Yoga for your feet? Yes! Yoga is great. It’s a great stress reliever, and can help your mind, body, and soul. It can also help your feet! I was amazed to find so many great yoga stretches that help relieve foot pain and fallen arches. The key to fallen arches is stretching to strengthen and lengthen the muscle. There are a lot of problems that can occur due to fallen arches such as: tendonitis, plantar fasciitis, and pain in knees and hips. It can also throw your body out of whack, your feet are connected to your legs which connect to your hips, back, neck and so on. Practicing “foot yoga” will not only help your feet, it will help your whole body. I’m going to talk about a few yoga stretches you can do to keep you grounded and pain free.

Virasana-Hero Pose

This pose is an important pose for your feet. It stretches the top of the foot and ankle while toning the sole of the foot. This pose is very therapeutic for flat feet as strengthening the muscles in the feet helps recreate the arches. It will also, over time, reconstruct the alignment of the tarsal bones by having pressure on the tops of the feet and allowing the toes to spread.

Baddha Konasana-Cobbler Pose

This pose is great for arches if you do it right. While in the Baddha pose, press the four corners of your feet together and draw the toes away from each other to strengthen the foot muscles and activate the arches.

Viparita Karani

This pose is also known as the leg on the wall pose, for obvious reasons. This pose helps restore oxygen and blood flow to the legs to energize them. All the blood that pools up in your feet can now return to the rest of the body. Keep your legs straight and just relax.

Adho Mukha Svanasana

A more common name for this pose is the downward facing dog. Your feet will love this pose. It works to lift your aches, and stretch the soles of your feet. Over time this will help lengthen your plantar fascia muscles.

Supta Padangusthasana

This pose is great for those tight calf muscles. Tight calves are a common root of a lot of foot problems. Using a towel or something of the sort, pull your mid foot to help stretch those muscles. Believe you me, this pose feels great!

It’s important when practicing yoga to remember to breathe correctly and know your limits. Do some research and find out which poses best suit you and your physical health. Yoga is practiced all around the world by people of different ages; there is always something you can do! Be sure to click on the pictures of each pose to take you to a website that explains exactly how you should be doing them. Also follow this link, for a very helpful website for people who are thinking about trying yoga for the first time! Not only does yoga benefit your feet, it focuses on keeping your whole body happy and healthy! A lot of the foot problems we see here can be fixed with some simple stretches and proper shoes, so why not give it a try. Remember if you have happy feet your body will be extremely grateful!