Dear Souls!

I have been thinking a lot about feet this week, particularly my feet and all the little things they do and don’t do. Turns out having extremely hypermobile ankles doesn’t help you develop good foot proprioception (the ability to sense stimuli arising within the body regarding position, motion, and equilibrium). It also doesn’t allow for awareness in the ankle either. I didn’t realize all the little movement patterns I had picked along the years in order to compensate for not knowing where my ankle and foot are in space. I either hang out on the inside (medial) part of the foot or the outer (lateral) side of the foot when walking upstairs, doing squats, or even doing yoga asana! What is especially interesting for me is that I do not have an overall preference, it depends on the task I am trying to do.

Are you aware of your foot and ankle patterns? When standing, in mountain pose: do you roll out at your ankle and lift the inner arch up (called supination), roll out and have a hard time grounding down on your lateral edge (called pronation), or have a neutral ankle position which allows for finding the entire ball of your foot rooted to the earth with (ideally) even pressure throughout? Does it always tend to be only one of the above options?

You might be curious  why this matters. There’s lots of reasons, knee and hip health being high on the list, but the reason I want to touch on here is: accessing your inner and outer thighs and legs muscles in yoga asana. Being able to press the ball of the big toe and the ball of the little toe down at the same time while in standing poses helps to activate those medial and lateral leg muscles that are essential for hip stability... which is essential  for every standing pose. That is why yoga teachers cue to “ground down through the 3 [or 4] corners of your feet.” This cue is meant to encourage you to not only have a stable, well grounded foot, but to find and engage the muscles of your side body and help you to internally feel the muscle chains energetically feeding into one another. Engaging these side body lines of energy and the front and back body, ultimately to finding 360 degrees of muscle engagement and support. (Side note: If you heard the cue in my class it was the 3 corners of the feet since the heel bone is round-ish and is only one point.)  

So what have I been working on? Amazingly it is the strengthening of the intrinsic muscles of the foot (the ones that originate (start) and insert (stop) in the foot ) that allow for greater control of the ball of the foot and help you access your extrinsic muscles of the foot and the lines of energies we were just discussing. (Extrinsic muscles are muscles that originate in the foot but insert above the ankle.)

One of the best ways I know to strengthen the little intrinsic muscles in the feet is by trying to dome the whole foot off the floor without actually using any of the leg muscles that would lift the foot off the floor. Don’t worry you will not be able to actually lift the foot. Another way is to lift a hand towel off the floor with your toes. Keep lifting it up and the dropping it and then pick it up again. After about 5-10 reps, if I am really gripping that towel the little toe side of my foot cramps so hard!    

Next time you take to your mat, experiment with different pressures throughout the ball of the foot and test out if you can feel the activation of the sides of the legs . What do you notice? Which way feels most secure and active in your body? Remember, to have fun with the inquiry and that we have a yoga practice not a yoga perfect!

Hope to see you in class soon! ☺