Somatic Storytelling: the bunion

A case Study:


I saw a woman this week with a bunion, a bony growth on the inside of her big toe. She had suffered pain in this foot for twenty years and was contemplating surgery. Now, what can one do about someone else's body growing extra bone on their foot? Thinking about it from my perspective: as a somatic educator, my question is Why would someone grow extra bone in their foot in the first place. Structure over function. Structure means your bones and nervous system. Function means what you do with the structure, how you carry it through the world. It seems quite unlikely that someone would just happen to grow extra bone in their foot. There must have been a functional imperitive, the way she was using her body demanding that the structure of the foot shift.

In fact, bunions are very common among women(another plague of patriarchal society perhaps). There's speculation that it is caused by squeezing the foot into tight, constricting shoes. I think quite simply what is clear is that it means the person's center of gravity, which should be spread out evenly throughout their whole foot has been shifted, perhaps narrowed or set off center. If this happens long enough the structure will compensate.

When you look at her whole soma, indeed there is a great deal of compensation. For one thing, her weight is shifted onto the other leg. This could be so that she doesn't bear weight on the painful foot or it might be that the imbalance in the foot leading to the bunion started from this weight shift higher up in the center. Potentially from an earlier trauma. Two, there is a great deal of tension in the hips that seems to lock the pelvis and corresponding legs in their position, diminishing her capacity for comfort and healing.

So, my focus is on comfort. At this stage, there is nothing I can do to get rid of the bunion, all that I can do is help her refind her center of balance and release the tension around her pelvis letting the legs move freely and restoring ease to her gait. As with most problems, this involves keeping focused on the center of the body. This is where real change has to come from.

And I'm happy to let you know that it seems to be working. After just one session of lengthening and balancing the muscles in her waist, she felt a great deal of comfort in her body and actually noticed that the foot pain went away. As long as she continues to remind herself how to stand in an easy, balanced way, the bunion pain should go away. And I'm very curious to see if, once natural, balanced function is restored, the bunion might actually start to diminish. If the extra bone is no longer needed for support, will her Soma start to absorb it back? We shall see. This is just another example though of our amazing capacities for self change and healing, at any point in our lives.