How to do Active Feet in Yoga

I will be giving a talk next month about Foot Health to a group of Yoga People and before my little talk will be a Yoga Session that will focus on the feet.  It all sounds very exciting I know, but apparently Active Feet is something that you can practice. 

Active Feet/Spreading Through the Bones

See, the feet, when spread, become like energetic little straws, drawing energy into the body and also sending it OUT from the body in a very radiant, directed way. It’s easy to talk about the feet and structurally how they are our foundation and our roots, etc., but experiencing the feet energetically is different.

Try standing in tadasana and lifting all ten toes, spreading them, and then putting them back down on the mat. Take your time. Lift your toes. Breathe. Spread your toes actively and consciously, moving the pinky toe as far away from the big toe as you can. Breathe. Keep your toes lifted! Feel the air circulate in between the toes. Feel the webbing between the toes stretch. Feel the ball of the foot rooting into the ground with a distinct energetic signature and feel the energy vibrating out of each lifted, stretched, expressed toe. Breathe. Now slowly and with awareness, lower the toes, while keeping them spread!, back to the mat. Feel the difference between standing with un-expressed feet, and standing on expressed feet. Feel more connected, more grounded? Maybe feel the minor chakras in the soles of the feet? Do you feel your heart center bounce up as the arches of your feet open? These, and still other!, sensations are the result of active feet.

You can spread the bones in the toes by threading your fingers in between the toes. Try it now. Thread your index finger between the big toe and second toe and keep working until you get all your fingers in there. Not easy, right? Shows you how habitually “closed” we tend to be with our feet. If you think about your feet and the chakras in your feet the same way you do about your heart chakra, you wouldn’t want to walk around with a collapsed, habitually closed 4th chakra, would you? But we almost never think about our feet being “open.” Those Yoga Toes sandals sold in the back pages of Yoga Journal do exactly the same thing as spreading your fingers between your toes does: it creates space in the bones of the feet. Spread your fingers into your toes daily and bunions, hammertoes and other foot foibles will stay away.

In your yoga practice, try active feet. Make a conscious choice to EXPRESS through your feet. Ground down to rise up. In asymmetrical standing poses, like tree, spread your toes and feel the base of the foot widen and become softer. Let that wide, soft base support you. Feel every wobble and bobble as you continuously readjust for balance. In asymmetrical standing poses where you lengthen one leg, like bird of paradise, try spreading through the toes and imagine each toe like a laser beam of energy, coming from your deeply rooted core through your strongly aligned leg, and I guarantee you your standing pose will be brighter, sparklier, and your experience of the asana will move from one of effort to one of expressed joy and radiance.

The simplest and most direct way to experience active, spread feet is in tadasana. Lift all ten toes, breathe, spread them out, breathe, spread them out some more, breathe, now slowly lower your toes back to the mat, breathe, feel the energy rebounding from the sole of your active feet up your legs and into your heart center, creating a more lifted, more connected tadasana. I’d love to hear any feedback on how active feet has made a difference in your practice.
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