Downward Facing Blog

Do you have collapsed arches? Adrian Cox tells you what to do about it.

(Bangkok Post article)

Rumor has it that the first thing yoga celebrity Richard Freeman noticed about his wife was her wonderfully spread open toes. One of my own teachers enjoyed referring to this story, “Go on, spread your toes, it might bring you love!” -apparently addressing the tight toed, single students. Leonardo da Vinci called the foot “a work of art and a masterpiece of engineering”, and Greek philosopher Socrates observed accurately that “we hurt all over when our feet hurt”.

Some say that there are chakras (energy centers) in your feet, and that enlightened beings transmit energy out of their feet. Many Nepalese and Indian temples have carvings in stone which represent the lotus footprints of Vishnu, or the Buddha. In yoga practice, we begin with a Sanskrit chant that begins declaring; “I bow to the lotus feet of the guru” –a voluntary turning of the mind towards the antiquity and lineage of this practice.

Even for the unenlightened, the foot is indeed a masterpiece of engineering, containing 26 small bones, and more than 150 ligaments. Your feet are complex structures, and usually ignored. How little we pay attention to our feet shows in how it’s almost impossible for most people to feel and articulate the third and fourth toes. Can you?

What I observe clearly though are that a majority of people walk around with painful, collapsed arches.

Weak arches may result in lower back pain, sagging energy, and postural problems that move all the way up the body. As Ida Rolf, the founder of the body work method of ‘Rolfing’ observed; “If one foot is consistently everted (a collapsed arch), the ankle, the knee, or perhaps more likely, the entire pelvic basin is rotated” There can also be high arches, and flat feet, but these are in the minority. The common, unnecessary, sagging inner arch is due to a weak (and trainable) tibialis anterior muscle. This muscle starts on the outside of your shin and moves across the shin near your feet and connects near the big toe. In other words, it’s the muscle that pulls up the arch in your foot like a saddle.

The solution is to build good posture from the feet up; widen the feet and toes, and press down the weight in three places, like a pyramid. Press into the mound under the small toe, the mound under the big toe, and at the front of your heel. When your anterior tibialis muscle gets strong, you can keep the middle three toes lifted as well. This in turn affects a subtle channel of energy up the legs into the pelvic floor. I teach this in lift of the middle toes and weigh balancing in all the standing postures, including simply standing up.

You might have trouble lifting the arch and toes directly at first. It’s likely you have been torturing your feet, compressing them inside tight shoes or high heels for many years already. A good way to start is to head for a foot massage to build up foot-consciousness. Or, use these simple yoga postures:

Virasana with tucked toes

This provides an uncomplicated and valuable stretch for the toes and connective tissues across the sole of your foot.

Virasana

This helps to stretch the ankles and top of the foot, and helps to establish the arch in the foot

If you practice yoga, good foot alignment will likely take care of a majority of the other alignment issues in your legs. Nearly all yoga postures are created from the feet up, and these principles can be applied in each and every posture. Notice these two postures with the right way of doing the posture and the incorrect (usual) way.

Downward dog correct version

Observe how the line of the ankle is in a straight line with the heel

Downward dog incorrect version

See the collapsed ankles here. If your feet look like this, bend and roll the knees outward while taking the weight to the outside edges of the feet. Align the heels straight and only straighten the legs to the point that the arches do not collapse. If the arches flatten when you push the legs straight, then the peroneal muscles on the outside of your shin are complaining out of tightness. The solution is more stretching, more yoga.

If you have lower back pain, or postural problems, consider your feet first. You may want to ditch the tight shoes or high heels for a while. Train your body to have an arch on the inside of the foot; it will be worth the effort in how tall you walk, and with how much energy. And who knows, your newly spread toes may even attract your future lover!