Dawn Williams Yoga
Yoga for People with Parkinsons
The bones of our feet are connected to our whole skeleton. They are not just flat platforms to balance on but they are alive with 26 bones and 33 joints so they do a lot of work to move us from one place to another. These bones interact with the gravitational force of the ground to propel us forward. From a survival perspective our feet lead us in walking to our food and drink in a forwards motion because our eyes have probably seen something we would like to eat or drink.
At the same time our feet have over 200,000 nerve endings which help us to know where we are in space (proprioception). When we balance on one foot our brains are trying to connect with the nerve endings in our feet to find out where we are in space. This is balance. Have you noticed which part of walking is ‘balance’? We step onto one foot and momentarily balance on it until we gently sweep the other foot through to stand on that foot and balance.
This is why Yoga is so important as we move our feet in gentle warm ups and then we strengthen them and connect them with the rest of our body to improve how we balance and therefore how we walk.
