Flat footed and knock kneed

Hi John

The busyness of life will see me answering this post with more detail in a little while but for the moment is it possible to tell me how you have tried to fix your imbalance in your legs and hips up until now, what exercises, stretches if any you have done? Or is it that you have the condition and have accepted that your body is the way it is? It seems a lot of your issue has the potential to be fixed by evening out your body – strengthening and stretching in the right places – so knowing if you have done and what you have done up til now will be interesting and may help us.

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hello John

Thanks for the response. The good news is that with intention and mindfulness in the way you use and hold your body in and out of class I do believe that you can make some great changes. I want to give you a couple of things to focus on and an exercise to do.

For a start your knees come together which means the outside of your legs is longer and your inner thighs (or adductors) are shorter. Here is an exercise to start to lengthen your inner thighs. Simply sit on the floor (you can do it on a chair – I do it at my desk sometimes) with the soles of your feet together and then allow gravity to take your knees down toward the floor. The longer you sit like that the better. Try a minute, then 2, 3, 10.

In class Tree Pose (Bikram style) where you bring the heel to the opposite hip does help you get a stretch and twist the knee in the right direction. Keep doing this pose if you can.

If you practice Suptavajrasana or Fixed Firm (if you are not sure you can check out the pose gallery photos Pose Gallery) then please for a while I would like you to do something different.

I would prefer for a while and this could be a few weeks (longer or shorter) that you avoid moving your feet apart to position the heels to the outside of your hips. This is actually further exacerbating your problem. Instead bring your feet, knees and heels together. And simply stretch out your inflexible ankles and find and build on the stability in your knees. Don’t go back, just sit here nice and straight. I warn you: some people feel frustrated that they aren’t doing anything (but not you :cheese:)

You mention that you have:
a) at times had success in feeling your arches develop and
b) watched some of my videos.

So if you have had a look at Great Posture From The Ground Up you will know that you can effect a ton of changes that reflect in much better posture. It talks about lifting up through the ankle which I hope over time will be easier with the ideas I have given you. It also talks about walking. The use of the outside of the foot and finishing with the big toe is great for you. I would also like you to be more aware of how you may settle into your standing leg when you balance on one leg. Lift up through your hips as well.

Many people do shift their feet to the outside (fan them outward) to find easier balance. Just notice this and try to minimize the action. Over time I would like you to notice how other changes in your body change the degree of difficulty to keep your standing foot in alignment.

There may be other modifications that you need to make with your poses. You may not know what they are at the moment. I could probably preempt some modifications but rather than that, start to become aware of the poses where you feel you are more prone to drop the arch, or for your knees to collapse inward or where the ill-effects are exacerbated. Come back and we can tackle them one by one. I think it would be more useful to create the awareness (largely because many things will fix themselves because of your heightened mindfulness to your form).

Namaste
Gabrielle 🙂

Hello Gabrielle

I think this may be the right place to ask my own question. Like I mentioned before, I have learnt about everything I know from your Master class, cd and this forum. There are no Bikram/hot yoga studios where I live in South America. I think I am doing very well and I am enjoying the yoga very much. My only problem seems to be that I don’t make any progress in the first part of awkward pose. My feet are also quite flat, my knees tend to come together and I can’t go down very much without lifting my heels. I know I am not supposed to lift my heels, so I don’t go down any further.I also have to mention that I usually like to walk on tiptoes. Yoga really helped me to keep my feet down on the floor.
First I thought that I will have to be patient, gradually my legs would be coming down with my heels on the floor. But..it seems that I am still at exactly the same point where I was when I started about 8 months ago! I did the exercises you mentioned (lengthening the muscles of my inner thighs) and I can do them well, but still it doesn’t seem to help me to come down more.
The only way I can come down a bit more -outside the yoga room- is by having my hands on a table and then bend my knees. In that way I can keep my feet flat on the floor when coming down. Then I finally also feel my muscles there! In the yoga room, I never feel my muscles doing anything in this first part of the pose, because I can’t come down enough without lifting my heels from the floor.

Sorry for the long introduction, just hope I am clear enough. My questions:
-Should I just continue like this and be patient?
-Could I not lift my heels from the floor a little bit? It gives me the feeling that at least I am using the muscles that I am supposed to use, or am I wrong?
-Do you have any other recommendations?

