Peeled Earth and SKY

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Flat Feet


In my afternoon class yesterday was a seemingly aware young woman who informed me that although she heard my suggestion to lift the inner arches of her feet she just couldn't. Really? She had such a lovely body full of potential but her energy died at her feet. She had accepted the base of her body as dead, useless, ugly. Just two pancakes that hang out at the end of her ankles. Her embarrassment towards her malformed feet lived in the rest of her structure. She struggled to find grounding through her legs and stability in her spine. When we cannot connect with our roots it becomes very difficult to adjust and grow. Sadly this is a common response from students when given an adjustment during an advanced Yoga class. The thinking seems to go: why should I feel like I can change such a body structure? I'm well into my thirties, an advanced Yogi, and have already had one surgery.


Again and again I walked over to her and lovingly touch her inner arches to find her flinch every time I got close. She hated her feet. She hated me noticing them. So I decided to love them. Quietly I listened to her tell me why she would not lift them, why it was useless to even try. I decided to agree and instead ask her to lift her inner ankle bones. She gave me an awkward look and then lifted her inner ankles seemingly effortlessly. Attached to her inner ankles were the inner arches of her feet. Her flat collapsed feet followed suit and lifted with her ankles. Amazing. Her feet looked nice! We both smiled and I reminded her throughout class to lift her inner ankles/inner arches and I saw life begin to sprout in her feet and legs and spine.

As Theresa Bertherat writes in ' The Body Has Its Reasons' "... it's never too late to offer your body the time to pause and re-evaluate itself. It requires a little bit of humility, but you're amply rewarded by the joy of moving with grace and precision, of making full, round gestures, of rediscovering all the sensations in a body free at last to live its real life."

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