Functional feet: Your route to a flatter tummy

Functional feet: Your route to a flatter tummy Functional feet: Your route to a flatter tummy

Walking, Movement and Health

Foot alignment is at the heart of good posture. It influences how your abdominal muscles switch on, how your muscular ‘COREset’ tightens, and it can be a route to a flatter tummy.

Are you dealing with a separation of the rectus abdominis muscles (diastasis), a weakened abdominal wall, lower-back or hip pain, bloating, an overhang, numbness in the lower abdomen, a feeling of tightness or other discomfort around the pelvis? Then the next few lines are written exactly for you. Give yourself ten minutes of time just for you. I’ll teach you how to feel your feet as a key component of functional exercise. I’ll show you how to bring life back into your centre — through your feet.

What your feet have to do with your centre

Foot alignment is at the heart of good posture. The foot is connected to all the joints and muscles of the pelvis. If you use your feet correctly, you can notice an immediate response in your sitting bones — have you ever spotted that? Through the ankles, energy transfers to the knees and hips (and their position then affects the natural curves of the spine and the position of the shoulder blades).

In short, the body works as one whole. Do you know what the foundation is for activating your abdominal muscles and tightening your muscular ‘COREset’? A stable pelvis. And where does the secret of pelvic balance (level, tilt, tension, stability, mobility) lie? Of course — in a stable leg, in a lively, active foot. But you do need to be firmly grounded – either barefoot or in soft, flexible barefoot shoes. A conventional shoe with a rigid sole, an unnaturally shaped insole or a raised heel often numbs our feet.

I’ve prepared a few exercises to improve how you sense and use the foot–leg–pelvis chain. Let’s do it together – barefoot, or in barefoot footwear.

How are you standing? A small experiment

Give yourself ten minutes in a calm, quiet room without distractions. Invite a helper (your partner, mum, child) to slowly read the following points to you. Stand in an upright position that feels comfortable, and close your eyes. Use your imagination and scan through your body, bit by bit, with full attention.

Assess the support of your feet:

  • Are you standing with equal weight on both feet?
  • Do you feel more weight on your toes or your heels, on the outer or inner edges of your feet? Is it different on each foot?
  • Where exactly are you touching the floor? And how strongly?
  • Do you sense your toes pointing away from each other, closer together, or are your feet parallel?

Take an inner look at your heels:

  • Are both heels loaded equally? Where do you feel your support against the ground?
  • Is one heel (or perhaps both?) tipping outwards or inwards?

Notice the alignment of your lower limbs:

  • Are your knees at the same height and do they look the same?
  • Which way do your kneecaps face — forwards or out to the sides?
  • Would you say you have knock knees (X-shaped legs) or bow legs?
  • Do you feel your thighs rotating inwards or outwards?
  • Observe the position of your ankles, knees and hips.

Now imagine your pelvis as a bowl of water (the axis of its base runs through the pubic bone at the front and the tailbone at the back). You can also hold it with your hands:

  • Is the bowl tipping to one side? Would the water spill forwards, backwards, or to the side?
  • Do you feel an arch in your lower back and a relaxed tummy?
  • Do you feel you have a rounded upper back and your pelvis is slightly pushed forwards in front of your body?
  • Are the hands ‘hugging’ your pelvis at the same height?
  • Is your pelvis shifted to the right or left?

Tell yourself, in your mind, how you feel in your centre:

  • Is your centre clenched and unable to fully relax?
  • Do your muscles feel more relaxed, inactive, or ‘disconnected’ from the rest of your body?

You’ve just begun the process of ‘the art of sensing your body’. In a moment, we’ll add

awareness of other body positions and movement. Did you know that when you bring your attention to a part of your body, the nervous system sends the brain information that something isn’t quite right, and the regeneration process begins?

After a short rehabilitation session, try this little experiment again – what has changed? Noticing the difference between your starting point and how you feel after actively working with your body is absolutely key.

Through your nervous system, you’ve just sent your brain a message about the areas that don’t feel quite right. The regeneration process begins.

Exercise no. 1: The pelvis as a bead

So — how is your pelvis doing: would your imaginary bowl spill forwards, backwards, or to the side? From today, you’ll keep an eye on that level surface — not only during exercise, but throughout your day. A neutral pelvic position is essential for your musculoskeletal system, for flattening the tummy, for the ability to conceive and carry a baby, for digestive, menstrual and sexual comfort, and also for mental wellbeing. The pelvis is the centre of our emotions — did you know that?

Let’s try one more supporting exercise. Standing up, place your hands around the iliac crests of your pelvis and imagine you’re holding a bead on an abacus. What does an abacus look like? There’s a bead on a wire that rolls forwards and backwards. Close your eyes, imagine that wire running through your hips, and under your palms gently tip your pelvis like a bead forwards and then backwards.

Notice whether the movement is smooth, whether one direction feels easier, and whether you feel any resistance or tightness (the pelvis can be very tense). The movement is slow and mindful — don’t rush anything. After a few tilts, try to find a pelvic position where you feel a similar stretch at the front and the back of your torso.

