Module 2 • The Sacred Mechanics of Walking: A Journey from Heel to Heart
Module 2 • Lesson 1
Textbook Title: WALKING ON AIR: UNRAVELING THE SECRETS OF YOUR ANKLE AND SUPERCHARGING YOUR STRIDE
Video Length: 53 minutes
Overview: Unlock the power of your stride by diving into the dynamics of ankle mobility and stability, exploring how the Talocrural and subtalar joints work together to create balance, adaptability, and effortless movement—so you can walk, run, and move with more strength, ease, and awareness.
Exercises Covered: Toe Yoga & Macro Walking
Module 2 • Lesson 2
Textbook Title: UNLOCKING THE FOOT’S HIDDEN WISDOM: A YOGI’S GUIDE TO THE ARCHES THAT KEEP YOU BALANCED AND ENERGIZED
Video Length: 28 minutes
Overview: Discover the hidden wisdom of your feet by exploring the intricate arches, muscles, and biomechanics that provide balance, stability, and energy in every step—unlocking deeper awareness for both your yoga practice and daily movement.
Exercises Covered: Transverse Arch Awakening, Lateral Knee Tracking & Big Toe to Glute Spiral
Module 2 • Lesson 3
Textbook Title: IN STEP WITH YOUR TRUE SELF: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE ANATOMY AND SPIRIT OF WALKING
Video Length: 49 minutes
Overview: The swing phase of walking is more than just biomechanics—it embodies the balance between effort and surrender, where fascial elasticity, not muscular strain, guides movement, echoing the yogic principle that true freedom arises when knowledge is balanced with fluid, intuitive experience.
Exercises Covered: Toe Flicks & Enhanced Leg Swing Technique
Exercises Covered in Class & Homework Assignment:
Macro Walking: Macro Walking is an exercise that focuses on enhancing balance, squatting, folding, and push-off movements during walking to make the gait more effortless and improve the experience of the "swing phase.”
Transverse Arch Awakening: activates and awakens the transverse arch in the foot, which plays a vital role in distributing weight and maintaining stability as we shift our weight from the heel to the ball mound (in walking), ultimately enhancing our overall foot biomechanics and balance.
Toe Yoga: Toe Yoga involves practices to activate, spread, and strengthen the toes.
Big Toe/Glute Spiral: This exercise is skillfully crafted to bolster stability by applying downward pressure on the big toe while initiating a femur-spiraling action into the hip socket. This dynamic fusion concurrently activates the adductor hallucis muscle and engages the glutes, thereby elevating both balance and stability.
Lateral Knee Tracking: Seamlessly extending from the Big Toe/Glute Spiral, this exercise harnesses the spiraling motion's energy. As the spiral takes effect, it guides the knee outward, toward the pinky toe, during the flexion phase. This deliberate knee movement serves to evenly distribute body weight across the foot and its arches while synergistically involving the glutes for enhanced stability.
Leg Swings: Leg Swings are movements that help explore the swing phase of walking by allowing the leg to swing back and forth while standing on a block to engage the front and back lines around the hip.
Toe Flicks: Toe Flicks are exercises designed to re-pattern the leg-lifting movement, reducing the reliance on hip flexors and promoting effortless leg propulsion by engaging the fascial elasticity and spring-like qualities essential for the swing phase of walking.
Homework:
For your homework assignment, start weaving the exercises and postures you've learned in class into your daily personal yoga routine. When relevant, extend your practice beyond the confines of the mat into everyday life. Pay attention to what is motivating your practice, what is speaking to you, and channel that inspiratoin into developing a yoga sequence aimed at the students you regularly teach, rather than just the attendees of this training. From this personalized sequence, choose an 8-minute segment to present to our training class for valuable feedback. Additionally, prepare a concise 1-2 minute introduction that summarizes what has inspired you this week, which you can share as a preamble to your sequence. While it's an added bonus, not a requirement, consider infusing that underlying theme into your teaching cues to enrich the overall class experience.
Macro Walking
Macro Walking is an exercise that focuses on enhancing balance, squatting, folding, and push-off movements during walking to make the gait more effortless and improve the experience of the "swing phase.”
Exercise: Macro Walking
Let's examine these three micro-movements with a more expansive lens to fully integrate them into our bodily awareness:
Balance: Walking is fundamentally a balancing act. Enhancing your balance can significantly improve your walking experience, especially considering we spend about 80% of our walking time on a single leg.
Squat: In a standard gait, a step forward is taken. We'll intensify that action by transitioning into a single-leg squat.
Fold: As you walk, the leg that propels you forward also moves in a slight forward fold. We'll deepen this fold for a more engaged movement.
Push-off: The final stage of a step involves shifting your weight to the ball of your foot. Here, we’ll amplify this by adding a slight lift, as if propelling forward.
