Your feet

We've started this year by focusing on feet. There are two techniques we've been working with: firstly, imagining three main points of contact between the sole of your foot and the floor (the base of your big toe, the base of your little toe and the centre of your heel) and feeling how the weight is distributed across those three points. Secondly, trying to feel the arches in your feet - particularly your inner arch (on the image here called your medial longitudinal arch) and outer (aka lateral longitudinal) arch and seeing if we can engage the tissues in the arches of your feet. If you’re not sure what it feels like when your arches engage, try this: place your foot on a tea towel or small cloth. While keeping your toes and heel on the cloth, try and scrunch the cloth up using your toes and then flatten it again. Keep doing that for perhaps 30 seconds or so and see if you start to feel the muscles in the sole of your feet switching on. You can also try rocking your weight from inner to outer edges of your feet without letting your toes lift. As you roll to the outside of your feet can you feel inner arches lifting? And vice versa?

There have been some postures where lots of people in class have found similar patterns of how they've been accidentally leaning on to one side of their foot or the other. Here are the three most common ones that have come up:

Triangle pose

In triangle pose, turn your head to look at your front foot. Notice if you’re leaning more or one side or the other. Slightly more common is to lean on to the outer edge (ie little toe side), but leaning on your big toe isn’t unusual either. If you feel like you’re leaving on one side of your foot, can you engage the arch on that side of your foot and press down through your opposite toe? So, for example, if you find yourself tending to lean on the little toe side of your foot can you try to engage or lift your outer/ lateral longitudinal arch and press down through the base of your big toe joint?

Revolved triangle

Again, turn your head to look at your front foot. From the bodies I’ve observed over the years, it seems more common to lean on the outer edge (ie little toe side) of your front foot. Do you feel that in your body? Is your front big toe lifting a bit? If so, try to engage or lift your outer/ lateral longitudinal arch and press down through the base of your big toe joint. See if working your front foot like that makes you feel more balanced. And perhaps when you try this posture on the other side, set your feet in that way before you twist and see if the posture feels different.

Reverse warrior

In reverse warrior, the opposite pattern of weight shifting is more common compared to that we saw in revolved triangle. Come into this shape as you normally would, and then take your attention to your front leg. Does it feel like there’s more weight on your front big toe? If so, it might indicate that your front knee is leaning in a bit. If you feel that, try pressing down your little toe and seeing if you can engage or slightly lift your inner arch. And when you do the other side, before you reach your front arm up and back perhaps try working your front foot in that same way to preempt your front knee turning in. Or if you’re not sure if your front knee turns in when you do this pose, try videoing yourself doing it to see. Set your camera at the front of your mat for the best angle!

Let me know if you found any of the same patterns in your body and if the above tips helped. Or comment below if you have any questions 🙂

RESOLUTIONS FOR 2021

Tbh I’m not amazing at keeping New Years resolutions. I normally make them at the beginning of the month and they gradually drift by about March. So this year I’ve taken a bit longer to think about them, and since today is meant to be Blue Monday (the depressing day in January, not the New Order classic 🎶) I reckon if they seem like a good idea today maybe these ones will last. I’m setting myself three, and have added the names of the wonderful teachers who they’ve been inspired by in case you want to check them out too:

• Do more training with teachers that don’t look like me and/or have different backgrounds to me - first stop will be Kallie Schut for part two of her course on decolonising yoga

• Keep working on my teaching skills so that my classes are increasingly accessible for people with injuries/ conditions/ something that limits them, while still being interesting for those who like a challenge - for this I’m studying with Alexandria Crow throughout 2021

• Stop saying ‘namaste’ at the end of class, after having listened to and read work by Susanna Barkataki.

And since it is Blue Monday, just a reminder that if you’re feeling blue and fancy joining class but can’t afford to atm, please send me a message 💙

What we'll be working on in 2021

At the beginning of each new year I spend a bit of time thinking about where I want to take my students over the 12 months ahead. And, using a process I picked up from one of my own teachers (Jason Crandell), I’ll think about what mental, physical and emotional qualities I want to help people cultivate in class. Then whatever we’re working on throughout the year - postures, techniques or anything else - everything will be underpinned by those elements. So (only a few days late) here’s what I’m aiming to develop with you lovely people this year....

