From the Ground Up

Getting to know the mechanics of your feet and the pivotal role they play in yoga is the first step to establishing a solid foundation in your practice.

By Tias Little

Stand Like a Mountain
In hatha yoga, standing poses are the primary tools for building this "good space" and stability in the feet, thereby energizing the legs to support proper posture. So it's no surprise that the best known approaches to hatha yoga—including Iyengar Yoga, Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga, and Bikram Yoga—use standing poses as their starting place. Standing with equilibrium is the first posture in all these systems. Whether it's referred to as Tadasana (Mountain Pose) or Samastithi (Equal Standing), this pose is the foundation for all the postures because the neutral standing position teaches us to be fully upright, connected to the ground yet reaching out and up toward the sky.

The ease of our upright posture is determined mainly by alignment of the feet and, more specifically, by "equal standing" through the inner and outer side of each ankle joint. In people who have fallen arches or, as they are commonly called, flat feet, the lack of arch support causes the inner ankle bone (the base of the tibia) to collapse in and down. Once the inner ankle drops, the inner groin at the top of the inner leg often also collapses. In turn, the weakness of the inner thighs leaves the lower back vulnerable to compression.

Students who tend toward flat feet may at first experience a great deal of difficulty in waking up the feet and lifting the arches in standing poses. I know how difficult it can be to learn to do this, so to help my students I often give them both guided imagery and anatomical information.

For students familiar with Mula Bandha (Root Lock), I suggest they think of the lift of the arch as a "Pada Bandha" (pada means "foot" in Sanskrit). Although bandha is usually translated as "lock," it also implies a "binding" or "harness" that can be used to draw energy upward. In Mula Bandha, this is done by engaging the muscles of the pelvic floor and contracting them up, much like Kegel exercises practiced during pregnancy to create strength and elasticity prior to labor. But although a lifted arch feels similar to the lift of the pelvic floor in Mula Bandha, the mechanism of the lift is different.

The complex design of the foot does not allow us to accomplish Pada Bandha simply with a voluntary muscular lift. Instead, the key to creating strong arches is to extend the foot, stretching and making space in the skin and in the muscles and connective tissues that join the 26 bones of each foot. To create malleability in the foot, we begin by stretching it lengthwise and extending it out laterally. By making the foot more elastic, we build an effective trampoline that springs the weight of the body upward.

To build this trampoline-like resiliency in the foot, we need to fully release and press our weight into the bones that strike the ground when we stand and walk. The heel bone is designed to root downward. By plugging down the front of the heel, the root of the little toe, and the root of the big toe, we create a triangular base that vaults the inner arch of the foot upward. In all standing postures in yoga, these complementary forces of descending weight and rebound are at work.

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