The Barefoot Therapist

17/01/2026

🏃‍♀️ Plantar Fasciitis Relief Starts Here 🏃‍♂️

I've worked with countless athletes and clients struggling with plantar fasciitis—that sharp, nagging pain in the heel and arch that makes every step a challenge.

The good news?🤔 With carefully applied self-help techniques, relief is possible! 🙌

Here’s What Works

✅ Stretching & Mobility: Gentle stretches for the calves, Achilles tendon, and plantar fascia can reduce tension and promote healing.

✅ Strengthening: Exercises like toe scrunches and foot lifts build support for your arch.

✅ Massage & Myofascial Release: Use a tennis ball or foam roller to gently massage the sole of your foot.

✅ Rest & Recovery: Avoid overloading your feet and give your body time to heal.

💡 Pro Tip: Consistency is key! These small steps, done daily, can lead to big improvements.

Don’t let plantar fasciitis keep you from doing what you love. Take control, and your feet will thank you!

👣

16/01/2026

*LIVER ALERT* DRY JANUARY??? 🤔😉☔

Given that 🥃🥂🍻🍺🍹🍸🍷🍾 has been abandoned by most.....Do you realise how important your liver is?

Its so important when all the winter bugs are flying around that your immune system needs to be functioning well

Read on.......😮👀⚕



BOOM! 💣💥 Liver Functions .......(500 plus !) 😯👊👌👏👏👏

The liver has well over 500 functions and is known as the laboratory of the human body. The liver is tied to all bodily processes because it is responsible for filtration of all incoming foods and fluids. The body relies upon the liver to remove toxins so that nutrients supplied to the body are pure and capable of providing nourishment. Many scientist believe the liver is connected to, or at least aware, of every disease or dysfunction that is happening inside the body.

✅️ Metabolises proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, thus providing energy and nutrients

✅️ Stores vitamins, minerals, and sugars

✅️ Filters the blood and helps remove harmful chemicals and bacteria

✅️ Creates bile which breaks down fats

✅️ Helps to assimilate and store fat soluble vitamins (A, E, D, K)

✅️ Stores extra blood that can be quickly released when needed

✅️ Creates serum proteins that maintain fluid balance and act as carriers

✅️ Helps maintain electrolyte and water balance

✅️ Creates immune substances such as gamma globulin

✅️ Breaks down and eliminates excess hormones

✅️ Vascular (blood management)

✅️ Provides blood clotting factors

✅️ Breaks down ammonia (and other toxins) created in the colon by bacteria; thus preventing death

✅️ Helps to maintain blood pressure

✅️ Constructs cholesterol and estrogen, reconstructs hormones

✅️ Humanises nutrients, metabolises protein, carbohydrates, fat for energy

✅️ Synthesises urea, constructs blood protein, interconverts amino acids

✅️ Constructs 50,000 systems of enzymes to govern metabolic activity throughout the body

✅️ Removes damaged red blood cells

✅️ Converts the thyroid hormone thyroxine (T4) into it more active form triiodothyronine (T3). Inadequate conversion may lead to hypothyroidism, chronic fatigue, weight gain, poor memory and other debilitating conditions.

✅️ Creates GTF (Glucose Tolerance Factor) from chromium, niacin and possibly glutathione. GTF is needed for the hormone insulin to properly regulate blood-sugar levels. Manufactures bile salts which emulsify fats and the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K for proper absorption. The liver also removes some fat-soluble toxins from the body.

✅️ Activates B vitamins into their biologically active coenzyme forms. Virtually every nutrient must be biotransformed by the liver into its proper biochemical form before the nutrient can be stored, transported or used in cellular metabolism.

✅️ Stores various nutrients, especially A, D, B-12 and iron for release as needed.

✅️ Manufactures carnitine from lysine and other nutrients. Carnitine is the only known bionutrient which can es**rt fats into the mitochondria where they are used to generate ATP energy. The mitochondria generate 90% of the ATP energy at the cellular level.

✅️ Converts lactic acid from a toxic waste to an important storage fuel. Lactic acid is produced when glucose is metabolised through the energy production cycle. When excessive levels accumulate, you experience sore muscles. A healthy liver will extract lactic acid from the bloodstream and convert it into the reserve endurance fuel, glycogen.

✅️ Serves as the main glucose buffer, preventing high or low extremes of blood sugar. The liver is the key regulator of blood sugar between meals due to its manufacture, storage, and release of glycogen, the starch form of glucose. When blood sugar is low, a healthy liver converts stored glycogen into glucose, releasing it into the bloodstream to raise blood sugar levels. When blood sugar is high, a healthy liver will convert the excess into stored glycogen or fat.

