The majority of the daily tasks we complete are done while wearing shoes. Not one of them is yoga. While it’s common knowledge that we shouldn’t practise yoga while wearing shoes, many of us are unaware of the reasoning behind it.
It’s polite to leave your shoes at the entrance while entering a yoga studio. In other words, avoid wearing shoes when you enter a yoga studio. Who wants to cope with outside grime and mud while attempting to relax by wearing their shoes inside?
Advantages of Practicing Yoga Barefoot
- Increase in Balance
In our yoga practise, our feet play a significant part. Yoga poses need for us to have our feet firmly planted on the ground, especially in classes featuring a lot of standing poses, like Ashtanga yoga. The best way to do this is barefoot because it’s better and simpler to establish steady and balanced contact with the ground.
Additionally, it is desirable to uniformly distribute the weight across the soles of the feet when practising standing postures. This denotes that the heel and toes bear equivalent weight. The toes may need to be slightly gripped or moved in a way that is impossible to achieve when wearing shoes or socks for this even distribution of weight.
To provide stability and balance and prevent potential accidents, an even distribution of weight is required. Incorrect foot alignment can, in fact, result in incorrect alignment throughout the body, which might eventually cause damage.
- Strengthening The Feet and Massaging
Stretching, flexing, and strengthening the muscles in our foot are all possible during yoga practise.
The little muscles in the foot do work hard to aid in balance while we are barefoot. Because humans cannot perform this action while wearing shoes, these little muscles become dormant during the day. So even the tiniest muscles in our feet can benefit from a workout during a yoga session. You don’t want a single group of muscles to support your entire body weight, so just be sure to distribute the weight equally.
Our feet also contain a vast network of nerve endings. The nerve endings in the soles of your feet are stimulated when you touch the dirt with bare feet. Your brain receives messages from the nerve endings, which also allow your body to maintain optimal balance and joint position. It’s also claimed that going barefoot will lessen the sole inflammation. Additionally, it offers free toe stretching and reflexology.
- Feeling Grounded
Yoga challenges us to acknowledge our physical ties to the earth. One of the things that helps differentiate yoga from gym workouts is this sense of being grounded.
We might not be used to the concept of grounding, which requires a mental adjustment. Our daily schedules can occasionally be incredibly hectic and stressful, requiring a lot of running around. Thus, in a yoga class, this feeling of being grounded may have a greater psychological impact on us as we step upon our mat and the bare soles of our feet connect to the earth below.
We are actually connecting to something far bigger than ourselves when we connect to the ground and the floor below.
Some instructors may instruct their students to believe they are standing on roots that begin at the bottoms of their feet and reach deep into the earth. Anyone who enjoys gardening will understand how crucial it is to have robust and healthy roots.
So, we occasionally feel unanchored when life looks hectic and issues pile up. Thus, when practising yoga barefoot on the mat, we have the opportunity to take a minute to breathe and try to connect to our strong roots that extend through the ground below.
- Helps the Teacher See What You’re Doing and Adjust Accordingly
Yoga instructors typically use a number of methods to teach individual poses or a series of poses. The most typical method is a mix of:
- Pose demonstrations
- Verbally describing the poses and any adjustments that might be necessary for the pupils
- providing manual adjustments.
- The teacher must be able to clearly see what the student is doing for the second and third selections.
The frequent verbal cue is:
Ground the big toe: By uniformly distributing weight and pressure along the leg and foot in standing positions, this cue helps prevent injuries, particularly to the ankle region. To facilitate this tiny adjustment, the teacher may occasionally put her hands on the kids’ feet.
- Flow of energy
Yoga is more than just learning the poses; it’s a fusion of the body, soul, and mind with the universe and the earth.
Free electrons make up the surface of our planet. Our bare feet absorb the electrons from the earth when we touch it, and these electrons then interact with the free radicals in our bodies. As a result, the body’s free radicals are subdued, putting out the fire that has been raging inside of us. People frequently report feeling energised while going barefoot for long periods of time.
- Treats several diseases
The advantages of practising yoga barefoot extend beyond merely the health of our feet. It has been discovered that barefoot yoga strengthens your immune system, stimulates metabolism, eases headaches, and relieves muscle discomfort. It also aids females with PMS and other menstrual problems. In addition to energising the body, connecting with the ground also has a relaxing impact.
People with knee problems and injuries benefit from barefoot yoga as well. Strengthening the foot is crucial since the majority of leg problems, particularly knee problems, result from too much strain on the legs. Since the pressure builds up in the knees from the feet, barefoot yoga is beneficial for knee problems. Barefoot yoga is another method for treating varicose veins.
CONCLUSION:
Our shoe-dependent culture is unaware that taking some time to walk around without shoes is pretty healthy for you. After all, we are protecting our feet from all the unpleasant and harmful things they might encounter while strolling on this Earth of ours.
While doing Yoga, cumbersome, rigid shoes might significantly impact your standing postures. Conversely, socks are overly slick and will hinder your ability to do balance postures.
The majority of yogis would concur that going barefoot is a typical practice.
Yoga practised barefoot encourages good posture and strengthens even the tiniest muscles in the feet.
Mr. Harish Singh Pawali aka Hari Pawali
Owner and Founder of Shree Hari Yoga School
