Barefoot Walking: Free Your Feet to Minimize Impact, Maximize Efficiency, and Discover the Pleasure of Getting in Touch with the Earth
432
Barefoot Walking: Free Your Feet to Minimize Impact, Maximize Efficiency, and Discover the Pleasure of Getting in Touch with the Earth
432eBook
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Overview
As the thousands of people who have fallen in love with barefoot running already know, shedding your shoes is good for the body and the soul. Barefoot Walking shows all readers, no matter their fitness level, how to take command of their physical and spiritual well-being through this simple and easy practice, even if they are daunted by sore feet, achy joints, injury, illness, or feeling out of shape. This book contains special material for children, pregnant women, and seniors, and shows anyone how this gentle, natural activity can literally transform one's life, restoring health, vitality, strength, and balance, and improving focus, mood, memory, and more. Full of tips and tools for going bare, this is the essential handbook for people who want to move their body, connect with the earth, and feel physically and psychologically more alive.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780307985927 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Harmony/Rodale |
| Publication date: | 03/26/2013 |
| Sold by: | Random House |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 432 |
| Sales rank: | 1,028,005 |
| File size: | 9 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
chapter 1
Walk Your Way to Health and Happiness
I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.
—John Muir
No matter what, we always return to barefoot walking.
At our barefoot running clinics, people often ask, “What do I do if I’m not ready to start running?” or “What if I hate running?” Or they would tell us they were too weak, too old, or too heavy. For them, who were the vast majority, we would prescribe barefoot walking. It’s an activity nearly everyone can do, and a kind and gentle way to exercise.
It’s something kids can do to grow their feet and limbs strong. It’s something seniors can do to roll back the clock, gaining balance, strength, flexibility, and even greater bone density. And it’s something all of us can do, even with the most hectic of schedules, to get or stay in shape and quiet our minds in the process.
Walking barefoot each sunrise and sunset is where we do our best brainstorming for our books. It’s where we swap ideas, feel things out, and have our greatest aha moments. You could call our barefoot walking time our “lab time” or our “creative time.”
It’s like a substitute for antianxiety medication without the side effects. Even today, if we start to get wound up, we head outside for a few minutes of barefoot walking or sitting on the ground. Both calm us and refresh us creatively.
Walking barefoot could be the deep breath we all need during stressful times. And for those seeking a spiritual experience, barefoot walking truly is the greatest exercise on earth.
It’s hard to focus on your spiritual growth when your house (your body) is falling apart and your mind is wrapped up in thought. Barefoot walking helps your spiritual path, no matter what your religion, by helping you build a stronger foundation for your home and quiet the chatter. When you walk barefoot, you can’t help but clear your mind and focus merely on your footsteps, or on the ground beneath your feet.
In essence, though designed to get us from point A to point B, barefoot walking is a powerful form of meditation or prayer, whether we intend it to be that way or not.
You’ll gain a greater connection to your beliefs, to the earth, and to your higher power, whatever or whoever that is for you, with each and every step. You’ll clear your mind and have time to breathe, to think, and to pray.
Quite simply, barefoot walking is our birthright. It’s something each of us was born to do and can do, and it has some dramatic health benefits. And for us personally, it was our path to healing—Michael from an accident in 2006, Jessica from a foot injury in 2010, and both of us from a book tour that left us exhausted in every sense.
It was only by going barefoot and going back to basics, back to walking, that we began to heal.
One Foot in Front of the Other
You aren’t likely to set any records for long-distance walking or to push your body into being a superstar athlete with barefoot walking. Though we will set modest goals together, when they are combined these small, incremental changes will be life-changing.
Our goal is to help you turn yourself into a healthy, happy human being. It’s about helping you overcome your own challenges and grow, both physically and mentally.
“Ah, but isn’t barefoot walking a strange way to grow?” you ask. “After all, you’re just putting one foot in front of the other, right?”
Well, actually, that’s the point. For when you put one foot in front of the other and can feel what’s going on beneath your feet, something special happens. It’s as if you’ve flipped the on switch for your body, which begins to wake up and sense what’s going on.
When you go barefoot and commit to a practice, you can’t help but get better. Your joints heal, your muscles grow stronger, you stand taller and with better posture, your blood sugar seems to be better regulated, your body’s inflammation subsides, and overall you feel much younger. And that’s just a few of the physical aspects.
Changes on the metaphysical level are even more dramatic. Your mind begins to quiet. In a world where we’re going 24/7, being bombarded with texts, tweets, emails, and advertisements from all directions, and have more stressors and commitments than ever before, the toll on our minds is catastrophic. So if we can quiet the mind, we’ve gone a long way toward returning to health. For you can’t have a healthy body without a healthy mind.
