Yesterday I saw a podiatrist called Holly. She made my feet feel happier. She removed hard skin that comes from my individual weight bearing style. She had a look at my athlete’s foot which is quite sore but slowly getting better through diet, friendly bacteria and listerine foot soaks. It’s been a bit hard to walk because my usually stronger foot is now the sorer of the two. I think it’s arisen because I’m cleansing and usually when you cleanse and eat more simply (ie without sugar everyday), old stuff comes up and needs to be expelled. So I’m slaying it and it’ll leave me soon and won’t be welcomed back.

I might call on Holly to do a biomechanical assessment of my gait and balance points. Maybe I’ll get some insoles. Maybe she’ll conclude that my feet are better off left to their own devices. It’s good to get opinions on my enigmatic legs (that’s what the orthopedic surgeon told me they were).

I told her about my own conclusion as to why I walk the way I do. That when I was a little one and in frog plaster, my brain and hips lost connectivity with each other because I had surgery and didn’t walk or weight bear on my legs for an extended period. Holly said this was right. When people have injuries or pain in certain areas, their brains drop connection and reroute into other areas so as not to feel pain anymore. Bodies are great at adapting. Therefore, my brain learnt that in order to walk, my back had to play more of a central role in the process and my hips lost their place (and their suppleness) in the sequence of how I stood and moved. They were so down the list I haven’t been able to feel them working up until recently.

That’s why bellydance is so good for me. It gets me engaging with my hips. It gets my brain saying ‘hello hippos’ down there. I feel it. I feel the progress. I feel my whole posture changing as a result of my hips getting more attention. Bellydance moves rock! And roll too. Rolling feels amazing. That’s when you engage the abdominal wall and make it do things you never even knew were possible.