The Foot Phenomenon: Simple, Surprising Ways to Improve Your Balance, Health, and Longevity

IIt’s 11am on a Thursday morning and normally I’d be sat behind a keyboard or on the phone with a colleague. Instead I’m sitting in a nail salon in south London, leaning back in a motorised armchair, mechanical fingers kneading my back as my feet soak in a small hot tub. Someone has brought me a coffee. In the chair next to me, another customer sighs, “This is the life!” before telling me about her ingrown toenail.

It is, and if I weren’t so comfortable, I’d be tempted to stand up and kick myself in the ass. It took me 61 years to get my very first pedicure, and when I sat down, all I could think was, “What took me so long?”

The next 40 minutes are blissful as my horrible old man’s hooves are painlessly clipped, filed, rasped, exfoliated and moisturized. I leave Jolie Nails & Spa with a spring in my step, on feet that… well, you still wouldn’t call them pretty – that’ll take a few more sessions (and something to make my nails shine; I quite like the way they look Boy from Chanelprobably in black) – but at least I’m not ashamed to show them to the world anymore.

This isn’t about getting beach-ready, although I’m glad no one will hesitate when I put on a pair of flip-flops anymore. I’ve only just realized that I need to take good care of my feet if I want to make it to 100. If I don’t keep them strong, flexible, and sensitive, more and more activities will become out of reach. Worst case scenario, I’ll fall and end up in the hospital. I’m beginning to understand why we’re talking about having one foot in the grave.

“Our feet are literally the foundation for every movement we make,” says the longevity guru Peter Attia reminds us in his book Outlive. “Whether we are lifting something heavy, walking or running, climbing stairs or standing waiting for the bus, we are always channeling power through our feet.”

They are also crucial for balance. “They are the feedback point for the brain to know where it is in its environment,” says Asha Melaniea York-based personal trainer with an interest in longevity. In their natural, unshod state, our feet are our primary point of contact with the earth. “There are hundreds of thousands of sensory receptors in each foot,” says Melanie. “And then we put on our clunky shoes and make sure they can’t feel anything.”

In fact, I would argue: we forget that they… should feel something. We wrap them up and it’s out of sight, out of mind. Men especially pretty much forget we have feet unless there’s a blister or a bump to remind us. I’ve only really become aware of mine in the few months since I started yoga. There they were, naked, ugly, and surprisingly unstable. Yoga teachers would tell me to spread my toes or “ground all four corners of my feet” and I’d think “How?” and “All four what is?“

This pedicure is my way of saying to my feet, “I see you. I will do better with you.”

How do I go about it? For starters, Melanie says, now that they’re fit for polite company, I shouldn’t hide them away any longer. “Go barefoot as much as possible,” she advises. “When you’re at home, there’s no reason to even wear slippers or socks. Get your feet outside; let your feet be feet as much as possible.” Eloise Skinnera pilates and ballet teacher from London, supports her. “Even socks can restrict your toes,” she says.

That doesn’t mean I should throw out my shoes right away, Melanie says, but I should try to switch to something less chunky and soft, with enough room for my toes to spread and wiggle. “It should be a gradual process so all your ligaments, tendons and joints can adjust.”

But that’s just the first step. Now that I’ve freed my toes, I need to retrain them so that I can spread them out when I need a more stable base, or put my weight exactly where it’s needed. I could start by simply spreading them out: just standing or sitting barefoot, then forcing the toes to spread and splay a little. I can just about manage this, but when I meet Skinner to do some exercises, I’m embarrassed by how hard it is to isolate—or try to isolate—individual toes or groups of toes. In an ideal world, I could copy her “piano toes,” pulling them off the ground one by one and then putting them back down individually—but I struggle to move just the two largest ones without taking everything with me.

There are a few moments where Skinner, the photographer, and I just stare at my motionless toes as I curse in frustration. It feels more like a mental problem than a physical one—my mind can’t get the “move” command to the right part of my body. Later, I realize it reminds me of one of those 20th-century telekinesis experiments, with a serious researcher who tried and failed to move a glass of water just by thinking.

How long does it take to make real progress, I ask Melanie. “How long is a piece of string?” she says. “The more you put in, the more you get out. But if you do a few minutes every day, you can see a difference in a few weeks.”

I also have to watch my big toes, because any weakness can lead to knee, hip, and back pain. “It sounds ridiculous,” Melanie admits, but when you walk, this is where you push off, so problems here affect the rest of your body. One way to build strength is to sit on a chair and lift your big toe up as far as you can with your index and middle fingers. Then, without moving any other muscles, press down with your toe as you lift with your fingers, so that nothing moves but both your toe and your fingers try to move. Hold for seven or eight seconds, relax, and repeat four or five times.

What else is on my to-do list? Improve my ankle mobility, apparently. “Everyone should be doing ankle carts (controlled articular rotations),” says Melanie. They’re as simple as sitting with one leg in front of you, then holding the leg still while slowly rotating the foot through its full range of motion, five times clockwise, then five times counterclockwise, before repeating with the other leg.

To strengthen your soles and arches, Skinner recommends a gentle elevation that starts with you standing at a ballet barre or desk, the tops of your hands resting lightly on them, elbows at your sides, feet hip-width apart. Then lift your heels and slowly roll up onto your toes, then back down. “What you want to feel instead of a lift and a lowering,” she says, “is more of a peel up and then a slowly “Peel back down, using the middle of your foot and the front and back. It really helps if you can spread your toes too.” That’s easy for her to say with her lovely slender fingers. Mine look more like sausages that have been crammed together for too long on the supermarket shelf.

You can also alternate with a ‘towel scrunch’: stand barefoot on a tea towel or something similar, use your toes to pull the whole thing under the sole of your foot and then push it back out again.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to foot exercises. But if you’re still feeling a little sore, try a self-massage. Melanie and Skinner swear by small massage balls—about the size of tennis balls, sometimes with little flexible spikes on them—that you can roll or press against sore muscles, or roll between the ground and the sole of your foot. “It’s my number one thing to take on vacation,” says Skinner. “Besides your feet, you can use it for your shoulders, your glutes, your hamstrings…”

I’m sold. It’s going in my holiday suitcase, next to the pedicure set.

Asha Melanie leads the Move 4 Life! longevity retreat at Manoir Mouret near Toulouse in October; details on manoirmouretretreats.com