By David Keil • April 3rd, 2006

Those wonderful glorious feet, unfortunately kept in containers (shoes) most of the day. Poor things have quite a responsibility in both our everyday walking/living life and particularly in our yoga practice. The feet are our foundation in both. As a therapist the feet are one of the first things I look at as it's important to see what someone is standing on all day. As a yoga teacher I've learned to look at foundation first which is feet in standing postures.

The foot itself is made up of 26 bones all inter-relating and articulating against one another in a complex bone structure. Why so many bones in such a small area? Don't you find it helpful that our foot is able to adapt to a myriad of surfaces and terrains such as rocky roads, a forest walk including sticks, twigs and holes in the ground? Our foot is able to mold to the ground because of the interaction of these 26 bones and then transfer the force from below up through the ankle joints and to the rest of our body in such a way that we stay balanced.

The foot is foundation because it is meeting with the ground, which generally doesn't change, particularly in our yoga practice. I don't know about you but I haven't practiced on a particularly uneven surface in years. So we build our foundation on the ground and if the foundation isn't right everything above has the potential to go awry. We find a similar principle with the foundation of a house. If you lay the foundation and it settles unevenly or one side drops significantly more than the other, will the windows upstairs close properly? Will the front door close properly?

Our foot foundation is built on three arches, yup, you read correctly, certainly we're almost all familiar with the one on the inside (medial side) of the foot which teachers are constantly telling us to engage but there are also two others. One of these is found on the outside of the foot although not quite as prominent. ...

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Location:  Miami, US

David Keil was introduced to yoga in 1989 by his Tai Chi Chuan  teacher. Both the Tai Chi and Yoga practice at the ripe age of 17 began his research into his own mind-body connections. As...