Practicing these 'macro-walking' exercises can be beneficial before a long walk or jog. They serve to enrich the movements of your gait, making walking feel more effortless. This also opens the door to better experiencing the 'swing phase'—those moments when your foot is not in contact with the ground.
Macro Walking Exercise in Three Parts:
Part 1: Lunge
Begin by standing with your feet hip-width apart, maintaining good posture with your shoulders relaxed and core engaged. Take a step forward with your right foot, lunging into a short, controlled lunge position. Your weight should be evenly distributed between your front and back legs, and your torso should remain upright. Swing your left arm forward, right arm back to pattern the correct cross lateral arm positioning
Part 2: Balancing Hip Hinge
From the lunge position, smoothly transition into a balancing hip hinge. Shift your weight onto your right foot and begin to hinge forward at your hips while simultaneously lifting your left leg behind you. Your torso should naturally incline forward, forming a straight line from your head to your extended left leg. Keep your left leg and torso aligned with one another and allow the left arm to be heavy, helping you gently spiral towards the grounded leg.
Part 3: Balancing Leg Swing
In the final phase of the exercise, transition from the balancing hip hinge into a balancing leg swing. While maintaining your balance on your right foot, initiate a controlled swing of your left leg forward. As the left leg swings forward, the left arm swings back and right arm swings forward, allowing the torso to naturally rotate slightly towards the swinging leg. Focus on the fluidity of the movement and ability of the opposite arm and leg to work together.
Repeat this three-part sequence several times, alternating between your right and left legs to improve balance, stability, healthy rotation and full body integration.
Recap & reflect:
Understanding the intricate mechanics of our ankles and feet isn't just academic; it's a profound gateway to elevating our entire practice of walking and, by extension, our bodily awareness. From the dual functionalities of the Talocrural and subtalar joints to the stabilizing ligaments and tendons, every component works in unison to make our gait both a marvel of engineering and an art form. The mnemonic devices for tarsal, metatarsal, and phalangeal bones serve as useful learning tools, complementing the broader view of our gait mechanics. Walking is essentially a balancing act that engages both mind and body, an insight well encapsulated by James Earls in "Born to Walk." It's through our bipedal movement that we not only traverse diverse terrains but also experience an enriched sense of proprioception and connectedness to the world around us.
Reflective Journal Question: Given your understanding of the ankle's complexity and its contribution to gait mechanics, how do you think mindful walking or yoga on uneven terrain would further deepen your appreciation of your body's innate capabilities?
Transverse Arch Awakening
Activates and awakens the transverse arch in the foot, which plays a vital role in distributing weight and maintaining stability as we shift our weight from the heel to the ball mound (in walking), ultimately enhancing our overall foot biomechanics and balance.
Exercise: Transverse Arch Awakening
To activate this arch we can stand with our toe mounds on a blanket, and our heels on the floor behind the blanket. Lean forward till you have to grip with your toes to maintain balance, hold here, and then lean back. As the toes grip gently in this way, the transverse arch is warming and activating. When you step back off of the blanket, you should feel a good bit of space and warmth in this arch
Medial Arch: This is the most prominent arch and it runs from the heel (calcaneus) to the big toe (hallux). This arch is essential for absorbing shock and maintaining balance. The bones of the medial arch begin as the talus reaches out to connect with the navicular bone, which then fans out to connect with the 3 cuneiforms, which extend out to the first 3 phalanges, which become our big toe, and two next toes.
Muscles of the arch: The medial arch itself also utilizes the deep calf muscular support like the Tibialis Posterior and Fibularis Longus muscles, as well as the great flexor Hallucis longus, for increased support. To activate your medial arch you can press a button with your big toe, this flexes the hallucus muscles, which shortens them, creating a stronger arch. This happens with every step we take. Feel the arch lift slightly with a slight button press.
Toning our Arch: The medial arch defines the shape of our foot arch, the abductor hallucis muscle. This muscle is often thought of as a fixed aspect of our body, like our eye color or leg length, but it’s shape is maleable like any muscle, and as we awaken it it naturally begins to lift and lengthen. The arch itself is 3-dimensional in scope as it not only runs from the heel to the big toe mound, but also fills that space vertically, like a roof truss, watch it happen when you press the button
Toe to Tongue: We can combine this button press with a slight tone of the glutes to really feel the arch integrate with hips. Let’s try this with a heel to heel stance— stand without any toe/plum work and see how the knee wants to buckle in— Now add the toe/plum and notice the difference. Your glutes and big toe work together to keep your knee from buckling in when you walk, which is accentuated with heel to heel stance, but of course applies to all stances. You can experiment with pressing the big toe button while you hinge in and out of trikonasana, and notice how it adds stability to your stance and glide to your hinge.