I want to mention that I can easily go deeper for example in eagle pose (when there is some pressure, I can go down. Same when using the table or wearing shoes with a small heel, then I don’t have any problem.)

And for the rest: thanks so much again for your wonderful books and information!

Lisa

Hi Gabrielle,

I will definitely try to even concentrate more on arching my spine and sticking my bottom out. I forgot to mention that when I sometimes (but I promise I won’t do it again!) came down lifting my tiptoes off the floor, I would roll part of my towel as a support under my heels. I was really having my weight in my heels but just a bit (an inch?) higher than normally. I remembered this habit from doing fitness: squatting through your knees with your heels on the floor. When impossible, you would put something under your heels. Like this I can do the exercise very well, I finally started feeling my leg muscles and my foot position would at least be right. But I understand that this is not the right way.

I will try this again and try to be not too impatient. I got your message!
Thanks so much for your reply.

Lisa

Hi Gabrielle,
Yeah thanks for your lively image, that really helped me to stop that!! I am always trying to be very conscious of my problem. When I do Ardha Chandrasana, I always lift my toes off the floor (both when going to the sides and also with the backbend). Just to avoid that I have my weight in my toes and to be sure that it is in my heels. The thing is, whenever I try to do awkward pose outside of the yoga room wearing normal shoes, I am able to do it fine, even with my weight in my heels because my heels are probably a couple of millimeters higher than my toes. I can only go down 10 cm now in the yoga room, after that my knees go in an feet fan outside, then my heels want to lift…
According to my mom I was diagnosed with achilles tendons that are too short when I was a child. I also had tendonitis in the achilles tendons several times. On the other hand: my achilles tendons are not too short to keep my feet flat on the floor, so I will keep on trying to stretch them. I also don’t keep my heels together when they ask to keep toes and heels together, because of my fanning feet. I read that in your Masterclass and I am convinced that it is better for me to have a small space between my heels when my toes are together, the alignment of my knees is so much better that way. So I am not 100% sure where the problem comes from: achilles tendons, pronation, both? I will be patient though and keep you up-to-date. I already said it 10 times, but want to thank you again because as a ‘home yogini’ without a studio nearby, you and your book are my teachers!

Hi Gabrielle,
Thank you for asking!
They are at least behaving better. I did 3-4 times a week Bikram yoga and started adding twice a week 1 hour of hatha yoga (which I never did before). With the help of youtube and some other websites and a class that I downloaded I started doing it. To me, it seems that especially downward dog and frog pose helped me to bring my feet to the floor.It is always difficult to say what helped me: just time or also these other poses, I agree. But I really think I had some benefit from these poses as well.
It means that I can keep my feet on the floor, get a bit deeper, but my back is coming forward a lot, although I try to curve it as much as possible. Also my feet keep on fanning outwards, that definitely not seems to improve. My knees also still come inwards but that is easier to resist/correct than the fanning feet. I am nearly always doing yoga with my partner who can do this pose easily and can keep his back completely up. Should I also be trying that -which means that I won’t get as deep- or should I just concentrate on getting deeper and keep on curving my back? I never see other ‘bodies’ in the same poses and can just compare with him or the people in your book. I get down with my back quite a bit more than the lady on page 94 of your master class and my thighs are still not in a horizontal position, my shoulders are just slightly higher than my hips! Any hope for me? Or should I just be patient?

I am doing a 14-day challenge at home now, just to see how different that is from 3-4 times a week and I am improving a lot faster and my mind is more quiet as well. I like it! I can stretch out both legs and lock both knees in standing head to knee, balance for 3 seconds in toe stand an I even start to like Camel pose and regret coming out of it. I mention this because I think another thing really helped me to keep my heels on the floor, which I discovered when doing yoga every day. With ‘standing head to knee’ and the ‘sitting head to knee’ I kept on pressing my toes into my hands to release the uncomfortable pressure on my heels (achilles tendons?). I try to release my heels now and pull more on my toes and still find it difficult to push my heels away.

I may have the chance to go to a real studio in a couple of weeks. But unless you are coming a couple of times, my experience is that the teachers don’t seem to correct ‘drop in’ students a lot, whereas I like to be corrected as much as possible!

I’m curious to know how John is doing?