Weird Toe Discovery!

Nothing elaborate or deep today, just a post about toes and toe weirdness.

As some of you might already be aware, I use meditation as part of my arsenal against overly insistent phantom limb sensation.  I don't really get phantom limb pain, but I always have sensation in my phantom limb, and sometimes, for a variety of reasons which you can read about here if you're interested, it is so strong that it kind of takes over my consciousness, and this can suck.  When this happens, I try meditating on the leg I still have, the living leg not the ghost.  I concentrate on really feeling it, the skin, the hairs, the blood, the muscles, the bone, the potential.  I move it; I stretch it; I consciously relax it, bit by bit.  I even kind of pet it sometimes, to help me feel it and also to remind myself through this part of my body that whatever I still have is always, must always be more important than what I've lost or given up.

After three years of doing this without sudden insight or other notable incident, in the process of doing this last week, I made a very strange discovery:  I cannot feel my middle toe.  Well, I can feel it if I rub it up against something deliberately, but otherwise I can't even move it independently of other toes let alone feel it independently.  It's like the middle three are almost a solid block.

As I meditate on my foot I can feel my big toe and the toe next to that, my pinky toe and the toe next to that.  Mostly I feel those two inner toes at the places where they join with my foot.  I cannot feel my middle toe at all, though, not by thinking about it, only if I spread all my toes wide apart and really move that middle toe against something with a strongly different texture or temperature.

How weird is that?  Is it weird?  Can you feel your middle toe? 

Don't know?  Try it.  Shut your eyes and try to isolate the sensations that belong to just your middle toe.

Is it as hard for you as it is for me?  And if so, is it as weird for you to discover this as it was for me?

And do you wonder, as I am forced to wonder, if I hadn't had phantom limb sensation interfering with my sleep last week, would either of us have discovered this, or would we have gone to our graves never experiencing our middle toes fully and never even knowing what we were missing?

Okay, now you want to know how and why I discovered this?  I discovered this because in the process of moving my consciousness from the ghost to the living, I realized that though I cannot feel my living middle toe without making a special effort, I can feel all my phantom toes, each one distinctly, all the time.

Now that's weird, admit it.

Ooky.  Just plain ooky.

Comments

[Cathy]

Sheesh. Now you got me sitting on the couch trying to locate my middle toe. My feet are so big and ugly I don't want to divert too much time looking at them :0)

[Ron Sullivan]

Huh. Now that I think of it, I can't either. I can sort-of locate the sensation of the end of that toe, but not the base; it does just feel like a unit with its neibors though I can feel them OK. The right middle toe, can't feel that very well but I can spread and "grasp" more independently and I can feel that as I do it.

I'm right-handed, FWIW, and I drive an automatic transmission so my right leg is stronger and more flexible in general than my left.

Oh great, now I'll be wiggling my toes all day and looking off into space. If Chris asks why, I'll send him here. Blogmeme!

[Sara]

(mwa ha ha ha ha)

Cathy, if you have your feet and they work, they are beautiful. There are people in this world who would kill (probably not literally) to have your feet instead of the ones they have that don't work, the ones they have that hurt all the time, or the ones they don't have at all. Yes, I am lecturing you obnoxiously. But did you really think I wouldn't? ;)

I shall make you know and appreciate your own feet intimately! In spite of the efforts of the fashion industry to make women feel bad about themselves in detail on a well nigh constant basis, you will learn the beauty of your feet and their mystery! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

Sorry. I had a little sip of water, and I feel better now. Speaking of all that, though, Ron, I have not forgotten about "On Feet and Feminism"; working on it, really. And meanwhile, I must respectfully request that you please make sure people have already voted before you send them here to get obsessed about their own toes. Please. It's important. ;)

[Penny]

(I already voted, fear not.) My middle toes seem to be part of a collective--they move with their neighbors, not on their own. I broke the second toe in June, and the middle on that foot even shared in the bruising. But I suspect some folks, dancers and yoga practitioners, *can* learn to isolate that toe's muscles and move them independently. (Not sure what purpose it would serve, but it might be an interesting exercise.)

[Sara]

Give that voter a cookie! Or how 'bout some words by yogis on toesies?

"From the Ground Up" by Tias Little ("As we free up our feet, we tap into a reservoir of potential energy. It is as if we are standing on wellsprings of life force that have been blocked by years of constrictive footwear, lack of use, and inhibition.")

"Feet First" by Julie Gudmestad ("You have muscles in your feet that are designed to spread your toes just as the muscles in your hands spread your fingers. If your toes stay glued together no matter how much you try to spread them, the muscles are probably atrophied from lack of use, and the toes themselves may have lost flexibility.")

They don't say anything about being able to feel every toe distinctly. The practice of yoga, though, is about living as fully as possible in the bodies that we have. That's not all it's about, but that is one of the fundamentals.

[Cathy]

Lecture away, dear. Trust me. I know I'm lucky. But these old feet grew up in the '60's when my size 9's had to be crammed into really cruel shoes. Vanity,vanity - what a waste of time.

[Enjay]

When I close my eyes and concentrate, I can feel sensation in all of the toes on my right foot. I cannot on my left, but that is the leg that is damaged, so that doesn't surprise me.
I can't move either of them independantly though. :) Thanks for the exercise, it was nice to sit and contemplate for a few minutes.