When I did my biggest rebrand in 10 years (from Feel Better Every Day aka selfcarecoaching.net to Soles to Soul Care for Trauma and AuDHD) in February, I hadn’t expected to have to have a bit of a reckoning with my own feet and sensory issues
But the learning to love and care for all our parts, from the soles of our feet to our souls meant I had to really connect with my own… It’s been HIDEOUS. And beyond heel-ing (geddit? Heel? Heal? Sorry not sorry)
I hope this episode will help you connect with your own feet and send them more love and care. Let me know how you’re getting on.
le grá (with love),
Ev3
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction and why feet matter
01:13 From hating my feet to heeling my relationship with them
03:51 Breakthrough in yoga class
10:03 FEEL.: caring for your feet and your nervous system
14:45 LOVE.: accepting and appreciating your feet
17:01 HEAL.: standing tall and supporting others
19:03 Younger you, foetal (feet-al) position and feeling safe
22:53 Grounding practice: from the soles of your feet to your soul
LINKS
Choose your own adventures: https://solestosoul.ie/adventures/
If you enjoyed this, check out:
Episode 51: Reconnect with the earth and your Self
Episode 73: Befriending your Traumatised and ADHD Inner Child
Episode 82: Love Yourself, Warts and All
Book your free telephone consultation and access 100s of body-mind practices at https://solestosoul.ie/free-downloads
FULL TRANSCRIPT
The feet are the most distal point from the brain, so anytime we’re working with the feet in yoga or giving yourself a massage, you’re kind of waking up the whole body, you’re treating your whole self. So just notice for yourself which of these things feel friendly to experiment with. Welcome to episode 117 of Soles to Soul Care for Trauma and AuDHD.
Learn to love and care for all your parts from the soles of your feet to your soul. I’m Eve Menezes Cunningham and I’m your host and the producer and you can find out more, access older episodes, full transcripts, free resources, all sorts of things at solestosoul.ie. So that’s s-o-l-e-s-t-o-s-o-u-l.ie and there’ll be a link in the show notes. Today’s episode, I’m talking about something I never thought I’d be talking about, feet.
When I rebranded at the beginning of this year, I’d been Feel Better Every Day for so long, selfcarecoaching.net, and Soles to Soul felt really appropriate because my approach is very grounded, it’s very embodied and it also works with the transpersonal and energy. So Soles to Soul, it kind of encompassed everything. And it also brought on a bit of a reckoning for me personally, where I’ve been awful to my own feet my entire life.
Now I understand more about sensory differences and ADHD, I have more compassion for that, and I’ve actually been able to work with my feet, understanding that it’s harder for me than it might be for someone more neurotypical. Or other ADHDers, everyone has different sensory differences. But I remember as a teenager, my brother being like, chop them off already, because I used to moan about having feet so much.
When I did my yoga training and when I was younger, attending yoga classes and you had to be barefoot because it was considered a risk slipping and I wasn’t able to assert my need to keep my socks on. And throughout the training, I recently thought about how much I had to learn again later on my own time, because I was just freaked out by the idea of my nose being on the spot on the mat, where my feet had just been, as we moved through different sequences. And it’s just something I’ve given a lot more thought to, as I’ve been thinking about loving and caring for all your parts, from the soles of your feet to your soul.
So I thought for today’s episode, I’d dig into that a bit and hopefully encourage you to be gentler with your own feet. So it’s, to me, really interesting that I now, after a bath, enjoy putting lotion on my feet and sending the whole foot, the toes, lots of love, putting my fingers between my toes and doing a little bit of foot yoga, but really giving myself a good foot massage and how lovely that is. And yes, I wash my hands thoroughly after touching my feet.
Something else that happened really amusingly with hindsight, but at the time it was like, oh, what do I do now? I’d gone to a yoga class and I got soaked on the way, because I live in wondrous Westport and it rains a lot, but I was particularly drenched, just getting from the car to the studio.
When I took my shoes off and went into the studio, my socks were just soaking wet and it’s like, I have two choices here, either stay in sopping wet socks, which is ah, all sort of sensory issues around that, or take them off and free the feet. And it was gorgeous.
It was so lovely. And I was sending them so much love. I mentioned Dr. Emoto in the book, 365 Ways to Feel Better: Self-Care Ideas for Embodied Wellbeing, but he famously studied water and how the molecules react, the chemistry of the water changes, depending on when people were sending hateful thoughts or loving thoughts.
And I spent that class sending as much love as I could, remembering my rebrand and also feeling really grossed out by the idea of feet, my feet. I’ve kind of moaned about other people’s feet being too close to me in various classes and on CPDs and what have you, but this is very much even my own feet. But it made me think it was something that I wouldn’t have chosen to do, but they felt free and they felt like they were like, we’re free, and it was really lovely.
