You Need to Pay Attention to Your Hands and Feet

On the mat is the perfect place to start

When was the last time you gave attention to your hands and feet? We often take these body parts for granted, despite all they do for us every day.

In my acupuncture practice and in my yoga classes, I see what happens when you don’t give your hands and feet the care that they need: you often end up in pain.

Toes that get squashed into unsupportive shoes for years end up with bunions, hammer toes, and crossed in all sorts of unnatural directions. Hands that aren’t actively used lose strength and mobility. Opening jars and grasping coffee mugs becomes difficult, if not impossible.

Take care of your hands and feet now, while they are still under your control. If you are already beyond that, there is still a lot you can do to improve things.

Connecting to the floor

Whether you stand on your feet or your hands, your connection to the floor creates stability on the mat. That stability comes with you off the mat and into your life.

As a biped, the floor is your orientation to the world, and where gravity pulls you. When you practice yoga, you either resist gravity or you surrender to it. In Mountain pose, you press your feet firmly into the floor as you lift upward, resisting gravity. In Pigeon pose, you surrender to gravity as you drop into the stretch.

The floor offers stability, and a feeling of groundedness. When you notice anxiety taking you into the mental spin, feeling your feet on the floor can bring you back into your body. Grounding your feet into the floor helps ground you emotionally.

Strength and Balance

The best way to create whole body strength and balance is by pressing into the floor. It doesn’t matter if you are on the yoga mat, in the gym, or hiking up a mountain. How you place your feet (or hands) on the surface beneath you determines what happens in the rest of your body.

When you practice Tree pose/Vrksasana, you cultivate both strength and balance. Spread your toes to create a wider foundation on which to stand. Press your standing foot into the floor will activate and strengthen the quads, glutes, and inner thigh on that leg.

When you feel your connection to the floor, you have better balance. If you walk on uneven surfaces (like with hiking), being intentional with your foot placement will lessen your chances of falling. I like to walk in “barefoot” shoes so that I can better feel the surface beneath my feet. They are not for everyone, but they work for me.

The yoga mat is the perfect place to practice

Yoga allows you to strengthen your hands and feet while maintaining their mobility, as long as you are intentional with how you use them.

Your hands

When you place your hands on your mat, press every knuckle of your palm into the floor. Extend your fingers outward in all directions. Not only with this give you more floor to stand on, but will improve your balance on your hands. It will also stretch the muscles of your palms and fingers, improving their mobility.

When you are in poses such as Plank/Phalakasana, Downward Dog/Adho Mukha Svanasana, or Handstand/Adho Mukha Vrksasana, your hands become your foundation and your connection to the floor. When you control how you place your hands, the rest of the pose falls into place.

Relaxing your fingers brings all of your weight into your wrists. Over time, your wrists will hurt. Spreading the fingers and extending the weight outward toward your knuckles and fingers takes the pressure off the wrist joints. It also engages the forearm muscles which are responsible for grip.

This may also encourage you to use the upper arm, shoulders, and upper back. The more muscles you engage, the less each individual muscle has to work. Plus the bigger muscles (like in the upper back and core) will keep the smaller muscles from tiring and straining.

Your feet

Have you noticed what your feet are doing in poses like Warrior 1/Virabhadrasana 1 or Triangle/Trikonasana? The more you press your feet into the floor and spread your toes, the more stable your pose. Pressing your feet firmly into the floor builds strength in the legs, and encourages you to use your core. If the legs work, chances are you’ll get other muscles to work too, thereby strengthening your whole body at once.

If you don’t pay attention to your feet, you’ll have a less solid foundation and you’ll fall over more easily. Make your feet work for you. In poses such as Awkward pose/Utkatasana, I like to lift my toes. This strengthens the arches of the feet and brings your weight back toward your heels. You’ll feel your glutes and quads even more when you do this.

Make sure you don’t grip your toes on the floor. This only creates tension and possibly foot and calf cramping. Spread them then relax them onto the floor and make the bigger muscles work to hold you up.

When in doubt, spread your digits

It’s much easier to stand on a big, wide surface than on a smaller one. Walking on a balance beam is much harder than walking down the street. Our hands and feet are only “so big,” and making them as big as possible will make them a sturdier surface on which to stand.

You might find it challenging to spread your toes if you don’t normally do that. I find it helps to spread your fingers. I don’t know why it helps, but it does. You might also find that some toes spread more easily than others. Getting them all to spread easily takes practice, attention, and intention.

I’ve been spreading my toes for the last 30 years, and even I sometimes have trouble getting one of my “pinky” toes to cooperate. Don’t give up. If you spend a few minutes every day working toward spreading your toes, you will eventually cultivate control over your feet. Doing a little “Jedi Mind Trick” by staring at your toes and willing them to spread helps too.

Join me on the mat!

I teach online yoga classes for active adults over 50 who want to build strength, improve balance, increase mobility, and find some sanity in this insane world. Whether you’ve been practicing yoga for years, are a brand new beginner, or are somewhere in between, you are welcome to attend!

I teach live online classes Monday- Friday with access to a huge on demand library whenever your schedule allows. Feel part of a warm, welcoming community from the comfort of your own home (or office). Purple Room Yoga is a judgment free zone where you can practice at your own pace.

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