If you are asked, “Where do you stand?”, then often it is a question about your opinion or view on a particular issue. However, a more literal interpretation would be to question about where you are standing in space. Do you know where you are standing? It seems like such an obvious answer, but the fact of the matter is that most people have poor kinesthetic awareness and are unconscious of their habitual standing posture…  Most people do not know which of their feet turns out more than the other; which heel hits the ground harder than the other; or which toes lift up more than the other when standing and walking. Modern lifestyle, in which most people wear shoes primarily for comfort and fashion, tends to desensitize our feet.

Furthermore, our walking surfaces are designed to be flat, smooth surfaces to help make life easier. Since most modern people rarely walk barefooted outside on uneven, moveable ground, their toes and feet get used to walking during their day without much sensitivity or focused awareness. So, if you ask someone where are they are standing—how their feet are aligned and touching the floor—generally they will not be able to accurately answer you since they have never been taught to cultivate sensitive awareness in their toes and feet.

Knowing exactly where you are standing, not only reflects heightened mind-body awareness, it gives you the opportunity of freely choosing how  and which way you want to stand both in that moment and in your life. In the Bowspring method, we choose to stand with the paws, our forefeet, touching the floor with great sensitivity. All of our toe pads and mounds on each foot consciously touch the Earth with equal pressure. The tops of the feet are softly curved and the center of the paws are hollowed up away from the floor with the heels light. In this alignment, the feet can Dig and Drag – push forward and down, and pull back and up – so that the fascia on all sides of the legs is uniformly toned up into the hips and the torso. By knowing where and how we are standing, we can choose to align our feet to help give up our dynamic posture maximum lightness and springy power. To can gain our full potential to extend our spine and our core as fully as possible while we are standing starts with knowing how our feet aligned while we are standing.