Writer’s Block: Bit of the Ol’ Buyer’s Remorse

For the last few months, a certain ad in the back of some magazines I read keeps catching my eye.

Yoga Toes. They claim to strengthen your foot muscles, improve blood circulation, relieve foot problems, etc etc. Every time I looked at the ad, I would shudder at the picture and curl my toes up defensively.

And yet, I was a little bit intrigued. Do these toe torture devices really do what they claim to do? I love wearing shoes that I know aren’t very friendly to my feet, so maybe my toes were really in desperate need of being stretched and stuffed into these things.

The other day, on a messageboard I read every now and then, someone mentioned buying Yoga Toes and was eager to try them out. Which pushed the idea back into the front of my mind.

So curiosity won out. I had to try it. But I didn’t want to spend $50 on these things without first having a trial run at toe torture and seeing how my feet felt. So I remembered that I already owned something that did the exact same thing that Yoga Toes and the other brands like it do–those gel toe spacers that you’re supposed to use for pedicures. I’d gotten a set years ago as part of a nail kit I received from someone, but I never used them because they really do resemble toe torture devices. And I don’t like wearing nail polish on my hands or feet (because I have a tendency to keep picking at the polish bit by bit as soon as it’s put on until I’ve gotten it all off), so I had no reason to ever use them.

But maybe my feet really, really needed these Yoga Toe-esque things shoved between them? So a couple nights ago I tried it. I stuffed my toes between the little pieces, stretching them out to contortions they’ve never been forced into. Only problem was, neither of my pinky toes would go into the thing. Not easily anyway. I suppose I could have forced them to, but I was afraid that my pinky toe would get stuck sticking out at a weird angle. So I just kind of let my pinky toes rest against the toe next to them, pushed out only slightly because all of my other toes were all stretched apart.

I had read that you’re supposed to start out slowly, just ten minutes to let your feet get used to it. Ten minutes later, my toes were starting to go numb and looked a bit purple. I don’t know about relaxed, but my toes certainly felt relieved when I took the torture devices off.

So I don’t have to feel guilty since I didn’t buy anything, but I did feel pretty silly during my experiment.