Plantar Fasciitis or Heel Spurs: Is the Arch to Blame?

Plantar Fasciitis or Heel Spurs: Is the Arch to Blame?

by Dr. Carlos Yu

I’ve had plantar fasciitis before. It’s a pain that’s hard to forget—like walking with a tiny knife in your heel each morning. I tried all the usual things: insoles, foot stretches, massage. Some of it helped… temporarily. But the pain kept coming back.

Eventually, I realized I was only treating the symptoms, not the system.

Because plantar fasciitis isn’t just about the heel. Or the arch.

It’s about posture. Most of us go through life in a subtly flexed position—leaning forward into screens, tasks, or stress. That shifts our weight toward the forefoot and overloads the plantar mechanism.

So the solution isn’t to fix the body—it’s to listen to it. When I began to tune into what my body was saying, I noticed something simple but profound: healing came when I stood taller, shifted my weight back toward my heels, and allowed my big toe to dorsiflex. That small movement helps override the reflex to plantarflex in response to pain—an instinct that actually worsens the injury.

These aren’t mechanical corrections. They’re invitations to presence. And presence is what the body has been asking for all along.

The heel pain? It’s a healing message. A quiet call to come back to now.

And maybe it’s no coincidence that heel and heal sound exactly the same.