Hello. I am a teacher here in the Truckee area, and I couldn't help but notice your post as I have suffered from this same malady in the past as a bicycle racer. What I have traced it to in many cases, not just my own, was really in the end a hip and back issue. Specifically, a problem where an overabundance of nerve activation in the back, hips and out parts of the thighs caused this problem in my foot. Having had last year a surgery and being in bed for many months in recovery, I noticed it start to re-appear before I was able to re-engage in my yoga practice again.

Unfortunately, I have noticed that many 'yoga' classes out in the regular world (I lived in an ashram for three years) tends to focus much more on effort than on balanced movements (front/back/side to side) with a rest interval between in savasana. What many so-called 'styles' of yoga do is put one in downward dog or child's pose as a rest instead.

When in savasana properly the parasympathetic nervous system (the rest/digest system) is activated, relaxing the muscles of the body. In the Sivananda tradition I was trained in, we do this following each asana as well as at the beginning and the end for lengthier periods.

What I have found is that by teaching yoga with balanced movements in mind as I described above, one can come to know one's proprioceptive awareness relating to the parasympathetic nervous system in tandem.

Having said all this, this basically makes "workout yoga" as I like to call it, unsuitable for many people with neuromuscular issues like the ones Bill and Indigo have described. Better to go with a more balanced yoga practice.

Now if I can be much more muscularly specific, it's coming from the back (how it got there doesn't matter so much, unless it's als not been addressed). Once it gets into the back the neuromuscular tightening heads up and down the body in a specific and consistent pattern. Many of these muscles you can look up in Wikipedia or other places, so try to look at it closely and see where the problem lay. I do personal consultations in my Yoga business for exactly this purpose, so I have seen many people with simiilar issues.

So, from the low back- going down the body- it gets into the piriformis/gluteus maximus, then into the large groups of muscles going down the thighs- vastus lateralus and the illiotibial band. When these tighten, so do the opposite muscles on the hamstrings- mainly the large hammy on the inside of the thigh (also why many people have knee pain when sitting cross-legged). Couple this with the sartorius muscle- which manages to be in both tight places at once- both in the hip and at the knee, on the inside, and slightly underneath. To see this muscle in action- lock the knee and place your weight almost on one knee entirely, with that same hip kind of sticking out. Sometimes people do this while waiting for someone, for example. The muscle that cuts across the quadricep on the inside, making the inside quad look like a little bump near the knee is the sartorius.

Continuing, the same principle of tightness goes then into the shins, as they consistute the opposing muscle group to the tight inside hammy and sartorius, just further down the kinesthetic chain. What is causing all this is relative inflexibility. As each joint becomes less flexible- starting in the back, the effect cascades down (and up, as I said earlier) causing the muscles on either end of the movement chain to make for the loss of flexibility in that area. So now the shins become tight. This is where shin splints happen- the muscle fascia become so tight that the part attaching to the bones begins to slowly break off parts of the shin bone. Obviously, this can lead to top of the foot problems, or problems with the big toe, which is the end of the neuromuscular chain in the foot. So, putting oneself in a balancing situation on one leg, being so neuromuscularly imbalanced is the general cause for both Bill and Indigo.

You can see that bending the knee, as described by Bill alleviates this problem by shortening the hamstring/sartorius chain and working around the problem, temporarily, yet contributes to the overly sympathetic (the Go part of the nervous system) outside leg muscles, hips, and back and so in the end might relieve pain, it rather contributes to the imbalanced nervous action, and so one will have to eventually bend the knee more and more to achieve the same pain-relieving effect. Or begin to balance yourself muscularly and in your practice.

My own yoga practice saves me from this, as I am exploring the vast realm of parasympathetic experience available to me. Yoga must contain three basic things- awareness, breath, and movement. If you are missing one of them (and usually this is awareness, the fundamental component) then it's not Yoga, it's exercise. Context is everything. Context lies above awareness in importance and something which is seriously missing in Yoga practice today. Physical benefits are a mere side effect of real Yoga practice, not it's aim.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Om,
DurgaDas
Regis Chapman
Silent Motion Yoga
www.silentmotion.org (under construction)