The Pitfalls of High Heels
When we squeeze our feet into tight-fitting shoes and then remove almost all contact with the surface on which we're standing or walking, we allow these sensing and adapting functions to atrophy. It's no wonder that many women look like they're about to tumble down when they walk about in these shoes. They are!
It's interesting - and telling - that at times when stiletto heels have been in vogue, the main concern was the harm these heels did to floor surfaces - not to the women wearing them!
I remember reading about an elementary school teacher on Long Island who was ordered by the school board to refrain from wearing these shoes in her classroom because of the pockmarks they were leaving in the wooden floors - not because she was increasing her risk of injury. And not because of the terrible visual example her stiff posture was setting for her students.
Does all this mean that one should never, ever wear high-heeled shoes? No, it certainly won't harm you to wear them once in a while, particularly if you take advantage of these occasions to sense their effect on your posture and movement patterns.
In fact, it can be quite illuminating during an Alexander Technique lesson for a student to switch back and forth between high heels and flat shoes (or going barefoot) for this very purpose, and to learn how to make the best of high heels when it is absolutely necessary to wear them.
If you are a frequent wearer of these shoes, and want to lessen your use of them, it's probably best not to do so at once. I would recommend gradually reducing the heel height and the amount of time you wear them in order to give your body time to adjust.
Shoe styles come and go. Platform shoes, high-heeled boots for men, "negative heel" shoes - there's really no end to the silly designs that have appeared over the years. The best general shoe advice I've seen comes from Elizabeth Langford, an experienced British teacher of the Alexander Technique who sums up the whole question very well in her wonderful book, Mind and Muscle - An Owner's Handbook:
"I think you should start from a recognition that 'nature knows best'. Granted that we like to have some protection, in a good shoe we can still approximate to the bare-feet state. That is, we can feel, we can move, we can
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