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The First Step of 1000 miles
The unique properties of Original SANDDUNE™ provide a cushioning, conforming platform ideal for use in the early segments of a rehabilitation plan. Its surface gently forces the foot’s muscles, tendons and ligaments to stretch as your weight shifts from one foot to the other. Simultaneously your whole body is adjusting to gain its Center of Gravity (COG).
“Toes Down” Stretch
“Toes Up” Stretch
Few balance devices allow the whole foot to sink down into their surface while offering the benefit of allowing your toes to stretch and work individually. Original SANDDUNE’s material and construction allow for these “Toe Cross Fit Workouts.”
Relearning to press each toe, individually, into the floor and then into the SANDDUNE™, is a job many pairs of feet have not done since they were running around barefoot as kids. Try it right now and see how challenging it is! Don’t look down at your feet while you try! Among the select few who use their whole foot besides kids and a select group of athletes are:
- Gymnasts
- Dancers
- Runners in ” nature’s socks” like Abebe Bikila or Zola Budd
- Yoga devotees to name a few (sans yoga socks!).
Peeling The Heel
“Peeling the Heel” is an exercise that promotes greater flexion in the ankle arch, and allows the Achilles to tendon to stretch and strengthen slowly. This means greater ankle strength, and can increase the leg stride. You are now “firing the glutes” and learning to walk from the hip. And getting gentle trigger point therapy for the foot at the same time.
Lao Tzu said, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.“ Help your toes begin your journey today with Original SANDDUNE! Give them the “Boost of Balance” as your Holiday Season begins!
Your Internal GPS
Experiencing weight bearing activity on a compliant surface such as the Original SANDDUNE™, engages use of proprioception otherwise known as your internal GPS. Exercise on this apparatus safely recruits muscle fiber without the traditional tearing that occurs on hard surfaces. This is why we suggest padding for at least 2 weeks to become acquainted with the Original SANDDUNE™’s unconventional surface.
This regimen is
a great alternative to letting the body rest after following the workout/fitness pattern of high intensity workout training without loosing the strength and stamina gained in the high intensity workouts.
Original SANDDUNE™ is also an alternative to beginning a regimen that can be part of addressing neuropathy, common in many with diabetes. It is easy on the feet facilitating and encouraging exercise.
Padding is simply walking but keeping your feet in continual contact with the surface. This is suggested for EVERYONE, including high functioning athletic types. Resist the temptation to jog. Why? Because you are retraining every muscle
and joint in your body including long and short muscles closest to the bone.
This is “mindful” centering with the somatasensory body (whole body meaning bottom of foot to brain) – a new way of educating and retraining the foundation of your physical body (neuro pathways) using Original SANDDUNE#™.
Simply holding on to a bar and learning to stand on one leg with your other foot raised slightly above the pad after you have centered yourself or just standing and learning to create small dime size circles clock-wise and counter-clockwise under your foot, noticing how the sensation moves up your legs into the trunk and into the hip sockets, will help you begin to retrain your foundation.
Learning the subtleties of how the body aligns and connects through the resistance option of both uphill and downhill positions teaches postural integrity. The uphill slope is higher and simulates walking uphill. The downhill slope is lower and simulates walking downhill.
Beginning these exercises slowly and building speed and momentum may not feel like much to start, but the results will definitely make themselves known or felt in a relatively short time as the muscle activation becomes stronger and the movement easier. Once you step off and resume walking on a normal surface, you will begin to notice subtle changes in your posture.
This is your new way of educating and retraining the foundation of your core balance, strength and coordination.
Get Low to Stay Low Workout
Demo and Brief Description of Low Assault Workout
As professionals whose livelihood weighs heavily on their ability to get into and out of buildings that are burning and collapsing, firefighters know that their job demands superior upper body strength and balance coupled with that same demand for their lower extremity strength and mobility. Their job requires them to work in a crouch position staying low to the ground so their profile is not in the midst of blinding, choking smoke. With job descriptions that include:
- Guiding and carrying people out of burning cars or collapsing buildings
- Tearing down walls to create escape routes
- Dragging 50 lb hoses
This equates to lower body strength being paramount. Fast reaction time, speed and strength are key. In the athletic world:
- defensive and offensive linemen in football
- sprinters coming out of the blocks
- jockeys
- ballet dancers
- martial artists
- skiers
- soccer players
are some examples of the athletes whose lower body strength, reaction time and speed are critical to their
performance. This same premise can be applied to military troops who must carry 75 lbs and upwards on their backs during training and on the battle field. The Low Assault – Get Low to Stay Low workout will help build sustained, explosive muscle strength and fluid lower body power.
Dancing on the SAND
Robert Contreras of Inspire Dance Company of Las Vegas and his dancers show their moves on Original SANDDUNE. Solid building tool for dancers from youth to adult. Challenges and strengthens!
How does the SANDDUNE help with balance and strength?
Eagle’s Lost Focal Point!
The Original SANDDUNE™ simulates walking in loose sand at the beach. It challenges your body to find its center of gravity. The natural phenomenon of neuropaths being re-activated after lack of activity caused by injury, illness or sedentary lifestyle, causes your muscles to react to signals from your brain, which begins a process of strengthening those muscles which are necessary to restore and maintain good balance.
For example, people with strong balance can try this Spine Stretch exercise described below on the SANDDUNE to really build and challenge their balance. From there progress to positions like the Eagle pose in Yoga. Make sure you have someone present with you to spot if this is new for you. If not, have a barre or something sturdy and stable to assist you should you loose your balance – wall or sturdy chair for example. Make sure there are no sharp object around you.
