Here’s a quick video with Leena on a great way to stretch your toes and bring some more mobility to the joints for your feet.
Each foot and ankle has 26 bones, 33 joints, and more than 100 muscles, tendons, and ligaments! One quarter of all bones in the human body are in the feet. This means our feet are exquisitely designed for weight-bearing and movement, and they are the foundation for whole body alignment and healthy movement patterns. Unfortunately, due lack of movement and poor footwear choices many folks have lost healthy mobility in their feet and have related pain in the ankles, knees, hips, and back.
If you want to give yourself a foundation for healthier feet and whole body alignment, check out this upcoming workshop:
Dynamic Feet & Foundations workshop with Leena Miller Cressman
Saturday, May 7 / 3:00-5:30pm / $35+hst [register here].
In this workshop you’ll learn corrective exercises and self-massage techniques to restore flexibility and strength. We’ll also discuss how to make well informed choices about footwear, including how and why you might transition to more minimal footwear.
Anyone with feet can benefit from this workshop; no yoga experience necessary.
If you’re interested in this topic, but can’t make the workshop, I highly recommend checking out a great book by biomechanist, Katy Bowman,Whole Body Barefoot. She makes anatomy and biomechanics really easy to understand and offers tonnes of great suggestions and exercises to transform your feet and your whole body alignment! Also, her blog is a treasure trove of great articles and resources, here’s a great post on minimal footwear.
Leena Miller Cressman is the director of Queen Street Yoga. Right now she’s in love with practicing the Tensegrity Repair Series, handstands and doing gentle twists over her bolster. You’ll also find her cruising around on her rusty but trusty bike, and tending to her community garden plot full of arugula, kale, and basil.
The Branches 