Let’s use an image again — your back will feel nicely long (you feel length through the lower back near the pelvis, and length through the neck near the head), your tummy will feel long and active (the pubic bone gently draws towards the navel, and you lengthen the crown of your head up towards the ceiling).

Exercise no. 2: Lighten up

Stand in a relaxed stance and notice how much weight your feet have to carry. They’re probably bearing your entire body weight and are overloaded. What if we try it differently? Now slightly bend (so-called ‘unlock’) your knees, bring your pelvis to level (for example using the ‘bowl’ or ‘bead’ visualisation), and lengthen up through the crown of your head towards the ceiling — as if someone were pulling you up by a bun. How do your legs feel now? Where has the activity shifted? Exactly — into your centre.

Exercise no. 3: The ten-crown coin trick

The domed arch of a grasping foot was transformed long ago into a spiral arch. The spiral is an old, proven structural principle of life — think of the brilliant DNA helix, the strength of twisted antlers, the stability of a snail shell, the practical winding of plants, a functional umbilical cord, and so on. Our feet ‘screw’ in the same way you twist a towel in your hands. Let’s give your feet a little wring too.

In an upright stance (pelvis level, body lengthened through the crown of the head) without socks, spread your toes — big toe and little toe move away from each other — and try to widen the foot. Only the joints under the big toe and little toe stay in contact, and a ten-crown coin would fit under the other joints. Keep this set-up and lift all your toes off the ground.

Try practising moving your toes away from each other and then drawing them back together (watch that they don’t turn into ‘claws’ as you draw them in — keep your toes long). Once you’ve finished the movement, press only your big toes into the floor and lift them, then only your little toes and lift them again. Can you do it on each foot separately too? And now you’ll be able to ‘suction’ and lift a ten-crown coin off the floor with your bare foot.

Exercise no. 4: Monkey feet

In an upright stance without support (pelvis level, body lengthened through the crown of the head), remove the big-toe support by curling your toes down into the ground — your feet will form an arch. Rotate the heel slightly outwards and the midfoot and forefoot inwards and down into the floor. Feel the ‘screwing’ (rotation) and the play with length. Feet screwed in this way shift the pelvis backwards and gently rotate it downwards — can you feel it?

Don’t forget that your knees must face forwards. Breathe freely and, in this body set-up, try slowly lifting your arms up towards your ears, or with a stable pelvis rotate your chest to one side and the other (for example, reaching for a coffee). What’s happening in your centre?

Exercise no. 5: Bouncy ball

If you have a soft inflatable ball at home, get it ready and let’s give your (centre) a proper workout. Stand in an open space, place the ball a few centimetres in front of your body and step onto it with your right foot. Reach your arms forwards (as if holding an imaginary ball in front of you) and relax your shoulders.

Press the left foot into the floor with an active arch; the right foot will rest lightly on the ball — imagine you want to ‘suction’ the ball up and lift it. With a deep exhale, shift your weight onto the right foot and push off the ball. The left heel stays firmly grounded. On the inhale, return to the starting position and ‘suction’ the ball again. Exhale, step. Imagine you’re a bouncy ball that springs high up towards the ceiling.

You can read this and other interesting interviews & tips in the electronic edition of the BAREFOOOT magazine. The printed version will be waiting for you in our shops, or in your next order.

Exercise no. 6: Make the connection

To finish, let’s see how your active work with the arch affects your pelvis and abdominal muscles.

Sit on the front edge of a chair, ideally a straight chair without armrests. Notice your sitting bones pressing into the seat, align your torso and lengthen up as if by an imaginary bun towards the ceiling. Place your feet on the floor hip-width apart, with your knees directly above your ankles. Place your palms on your lower abdomen and notice what’s happening there. In the starting position, your heels and toes are relaxed on the floor.

Now imagine again that you have a ten-crown coin under the midfoot and you want to lift it — the joints under the big toe and little toe press into the floor, as does the centre of the heel. And what happened to your sitting bones? What did you feel under your palms? With each inhale and an active foot arch, the sitting bones draw closer together and your pelvic floor activates. The deep abdominal muscles naturally respond and switch on too. Try to keep this set-up and alternately lift the right and left foot off the floor. But be careful — the ten-crown coin mustn’t fall out.

More tips for a flatter tummy can be found in the article Diastasis – how to get rid of it once and for all. A great guide is also the book Diastasis, packed with information, practical exercises and beautiful illustrations, or the set of exercise cards.

We often observe our bodies, but we don’t truly feel them. We’ve lost the ability to sense connections, feel changes, and adjust conditions for self-healing. Today you may have tried something new — something that motivated you to step into your body’s functions in a harmonious, healthy way. And playfully, too.

May your feet carry you lightly along your path through life.

Anna Nováková

Certified instructor of healthy movement, yoga and spiral dynamics, specialising in people before pregnancy, during pregnancy and after childbirth. Mum of three children born by caesarean section, who has faced many physical challenges. After years of study, she now works with maternity hospitals, gynaecology and physiotherapy organisations to help raise awareness of caring for the postnatal body. Author of a book, exercise cards and an online therapeutic and exercise programme Diastasis.

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