Toe Spreaders what are they and why use them a reflexology review

hello and welcome Adam Thomas from balancing touch reflexology so good to see you and thanks for joining me today well today I'm down on the ground and we're going to look at what these are [Music] so these are toe spreaders okay what they do is they spread our toes right they give us space we put our toes in between here and it allows our toes to have more space so a healthy foot in general should have toes that can you know move apart and they're not all you know on top of each other or twisted or calloused or things like that and it's shaped kind of like this and usually this is the widest part of the foot here and the toes kind of keep going up that way right but a lot of Footwear for example um doesn't allow for our feet to be in a natural position because it squishes our you know a lot of shoes come to a point at the end here and our toes in the shoe the toe box of the shoe doesn't allow for a lot of movement right so they get squished and then we walk around on flat surfaces and there's not a lot of movement that our toes uh get right where Maybe if we didn't have you know live in cities and flat grounds and stuff like that you would get a lot more kind of stimulation on your feet and a lot more movement in the toes right just from walking around so um our feet get a little bit tired and they get you know things like calluses and corns and um plantar fasciitis and a whole bunch of itises and problems that we get with the the feet because they're not being used as much as possible so these things are toe spreaders and they are a great tool for us to have um so here's some here this is what these look like they're made out of foam I got them in Japan they're really great um and I use them a lot so I'll show you how to use them in a sec here is another I'll actually put the link in the description below so you can check these out as well because these are really great and you can see here that they're like siliconey sort of right they're stretchy and they serve a little bit the same purpose but you can use them for some different uh you know different uses or more uses you can use these for which I'll share with you in a second and the last one is you have some toe spreaders right here right because you can get in between your fingers in between your toes right like so there you go there's a toe spreader right there so this one here is foam and I'll show you how it goes on here so this one goes in between there and then it just follows and it just separates your toes like so you see that there you go that's what it looks like there um I'll put on the other one okay so this goes here wraps around this way and you may notice that you know for example my left toes are a little more stubborn than the rate is right and so there you go there and look you can actually step and walk around in these These are quite thick and I have been wearing these for a while so they're not going to irritate me and bug me but for some of you out there who really their the toes are quite stiff and tight together this might be a little bit difficult and uncomfortable for you and if that's the case then you can just wear them for a little bit and then take them off so in the perfect world how I like to wear these is I'll go and have a bath or something after you know at the end of the day soak in the tub for a bit and then you know come out and uh maybe watch something on TV or or you know just kind of relax read a book or something like that and so what I'll do is I'll put them on and then after maybe 20 minutes or or longer my feet will kind of go okay that's enough and then I will just simply take them off but they feel really great they allow all the muscles to kind of relax a bit while you um well you're also relaxing right um and so that's really good that way so these ones are a lot more kind of no I wouldn't say delicate because but they are they feel a lot more delicate than um the ones that I just was using right but these go on like so so in between so they can be a little bit more difficult to put on bear with me for a second let me put these on and yeah I really want them to be in the webbing so if if it's on a bigger scale on my fingers here I want it to be right in the webbing and then that feels really nice and then that will also give the the greatest stretch in the toes right so I'll put this one on on this side as well there we go there so these ones they feel a lot more like they're part of my feet where um you know they're a little bit more I don't know if they're more comfortable but yeah they're kind of more comfortable um so you know again I can walk around and wear these so these ones I can probably wear a little bit easier than these foam ones right because they're quite a bit more thick and they kind of just push it you know they're more rigid right so they're sort of pushing my toes apart a little bit more but these ones are really cool because you can kind of do like different exercises for example while you're wearing this you can you can also do it when you're wearing these foam ones as well but you know you can also do a little bit of you know ball work with these on um if you have uh shoes that have a really wide um toe box in them you can actually wear these inside the shoes right so that's a kind of a cool advantage to these you can probably wear them a bit more because I could not fit these on and then you know put them inside of shoe it's just not going to work for me but these ones on the other hand do right these ones here there's just a lot more material and as you can see right there right it's a little bit uh more to deal with if you were to put them in shoes and that sort of thing um is one better than the other not really I I enjoy using both of them right these ones kind of disappear a little bit easier like they feel they kind of just once I wear them for a bit they sort of it feels like I'm not wearing anything so that's kind of cool um I do feel these ones give a bit more of a a stretch um than these do but on the other hand you can wear these longer so yeah I don't really know they're tools right they're not meant to replace the feet the ideal thing here is that your feet get enough exposure to being separated and stuff that eventually you can open up you know I can do it better on my right foot here but you know you can spray splay your toes a lot easier right and that's our goal right there is to be able to actually open up our toes and have them move and that way we get more um it's more of a foundation for us to walk around down right we can use our hands so same thing I will go and have a nice warm bath or something like that and then I will put my fingers in this because sometimes I don't want to go and search for those and dig them out right and you can just put it in this way so here I'll show you a couple different things here so this would be if you just put in the tips of your fingers into there so you can see there that I just have the tips of my fingers and I feel a nice stretch right my fingers are a little more a little more bony than you know the foam or the silicone and so I feel it a bit more so that's also can be a good thing as well as you're you're giving yourself kind of a a deeper kind of stimulation massage as well um so this would be like kind of phase one where just get something in between your toes right just to spread them out and you want to you want to be here for you know at least five minutes right to try and you know allow the muscles to open up and relax and that's because that's our goal right here is to have your toes open and stretching um and when you leave them you know when you leave muscles sort of stretching for longer then they finally go right they they take a big breath and actually relax into it right so that's phase one there but when you get your toes a lot more flexible what you do is you get right in to try and put almost the webbing of your fingers in with the webbing of your toes right and that's what you really want to do there right so it's kind of like you're doing you know interlacing your hands right except for interlacing our fingers and so when I do this I keep my thumb on the outside right you can see here that my thumb's up top and then I go um you know in between each one and then that way it ends up nice so there you go there that's a great way to spread your toes so again the advantages and you know sort of benefits of doing this is it allows your body to have more of a foundation right with your if you're standing on something like this versus you're standing on something more like this you're you're going to have better posture right there's more stability there's more um you know you're gonna be more stable on your feet right so if you tend to be a person who's a little bit clumsy and things like that look down at your feet are you able to actually open up your toes right and if you're not you know this is going to be a major benefit to you is to be able to open up your toes right so yeah so I hope that makes sense um I would recommend getting these they're really inexpensive oh yeah that's another thing too is these are not actually for doing pedicures right you combine them but those are really flimsy they're almost half the the width of this like the half half the thickness and so when you put them in they're really flimsy and they don't actually work that well so I wouldn't recommend buying those I would actually look for something like this um I've had some clients that are really you know wanting to fix their feet right away so they you know put them on at night and go to sleep put them on I would recommend that uh you want to actually be aware when you're using these um to feel right you want to feel your feet relaxing it's like a like a bit of an exercise right you don't want to just you know put on something and go to sleep and hopefully it does a magic trick your feet are all happy it doesn't work that way um being aware and feeling your feet stretching and feeling your body moving is going to be more beneficial for you anyway I just thought I would do a longer video about what these are how they look how to use them um so hopefully that was helpful for you so yeah until next time this is Adam Thomas from balancing touch reflexology remember to keep these feet happy thanks for watching bye if you're interested in learning more about reflexology you can subscribe to the channel below it's also very helpful to hit that like button and feel free to share it with anybody who you think might be interested in you can find my online courses reflexology charts and other reflexology goodies over on my website which is balancingtouch.ca thank you so much for watching today and if you have some more time you can check out some other videos till next time this is Adam Thomas from balancingtouch.ca see you later [Music]