Khechari Mudra: If you add one last detail, a little upward press of the tongue into the roof of the mouth, you can activate your deep core from toe to tongue. This is because your medial arch is a part of your Deep Front Line, a fascial chain that sits between your front and back line of the body, occupying a volume within you, which is why it is associated with your core muscles. The bottom of this chain is your big toe, the top of this chain is your tongue. Pressing the toe down and tongue up pre-tensions your chain, giving you strength and stability.
Toe Yoga
Toe Yoga involves practices to activate, spread, and strengthen the toes.
Exercise: Toe Yoga
Toe Yoga Exercise: Toe Lift and Spread Sequence
This Toe Yoga exercise focuses on improving the flexibility and control of your toes, enhancing toe independence, and promoting foot awareness.
Instructions:
This can be done from any position where the sole of one foot is comfortable on the floor and visible
Begin by lifting your big toe off the ground while keeping your other toes grounded. Practicing by mimicking the same action with thumb and fingers can help
Hold your big toe in the lifted position for a few seconds, feeling the stretch and engagement in the muscles of your big toe.
Gently place your big toe back on the ground.
Now, lift your other four toes off the ground while keeping your big toe down.
Keep your lifted for a few seconds, and then try spreading them as wide as possible before lowering
Continue with this alternating pattern, lifting your big toe, holding, placing it down, and then lifting your other four toes, holding, and placing them down.
As you progress, try to isolate each toe as much as possible, eventually trying to lower 1 toe at a time from the pinky in
After completing several rounds with your right foot, switch to your left foot and repeat the entire sequence.
Once you've practiced with both feet, place both feet flat on the ground and relax for a moment.
This Toe Yoga exercise enhances the dexterity and independence of your toes, helping you gain better control over their movements. Regular practice can contribute to improved foot strength and coordination, which can benefit your overall balance and stability.
Big Toe to Glute Spiral
This exercise is skillfully crafted to bolster stability by applying downward pressure on the big toe while initiating a femur-spiraling action into the hip socket. This dynamic fusion concurrently activates the adductor hallucis muscle and engages the glutes, thereby elevating both balance and stability
Exercise: Big Toe to Glute spiral
This exercise is valuable in any position where a minimum of one foot sole contacts the earth. For continuity, we will practice in the macro walking poses.
Starting in position one of macro walking, the lunge, gently anchor the big toe or “press the Big Toe Stability Button” to increases activation of adductor hallucus. While maintaining that gently pressure, add the whole leg spiral, by minimally externally rotating the thigh bones so that they secure in the hip sockets as the glutes brighten. Release and repeat severally times until the cocontraction of adductor Hallucus and the glutes feels natural. Then, keep the toe to glute spiral engaged as you transition into the hip hinge and leg swing and notice if you feel more stable. If you are craving a little more, you can come to tip toes at the end of the leg swing as the torso spirals towards the lifted leg.
Secret of the Knee: Two compartments of knee, lateral and medial. Knee Is mainly a hinge joint, but this is oversimplified. The lateral surface of the tibial shelf is smaller than the medial one, which has more sliding space. If the knee was a true hinge, the surfaces would be more symmetrical. The medial shelf glides forward, like a hinge, but the lateral portion pivots. So when the knee flexes it will pivot more on the lateral and glide more medially
Lateral Knee Tracking
Seamlessly extending from the Big Toe/Glute Spiral, this exercise harnesses the spiraling motion's energy. As the spiral takes effect, it guides the knee outward, toward the pinky toe, during the flexion phase. This deliberate knee movement serves to evenly distribute body weight across the foot and its arches while synergistically involving the glutes for enhanced stability
Exercise: Lateral Knee Tracking
This is a natural extension of the big toe/ glute spiral. When the spiral line of the leg engages, the knee will begin to track wider towards the pinky toe rather than second toe next to the big toe. You can play with this phenomena in any pose that uses the big/toe glute spiral and knee flexion.
Try it in Virabhadrasana I. First bend the knee, noticing where it tracks. Then, straighten the leg, engage the big toe toe glute spiral and bend the knee again and notice if it tracks differently. If the knee is not already beginning to track with the toe next to the pinky, keep the big toe/ glute spiral engaged and play with consciously tracking the knee towards the toe next to the pinky. Notice any sense of spaciousness in the knee and any enhancement of stability in the foot and hip
Other great poses with which to experiment: Uttkatasana (chair pose), Setu Band Sarvangasana (bridge pose), Malasana, Goddess pose.
Recap & Reflect
In our quest for a deeper, more nuanced yoga practice, understanding the biomechanics of our feet is indispensable. Your feet are not merely static platforms but intricate systems of arches, muscles, and fascia that collectively contribute to your overall well-being. From the stance to swing phases of walking, each moment is a fine dance between stability and motion, groundedness and flow. The stance phase, often overshadowed by the dynamic swing phase, is actually a cornerstone in understanding human gait. By delving into the intricacies of the heel strike, lateral, transverse, and medial arches, we not only elevate our physical practice but also connect more intimately with our anatomical selves.
