If there’s one part of the body that yoga seems to forget about, it’s the toes.

Aside from pointing them or curling them, we don’t do much with them. It’s almost like they’re optional appendages to the human body.

You can change that in under a minute, in what you’re waiting for your yoga class to begin.

 

 

 

1. Sit down and bring your heels together. Spread out the toes as pictured.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Starting with your pinky toes, manually entwine each toe. Go up until your toes look like they’re “zipped up” as in the picture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Another angle, in case the previous image didn’t sufficiently clarify this. Stay for 5-10 slow breaths, release, and then zip up the toes again, starting with the opposite pinky at the bottom, and working your way up to the big toes, just as before.

 

 

Benefits: It keeps you from taking your yoga practice too seriously. Also, it stretches the muscles, ligaments and fascia between the toes. Especially useful if you’re a slave to toe-squeezing fashion.

Avoid if: The only scenario I can think of for avoiding this is if your toes are so unaccustomed to stretching that they cramp up. Also, if you are so ticklish that you annoy the living daylights out of your yoga classmates. If so, try this at home instead.

Final thoughts: Mind you, there are other parts of the body that yoga doesn’t get around to, but they belong in an episode of a reality-TV series that I’m pitching to FOX right now, called “Yogis Behaving Badly.” (Just kidding. But don’t you think it’d have that this-is-so-bad-I-have-to-watch-it quality that drives networks’ ratings?)

 

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Ed: Bryonie Wise