you don't see this chest movement, this shoulder movement. All of that is you're engaging accessory muscles to do breathing that you shouldn't.

Speaker 1: 30:15

So then we have neck aches and headaches. I mean it's all related. Again, if you have an airway issue, if your upper and lower jaw are too far back, you have to bring your head forward to be able to breathe better, because that opens your airway. So there's so much that goes into it and again it can increase pain. And I always tell my patients the reason why I look at the whole body whenever I'm doing an evaluation. It's because we are compensating the whole time, making sure that we don't fall over, right? So sometimes we see hyperextended knees. I have, and a lot of hypermobility patients who are slightly hypermobile. I always hyperextend my knees and I've tried before to let them go and I wobble.

Speaker 1: 31:01

You know so it's crazy how your jaw is related to your hips, they're related to your knees and related to your feet. We're going to see signs everywhere. That is why I'm going to plug in here. We created a group called airway circle so if there's any professional out there that would like to learn more about airway and everything that's related to airway, we have lectures every thursday night at 8 pm eastern and we go live on facebook. We have a facebook group called airway circle professionals for professionals only, and every circle, patients for patients questions. But we do these, these lectures, specifically to ask questions to other professionals, because as a myofunctional therapist, I can look at a patient and all I see they're myofunctional disorders. But until I speak to a movement specialist who specializes in feed and know all these connections, I'm never going to know when to refer. I'm never going to know exactly how these things are related.

Speaker 1: 31:56

So we created a safe space for different professionals to chat and share and collaborate and it's just become a very, very positive. It's an online study club. So every Thursday night, join us and then we have a directory. So if you're looking for a professional who knows airway, it can be a chiropractor, it can be a dentist, a sleep dentist, speech pathologist, physical therapist. You can go on our website, website airwaycirclecom, and we have a directory that's free for patients and professionals alike, for you to find somebody globally. We have people all over the world who are helping us better treat our patients, and I feel like that's how we get better prognosis. You know, everybody's so specialized, but whenever we sit down in a room and we talk about the same patient, we're going to be able to get way further into it. So, yes, thanks for sharing that. Next question, let's talk about the jaw. Okay, so tell us, how is the jaw related to feet?

Speaker 2: 32:59

You know, I think that when we were first talking, I said that the jaw was similar to the feet in terms of having to go through the same history and its modern movement background.

Speaker 2: 33:10

In terms of its actual relation to the feet, I'm not super familiar with it. The thing that I think is that I've been kind of deep diving in recently is the jaw's relationship to the pelvic floor. The feet and the pelvic floor have a really close relationship and the jaw and the pelvic floor have a really close relationship. So maybe they're like neighbors. The jaw and the feet are like neighbors. The pelvic floor is like their neighborhood, I guess. So I I actually would love to learn more and more about the jaw and the foot connection because I you know, it makes sense that there would be one. Like, one of the interesting things about our bodies is that we kind of have stuff that kind of runs up and down, stuff that rotates and stuff that's flat. So our feet are like they're a diaphragm really, and your diaphragm is a diaphragm, your jaw is a diaphragm and your pelvic floor is a diaphragm. So you know, I'm going to guess that those are some of the structural relationships between those parts of our body is just the fact that they're kind of in the same orientation. But I've been doing a deep dive into the jaw and the pelvic floor recently. There's a really great teacher called Thomas Waldron who's from England and he's an awesome Pilates background teacher who has just he's a great teacher if you want to do a deep dive into pelvic floor stuff. And according to Tom, you know there's four theories about why the pelvic floor and the jaw are connected and no one has been able to prove which one is right, which I just like. That is so amazing to me, so you can vote for your favorite. So there is a fascial relationship. The connective tissue of the jaw and the pelvic floor are continuous. There's a neurological relationship. So the best example of that, I think, is if you've ever tried open a pickle jar and you, like, are gritting your jaw to do it, you're also gritting your pelvic floor at the same time, like that's your body trying to. You know, give you a little bit more.

Speaker 2: 34:49

There's a dural relationship. So the lining of the brain and the spinal cord travels between the kind of the neck jaw area all the way down to connect at the sacrum, and so tension in the dura is potentially something that can transfer to how your pelvic pelvis is moving and therefore how your pelvic floor is working. And you know there, you know, suddenly you're like jaw and pelvic floor right, because if your pelvis isn't moving well, then your feet are potentially not moving as well as they could either. So there's certainly, you know, I tend to think bottom up when I think about feet, but you know, there's no reason why I couldn't be top down also. So you know the other thing you're going to get.

