Yogi

Are you a Yogi?

There is a strong obsession on feet in yoga practice and it’s a beautiful thing. Much like the foundation of a house, the foundation of a pose, the feet play a vital role in the integrity and stability of an asana. For a house, the foundation provides the base that supports the weight of the entire structure, transferring its weight onto the earth and providing support for its staggering weight. Our feet do the same thing in yoga.

Teachings about feet in yoga begin straight away as soon as you step onto the mat. Often you will hear yoga teachers telling students to root into the heel and the big toe mound.

It’s important to have a strong foundation for each yoga pose as weaken muscles in the feet will reflect upwards into other areas of the body.

If yoga is what interests you the most, there are more detailed foot exercises and tips in the blog section.

Here a few of our favourite steps to build the strength of your feet and a powerful foundation:

1. Spend time in poses that plantar flex the ankle joint and engage the arches of the feet. Poses such as Child’s Pose (Balasana), Reclined Hero Pose (Supta Virasana) and or Camel Pose (Utrasana).

2. Fan out your toes. The Toe Spacers will help do this without having to do a thing. Once you do take them off, try splaying out your toes for a few seconds and bringing them back to normal foot state. Repeating this 3 or 4 times.

3. Focus on building a strong Tadasana. Mountain pose is the foundation for all of the standing postures and improves posture, groundedness, stability and confidence. Bring awareness to three points in the bottom of your foot: the heel, outer ball of the foot and inner ball of the foot. Think about grounding them down and building a strong and stable foundation that will lead you to more stable standing poses.

Continue to build your poses on a strong foundation and consciously bring awareness to your feet and toes as you continue to practice yoga.