Several styles of yoga are popular in the United States, including Ashtanga, Vinyasa, Iyengar, Anusara, Kundalini and others. Those that include a vigorous sequence of linked poses called the Sun Salutation require stepping or jumping back and landing on the pads of the toes. This action can create foot pain. You can reduce and eliminate foot pain, including changing the style of yoga practice you currently do.
Transitional Movements Can Create Foot Pain
An active sun salutation requires jumping back into a low pushup position in Four-Limbed Staff pose or Chaturanga Dandasana. From there, you transition from being on the pads of the toes to rolling over your toes, flattening the feet so only the tops of the feet touch the floor. These two transitions create the most obvious foot pain in most people. The shoes you wear much of the day constrict your feet and make you experience foot pain during yoga practice because you now ask your natural arches to bear the weight of your body instead of your shoes. Ashtanga, Vinyasa and many of the Power Yoga styles include the Sun Salutation. Iyengar and Kundalini do not.
Heel Lifts Strengthen Muscles of Arch
To help reduce foot pain, you can do specific exercises to bring back the elasticity in the plantar fascia muscles of the sole of the foot that forms the arch bed.
For example, stand barefooted with your feet hip-width distance apart. Keeping the head and chest tall with lower abs drawn in toward the spine, lift both heels, contracting the muscles of the legs. Pause before lowering your heels to the floor. Do 10 to 20 times daily. This helps to strengthen the plantar fascia and give you a steadier gait.
Repair Feet After High Heels
Especially if you wear high heels at work, you shorten the muscles at the back of the leg, including the Achilles' tendon, hamstrings of the back of the thigh and calf muscles. At the same time, you force your arch to remain in a fixed and inflexible shape for hours. In some cases, women's shoes also crowd the toes, forcing the big and second toe to overlap. You can rebuild the smaller muscles of the toes. Place several large marbles on the floor. Sitting in a chair, use the right foot to pick up one marble at a time and move it the left. Move several marbles before repeating with the left foot.
Build Your Arches
Everyone has a different arch bed and natural stance. If you are flat-footed, it is likely your yoga teacher will encourage you to fan the toes to create an artificial arch and then set your toes down, trying to keep that arch. The arch beds of your bare feet become your "shoes" in yoga. If you are flat-footed, help build an arch by setting a small clean towel on the floor. Sit in a chair and place your bare foot at the bottom edge of the towel and use your toes to roll up the towel. Repeat on the left side. You will immediately feel all the muscles in your feet and toes and the plantar fascia working as you do this.
Consider Iyengar, Kundalini Yoga
Foot pain can occur in yoga practice if you are flat-footed or stiff in the medial arch or you are unable to jump back in Chaturanga Dandasana without jamming your toes. Work individually with a yoga teacher if that is the case, as you will need to learn to engage the lower abs to float back lightly. You can also just step back in Chaturanga to prevent creating pain until you master the "jump back."
Or, you might consider Iyengar yoga which emphasizes precise alignment using props including blocks, straps, rope wall and folding chair to correct muscular imbalances in the body. Kundalini yoga is not based on Vinyasa or movements from one yoga posture to another, but it can include advanced breath work, stating mantras and specific postures that are held one at a time for 11 minutes or longer.