Speaker 2: 35:27

Oh wait, I'm getting excited. I'll come back to that in a second. So the dural relationship it seems like it likely that that's a lot of what's going on. And then the final possibility is just that, as embryos, our mouth and our pelvis kind of develop as these two indents, starting at basically the same time, and they kind of develop as these two indents starting at basically the same time and they kind of travel through our body and a tube develops between them, and so there's this embryological developmental relationship too, and who knows exactly how that affects that relationship.

Speaker 2: 35:50

But what you do see, there's a very uh, clear correlation between people who have jaw stuff and people who have pelvic floor stuff, and once, once again, you're getting a clear correlation to people who have foot stuff and people who have pelvic floor stuff. So, you know, is it causal, causal maybe, but we do know that. You know, if you rip your feet into the ground, you will usually feel your pelvic floor tighten. If you clench your jaw, you will usually feel your pelvic floor tighten. And if you have a nice relaxed jaw, you have more ability for your pelvic floor to relax and tone reflexively. So I'm going to guess again, indirect relationships, but I I'm going to bet those travel all the way through. And we do know that when your pelvic floor is gripped all the time. And there's really cool studies where they made people drink a bunch of water, got a really full bladder pelvic floor working extra hard, and they made them walk and they measured how they were walking and they were walking really weirdly because, of course, right who hasn't had to pee in the bathroom?

Speaker 2: 36:42

so I'm thinking that those are the kinds of relationships you're going to see between your jaw and your pelvic floor. So I wouldn't necessarily I mean your feet, I wouldn't necessarily say work on your feet to sort of fix your jaw, but I would say there's probably something and you know you're not going to ever go wrong by working on your airway slash jaw and working on your feet. They're both really good ideas to deal with.

Speaker 1: 37:02

This is making so much sense to me. We have Dr Neil Bukandani, I think is how you say his last name. He's a chiropractor in California and he recently talked to us about the diaphragm being the floor of the mouth, how it's related to the diaphragm, so that makes so much sense to me. You know, for the mouth to the diaphragm, so that makes so much sense to me. You know, I have heard the, the relationship of all of these, uh, women who are having babies and like they cannot, um, you know, dilate as as wide as they are supposed to, or they tear, being related to also tightness on the for the mouth or a tongue tie. So, oh, my gosh, I just want to do research, research, research. I want to know these answers. And then, people who grind their teeth like crazy I want to know what their pelvic floor is doing now. How different are they?

Speaker 2: 37:54

Well, you could make a good bet that there's going to be a correlation. So there are certainly people where you relax the jaw, relax the neck, when you succeed in that, their pelvic floors are going to respond by becoming much more healthy. Like no, no brainer on that one. But again, they don't 100% know why it's cool. And then the other thing that I can think of it's really interesting is you know, your jaw should be suspended and responsive, so it should move as you walk right. There should be this slight swinging of your jaw side to side as you're walking. If that's not happening, then your walk potentially isn't as fluid and efficient and then that means your pelvis is not as fluid and efficient. And then you know again, like who knows what the impact is on your feet. We're in a land of speculation and remote causes here, but also humans are sensitive to input.

Speaker 2: 38:42

So if you're always gritting your teeth, you're probably not getting the optimal outcome that you could be for your feet and certainly for your pelvic floor.

Speaker 1: 38:49

Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2: 38:50

And your balance. Your balance changes too, so that's one for sure. You'll notice.

Speaker 1: 38:54

If you go and grip your teeth and stand on one leg, you'll likely notice your balance isn't as good so that is something I have seen, also some some dentists doing the suction that we teach in my functional therapy. So if you suction your tongue lightly all the way up and you open and you close, that also helps with your balance. This is also interesting. Having suction in your tongue will help you balance. Uh, and our beloved speech pathologist on area circle. She's saying what does gosh, I'm gonna butcher this is it vagus or valgus and verus? Is that how you say it in towing? And now towing do in terms of altering movement pattern?

Speaker 2: 39:42

okay, so you're talking about about the toes and the feet.

