Parallel or Not: Aligning Your Feet

by Baxter

I received this inquiry from one of our regular readers recently:

One of the things I am noticing is, as much as I try, I can't seem to keep my feet parallel in mountain pose or to begin a flow without constantly looking down and re-aligning them.  I'm wondering if this is something I should give up on (keeping my feet straight) or just let them splay a bit and not sweat the notion of my feet alignment looking like my instructors.  I'm wondering if my body is simply built this way and I'm trying to get the proverbial square peg in a round hole.  I am also wondering if this impacts balancing poses since I try to keep my feet parallel with the edge of the mat and I seem to be fighting stability for foot position.
 
Thoughts welcomed if this makes sense or maybe, just maybe I answered my own question about foot position?

This is a perfect question for this week, as I am thinking a lot about feet this week, as I am teaching my annual Yoga for Healthy Feet workshop here in Oakland on Saturday. And our reader’s observations about his feet are not uncommon. Lots of yoga students, when confronted with the request by their teachers to “parallel” their feet find this quite challenging and sometimes downright impossible. It can feel odd or uncomfortable to stand this way.

There are many reasons for this. A common one that shows up in yoga class are ex-dancers who were taught from a very young age to emphasize a turn out of the entire leg from hip joint to feet, as the classical ballet position of the legs. They develop a “functional” turn out, one that was not present at birth, but develops as a result of a habitual way of moving. We see a similar condition in functional scoliosis, where the thoracic spine becomes bent and twisted as a result of some repeated activity, such as carrying an infant on the same hip all the time, or always swinging a hammer with the same arm.

In addition to functional changes in foot and leg alignment, trauma can result in such troubles, especially an injury like a broken bone that does not set in its original alignment as it heals. And then there are genetic expressions of the skeleton in the lower extremities that you see running through family lines, either with the feet or shins turning out, which we sometimes call duck feet, or turning in, which is referred to as pigeon toed. Genetic patterns in the hip joints, thigh bones, knee joints, shin bones and ankles can also affect the alignment of the feet.

And keep in mind that, except for disciplines like yoga, martial arts, dance and such, most of us don’t pay a great deal of attention to our feet being aligned parallel, as in yoga. And many non-yogis who don’t concern themselves with such things have wonderful, happy lives. So some of this is kind of arbitrary, and not always essential for a healthy life. But this foot position might be essential in performing well in certain yoga asanas, like Half Moon pose (Arda Chandrasana), where you have to balance on one foot and leg with only one hand on the floor to help you.

There are also inspirational stories of modern yoga practitioners, like that of Muktananda Stiles, who reported being bow legged, and with specific guidance from an experienced yoga teacher (in his case BKS Iyengar), reversed this to symmetric legs and feet.

So, let’s suppose for a moment that being able to stand with your feet parallel does confer some benefit to your posture and your musculoskeletal health. How would you go about assessing and changing what needs to change? You’ll want to do a self-assessment of your lower extremities or have a friend or teacher do one with you, as sometimes others will see something you do not.  Some things to look at: Are your thighs parallel, knees caps straight ahead, but shin bones turning out and the feet go along for the ride?  Also, look at whether both feet turn out or in the same amount, or if it seems to be a one-sided thing. You might have your teacher look at your hip joints as a source of foot turn out, like in our dancer example, or the knee joint, or the shins. Also, do the feet have high or flat arches at play that could also affect your efforts at symmetry?

Once you have some idea of what could be contributing to your particular asymmetry, a clearer path of action may present itself. One way my colleague and friend Richard Rosen has of working on the thighs generally (as they contribute to the effect on the feet) is to use a block between the mid-thighs to activate the adductor muscles of the upper legs, which are often loose and weak for many of us and can contribute to supination of the feet, where we tend to roll onto the outer edge of the foot. Simultaneously, you can place a strap around the outer mid-thighs and cinch it firm, so you can squeeze the block while also pushing out against the strap. This may seem like a paradox, but play with it and see what you discover. 

For those with tight outer hips, which could also contribute to rolling onto the outer edge of the feet, the strap can bring you back to even.  For those with pronation of feet, where you tend to collapse onto the inner foot, the outer press on the strap can get you more toward the outer foot.

The other things to consider are that if you want to get the musculoskeletal system to change, you will have to practice regularly and give it some time to take effect.  As we have mentioned elsewhere, the bones of the body can remodel as they respond to new stresses placed on them, as in osteoporosis. So we can take advantage of that fact here. 

It may also turn out that after careful evaluation you realize or decide that your feet and legs are better off, in the big picture of things, staying as they are.  In that case, you may have to be more creative about how you modify certain poses, such as balancing poses, to take your unique anatomy into account. In either case, you will have an interesting focus for your mind as you explore this common alignment recommendation in your public yoga classes!