✅️ Chief regulator of protein metabolism. The liver converts different amino acids into each other as needed.

✅️ Produces cholesterol and converts it into the various forms needed for blood transport.

✅️ Converts essential fatty acids such as GLA, EPA, and DHA into the lipoprotein forms necessary to allow transport via the bloodstream to the 50 trillion cells requiring fatty acids.

✅️ Main poison-detoxifying organ in the body. The liver must break down every substance toxic to the body including metabolic wastes, insecticide and pesticide residues, drugs, alcohol, etc. Failure of this function will usually cause death in 12 to 24 hours.

✅️ Removes ammonia, a toxic by-product of animal protein metabolism, from the body.

✅️ Breaks down hormones after they have served their function. i.e., if the liver does not break down insulin fast enough, hypoglycemia results because the circulating insulin continues to lower blood sugar.

✅️ The liver is vital to a host of other metabolic functions, but this brief overview should serve to illustrate the central role the liver plays in maintaining good health and the importance of implementing life-style change if necessary.

This is just the start of an extremely long list of liver functions. It is still uncertain exactly how many functions the liver is responsible for, but currently the list exceeds at least 500 different functions.

Credit : Healing Edge Sciences

15/01/2026

Sharing for a friend 👌🫶🏃‍♀️

Walk-running, AKA Jeffing, isn't just for beginners – it could be the key to faster race times, reduced injury and better mental endurance.

15/01/2026

? When you ask yourself in any of the extremes like the wind, rain, ice, and dark (it's a pre work thing😉). Never forget. ..the times when you can't run, and you would give anything to have the choice! 💚
Best get these stumps moving!! 👣👣👣👣
(If there is one!🤔😉)

15/01/2026

*NAMASTE* 🙏

I thought it would be useful to share one of my little rituals of feeling and being 'grateful'. 🫶
During a run at the weekend, I stopped to do my 'Namaste' bow at a place of contemplation and reflection. I was with a friend ( Kate), and she enquired as to whether it was towards the sun? 🌞🤔 It gave me the opportunity to explain it could be anywhere, with anyone. Usually at a high point/vista, and always a thank you to 'the universe' and nature for the gift of being 'at one' with it all. 🙏🌳🌊🌕🌞
I have spent many years studying Buddhism, and it's philosophies for life. There are no 'gods', in the beliefs, however there are many 'teachers'. These teachings have, and continue to be part of my life.
I extracted a few sentences below to provide an interpretation of 'NAMASTE' to provide a little more insight. There are variations as to it's meaning, so below are just a few words, and an opportunity to understand that if you see me out running, stop, and do a little ritual including a bow....you know I'm truly grateful 🙏, and share this with you. 🏃‍♀️💞🫶🤗

Namaste translated literally means ‘I bow to you’ - however other meanings have been adapted over time:

🫶 The light in me, honours the light in you.
🙏 The divine light in my soul, honours and bows to the divine light in your soul.
🫶 My soul recognises your soul.
🙏 We are the same, we are one.
🫶 I honour the place in you, that is the same as it is in me.

By saying Namaste and really meaning it, you are performing an affirmation. It is an active choice to take the spiritual lessons within a yoga practice, meditation, or even on the run🏃‍♀️, and take it out and in to your life.
Once you become aware of the true nature of reality, everything you do becomes an act of reverence. Simply living your ordinary daily life with full awareness becomes a complete practice of meditation, a perfect form of worship, an offering to all beings and to being itself. 🫶🙏💞


🫶
Nb I know the pose is a tree🌳 pose, it's all about 'balance' 😉🫶

14/01/2026

It's all about the feet and movement 👣
Worth a minute of your time to read📚 and try the move in the post below....


✅️ Life Changing Exercise❗️

When our feet are painful, it often seems like there is nothing we can do to exercise.

Pounding the pavement for for hours seems impossible because it will just make the problem worse.

We easily get into a downward spiral of gaining weight, hurting more, moving less, feeling bad about ourselves and on and on.

I want to give you hope and empower you to get out of that downward spiral. 👌💪🫶👣

Getting the ball rolling towards moving more and moving better and the downward spiral reverses into an upward spiral.

✅️ Learn about things you can do today, even if you are currently in pain. You get the blood flowing. You feel a little better. You want to do another. The one exercise you did causes you to think of another, and another.
Soon the momentum builds on the ball you just got rolling.

So here is one simple movement or exercise that takes just a few seconds.

✅️ While standing barefoot, move your weight from the heel to the big toe.
Slowly rock back forward with your pressure while keeping the foot flat on the floor the entire time.
When your weight gets onto the big toe firmly press the big toe into the ground.