So when I went to a class the following morning, I thought I have a choice now and I brought some baby wipes with me and I chose to deliberately free the feet, even though I didn’t have sopping wet feet and it was okay. So I just got in the habit of giving myself permission with my sensory differences to kind of take out a few of the baby wipes before the class starts, because I don’t want the noise to be disturbing anyone else. It possibly still does, I don’t know.
No one said anything to me, but I don’t want to be disruptive. And I’m sure it looks really strange, me kind of reaching for a wipe and wiping down my hands after I have touched my feet when we move into something else. But it really has been incredibly healing for me.
So I wanted to give this as an example, when you think about, like, I encourage you at the end of each episode to scan your whole self and like, think about what parts of you need and deserve some extra love and support. But today we’ll think about the feet and just ask yourself, when did you last send some love, some appreciation, some gratitude to your feet? And how does it feel to do so now? So taking a very quick break and be back with the episode soon.
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So I’m looking forward to hearing from you there or if you just go to the website, there’ll be links and there’ll be links in the show notes as well. Thank you for listening to my first ever podcast ad and welcome back to the episode.
If it feels warm enough, if it feels comfortable enough, depending on where you’re listening to this, not if you’re driving, you might want to take your socks off.
You might want to take your shoes off. You might want to, as we move into the FEEL. LOVE. HEAL. framework and starting with the FEEL. the kind of self-care, the regulatory stuff, the things that help us when we have the bandwidth feel better, you might want to do a bit of an audit of your shoes and socks.
Think about or try on and release the ones that don’t treat your feet with love, that don’t help you feel grounded and supported and nourished by the earth.
You might want to donate. You might want to keep for different occasions, but make sure that you have shoes and socks that feel delicious. I’ve been really loving bamboo, like kind of vest tops and underwear and socks the past few years, but you might like something else.
Experimenting and just noticing how your feet feel right now as you plant them more firmly on the ground, thanking them, spreading the toes as if you’re in a yoga class. I’ve got the barefoot shoes, which I really love. I’m not great in long distance walking with them, but I’m gonna, if she’ll let me show you, she’s hidden now, but I think I can just show you how funny it is that I moan about my feet and look at these adorable paws.
Look at these gorgeous, gorgeous paws. They go all sorts of places and I happily kiss them, but my own feet, it was like, it’s just really funny how then when you have more compassion for all of yourself, everything changes. So think about not only shoes and socks and slippers, think about how different parts of your home feel.
Do you have a rug that is delightful or a bath mat or would you like to cover or do you really like a particular part of a floor? Do you let your feet be enriched with being barefoot on the sand or on the grass? Like obviously being mindful of tips or any hazards, but how can you give your feet a treat each day? I don’t have within reaching distance, but those fascia release balls, I use them for shoulder pain or any kind of pain, really just kind of lean on them, lean against them, but they can be especially wonderful like just rolling your foot on them, just getting that input.
The feet are the most distal point from the brain. So anytime we’re working with the feet in yoga or giving yourself a massage, you’re kind of waking up the whole body. You’re treating your whole self. So just notice for yourself, which of these things feel friendly to experiment with. You might want to journal around it.
You might want to write yourself a letter as if to your feet or from your feet. What do they need from you? How are they trying to help you? How can you do more to honour all they do for you, carrying throughout life? Maybe they need more moisture, like a kind of lovely like jojoba oil or I love cocoa butter, aqueous cream when they’re very dry. I don’t do well with scented things.
I tend to have allergic reactions, which then created a whole new thing and I had to go to the doctor and have my doctor look at my feet, which was horrendous, but it was OK. My doctor was like, “I’m used to it. It’s my job.”
Notice how you feel. Notice what feels good when you think about connecting with your feet and sending them enormous love and letting yourself ground, letting yourself connect with this amazing planet we get to live on and letting yourself feel that nourishment. Support your microbiome if you’re happy being out barefoot on grass.
Funnily enough, I was always happy barefoot on grass or sand. It was the touching of the feet or having my face near something where grass always feels self-cleaning, especially in Ireland where it rains so much. As we move to the LOVE. part of the framework, so the FEEL. bit is the regulatory self-care.
The LOVE. bit is the kind of love archetype in psychosynthesis. It’s support, it’s loving energy, it’s acceptance and it’s the recognition that you’re part of the divine. You are part of nature.
You don’t need to do a thing to change. How can you, without changing a thing about your feet or a thing about your relationship to your feet, how can you just love what is? How does it feel? Like you might be listening to this or you might be fast forwarding this thinking, I’ve got a brilliant relationship with my feet. I don’t know what you’re on about.
And wonderful, I love that for you. But if you struggle, how might you amp up the love? How might you amp up the acceptance? I remember a long time ago, reading one of the Louise Hay books about a verruca and it was basically a wart. And I started kind of telling myself as I was treating it, “I love myself, warts and all.”
