The earth and feet and the space between / Erika Nerozzi
I am a scientist, I am very curious by nature. My main work is research in
the field of posturology. I conduct my work in Bologna in Italy and have also
worked extensively in Canada on research programs. I started out teaching
swimming and judo, and I watched people and how they moved and used
their feet and held their bodies, and asked myself, “ why?“.
There are so many aspects that influence how we organize our bodies
to stand without falling down, and move through space. This system which
defines what makes the human different from other primates, to be able to stand
up right as a biped and the ability to use language and tools, is called the BODY
SCHEME. This is not a fixed organization, but dynamic, and responds to many
things from the physical, structural to emotional and cultural inputs.
Our perceptions, the input we get from our senses, is what allows us
to move. In fact, without perception there can be no action. The foot is
an amazing organ that sends messages to the brain and has a really wide
range of movement possible as a response to this input. So really looking
at the foot at the beginning of the process of designing shoes seems like a
natural way to go about it. We made foot moulds for each of the designers
of their own feet, and it became obvious at once how different each foot is.
Then we worked on how the foot moves, the active phases of gait, and the
different structures within the foot that gives it its form and balance.
The question came up, what is the ideal shoe, from the point of view
of the foot? I think there isn’t one fixed solution. The foot is happy changing
position, and moving on different types of surfaces, as long as it isn’t
squashed into a space to small for its bones to move. Sometimes you need a
structure that grabs the surface you are walking on that can give you traction
and support, other times you want a smooth surface with a smaller contact
that allows you to spin easily. One of my favorite activities is Latin American
salsa dancing and I need beautiful shoes that are smooth on the soles to let
me really move to the music.
I think we need to look at different solutions for footwear also based on
the age of the wearer. I look a lot at the problems that the older population
has…50% of women over 50 have a kind of painful collapse in their
metatarsal arch which changes their ease in movement, if their footwear
doesn’t help to compensate this change. One problem I have seen is that
many people become much less active socially because of this; it creates a
perception that they are old and can no longer be as engaged in life,
they don’t go out, they give up favorite activities. And much of this could
be helped by their footwear, they need beautiful shoes too!
Erika Nerozzi
Expert in anatomy, posture, gait and feet.
Sunday, July 12th, 2009 at 4:01 pm and is filed under 2009. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
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