om lite
Victoria Jackson appreciates the wonder of feet
I
think I’m developing a thing for feet! Not my feet in particular,
just feet in general. I’m thinking about feet a lot at the
moment. Partly it might be inspired by my thoughts turning to
sandals and summer pedicures and I’ve been marvelling at a
friend returning from holidays with beautifully hennaed feet.
But my interest is definitely more than skin deep and I’m starting to
get an appreciation for the wonder of our feet and the thankless
work they do day in day out. They get us from A to B and often
endure lots of standing up and bearing our full weight, all the while
being crammed into a variety of shoe shapes and heights.
I remember my first yoga teacher telling me very early on that I’d
never have a strong yoga practice if I didn’t work on my feet. I didn’t
know how to take this. I was ready to imagine I could improve spinal
flexibility or the openness of my hips. This sounded like proper yogic
work. But strengthening my feet? That didn’t sound so interesting.
Years later, I’ve caught up with this idea (I am obviously a slow
student!) and I am starting to realise how every yoga pose is only as
good as its foundations, which more often than not is the feet.
Now that I am teaching others, I realise that you can tell a lot
about someone from their feet. A bit like Sherlock Holmes famously
identifying a man’s profession from examining his left thumb, you
can easily spot a newcomer by looking at their feet, often hiddenaway in sports socks. I guess it takes time to learn to love your
feet and early on it’s easy to be shy about showing your tootsies in
public! Seasoned practitioners have no such worries and their feet
are so obviously strong. You can see this in the lift of the arch, the
spread of the toes and the energetic quality of their feet even when
standing still. In my early yoga days I used to marvel at feet like
these, wondering if some people were born with stronger feet than
me. Now I know they are simply feet that have seen many hours of
practice.
These days I treat my feet with a bit of respect and love. In the
office I often discreetly roll my feet over a tennis ball under my desk,
and I’m found wearing minimal ‘barefoot’ shoes more often than
high heels. Vajrāsana has become one of my favourite yoga poses;
it wakes up tired feet like nothing else, stretching out the sole and
enlivening all the toes. The Sanskrit name literally translates as
Thunderbolt Pose referring to the weapon wielded by Indra, the god
of rain and thunder; it’s also known in English as Broken Toe Pose —
but don’t let that put you off trying it and seeing if it gives your feet
a treat.!Victoria Jackson lives and practices in Oxford. She is registered with
Yoga Alliance as a vinyasa yoga teacher.Best foot forward