Healthy Feet

If you want your yoga to build strong, stable, balanced legs, it's important to work the feet properly—even when you're not standing on them.

Each foot contains 26 bones, 33 muscles (intrinsic and extrinsic), 31 joints and over 100 ligaments. The feet contain a quarter of all the bones of the body (52 bones in a pair of feet), suggesting that the feet are extremely important components of the body. 

The alignment of our feet and the distribution of weight through them will affect the position and function of our knees, hips, back and shoulders so proper foot care is essential for healthy feet and the overall health of the body. Integrating basic foot care into your daily yoga routine can be very rewarding.

To learn how to properly activate the feet in all poses, it helps to understand the four basic foot and ankle movements that are most important in yoga, whether the feet are bearing weight or not....

PLANTAR FLEXION of the ankle occurs when you stand on your tiptoes. If you're sitting with your legs out in front of you, plantar flexion of the ankle happens when you point your toes.

DORSIFLEXION occurs when you stand on your heels with the balls of the feet lifted off the floor. If you're sitting, dorsiflexion happens when you push your heels away from you and pull your toes toward you.

SUPINATION occurs when you stand with your weight rolled onto the outer edges of your feet, lifting the arches and the base of the big toe. Non-weight-bearing supination happens when you sit with your legs out in front of you and turn the soles of the feet so they start to face each other.

PRONATION occurs when you lift the outer edges of your feet as you stand, collapsing your arches. In sitting postures, pronation occurs when you press out through your inner heels and the bases of your big toes. 

For standing poses proper yogic alignment of the feet includes grounding though the four corners of the feet (the big toe mound, the little toe mound, the inner heel and the outer heel) lifting the arches, and equally distributing weight between each foot. 

When you're not on your feet in yoga, it's usually best to train the foot and lower leg muscles to hold an anatomically neutral position—so you're neither plantar flexing nor dorsiflexing, and neither supinating nor pronating.

For inversions lengthen from your inner upper thighs to your inner heels and the bases of your big toes. Then press out through the four corners of each foot (as above). Most of us need to emphasize the push on the big-toe sides to balance pronation and supination. Also, make sure that the front and back of each ankle feel evenly open, with no compression or stretching on either the front or the back. As an added benefit of sending your energy down the leg and out the sole, your spine will naturally lengthen away from your lifted feet, helping open up the center of your pose. This also works in balances like Virabhadrasana III and Ardha Chandrasana.

Seated forward bends also benefit when you extend out through the legs and the soles of the feet,  find the neautral position and take care to bring your attention to the back of your heel. Check that you are on the center of your heel, rolling the leg neither in nor out. Next imagine you are pressing the balls of your feet into a wall and try to press more through the big toe and little toe mounds of the feet, equally. These actions will help ensure that your forward bends stretch the major muscles of your calves, the gastrocnemius and the soleus, as well as your hamstrings. 

Lastly don't forget the toes!  You have muscles in your feet that are designed to spread your toes just as the muscles in your hands spread your fingers, so get spreading whenever you are looking at them...maybe even start to practise moving them individually...toe yoga can be worked into every pose.