5 Effective Exercises for Plantar Fasciitis with Lulu Peelle, Yoga Therapist

Are the bottoms of your feet burning or aching or tight when you stand up? This may be the video for you. Hi, my name is Lulu Peel and I'm a yoga therapist and Ayurvedic counselor and today I'm going to talk to you about plantar fasciitis. So plantar fasciitis is a repetitive stress injury of the plantar fascia that run from the heel to the base of the toes. The fascia is the connective tissue. The connective tissue runs throughout the body but this affects particularly the bottom of the foot. The causes are lots of walking or running, very tight calf muscles, flat feet, high arches and overweight. If this condition is left untreated it can eventually cause problems with your gait and that in turn can cause problems in your ankles, your knees, your hips and your low back. The symptoms of plantar fasciitis are felt mainly in the morning when you get out of bed and you first put your feet on the floor or if you've been sitting for long periods of time and then you get up and place your feet on the floor and sometimes you may not feel it during exercise but you may feel it only after you've been exercising. I'm going to give you some tips today for the prevention of plantar fasciitis as well as when you are having a flare-up. I will caution you that when you're having a flare-up it means that there's inflammation and itis means inflammation. So I will caution you to go a little easier and a little more gently until the inflammation has receded. So healing can take any amount of time depending on the extent of the plantar fasciitis and also on how regularly you do the exercises and take care of the foot itself. Okay so let's see what can be done to help you plantar fasciitis. As I said before plantar fasciitis can be caused by tight calf muscles so we're going to do something to help stretch the calf muscles. So we're going to begin by standing maybe three to six inches away from the wall, your feet hip distance apart, hands on the wall shoulder distance apart, shoulders relaxed and then we're going to step the right foot back about three to four feet depending on the length of your legs placing the heel firmly on the floor and the toes at about a 45 degree angle to the wall. You're going to take a deep inhale and as you inhale you're going to bend the front knee and push into the heel of that back foot and you'll feel that stretch in the calf muscle and then exhale straighten the knee and again you're going inhale bend the front knee feel the stretch in the calf as you push that back heel down towards the floor. One more time exhale and then inhale this time you're going to stay here and if you want to feel a bigger stretch you can lean a little forward toward the wall keep pushing through that back heel feel the stretch here breathing into it. Nice deep full breaths keeping the shoulders the jaw relaxed and then stepping your feet hip distance apart again. Take a moment here notice the difference between the right calf and the left calf. The right calf probably feels longer and more stretched out and now we're going to stretch out those plantar fascia at the bottom of your foot and we're going to use a plain old tennis ball for that. So take the tennis ball place it on the floor and you'd want to have it on like a yoga mat or on a carpet or a rug because if you do this on a hardwood floor the ball's going to slide. So we're going to start by just placing the big toe mound which is behind the big toe on the ball and then you're going to just start rolling the ball around behind the toes and when you have plantar fasciitis you may find that there's some really tight little spots there so you can just create a little more pressure and this is helping to iron and create more flexibility in those sticky fascia. You can take your time you can take as long as you like to do this then you can move to the inner arch and this is a place this is a place where we often find those really sticky sticky points and then you roll it around there for a while and if you find that one little sticky place stay there and roll it. Don't go to a point where you feel you're in agony you just want to feel this gentle stretching of the fascia and then you'll move to the medial arch the center arch. You might find little sticky spots there and again find those little spots do a little more rolling around sometimes feels really good to do this and then move to the lateral arch on the outside of your foot and do a little rolling there and again take your time with this. Then moving the ball to the heel the heel is a little difficult to access but if you put your toes on the floor you can do a little rolling around that way lifting your toes maybe a little bit and then doing some side to side movement and again finding those little places that you can access where you feel that tightening of the fascia. If you are not inflamed you can do this standing up. Once you stand up you can create a little more pressure because then you're leaning your whole weight into the foot so if you feel ready to do that you can do it standing up and if you need the help of a wall or a table to hold on to while you're doing that that would be great. The other thing that's really good to do especially if you're inflamed is just to take a small water bottle fill it with water a plastic water bottle and put it in the freezer until it's frozen and then instead of using the ball to roll under your feet you can just roll the bottle along those fascial lines and that will help to smooth out those fascia as well as to reduce some of the heat of inflammation. The next exercise we're going to do is to contract and release the toes and what that does the helps to tone the fascia and the muscles of your foot so basically you can do this with anything I'm doing this with a sock it's going to help you pick up all those things on the floor at home and all you're going to do is you're going to curl your toes around the sock pick it up and then release it and curl your toes pick it up and release and you can just do this a few times during the day if you don't have a sock or anything else to pick up you could merely curl the toes and release and curl the toes and release you can do that sitting. Curling the toes is a little different from pointing the toes when you curl the toes you keep your foot flexed and then you just curl your toes like a monkey's toes and then you open them to stretch those fascia between the toes and curl and release. The next exercise you can do seated or even sitting up on your bed. Straighten the leg and then you're going to point which is different from just curling so pointing like a ballerina and flexing and spread your toes as wide as you can and pointing and flexing a couple more times so you can do this again at any time of the day whenever you get the chance while you're watching tv or anything else that requires you seated. Then we're going to make circles with the ankle so that pointing and flexing is part of the curling of your ankle so pointing and curling and then opening the toes wide pointing and curling opening and do that a few times to keep the ankle strong and to help support the feet. The last exercise we're going to do another calf stretch so this you can do with a belt. I have a yoga strap you can use a towel you can use any kind of belt or strap and you're going to take the belt and place it under the ball of your foot and you're going to pull the belt towards you and let the toes come towards your body. You could do a little releasing and flexing here this will stretch the fascia in the feet as well and then holding it and feeling that stretch of the calf for a few breaths hold it hold it try to relax the shoulders the neck the jaw and then releasing. These were just some ideas that you can use if you suspect you have plantar fasciitis or any problems with the bottom of your feet but it really is advisable to go and see a health care provider to get a diagnosis. Although this is for the foot with a plantar fasciitis itself it's really good to do these exercises for the other foot as a preventative and it really feels good to keep those fascia lubricated and stretched.