I want to find whatever is abnormal and bring it back to normal. I don’t look for a loss of mobility, even though it is part of the landscape. Think about a foot and all the tiny bones that form it. Yes, let’s talk about the foot.

This morning I saw a patient for a foot pain. X-Ray saw nothing wrong. The doctor saw nothing wrong. The osteopath saw nothing wrong. I worked for 10 minutes and solved it. So this leaves you with 2 options: – either I am super strong at creating a placebo effect – or I saw something that others didn’t see (didn’t look for) and corrected it If it’s placebo then I wonder why people don’t try to achieve the same, but that’s another debate. Back to the foot.

The foot and its bones. No, no wait. Let’s back up a bit. You are already thinking only about the foot because…language. Language and anatomy books make us think of the foot as separate from the leg, distinct from the hip, the pelvis, the lower back, etc. But when it comes to the foot, you think about all the bones as a functional unit because you are used to seeing the foot in anatomy books.

So the first thing I’d do is to see the whole thing. At least in terms of the lower limb. At least. 1 functional unit from the lower ribs down to the foot. Like you take your idea of a foot and now you change the meaning in your mind and what you call a foot is actually the whole limb. You want to treat that.

So the foot in this case is a much wider area, and I want to adjust every single thing in this area. Adjust being from abnormal to normal. Everything. Bones, ligaments, muscles, etc. so, of course, you need to pay attention to the hip, the sacrum, the lumbar, and so on. But for the purpose of this article, we are going to talk about the foot.

I zoom in. A cuboid bone is now gigantic. And it needs to be perfectly adjusted. This means any change in its relation to its environment has to be adjusted. Not the mobility, fuck that, that’s an effect. There’s 1 good position for every bone. Not 2, but only 1. Any degrees of rotation, side bending, flexion, extension, etc. with any bone or ligament has to be adjusted.

This is done for every single bone of the foot. It is a very precise work. Not one to be done by cracking the foot. We are talking about a very refined mechanism. As I said, it took 10 minutes. I didn’t run any tests at all.

You palpate and correct at the same time. This is the tricky part. The find it of the find it, fix it, leave it alone. Because again, when you see it, adjusting is easy. But if you don’t, you are playing a game of hit-and-miss. You don’t know what you are doing, you are using manual therapy techniques like a massage, and you hope what you did will bring results. Your sessions are over because you decided it’s time, not because you KNOW it’s done.

Now how to adjust. I know most of you will try to reproduce that and won’t focus on the “find it”. Anyway, this is what I currently do. I will NOT think about biomechanics. Fuck that. I will work on a bone and its relationship to the foot. Using a fixed point on the bone, I will bring the foot in the direction that increases the lesion.

Then I will come back in the direction that the bone doesn’t like, and with the fingers resting on the bone, I will go in the direction I want it to go. Now is the important part: I will maintain the bone in that position, but I will bring the foot back into neutral, and bring the environment of the bone back to rest.

Ok so for example: for a cuboid that is too low under the 5th meta, I will hold the cuboid, and go in plantar flexion. Then I’ll bring the foot in dorsal flexion, pushing the cuboid up. I will maintain the cuboid there and let the foot come back into neutral.

Of course, sometimes a counter pressure is made on the other bone, sometimes the opposite movement of the foot is needed, etc, because people are not what biomechanics pretend they are. They are more like a chaotic system, that’s why you can’t copy this technique, even though you can use the spirit of it.

And apply that to every single part of the body. And spend as much time as needed to correct the lesion. Yes, sometimes doing the technique again and again. Never give up, until not only you know you are right, but you feel it. You feel like Hiro Nakamura and you can scream YATTA!!!!!

Love,
Jules