The souls of the feet

Every musician knows that the most important parts of the body for singing or playing a musical instrument are the feet.  Look at any singer or instrumentalist stand and you will note they seem to hang, perfectly poised, over their feet.  And the concert pianist's little leaps in the air off the piano stool are born entirely of the periodic surges of energy up through the feet to the fingers and into the keys.

The musician's intuition becomes in the hands of the reflexologist a therapeutic skill.  Onto the feet are projected other regions of the body just as the earth's sphere is projected onto a flat map in an atlas. Manual massage applied to the feet feeds back to the corresponding area of the body.  The feet are a gateway, the body's metaphorical as well as literal point of contact with the outside world. 

One of the best artistic representations of the pivotal nature of the foot and its placing occurs in Kobayashi's film 'Rebellion'.  Toshiro Mifune - Japan's Laurence Olivier - plays the master swordsman who in the closing scenes, through the usual vagaries of fate, is compelled to fight his old friend and duelling partner.  The confrontation takes place in a lonely mown field, with just the two of them edging slowly round, looking for a moment to strike.  As they circle each other, their feet move over the earth with the same delicacy, tenderness even, that you might use to explore intimately the face of a lover.  At one heart-stopping moment, Mifune misses his footing and nearly stumbles. The other rushes in, but before he can seize the advantage, Mifune is up and balanced again, his feet planted like two mighty firs. 

More than most cultures the Japanese seem to have a deep appreciation of the profound nature of this type of contact.  It is reflected in their martial arts, many of which are conducted in bare feet. There you are taught, like the musician, to feel the power rise from the ground through the legs. The stance is critical; a poor position of the feet leaves you wide open to attack and renders your own attack futile, its speed and impact literally cut off at the legs. 

Irrespective of any other benefits, learning a martial art or practising a more spiritualised version such as Tai Chi has the important effect of putting you in touch with your feet and through them the earth.  You soon begin to feel positively Antaean, constantly drawing strength from Mother Earth as that ancient giant did when Hercules fought him and threw him down to the ground, only to see him rise up twice as powerful. 

Putting the feel back in feet has advantages beyond the simple but necessarily limited pleasures born of walking barefoot. Once you are aware of your feet again, even shoes become a rich, sensuous experience. To the practised connoisseur, the sensation of being comfortably shod on different terrains can only be compared to that enjoyed by the gourmet confronted by a series of exquisitely varied dishes based around the subtle shadings given to, say, the clean and pure underlying taste of fish.  For both, the sole can be a truly delicious experience.
 
(26.12.91)

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