This is exactly what I’m talking about when I mention working on movement skill.

✅️ This exercise is training the big toe to take on the weight its designed to handle when walking and running.

The big toe handles about 85% of the weight bearing that all 5 toes handle on each foot.

At least it’s supposed to anyway.

Often wearing pointed shoes cause us to push off the middle of our forefoot instead of straight through the big toe.

This simple exercise trains the big toe plant firmly.

✅️ A,B,C, on the photo. Follow the line of pressure the foot is designed to use when moving force from the heel, up the 5th metatarsal bone or outside of the foot, across all 5 metatarsal heads and out through the big toe.




This exercise directly works against bunions.
Bunions form because the big toe hovers instead of plants.
That hovering forces the big toe metatarsal head to be pushed outward, forming the bunion,

Start with learning movements like this and soon you will have an entire library of movements that all add up to a full functioning, healthy, strong body.

✅️ These exercises are life changing because they not only serve the movement you need today, but they also serve the best possible you 10 years from now.👌💪👣

❤️👣❤️
RunWednesdays

13/01/2026

The Fourth Phase of Water: A role in fascia?

The following is an extract of editorial written by Gerard Pollack, PhD from University of Washington, published in the recent Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies.

How can Jesus walk on water? Why do pollen grains jitterbug in a puddle? Why do fair weather clouds form such lovely puffy white shapes? And why can you “feel” the movement of fascial water?

Answering those questions requires an understanding of water. Given water's pervasiveness and simplicity, we presume that water must be completely understood, but in fact precious little is known about how water molecules line up — until recently.

We learn that water has three phases: solid, liquid and vapour. But there is something more. In our laboratory at the University of Washington we have uncovered a fourth phase. This phase occurs next to water loving (hydrophilic) surfaces. It is surprisingly extensive, projecting out from surfaces by up to millions of molecular layers; and it exists almost everywhere.

The evidence for this new phase of water has been described in a recently-released book: The Fourth Phase of Water: Beyond Solid, Liquid and V***r.

The existence of a fourth phase is not entirely unexpected. One century ago, the physical chemist Sir William Hardy argued for its existence; and, over the years many authors have found evidence for some kind of “ordered” or “structured” phase of water. Fresh experimental evidence not only confirms the existence of that ordered, liquid-crystalline phase, but also details its properties. These properties explain everyday observations and questions ranging from why gelatin desserts hold their water, to why teapots whistle.

The energy for building this structure comes from the sun. Radiant energy converts bulk water into ordered water, building this zone. Water absorbs the infrared energy freely from the environment; it uses that energy to convert bulk water into liquid crystalline water. Hence, buildup of the fourth phase occurs naturally and spontaneously.

Of particular significance is the fourth phase's charge, commonly negative. Absorbed radiant energy splits water molecules; the negative moiety forms the building block of the ordered zone, while the positive moiety binds with bulk water molecules to form free hydronium ions. Adding more light stimulates more charge separation. This process resembles the first step of photosynthesis. In that process.

The charges separated by light resemble a battery. That battery can deliver energy in a similar way as the separated charges in plants deliver energy. Plants, of course, comprise mostly water and it is therefore no surprise that similar energy conversion takes place in water itself.

The fourth phase can appear nearly everywhere. All that's needed is water, radiant energy, and a hydrophilic surface. The latter can be as large as a slab of polymer or tissue and as small as a dissolved molecule. The liquid crystalline phase inevitably builds — and its presence plays some integral role in the respective system's behaviour.

Liquid crystalline water envelops every macromolecule in the body, including those of the fascia. Those macromolecules are so tightly packed that the liquid crystalline water pervades your body. In other words most of your water is liquid crystalline water.

Radiant energy may also play a role during massage. Your hand generates radiant energy, and fascia absorbs that energy. That energy builds the liquid crystalline water that is necessary for healthy function. Further, pressure itself does the same: because liquid crystalline water is denser than bulk water, massage pressure converts bulk water into liquid crystalline water. We confirmed that in recent laboratory experiments. In other words, pressure and radiant energy build the liquid crystalline water that is characteristic of healthy tissue and necessary for normal physiological function.

Watch also Gerard's TED talk at http://youtu.be/i-T7tCMUDXU

12/01/2026

Great mobility stretch❗️💯
😍 Love free tips ❤️

Thanks for sharing Tom Morrison 👌💪🙏👏

After the Deep Lunge Test, if there was only one other exercise I could pick to improve someone's mobility it would have to be the Anchored Side Stretch.

Why is this stretch/opener so good for you?

Obliques & QLs!

