Foot & Pelvic Floor Connections
Your feet are your body's foundation, and their health is crucial to your overall well-being. They're also one of the more complex parts of your body, with each foot having 26 bones, 33 joints, and over 100 muscles, tendons, and ligaments.
If your feet are the foundation, your pelvis and pelvic floor are your sacred source of safety, power, and pleasure.
I created this Embodied Knowledge Video for my Awaken Your Pelvic Floor and Pelvic Power & Sacred Sacrum series. It’s one of three Embodied Knowledge videos shared in the series, each designed to be a bite-sized portion of anatomical goodness.
But before you dive in, I want to remind you that the anatomical divisions can be helpful, but they're also somewhat artificial as you are a whole human — not individual parts. So please use them as a doorward to sensing your wholeness. Second, I encourage you not to get too caught up in knowing all the anatomy. Instead, use this knowledge to inspire and deepen personal exploration. I encourage you to use it as inspiration to explore those connections. Remembering the anatomy isn’t essential. But sensing the relationships and expanding your capacity to embody your anatomy will change everything!
YOUR PELVIC FLOOR
Your pelvic floor consists of 14-16 muscles, ligaments, tendons, and fascial sheaths, all woven together within the boundaries of all four sides (left, right, front, back) of your pelvis.
You've got a front and back triangle. Together, they form the diamond of your pelvic floor — connecting your pubic bone in the front to your tailbone in the back and the two sit bones
THE FASCIA CONNECTION
You have 206 muscles, all surrounded by a special type of tissue called fascia. Think of fascia as a type of “saran wrap” that connects every muscle in your body together — from bottom to top. The fascia also wraps around your organs, nerves, and bones. It’s everywhere! And it’s the web-like fascia tissue that connects the muscles of your feet to the muscles of your pelvic floor and beyond.
Fascia is like the super stretchy glue that maintains structure in your body. It's a thin connective tissue that surrounds, connects, and supports every organ, blood vessel, bone, nerve fiber, and muscle in your body. But fascia provides more than internal structure. Its nerves make it almost as sensitive as skin, allowing you to sense yourself in motion.
There are multiple “chains” in the body. Think of this as stronger connections and denser lines. Everything is still connected, but some paths have a more direct ‘pull.’ For instance, in Anatomy Trains, the Deep Front Fascia Lint connects the pelvic floor fascia down to the feet and up to the head.
This is important for two reasons. First, tightness anywhere along this chain will pull on the rest of the chain, impacting the muscles, bones, and joints. Second, fascia also wraps around your nerves. Restrictions in the fascia can cause the fascial sheath surrounding nerves to ‘stick’ to nearby structures such as muscle tissue, bone, joints, and skin. So, every time the body moves, the nerve gets tugged. This, in turn, leads to irritation of the nerve.
SKELETAL CONNECTIONS
When exploring the skeletal relationships, we're primarily interested in the position of the feet and how that translates up your legs and into your hip joints and pelvis. Of course, we're also interested in the reverse: how your pelvic floor informs the pelvis and the hip joints down your legs to your feet.
As I mentioned, your feet have 26 bones, 33 joints, and over 100 muscles, tendons, and ligaments, so they are incredibly dynamic. For our purposes here, I would like to explore two primary foot movements: pronation and supination. Both are natural parts of walking, but too much of either can wreak havoc.
PRONATION
Pronation involves the inward rolling of your foot as it makes contact with the ground, and it helps to spread the force of impact. In other words, it helps with shock absorption and allows a smoother transition as your weight shifts from heel to toe.
Overpronation occurs when your foot rolls too far inward when you spend too long during your gait or while standing around — sometimes called a flat foot. You often see this in the increased wear on the inner side of the soles of the shoes.
This flat-footed overpronation can cause your legs to rotate inward. This internal rotation opens the space between your two sit bones (ischia), lengthening the muscles between your right sit bone and left sit bone.
SUPINATION
Supination is the opposite of pronation. During supination, your foot's outer edge takes most of your body weight as you take a step and helps to propel you forward.
Oversupination occurs when your foot rolls too far outward or too long during your gait or while standing around — sometimes called high arches. You often see this as increased wear on the outer side of the soles of the shoes.
This high-arch oversupination can cause your legs to rotate externally. This external rotation closes the space between your two sit bones (ischia).
FEEL IT FOR YOURSELF
Sense Your Sit Bones In Sitting
Come to sit on a chair that allows the soles of your feet to be flat on the ground and your hips and knees bent at about 90 degrees. If you're sitting on a hard stool or chair, add a folded towel beneath you (for comfort in your hands).
Begin with your feet a comfortable distance apart. Slide your hands under your buttocks with the palms of your hand cupping your buttocks, and the pads of your fingers are resting on your sit bones. Slowly tilt your knees toward one another so that the weight is rolling to the inside of your foot. Sense what's happening with your sit bones. Return to the starting position. Then, slowly take your knees away from each other so that the weight is rolling to the outer edge of your feet. Again, notice what happens with your sit bones.
THE PELVIC FLOOR & FOOT IN THE BRAIN?
Your body is mapped out in your brain in the sensory-motor cortex. Sensory is the part of your cortex that determines how you sense and feel yourself. The motor bit is the part of your cortex that informs how you move. These two parts of the cortex work together to help navigate the world and your felt sense of self.
Each body part has its spot on the brain. These parts are more or less the same from person to person. Some parts take up more real estate than others. If you look at the sensory mapping, you'll see the territory representing the feet is next to the brain areas representing the genitals.
Just look at how the genitals, toes, foot, leg, and hip are next to each other on the sensory map.
Sensory Homunculus via https://cnx.org/contents/KcreJ7oj@5/Central-Processing
When it comes to your feet and pelvic floor, mapping is important for two reasons.
The better the mapping, the more you can sense and feel. However, that mapping can also diminish when there's a lack of use, chronic overuse, injury, trauma, or neglect. For some people, those maps have diminished over time.
Areas next to one another. Smudging t’. Smudging two regions can contribute to increased pain, sensitivity, or loss of refined function.
SHARED NEURAL PATHWAYS IN THE BODY
Your sacrum gives rise to five spinal nerve segments. Three of those segments (S2, S3, and S4) innervate your pelvic floor muscles, and two (S2 and S3) control the small muscles in your feet. These shared nerve segments sometimes lead to cross-communication and overstimulation of the nerves, resulting in increased bladder urgency or frequency.
The beauty of this connection is that you can also use your feet to unwind and unfurl an overactive pelvic floor. Or you can use your feet to help activate a sluggish pelvic floor. Likewise, you can work with your pelvis and pelvic floor to help support the function of your feet.
One study examined pelvic floor dysfunction and the ability to spread one's toes. Those people with pelvic floor dysfunction found it more difficult to spread their toes.
But even if you don't have pelvic floor dysfunction, you can still experiment with spreading the toes of your right and left foot. Use that movement to see if there are differences between your two feet or how easy it is for you to spread your toes. You can use this movement as a barometer for the health and wellness of your pelvic floor. (1)
TRY THIS: If you have pelvic pain or even urinary incontinence, try to spread your toes…. you might find it challenging because they share some of the same neurological tracks. (1) The good news is you can explore your feet to improve the pelvic floor. Fun!
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