Yoga for Your Feet

While walking is said to be the best exercise for the feet, almost all exercises can benefit the feet, since most involve them. One exercise in particular that we’ll focus on today is Yoga. Your whole body can become more flexible and stronger with the different poses of Yoga. Your feet have much to gain from incorporating Yoga poses into your exercise routines.

No Yoga teacher instructs the classes the same way. Once you become more familiar with Yoga positions, you can practice them in a way that benefits you. Some teachers will help you relax and rejuvenate your feet after a long day, leading you to massage the feet before teaching you poses to flex, balance, stretch, and strengthen them.

Some of the following moves can help you become more aware of how much your feet do to support you on a day-to-day basis:

• Mountain Pose and Tree Pose: Stand tall with your feet together and big toes touching. Your hands are down, with the palms facing forward. While this may not feel like much, it’s a time to notice that your two feet are bearing your entire weight and supporting you. You can transition to Tree Pose, where you bend the knee and place one foot flat against your ankle, knee, or inner thigh. Your hands can be in prayer position in front of your chest. Check to see how your foot compensates to stabilize you as you try to balance.
• Downward Facing Dog: One of the most well-known poses, the pose resembles a dog when it is stretching. The whole body gets a good stretch, and the feet feel a good pull when you try to put the heels down closer to the ground.
• Butterfly Pose: This is a pose in which you sit, touch the bottoms of your feet together and spread your knees apart. Here, maintain the pose, but open your feet up like a book facing up towards you. As you gently pull your feet apart, press the thumbs into the feet to massage them, especially on pressure points like right under the big toe joint. 

While we don’t often think about doing exercises to strengthen feet, focusing instead on large leg, arm, and abdominal muscles, it is important to give your feet a little love. You can become more aware of how your feet work hard for you each day and in turn, they will increase your stability and flexibility. You’ll be more aware of your foot positioning as you walk and stand, helping you to prevent problems from poor posture. Use Yoga to benefit you, but make sure that you do not feel pain.

If you do notice that your feet feel pain as you practice yoga or any other exercise, it is important to get them checked out. Make an appointment today at Alamitos-Seal Beach Podiatry Group. One of our board-certified podiatrists, Dr. Douglas H. Richie, Dr. Jeremy L. Cook, Dr. Faye E. Izadi can assess your feet at either of our Seal Beach, CA and Los Alamitos, CA offices in Orange County.