My feet are the reason that I practice.

Once upon a time, I was a part-time yogi, a full-time runner and a regular weight lifter—and I thought that yoga was for stretching after a more aggressive workout. Oh, how wrong I was.

At one point, I was basically constantly on my feet, between my daily runs and working as a waitress, and, not surprisingly, I developed severe plantar fasciitis.

My amazing podiatrist put me in splints (talk about uncomfortable sleep), custom-made arch supports and also assigned me to thrice weekly physical therapy. He even wrote me a note to give to my restaurant manager stating that I needed at least two days off in a row. (I never handed it in.) But I still didn’t stop overtraining or working too much—and my feet kept getting worse.

And, thankfully, this enlightened doctor kept pressuring me to up my vinyasa yoga practice and tone down—or completely eliminate—everything else. I didn’t listen, though, until he threatened me with the direction that I was headed in—surgery. It was at this point that I did what I should have done a long time beforehand—I develop a strong, enriching yoga practice.

What’s the point of this mini bio, you ask? It’s simple: many of us do not give our feet enough—or any—love—until they turn on us.

Only then do we realize how much their health means to our entire body and state of mind—our feet are our foundations.

So, in honor of feet, here are five things that we should be doing with them to enrich our yoga practice—and show yourself a little bit of love.

1. Proper alignment.

Most yoga instructors tell you at various points during class (such as chair pose or mountain pose) to stand with your big toes touching and your heels spaced slightly apart—but why? The reason is that proper alignment in your feet means proper, neutral alignment in your hip joints.

Take a look at your toes when you stand—the second and third toes should be parallel (think of your middle fingers in proper downward dog alignment). For most bodies, this means that your heels become spaced ever-so-slightly apart.

2. Activate your arches. 

Feet are the foundations of any standing posture, and your feet are also where your leg muscles begin to engage.

What I’m going to describe next is a very subtle mind-body movement. Rather than getting frustrated if you don’t initially feel it, just keep doing what all yogis do best—practicing.

Standing with feet in proper alignment, trace an imaginary line around them, including around your toes. Press down actively into this outline as you draw up through your arches. You should feel your quadriceps begin to engage; feeling this sensation strongly around your knees. Now practice this activation during other standing postures for deeper sensation throughout the entire leg.

3. Relax. 

Another cue we often hear from yoga instructors is to let go of any unnecessary gripping, or clenching, in the body, and the feet are a huge sign of gripping, not only there but in other areas as well.

For instance, when taking rest on the stomach in between prone asanas, make sure to allow the big toes to turn in and heels to fall out. If our foundations—our feet—aren’t fully relaxed, then we’re likely gripping through the jaw or lower abdominals too.

Learn to observe held tension in your feet—and then learn to relax them when the posture allows—it’s that yogic balancing act of effort and rest. (This can also include unnecessary gripping of your toes on your mat in poses like the warrior series or pyramid pose.)

4. Flexibility. 

I always encourage students not to reach for their feet in a forward fold when it means overly rounding the spine or pulling from the shoulders. Still, if you cannot comfortably reach your feet in poses like this, you can use a strap around the ball of your foot to show your feet some healing, stretching love.

The bottoms of our feet and our legs are connected (no bad pun intended). My podiatrist always made sure to note that tight hamstrings and calf muscles do not for healthy feet make. Notice where you can include your feet in your back-body stretching.

Try pulling your heels actively away from the balls of your feet in your downward dogs, for example, and you’ll really be helping out that plantar fascia that I mentioned earlier.

5. Use your feet to turn on your hamstrings. 

In postures like warrior I and chair pose, your heels can be your biggest assets towards strengthening the hamstrings.

Most people have stronger quads than hamstrings, and they continue to turn on the quad in standing postures that could—and should—also be strengthening the back of the leg.

Dig into your heels in chair pose or create the action of pulling back the heel of your front lunging leg in your warrior I (without actually moving your foot on the mat), and then pay attention to how these actions feel within your legs.

There are a plethora of ways to further your yoga practice through your feet—these are only a handful—and I can’t even come close to listing all of them in one blog.

So today, before you simply go through the ingrained, habitual motions on your yoga mat, really try coming into the sensations of your body—starting from the firm, grounding foundation of your feet.

After all, it’s when we begin to come alive to these micro-movements on our mats that we begin to fully experience our true presence—and yoga—off of the mat as well.

Love elephant and want to go steady?

Sign up for our (curated) daily and weekly newsletters!

 

Editor: Bryonie Wise

Photo: Flickr