So whether you are solidly planted in Tadasana or fluidly moving into Trikonasana, remember that each phase of your foot's movement is a dialogue with your body's innate wisdom. Even your toes play a role, connecting to fascial lines that reach all the way to your tongue. As you explore and experiment, be aware of the opportunities for growth and enlightenment, both on the mat and in the deeper corridors of your self.
Reflective Journal Question: After reading this chapter and experimenting with your own biomechanics, how has your awareness of your feet and their role in your overall practice changed? Reflect on specific instances where understanding the stance and swing phases, arches, and fascia affected your yoga practice or daily movement.
Toe Flicks
Better than Netflix, Toe Flicks are exercises designed to re-pattern the leg-lifting movement, reducing the reliance on hip flexors and promoting effortless leg propulsion by engaging the fascial elasticity and spring-like qualities essential for the swing phase of walking.
Exercise: Toe Flicks
Spring in your step: To test this out you can imitate a key movement of walking, the hip hinge, by simply lifting your thigh up and down parallel to the floor. But of course, this creates tension in the hip flexors very quickly. To create the same movement without tension, try flicking your foot down into the floor, which propels the leg up. Feel the foot land and recoil back up, over and over again. The same lift of the leg is effortless, and it has style and spring! This is a glimpse of what is meant by there being ‘very little change’ in the muscle fibers, and that ‘much of the lengthening required during walking actually occurs in the fascial tissues’, which is to say in the spring.
Walking effortlessly relies on the dual elements of spring and swing, transforming what could be an exhausting activity into a nearly calorie-free motion. As James Earls insightfully mentions in "Born to Walk," "Much debate exists about what makes us 'human'—intelligence, language, cooperation, society, opposable thumbs, and so forth—but the ability to stand upright and move bipedally can be argued to be a precursor to all of them." This is pivotal because bipedalism expends significantly less energy than quadrupedal locomotion, enabling us, from an evolutionary standpoint, to traverse great distances for foraging and hunting without significant energy loss. In essence, walking is not just an anatomical marvel; it's an act of fluid grace that calls for a harmonious balance of letting go and going with the flow. Without this flowing quality, the walk we know would cease to exist.
Releasing Bondage: This offers a clear way to grasp the ancient yogic saying, "Knowledge is bondage." Knowledge can restrict us unless it's harmonized with fluidity and a sense of letting go—essentially, moving in a natural way. While technique and anatomical understanding provide guidance, it's the act of releasing that guidance that truly allows us to 'walk the path.' This principle is pervasive, influencing all dimensions of our practice, from the physical body and breath to mantras and heart-centered work. The manner in which we release our preconceived stride to discover our natural stride mirrors how we relinquish our preconceptions about the heart or breath to find their authentic experience.
Leg Swings
Leg Swings are movements that help explore the swing phase of walking by allowing the leg to swing back and forth while standing on a block to engage the front and back lines around the hip.
Exercise: Leg Swings
We can explore the swing phase macro swinging— stand on a block and let your opposite leg swing back and forth over the floor, flossing the pathways of the front and back lines specifically around the hip. Try to keep the pelvis neutral so that the deep core supports the action.
Recap & Reflect
In exploring the intricate biomechanics of walking, we unearth a profound symphony of movement that transcends mere mechanical understanding. From the stability and grounding offered by the stance phase to the grace and fluidity of the swing phase, each step we take is an invitation to deepen both our anatomical insights and our spiritual connection to the body. Guided by the research of James Earls, who emphasizes the role of fascial tissues in our gait, we're reminded that walking isn't just about muscular or cognitive effort; it's largely a subconscious, holistic act. Whether we're standing in Tadasana or flowing into Trikonasana, this wisdom offers us a roadmap for harmonizing anatomical knowledge with intuitive grace, helping us 'walk the path' more authentically. It reinforces the ancient yogic adage that "Knowledge is bondage," urging us to let go of rigid techniques to discover the natural rhythm that already resides within us.
Reflect: As you ponder the intricacies of the swing phase, authenticity in movement, and the role of fascial tissues, consider how this information aligns or contrasts with your understanding of yogic principles such as 'Knowledge is bondage.' In your daily walking and yoga practice, how can you integrate this biomechanical awareness to deepen not just your physical experience but also your spiritual journey? How can these teachings on the 'art of walking' help you find a balance between anatomical understanding and the need for fluid, intuitive movement in your life? Feel free to explore any 'aha' moments or subtle shifts in awareness you may have experienced while contemplating this material.