3 mental qualities

• Agency – I got this idea from another brilliant teacher I’ve recently started studying with, Alexandria Crow (and who I’ll be training with for the rest of 2021 to help develop this point further). Through this theme I aim for students to genuinely feel like they can take any of the options I offer in class without being judged or pressured into doing something different, to choose to rest whenever you want to, or perhaps even leave class if you need to. The longer I do this job the more I realise how different people’s experiences of coming to class on any particular day are, and so how differently they each might need to approach (or choose to avoid) different postures or techniques. Also, if people feel empowered to genuinely do what feels best for them in a group class, might this make yoga feel more welcoming, inclusive and perhaps encourage more diversity among students (and so eventually teachers)...?

• Attention – this one keeps building on a strand from last year because this is still something I’m continually working on (and that my phone/ laptop/ social media definitely doesn’t help with!). I also appreciate that for lots of students it’s even harder to focus on class right now, when we’re working online and they are at home with family/ pets/ housemates etc. But, to me, paying attention to what I’m doing and not thinking about the rest of my life for 60 mins feels like one of the key reasons why I feel better after practice. I think that effect is probably the same whether it’s been a 60 minute vinyasa class or an hour long savasana (which kind of backs up the fact that you should be empowered to rest/ take any option that suits you in class). And, since my cues are sometimes different to other teachers and I ask students to make shapes that aren’t always classical yoga poses, paying attention to class also means students hopefully following my instructions more easily! (You’re always welcome to filter out the jokes though 🥴)

• Equilibrium – my hope is always that by the end of class you’re feeling calmer than you were when you walked in. But this is also something I’d like to cultivate during the more physically challenging parts of class… can you accidentally fall out of a balance without mentally beating yourself up? Can you watch a demonstration of something you don’t think you’ll be able to do without starting an internal monologue it?

3 physical qualities

• Precision and sensitivity – These two are inextricably linked. When you begin practising yoga postures it makes sense that you notice the most obvious sensations first. But, over time, you might start to be able to feel what’s going on in other parts of your body. Developing this sensitivity and a higher level of body awareness will allow you to be more precise in your movements (eg is that leg doing what you think it’s doing..?) and notice the effects of what you’re doing more easily. Trying to work with precision and sensitivity also helps keep my mind from wandering, so I hope it will support your work on our second quality (listed above) of paying attention.

• Evenness - I don’t mean by this that I want all of our bodies to be completely symmetrical by the end of 2021 (that would be weird, impossible, and probably pointless!). Instead, I’ll be thinking instead about even and steady breathing, and working your body relatively evenly. For example, in vinyasa yoga we tend to stretch the backs and outsides of your hips and thighs relatively more than we strengthen them – can we start to address this and perhaps pay more attention to the fronts and insides too? Or, in relation to your shoulders, we spend a lot of time with your arms overhead or in front of you (think plank, downward dog, high and low lunge, handstand etc). Can we add in anything to strengthen the muscles that pull your arms back?

3 emotional qualities (these all overlap with each other and probably give a reasonable insight to my state of mind atm!)

• Patience – with yourself on any given day, with your body when it gets injured, with the process of turning up to class regularly or of constantly noticing your mind has wandered and bringing your attention back on to what you’re doing. And especially at the moment: with people/ pets/ neighbours at home that distract you from an online class! Although that last one might be selfish on my part because I love seeing the pets and kids joining for savasana in your zoom squares….

• Compassion – for yourself when you’re trying to stay focused but your mind keeps wandering, for your body when it gets injured, for your loved ones if they’re being annoying, and for yourself if you need to rest more often than normal during class or if generally you’re having a hard time (we are still in a global pandemic after all)

• Gratitude – for what your body can do and for still being here and able to practice after whatever you have personally been through over the past year or so.

So if you come to class/ a workshop/ a teacher training with me this year, this will underpin what we’ll be working on (and no, this isn’t a recent picture…. it’s from this time last year, in Oman). So if any of this sounds interesting I hope to see you in a Zoom square soon. And perhaps in person in not too long! 🤞