Your internal & external obliques are the cornerstone of your core, wrapping around the sides of your body allowing strong sideways, rotational and flexing movements. If they are pi**ed off, everything else can take a hit because of it.

Your QLs are deep muscles that attach your ribs & spine to your pelvis, they help to stabilise that entire lower back area while also assisting with lateral movements.

These muscle groups are responsible for both good hip function and shoulder function, if they are not able to do their job correctly, other muscles WILL reorganise - this causes loss of strength, performance and in some cases, nagging pains that soon become injuries.

This stretch gives people better shoulder mobility, helping leg length discrepancies, even assisting chronic lower back pain!

Even if you have none of these issues, using this at the start and end of your session will both help you move better and help your recovery... plus it feels absolutely amazing!

How to do it:
1. Stand close to a rig, doorframe or sturdy human
2. Place the inside hand in front beside your hip
3. Reach the outside hand up overhead & grab behind the pole/doorframe
4. Lean away from your hands, making a big C shape
5. Breeeeeeeaathe. Big deep breaths as you move around & have a wiggle
6. Try adjusting your hand or foot position to get the best stretch for you!
7. Repeat on the other side

💪 Start feeling and moving better the easy way!

🐈 😸 😁

Link to more stretches and video guidance in the link below, or just watch an agile kitten on a clothes airer...❗️ ✅️😸💪👌 ⤵️

https://fb.watch/pbBG1eandU/

11/01/2026

Thanks Dr. Howard Luks for the below 💪🫶👏👏👏
If you can run
for an hour at a conversational effort
and your heart rate stays low,
you’ve built something far more powerful than speed.

You’ve built mitochondrial density your cells’ ability to create energy efficiently.
You’ve trained your heart to move more blood with less effort, increasing stroke volume and lowering resting heart rate.
You’ve strengthened capillary networks that deliver oxygen deeply and reliably, not just under stress.

Exercise physiology shows this kind of aerobic base improves
- metabolic flexibility
- fat oxidation
-blood pressure regulation
-long-term cardiac resilience

It’s the difference between performance and capacity.

Anyone can push hard for a few minutes.
Few people can move steadily for an hour without strain.
That calm endurance signals a nervous system that recovers quickly, a heart that doesn’t panic, and lungs that cooperate instead of fight.

This is the kind of fitness that doesn’t shout.
It whispers longevity.

It protects your joints.
Buffers stress hormones.
And builds a foundation strong enough to support intensity when you choose it.

Running easy isn’t weakness.
Its wisdom earned one patient mile at a time.

🏃‍♀️
UKrunchat 💚🫶

11/01/2026

11/01/2026

*Knee Strengthening* 🦵🦿👊👌✅️

These knee-strengthening exercises will help with your running, strengthen the muscles around the knee and prevent knee pain.

The exercises strengthen all the muscles supporting the knee and stretch out the iliotibial band, known as the ITB, which runs down the outside of the thigh.

✅️ They can be done as part of your warm-up before a run or as a cool-down routine after a run, outside or indoors, or whenever is most convenient.

✅ Means you can still kneel to capture the wonderful grin of a happy pony, or take a photo out on the run! 👣😉🦄📷 (of course it was a unicorn!🤭😁)

Great guidance from the ✅️👏👏👏

🙏

Click here ⤵️ https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/exercise/knee-exercises-for-runners/

10/01/2026

? It's windy, and YOU need a training session.....HERE IT IS !! Nb it also makes a pretty graph, one we all like where it drops rather than keeps peaking...🙏👣📉

*TRAINING SESSION ALERT*
HILL REPS 👣🏔

A 'nice' 😉 endurance session....
✅ 10 min run warm up to start (up hill if you are tough😉)
✅ Run 3 minutes up the hill, jog recovery down × 5
✅ Run 90 seconds up the hill, jog recovery down x 5
✅ Run 45 seconds up the hill, jog recovery down x5
✅ 10 min run cool down
A great session, the recovery sessions get shorter, and you mentally feel stronger with the reduction of hill climb 💪👍

Benefits :
✅ Not only does it give you a change within your training but it also adds a new dynamic element if you feel your running is going stale.

✅ Running hills can be an intense workout that really gives you a fresh new wind and an adrenaline rush.

✅ This has a lot to do though with the form you use when you run up hill. Using proper form will make it not only feel easier but it will actually BE easier!

Feel free to contact me if you want any guidance 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♂️👣, or with those pesky niggles or injuries, via the usual methods 📱📞👋
Don't forget to ask our favourite Personal Trainers Jim Chater Danny Garbett and Ollie Goulden for advice, and I thoroughly recommend their fitness sessions 👀👍🫶💪👊👏