- Center yourself on the SANDDUNE with a small ball if you like, weighted or not, in your hands, with arms bent so that the ball is at your neck just below your chin.
- Stand straight, tailbone tucked with bellybutton pulled back toward your spine so your core is engaged and active. Remember as you increase your flexibility you are increasing your core strength on this apparatus.
- Before you begin your roll down, pick a focal point on the floor to maintain your balance once your eyes meet the floor.
- Now, imagine peeling an orange, trying to keep the peel in one piece as you prepare to begin a roll down (similar to what is done when doing a spinal stretch forward on the floor). If you are not an orange lover, then think Slinky toy and their fluid motion.
- Tuck your chin close to your chest resting it on top of the ball in your hands as you begin to slowly drop your head onto the ball in your hands and start to descend into your stretch. SLOWLY is the key word here. Your eyes focal point should follow the movement of your head. Draw an arc with your eyes or close your eyes and watch your body’s movement in a mindful visual manner.
- As you roll down, your head, hands and the ball will come into line with your waist. This is when you begin to uncurl your arms, keeping them close to your body and drop the ball slowly as you stretch the ball toward your feet. As Martha Graham, the great American Dancer said, “When you extend your arm, it doesn’t stop at the end of your fingers.”
- When you reach your feet, mindfully relax for a count of what is comfortable for you if this is your first time so that you can understand your body’s adjustments to being on a moving surface. A count said out loud of 1001, 1002, 1003 is a great way to gauge what your body’s balance can handle. Another quote from Martha Graham put this into perspective. “First we have to believe, then we believe.” “The body never lies.”
- At the end of your count, roll back up to standing in the same slow, fluid manner that you descended to your feet.
- I like to do this 10 to 20 times unless I want a deep stretch and trying to tuck my fingers under the SANDDUNE™ to increase my stretch.
Eagle Focus Found on The SANDDUNE!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
AS THE NEW YEAR DAWNS
THE ORIGINAL SANDDUNE™ WISHES YOU A
BALANCED, HAPPY, HEALTHY & PROSPEROUS
NEW YEAR IN 2014!
COG – Center of Gravity
When you begin to learn about the Center of Gravity or COG whether you are standing or sitting, you will learn how many small movements contribute to your COG and how they awaken the spine and your feet as the foundations for your COG.
You learn:
- how to sit properly on your sit bones vs. slouching and how this affects your posture both sitting and standing. If you slouch when you sit, you will most likely slouch when you stand. This
means learning to keep the belly button pulled in, shoulders square, a long spine and open chest (no slouched shoulders or shuffling when walking). - the importance of eye and head movement to sound balance. Most people do not “think” about how eye and head movement affect the body’s everyday functioning. This is especially critical as we age.
- the relevance of sensing your ankle, arch, heel pad, the ball of your foot, and be able to differentiate and move the five toes, which many people never think of doing.
Because the feet are the Foundation for the COG, weight shifting – both standing and dynamic (walking, running, cross training, etc), and learning to work your 
heels and toes together are paramount to healthy gait and balance. This applies whether one is aging, recovering from an injury/surgery or extended time off of the feet due to illness.
Understanding this leads to the comprehension of how these individual systems tie into “proprioception” or knowing where your body is in space. The sensors engaged by this proprioception are in each joint, the bottoms 
of the footpads, the visual and vestibular (inner ear) system as well as touch. For example, proprioception not only helps with daily direction-finding, but also is essential to becoming a beautifully expressive dancer or gymnast, successful professional golfer, or runner.
Together these sensors help to provide information about the environment that we see daily and that the muscles are engaging in judging the height of 
a step, the distance to the rail or ball, the depth of the curb, or the placement of the foot as a turn or a yoga stance is executed.
Learning to stretch and strengthen these muscles, their respective systems and their correlating movements on the non-compliant surface of an Original SANDDUNE™ makes it easier to do on solid ground. Why is it easier? You are not trying to balance your body on the ground as you do on the mirror resisting exercise produced by the Original SANDDUNE™. Referenced from Miriam Tate’s findings and class development.
Happy Thanksgiving
The staff of the
Original SANDDUNE™
wish you a
plentiful and joy filled
Thanksgiving Day.
“The miracle of gratitude is that it shifts your perception to such an extent that it changes the world you see.”
— Dr. Robert Holden
Foot Pain or Metatarsalgia
Metatarsalgia is a common overuse injury described as pain in the forefoot
The Original SANDDUNE™ can be utilized in a rehabilitation regimen for the the plantar neuroma known as metatarsalgia, a common problem for many runners and dancers, which is characterized by pain and/or numbness in the forefoot.
People coping with this ailment have symptoms that are varied among individuals. Some people experience shooting pain affecting toes that are side by side (2nd & 3rd or 3rd & 4th toes).
Others describe a feeling similar to having a pebble in their shoe or walking on pins & needles, a prickly/tingly feeling known as paresthesia or PVD/PAD as doctors refer to it. Burning and numbness may also be another symptom experienced.
This ailment can also be the result of a poor diet, a vitamin deficiency, the metabolic disorder diabetes or inflammation like rheumatoid arthritis.
The comforting properties of the Original SANDDUNE™ provides a cushioning and malleable platform, rendering it an effective instrument to utilize in the early segments of a rehabilitation plan.
Original SANDDUNE™ 