Speaker 1: 39:47

I'm assuming the knees going in and out. I do not know how to say those. And don't kill me.

Speaker 2: 39:52

No, you said the perfect word. I don't think anyone knows how the Romans said it anyway.

Speaker 1: 39:59

So I think what you're going to see is so I think what you're going to see is the, you know, bow-legged. And what is that? Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 40:09

I'm just kind of thinking it through a little bit here. So there's a few there. Some theories are just that that's happening because we have a cultural preference for turnout. If you look at military posture, if you look at ballet posture, you can learn to stand like that. Other theories say that that's happening to give you more contact with the ground.

Speaker 2: 40:41

If you're struggling to pronate, well, what you're going to get is more surface area of your foot, more push off ability if you turn out, because then you're going to turn out um, and then instead of so, there again we're right back into that big toe land, right? So if you can't push straight forward, then you maybe can push off to the side and then what you have is this constant rotational input. So you're not walking forward anymore. You're you're, you're rotating to move forward and that's going to put a constant rotational input into your hips, and your hips probably don't love that that much. So for sure, when I'm working with some of the pelvic floor stuff, that's something that I would like them to work towards a straighter head foot Because I you know, you may know, but one of your deep hip rotators actually forms a part of the pelvic floor and all of the muscles.

Speaker 2: 41:32

Yeah right, so you know hip rotation is a big deal for many reasons, but certainly if you want a pelvic floor that's working, you want good hip rotational mobility. You don't always want to be pushing into, you know, a given direction constantly. This gets a little bit tricky when you're actually talking about the relationships involved, because if you happen to have a lot of turnout in your feet and hips and that's sort of stuck there, if I was to then ask you to put your feet totally straight, the way we'd like you to end up, what you might discover is that, instead of there being this constant external rotation in your hips, what you really have is an internal rotation of your leg bone relative to your pelvis that you've been hiding by turning out your feet. So yeah, it's really tricky because you know alignment is very relative and as soon as you start kind of peeling away, the layers it's not an easy.

Speaker 2: 42:27

Oh look, you've got a lot of external rotation. You'll see that all over Instagram. It's like everyone's externally rotated and I think actually what a lot of people are is internally rotated, but hiding it. And either way, you know you're still stuck into a thing that you don't particularly want. It would be really nice if you were a little bit more straightforward so that then you could move back and forth through a center instead of being stuck on one side and never even getting to the other side.

Speaker 2: 42:51

As for pigeon toed, you know I don't see that as often.

Speaker 2: 42:55

I mean, again, you're in a rotational relationship between your feet, your knees, your hips, everything that's going on there. I think you probably want to start thinking about moving in the other direction when you're doing the movement work that I do, like I like to kind of have people make incremental changes. So very much again, like braces, like, like orthodontic, we're going to I prefer to use a different word. I'm sure there's a better one for airway focused dentistry type intervention, but you want an adaptive intervention, right? I don't want to say, hey, we're not a walk with your feet straight right away, forever now, and that's going to make you better, because it's not. It's just going to create tension, pushing tension. So what I'm going to ask my people to do is to go from this kind of turnout to this kind of turnout. Do a bunch of hip mobility work, do a bunch of foot strengthening work and then maybe did this much turnout. You know you, you work incrementally and I think that gets you the best results wow, this is also incredible.

Speaker 1: 43:45

We seriously could stay here so much longer because I just created all this question more questions in my head, but I am amazed, uh, in your work and how everything is related and how much better we can help our patients if we all work together, right. So thank you, petra, for being here with us today. We really appreciate it. If you guys want to follow along, go into your podcast platform any of them and look up Beauty of Breathing, you guys can follow us over there and have access to this recording very, very soon. So thank you for being here. Uh, really quickly, before we go, how can people find you? And we will add this on the show notes also awesome.

Speaker 2: 44:31

So my instagram and youtube and website are all petra fisher movement, fisher without a c, so you can find me in any of those places and I have a free foot program if you'd like to explore kind of some of the basic foundational restore your feet exercises that I recommend. So that's a great place to start if that interests you at all.

Speaker 1: 44:50

A hundred percent. We're also going to share this in our area circle groups, so thank you so much for being here. Oh, my goodness, this has been wonderful. Have a wonderful day everyone. Thank you, Thank you Thanks.