Along with Lifting Up and Through One and Three, this trio of closely-related lessons are designed to be explored and reviewed in any order. They may seem different on the surface, but they all point to global patterns of lifting ourselves into effective action through clarified connections with the earth.
Mostly back-lying, framed by standing and walking. A more detailed teaching of our popular Activating the Arches lesson that’s been specially tuned to improve walking. Clarify your image of your lateral longitudinal arches and cuboid bones so you can enjoy the profound benefits of finding an internal lift in your foot even as you engage it with the ground.
We offer over 50 free lessons, but this one’s just for our donors. You can learn about it in the lesson notes below, but to access the video you’ll need to join The FP as Member or Patron. Learn more
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Comfort & Configuration:
Described in the lesson recording intro.
Curiosities:
After you do this lesson, for practice you can take the active arch ideas into “last week’s class,” which was Lifting Up and Through, thinking of drawing up the central aspects of the arches of your feet from within, even as you engage your feet with the ground to support lifting one or both hips.
That lesson takes a global look at lifting up and through from the floor. This one has a very local focus on the feet. The feet, and any specific bones, should not be thought of as the learning goal. Rather, functioning well and as a whole in gravity is the aim. In my experience the skeletal specificity of fourth metatarsal and cuboid awareness helps folks find healthy function faster, and more often in their lives.
- Interested in organizing your feet further? My colleague Andrew Gibbons has two short YouTube videos about the structure and function of the foot that illustrate a lot of the details of this lesson. Before or after studying the lesson, check out Foot Function: Secrets of the Heel and Secrets of the Heel 2. Among other useful details these include very clear views of the cuboid bone and how you’re asked to manipulate it in the lesson.
Context:
Now part of our Bonus Video Content for all donors, this lesson was recorded in a “Walking with Your Whole Self” series in The FP Weekly Pay-What-You-Can Zoom Class on June 20, 2023.
Four consecutive lessons from that series are available at The FP:
- Free Your Torso for Better Posture, Walking, and Running
- Lifting Up and Through
- This lesson
- Lifting Up and Through 3: Buttocks and Buoyancy (Members & Patrons video lesson)
The Lifting Up and Through trio of lessons can all be found in our Grounding for Liftoff course.
Related Lessons:
Check out the related lessons tab for Activating the Arches.
Source:
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How might I save this and the whole Lifting Up and Through in My Journey? I would be happy to buy the classes, but looked and they are not available. Really nice series!
Great question! We are working on this right now. UPDATE: DONE! All donors can now “save and fave” all our bonus video content to My Journey too. Donors can also save talks, collections and Deep Dives to their lists.
I noticed the engagement of my hamstrings and buttocks probably for the first time in lifting the pelvis versus muscles in my lower back, which felt like such a relief. I’ve often been diagnosed with “glutes don’t engage” and a flat butt and some SI joint and pelvic instabity as a result. This has peeked my curiosity about the whole line from my foot to my pelvis instead of just focusing on the glutes. The image of the spiral felt very supportive in this idea of how to feel support when walking.
One other thing I noticed was how my big toes want to lift up as well. Curious about those and what with unravel with further explorations.
Thanks for commenting – I think a lot of people will relate to what you wrote and find similar changes with this lesson. I designed these Lifting Up and Through lessons (and the Grounding for Liftoff Deep Dive) in part to help folks with this type of very common “glutes don’t engage” organization. It often includes elements like you mentioned: SI and pelvic instability, as well as other elements like flat arches and lower back pain.
I hope you’ll keep sharing your journey, and any questions that come up, in these public comments. I’m excited to hear what you encounter in Lifting Up and Through 3, and in the Self Empowerment Workshop.
I did “activating the arches” a couple months ago and have since then been walking only barefoot or on barefoot-style shoes to optimize proprioceptive input. Doing this lesson yesterday I noticed I feel like I can differentiate the use of the arches quite clearly. Hoping barefoot living has a good impact on all of this 🙂
Let us know what you discover! I made the transition to mostly barefoot-style shoes long ago and it’s been very practical and pleasurable. I had fun writing about it in the intro to Supple Feet, Powerful Legs without really naming the footwear ingredient of change explicitly, since folks have to undertake it carefully. I’d like to write about barefoot-style shoes more explicitly sometime, so I’ll be curious about your ongoing process.