I didn’t believe it. But over time it was like, oh wow, that’s really like, I really do now love and appreciate my feet for all they’ve brought me through in life. And I’m so happy that I have had this healing in the last few months because I had to walk the walk more with the rebrand.
How can you love and accept your beautiful feet, even if they don’t feel beautiful? How can you acknowledge all they’ve come through for you? How can you strengthen and support your root chakra, that lower part of your body starting with the feet? How can you, like, if you can’t, how does it feel to imagine having that kind of relationship with your feet?
How might a future version of yourself be better equipped to give your feet the love that they and all feet deserve? I honestly cannot believe how many times I’m saying the word feet. I never thought I would be talking about feet. That’s what happens when you rebrand to Soles to Soul.
As we move on to the HEAL. part of the framework, heel, get it, oh my God, OK, sorry. It’s about the community care. It’s about turning what hurts our heart into action.
How can you use your feet, your nourished, supported, comfortable, happy feet to stand up for what’s right and to help yourself feel more grounded and more supported as you stand up for people who struggle to stand up for themselves? Who can help?
How can you connect with communities that make it easier for you to stand up tall, to stand in your power, to step into your power, to step towards your dreams and goals, to take each next best step? What ways do you hold community for others? And it might be that you choose to see a complimentary therapist, a reflexologist, an acupuncturist, any kind of massage where it could be anything at all. Think about what appeals, but how can you let yourself be held in community and heal your relationship to your feet and to the earth?
And how can you hold yourself and hold others? How can you help stand, ground, strengthen, lengthen through the spine, stand tall? Imagine roots growing from the soles of your feet, deep into the earth, keeping you connected and helping you stay connected with the earth’s nourishing, supportive, grounding energy. What can you do to build community around you that helps you keep connected with this? Let me know in the comments.
Let me know, like hit reply if you’re reading this by email. And as we move to sending love to younger you, it might be that you recognise that you were particularly unkind to your feet at a certain point in your life or up until a certain point that might’ve been with the thoughts you thought about it like me, or you might have worn shoes that were really uncomfortable, but you chose them because you liked the way they looked. Whatever it was, you might want to send love.
And I also want to talk a little bit about foetal – feet-al – position, which is a bit of a stretch. But as I did this work on my feet, I began to be able to, after Shavasana in a yoga class I was attending. So I’m fine like when I’m taking myself through things, but when I surrender to someone else’s teaching and guidance, it can be the pathological demand avoidance or the persistent drive for autonomy, PDA can come up and a lot of yoga teachers will instruct after Savasana to roll onto your right side in foetal position and pause there before coming back up to a seated position.
And when I was medicated, like when I was on my ADHD medication, I could do that. But a lot of the time it would be like every fibre in my being would be like, “Nope, you can’t make me!” And sometimes I do it, but I’d be thinking that.
And other times it was just like, no, I had an injured hand for a while and shoulder. So it was easier for me to rock up. But it was a really strong defiant, no, no, no, no, no.
I did not want to be in foetal position. And after I started working with the, like massaging my feet almost every day, like after almost every shower and after every bath in the swimming pool or like kind of in the steam room, like just really being friendly, like I’ve noticed my relationship with that change. And with the inner child work I was doing, I deepened what we’ve done in class.
And it suddenly felt safe for me to stay in foetal position. And I think I might have connected it with when I used to drink too much and pass out drunk as a teenager and I wasn’t safe or as a baby, but I was able for that deeper healing. I was able to recognise that now in 2026 and beyond, I’m safe, it’s okay to be in foetal position.
So thinking about your feet, thinking about foetal position, if that feels good for you, just notice that very, very basic self-care. Notice if you can’t do it for yourself, if you can’t do something along those lines for yourself right now, ask yourself what would help you. And it might be that you’re making notes, you’re journaling as in a, I’ll never be able to do this.
But if you could just make some notes for yourself now, you could return to them a week from now, a month from now, 10 years from now and it might have helpful information for you.
Thanks for listening to this episode. If you haven’t already and would like to, please like, subscribe, comment, engage across the platforms, wherever you may be accessing this.
And you can also email me eve at solestosoul.ie. And before you go, please take a moment to ground the episode by just pausing and scanning your parts, all your parts from the soles of your feet to your soul. So you may want to keep your eyes open, you may want to close them, but planting your feet firmly on the ground, lengthening through the spine if that feels comfortable for you, letting yourself feel held by the chair or whatever it is you’re sitting or lying or standing on. And taking just a moment to scan your whole self, your whole body, your whole energy field, and ask yourself what you’re going to do for yourself right now.
It might be as a result of listening to the episode, it might be something else, it might be a nap, it might be something to eat, it might be some kind of movement. But let yourself ground, let yourself get into the habit of connecting with your inner wisdom and notice what you need and give yourself what you need. Thank you for listening.
I look forward to sharing more next week.