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

Wake Up Your Legs
With all this information in mind, let's explore lifting the arches in Samastithi. Balancing the weight evenly through the feet in this pose demands the subtlety of a watchmaker and the rootedness of a redwood tree. Stand with your feet parallel to each other and hip width apart. To make sure that you are on the center of your heel bones and not riding your inner or outer heels, lift one heel at a time and carefully reset it. Try not to rest your weight back on your heels; instead, pitch it slightly forward to the front of the heel bone, aligning the center of your pelvis and the center of your cranium over the heel bones.

As you press down into the anterior heel, elongate your toes by grounding forward into the ball of the foot, especially at the base of the big toe and the base of the little toe. This action forms a triangular base for the foot and stretches the sole, much like stretching a skin to make the head of a drum. As a drumhead must be stretched equally and with full extension in all directions to create good resonance, the sole must also be fully stretched.

To fully "pump up" your arches, you also need to lift the muscles of the lower leg that attach to the arch. Probably the most important of these is the tibialis anterior, which runs along the outer edge of the shinbone, crosses to the inner front shin above the ankle, and attaches near the base of the big toe. Combined with the lift of the other lower leg muscles, activating the tibialis anterior is like pulling on a tightly fitted riding boot. This sensation of lift travels from your inner arch along your outer shin up to the knee and then up the inner thigh, all the way up into the pelvic floor. With all this muscular activity, you need to take care to keep your toes lightly extended, instead of clenching them against the floor or flexing them up toward the ceiling.

Discover Your Foot Foes
Don't be surprised if lifting the arches doesn't come easily. It takes time to retrain the body, and along with building new strength, you may need to undo many years of physical and psychological tension. For one thing, confining footwear can lead to tense and foreshortened feet. Living in New Mexico, I encounter students who torture their feet with cowboy boots all day and then compound the crime with high heels at night. Other common foot foes are ski boots, cleats, ballet point shoes, and rock-climbing shoes. Constrictive footwear limits the blood flowing in and out of the foot and cramps the bones of the feet together, resulting in compacted and clenched musculature not just in the foot but also on up the body.

In earlier times people usually walked barefoot or in footwear less reinforcing to the foot than modern shoes. They also had to walk on much more uneven surfaces than concrete. These conditions demanded that the foot be responsive: agile, adjustable, and articulate. In addition, the microadjustments required of the foot when walking on uneven terrain promoted small movements in the pelvis and spine that led to a pliability throughout the body.

Page 1 2 3 4 5 6

See All Anatomy Articles »