The Teachings of Feet

Well, welcome, aloha. And welcome to a beautiful sunny day in rural Oxfordshire where, in my wisdom, I’ve decided to do a Facebook Live. Now, it’s interesting because the sun’s streaming in.

And of course, with Lives you’ve gotta be really careful about, where’s the light? So this may not be the best time of day to do it. But I felt like doing it. So here we are. And what I wanted to talk about today was feet.

I wasn’t going to talk about feet. I was gonna talk about permission. But we’ll talk about permission another day. Because feet are really, really important. And my feet have been teaching me some really important lessons recently, that I think, hope, will be useful for you.

So back in two, oof, back in the 7th of September, 2019, I went for a Thai massage. I love Thai massage. And I particularly love Thai foot massage. The last time I was in Thailand, couple years back, I was having foot massages.

Wherever I could get a foot Thai massage, I was having it. My feet love it. So I went for a Thai foot massage. And I’d been having some niggles in my feet. My feet have always been a bit of a challenge because I’m hypermobile and that causes interesting situations.

But meh, they were just niggling. Went for my Thai foot massage. Walked into my Thai foot massage niggling. Walked out of my Thai foot massage and I was almost on my hands and knees.

I could barely walk. And the following day I was going to Hawaii. So there wasn’t much I could do about it. But the pain was so bad that I actually had to ask for one of those little scooty, doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo,

golf cart things they give you when you need assistance to go around Hawaii, to go around Heathrow, me and several other people of a certain age.

Now I’m 63, but I don’t feel in me like 63. And I don’t like feeling like an old person. But the problem when your feet aren’t functioning very well, or your knees or your hips, is you start to feel like an old person.

And I really felt like an old person. The other problem was, I mean the old person thing was actually not that big a problem. The far bigger problem was that I could barely walk. I couldn’t take exercise. I couldn’t get around. It hurt, it really hurt.

So as soon as I got back from Hawaii, the first thing I did was I went to see the physio, get some physio help and religiously did all the exercises. Didn’t help, actually made it worse.

So I went through various physical things, looking for exercises, looking for help. And I started to do some metaphysical work. I started to ask myself, “Okay, so what does this problem “with my feet represent?

“What’s going on here? “What does not being able to walk mean for me?” And I came up with various things. One was, well, it’s not being able to move forward. I looked in the Louise Hay book.

It’s about how you’re holding yourself back. I did all this work. I did loads of clearing. I did loads of release work. And still my feet hurt. I went to a pediatrist to see whether it was to do with my shoes.

And I had to get rid of a few shoes and buy a few new ones. I went to my chiropractor, who’s the guy who originally gave me insoles. He said the insoles were fine. I was at my wit’s end. I really was at my wit’s end.

Went back to Hawaii in March. Things were better, I didn’t need the little doo-doo-doo-doo-doo cart. But I was still hurting. And somewhere between the end of March and now, something really strange has happened.

Because from being just about able to get round a large airport, yesterday I did a walk of 10,000 steps, nonstop. I couldn’t have done that six weeks ago, I really couldn’t. Because I was so fearful of the pain.

So what’s changed? What’s different? I did all the metaphysical work. I did all the release work. What’s changed? And one of the things that’s changed for me is that with all this COVID, can’t go anywhere,

gotta be sitting inside stuff, it’s opened up space for me to be creative and to be creative about the way I express myself in my life. And one of the ways I express myself in my life is through teaching Huna and teaching spirituality.

And because all of the whole lockdown thing, I needed to get very creative about how I was gonna teach Hawaiian spirituality. Usually, I do it as live. I do the odd thing online.

So I started to flip it round. How could I start to teach online and still share the kind of knowledge? So I ran some Facebook Lives the other week.

Ran it, took my normal programme and turned it into some Facebook Lives. And what that did was it just unleashed this incredible sense of creativity and this incredible sense of moving forward.

It’s almost like I wanna give birth to something. And I realised that sometimes the metaphysical work, the, “What does this mean to me? “I have problems in my foot, what does it mean to me?”

Sometimes that work is enough. Sometimes releasing negative emotions and limiting decisions and limiting beliefs and all the good things that I teach and I think are really important, sometimes that can solve a physical problem.

But sometimes it’s about changing things in other areas of your life. So not changing what I was doing with my feet. ‘Cause I didn’t actually change what I was doing with my feet.

Although, my feet was where the problem seemed to be. What I changed was how I was thinking about the creative aspect of my life, about other areas of my life, about how I express myself in my life.

And changing that has changed what’s going on in my feet. Perfect example for me of the mind-body relationship and just how incredible that relationship is. And sometimes how complex it is.

And also, a really great lesson for me of the power of fear. Because I wasn’t walking because I was fearful of the pain. I wasn’t getting out there and sharing Huna as I want to share because I had some fear at a certain level of who’d want to listen?

Or there was definitely some fear stuff going on. So the fear of not walking and the fear of getting out there and sharing with people were kinda running like a, they were running in parallel.

And something when I changed my own behaviour, when I took a risk with the Huna teaching and I stepped out of my comfort zone and said, “Right, I’m gonna do this,”

it somehow released the fear of being painful in my feet. And it’s allowed me to start walking again.

So that’s my lesson for you from me. I hope it resonates at some level. I hope it’s useful at some level.

And I’ll talk to you again very soon.

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