My favorite shoes: Vibram Five Fingers, the alternative to bare feet.
My niece will be one-year-old this month, and she’s on the cusp of walking. It’s adorable. She can pull herself up and stand and walk around holding on to something, but when she’s up without anything to hold on to, plop! she’s down on her butt, looking pouty and, to be honest, completely heart-meltingly cute. But when she stands, she’s got this look in her eye like “look at me, I’m up on my own two feet!”
Sometimes, we forget about our feet; after all, they’re all the way down there. We shove our feet into sneakers, boots, and if you’re like me, five-inch heels. We keep our feet cooked up in socks and shoes for hours a day. We let our feet get calluses, we forget to cut our toenails, we let the pretty polish on our toes get chipped. But our feet… They’re really kind of everything, aren’t they?
They carry us through life. Literally.
Currently, my laptop is resting on the insides of my feet (I’m sitting in a loose butterfly pose). To get out of bed in the morning and start our day, the first thing that touches the ground is our feet. When we jump, hop, skip or run, we land feet first. Even the ever-popular saying for someone motivated and starting something successfully is “hitting the ground running.”
Often times when I’m practicing I connect my mind to my feet by simply thinking “strong feet.” They’re the basis of balancing poses, where we find our mountain, and the other half of our down dogs. Our feet are where we root into the earth.
So have gratitude for your feet; without them, we’d have no independence. They carry us through life. And every once in a while, give ‘em a pampering. They deserve it. You deserve it too.
c'mon yogi! 