There is a simple exercise you can do to correct bunions. Do this for 15 minutes a day, every day, for as long as it takes. Here are three different ways to do it:
Using a block and a yoga strap
Using just a yoga strap
Using a rubber band or hair tie
Over the years, I have recommended this exercise to any of my students who have bunions. I don’t know of anyone who took the practice to heart. People may have tried it once or twice and then not seeing any immediate results, simply gave up.
The Yoga Sutras tell us that:
“Long, uninterrupted, alert practice is the firm foundation for restraining the fluctuations.” Y.S. I.14
The “fluctuations” could be mental or physical, or any other sort of fluctuation you could think of. The sutra does not define what “long” means; it could be however long it takes. It does emphasize the fact that the practice is uninterrupted.
When I embarked on my first yoga teacher training back in the early 2000’s, we learned this simple exercise to cure bunions. There was a woman in my chort who said that she had cured her bunions by practicing those very same exercises that we were taught. She gave her testimony that the exercise worked. That plus doing this foot massage that ends with threading your fingers through your toes. Because of this practice, this person also had the extraordinary abilty of being able to interlace her toes together (without the help of using her hands) as eaily as you or I could interlace our fingers.
Most of us want our problem fixed, but we don’t want to have to work for it.
This past week, my friend Anna - who is a yoga teacher now living in Austria, shared this story in her weekly newsletter. Anna teaches yoga in a hotel. She doesn’t really have regular students each week, although some people return to the same hotel year after year.
She says: “This week, a returning guest at the hotel told me something I will never forget. The last time she had been in class, about 2 years ago, I had apparently given her a couple of exercises to do daily to prevent (or maybe even improve) bunions. She then told me she had done the exercises ever since for 15 minutes a day. The first year, she did not notice any difference, but she kept doing the exercises anyway, but soon after that she claims that her big toe started to straighten out and the discomfort subsided. Sure, I gave her the exercises, but most yoga teachers or physical therapists would have done the same. The difference is that she didn't give up and consistently practiced. That, I will tell you, is what made her bunions improve.”
If you had bunions, how long would you practice this exercise to see if it worked? A week? Two weeks? Would you keep it up for two years? You know, yoga is like orthodontics, it can take years to change your body, especially if the pattern that you are trying to change has been in place for a long time.
In Light on Life, BKS Iyengar says:
“Long uninterrupted practice of asanas and pranayama, done with awareness, makes the foundation firm and brings success. The young, the old, the extremely aged, even the sick and the infirm obtain perfection in yoga by constant practice. Success will come to the person who practices. Success in yoga is not obtained my the mere reading of sacred texts. These are increasingly essential aids but without practice remain simply theoretical. The test of a philosopy is whether it is applicable and even more so applicable now in how you live your life. Even Patanjali (the author of the Yoga Sutras), who was born a spiritual genius, said that yoga is mastered only by long, persistent, nonstop practice, with zeal and determination.”
Further along, he states:
“There is a chance that we can break free from the imprisoning past and individually train ourselves, …, in such a way that the old patterns are not repeated; new things truly can happen and real changes can in fact take place. This dawning clarity is, in essence, the path of yoga.”