The standing foot

Every pose on this site puts your whole weight through one or two feet, and for most people the foot is the least examined part of the body. It goes into a shoe in the morning and comes out at night, and in between it is a thing you stand on rather than a thing you think about.

It is also, structurally, the most complicated piece of equipment below your neck: twenty-six bones, thirty-three joints, and more than a hundred muscles, tendons and ligaments, arranged so that the whole assembly can be rigid when it needs to push and soft when it needs to adapt. A class that spends an hour standing is a class that spends an hour asking the foot to do both, repeatedly.

The tripod

If there is one idea to take from this site, it is this one. Your foot meets the floor well at three points:

1. The base of the big toe — the pad behind it, not the toe itself.
2. The base of the little toe.
3. The centre of the heel.

Three points define a plane, which is why a three-legged stool never rocks and a four-legged one on an uneven floor always does. Between those three points run the arches, and the arches are what let the foot absorb and return load instead of transmitting all of it straight up your leg.

Almost every instruction we give about the feet is some version of "all three points, roughly even". Try it standing up now: shift until you can feel all three under each foot. Most people find they have been further back on the heels than they thought, or rolled toward the inside edge. Neither is a defect; both are just habits, and habits can be noticed.

The two ways it goes wrong in a standing pose

Rolling inward

The inner edge presses down, the arch flattens, and the base of the little toe lifts away from the floor. Watch for it in Warrior II in particular, where the bent front knee tends to pull the foot inward with it.

The usual cause is a stance that is too narrow, and the usual mistake is to fix it at the knee. Pushing the knee outward while the foot keeps rolling in just puts a twist through the joint between them. Widen the stance instead, and the foot and knee sort themselves out together.

Gripping with the toes

The toes curl and claw at the floor. It feels like stability and it is the opposite: a clawed foot is standing on a smaller area than a flat one and has pulled its own toes out of the tripod.

It usually means the balance is at the edge of what is available today. The fix is not to relax the toes by willpower — that lasts about four seconds — it is to take some of the difficulty away: a fingertip on the wall, a lower lifted foot, a less demanding arm position. The toes release on their own once the task is possible again.

Rigid and soft, several times a second

One more structural point, because it explains why standing practice asks anything of the foot at all.

A foot has to do two opposite jobs. When you push off it, it needs to be a rigid lever — a floppy foot wastes the push. When you land on it, or when the surface is uneven, it needs to be soft and adaptable so it can mould to what is underneath instead of transmitting the shock straight up.

It switches between the two mechanically, by changing the alignment of the bones in the middle of the foot. Rolled slightly inward, the midfoot joints unlock and the whole structure becomes mobile. Rolled slightly outward, they stack up and lock and the foot becomes a lever. Walking is a continuous cycle through both states, several times a second, with no conscious involvement at all.

A long static hold is unusual for a foot, because it asks for something in between and asks for it to be held. That is why a minute in Warrior II produces sensations in the foot that walking for an hour does not, and it is why the Thursday class spends its time on the foot rather than on the poses the foot is holding up.

What a shoe does to all of this

Not an argument about footwear — just what is relevant to a standing class.

A shoe with a raised heel, even a small one, tips your weight forward onto the front of the foot and changes where the tripod loads. A shoe with a stiff sole does some of the foot's adapting for it. A narrow toe box holds the toes together so they cannot spread.

None of that is a problem in itself; it is what shoes are for. But it does mean that if you have spent forty years in shoes and then stand barefoot for an hour, the foot is being asked to do several things it has had help with, and it is entirely normal for it to have opinions afterwards. That is not damage and it is not a sign you are doing something wrong. It is a part of the body getting a job back.

The practical implication: if you are new to standing barefoot for long stretches, start with the shorter classes and build up, rather than starting with the seventy-five-minute one.

Why bare feet

Three reasons, in order of importance.

Grip. This is by far the biggest one and it is a safety point rather than a philosophical one. Socks on a wooden or tiled floor are the single most common way people come unstuck in standing work, and a foot sliding out from under a bent knee is exactly the kind of thing this site is trying to avoid. If you would rather keep socks on, get the kind with rubber grips on the sole, or practise on a mat or a short-pile carpet.

Information. The sole of the foot is densely supplied with sensors, and they are a large part of how you know where you are. Covering them is like balancing with slightly blurred vision — not impossible, just less informed. A shoe with a thick cushioned sole does this considerably more than a sock.

The teacher can see what is happening. On a video call, a bare foot shows whether the tripod is loaded and whether the toes are gripping. A sock shows a sock.

None of which is a claim that shoes are bad for you, which is an argument other people have at great length. It is a claim about what is useful for an hour of standing practice on a video call.

Five minutes, and nothing else needed

This is the whole of what we do in the Thursday class, and it needs no mat, no space and nothing to buy. Done sitting or standing.

1. Find the tripod. Stand with the feet hip-width and parallel. Rock slowly forward and back until you can feel the weight move between the heel and the two toe bases. Then find the middle. About a minute.
2. Lift and spread. Lift all ten toes off the floor, spread them as wide as they will go, and put them down one at a time if you can — most people cannot, and it does not matter. Ten repetitions.
3. Big toe alone. Keep the four small toes down and lift only the big toe. Then the reverse. This is genuinely difficult and it is comic to watch; the point is the attempt, not the achievement.
4. Roll the edges. Slowly tip onto the outer edges of both feet, then slowly to the inner edges, four or five times, staying well inside what is comfortable. Hold a wall.
5. Heel lifts. Rise onto the balls of both feet and lower slowly, with a hand on something. Ten, with the lowering taking twice as long as the lifting.
6. Stand still and notice. Thirty seconds. Feet usually feel noticeably different from each other afterwards, which is only interesting, not meaningful.

What this is not

It is not a treatment for anything to do with feet, and it is not offered as one. Plantar pain, numbness, a bunion that hurts, an arch that has changed shape, anything that came on suddenly — all of that is a podiatrist or a physical therapist, who can look at the actual foot. Many foot problems have a specific mechanical cause and a specific fix, and general exercises from a website are not it.

What this is: a description of how a foot meets a floor, and a few minutes of paying attention to a part of the body most of us have delegated entirely to our shoes.