It all begins with the mind. Your inside journey begins with a single step. When you go barefoot and feel the ground, you begin to expand your inner awareness. And that’s where the real fun begins.
Perhaps you’ve come to this book with a desire to heal, overcome injury, or cope with a long-lasting condition that’s left you with poor health. Barefoot walking is a holistic, gentle way to turn your body, and therefore your health, back on. If you think of humans as being like giant trees, our health begins with our roots. For us, our “roots” are our feet.
Start to strengthen and heal the feet, and you strengthen your roots. It’s a very simple process too. We start with short exercises and even shorter strolls. The great news is it can be done anywhere, especially at your favorite places. For instance, head to your neighborhood park or a local arboretum or botanical garden. Who knew you could heal and get in shape just by looking at the beauty all around you?
As you get into barefoot walking, you will feel a revitalized sense of connection with nature. You may have heard the term nature deficit disorder. Whether you live in the cities, the suburbs, or even the country, unless you’re working on a farm, chances are you’ve become disconnected from your natural environment.
This disconnect is harmful because it can leave you lost, confused, and unsure of who you are, because since the beginning of time we came from the earth, lived on the earth, and worked as one with the earth.
Now that we’re driving cars, living in multistory buildings, and walking on linoleum floors, we’re completely disconnected from where we came. But as you begin to feel the earth beneath your feet, you begin to reestablish that connection, to plug back into the ground, and to renew your birthright of perfect health and joy.
We really were meant to dance with nature, play outdoors, and wander in the woods. It’s what’s healed us and sustained us for millions of years, and it’s still there, beckoning us, calling us.
Build a New Body
When Michael got into barefoot walking, he was broken, healing from a near-death accident and living with a new titanium femur and hip. He went from one overuse injury to the next. Only by feeling the ground was he able to heal.
Others of you have similar broken bodies. Maybe you’re overweight or obese, or struggling with an autoimmune disease or diabetes. Maybe your joints ache. Your back hurts. You suffer from migraines. Perhaps that pain in your side is a broken relationship, an ailing parent for whom you provide daily care, a cruel boss, or a devastating loss of a friend or partner—an unfulfilled life, or broken dreams.
No matter what baggage you are carrying mentally and physically, barefoot walking may help you cope and recover.
The most important point is that we are not our bodies. Our bodies are merely the shells that house the soul. No matter what your body is like, it’s yours just for this lifetime. Then your body passes on, eventually returning to the earth (hmm, there’s that earth theme again).
If you believe in your mind that you can change your body, you can. Your body is a gift. Cherish it and treat it as best you can.
Think of your body like an expensive car—perhaps a true collector’s item, or maybe the car you’ve dreamed about your whole life. Chances are you wouldn’t buy the car and suddenly pack it with trash, dent the heck out of it, or fill it with bad gasoline.
On the contrary, you’d likely do your best to treat it well, give it the high-octane fuel it needs and the maintenance it deserves, and keep it sparkly clean.
Well, that’s what we need to do with our bodies too. Treat your body well, and it’ll treat you well. Where the analogy with the car stops is that we can regenerate our bodies. Nearly every cell in our bodies is replaced every three to five years. You don’t have the same skin cells you had even yesterday, or the same bone cells you had just a few years ago. This means you can truly transform your body into whatever you desire it to be.
You can decide what type of new body you would like. When we first started our journeys, we wanted bodies that no longer felt cramped from being stuffed in a car or seated in front of a computer for too long. What are you looking for?
Start building your new body by putting your two bare feet on the ground. It’s as if you’re plugging into a computer and downloading instructions for perfect health. For when you feel the ground, you gain awareness, and with each step you are working toward a new and improved you.
Love your body, and it will love you. It’s so simple.
Consider the discipline or practice of barefoot walking to be like a daily dose of love. You get up, you go for a walk, and you send love to your body. Each day as you walk, you’re filling it with more love and more love—and reshaping it in more ways than one.
When you commit to a daily routine, either walking or stretching (to promote your walk), you’re giving yourself permission to heal, permission to become healthy again.
No matter how far gone your health is, no matter how weak or tired you are feeling, you can make this change. All it takes is believing you can change and focusing on one gentle barefoot step at a time.
As you prepare to make this change, don’t focus on any negatives. Instead, see yourself walking daily. Feel the joy of connecting with the earth. Imagine the stillness and peace of mind of focusing on your breath and on the beauty all around you. And watch it come into being. The path will clear ahead.
Feel the Earth, Free Your Spirit
When you’re plugged into the earth, you’re connecting with something greater than yourself. You go from a single soul of one to a community of everyone (the community of humanity). You go from an uprooted tree to one plugged into the soil with far-reaching roots connecting with a community of other trees. When you go barefoot, you’re plugging back into the soil, back into the earth, and back into our global community. As Henry David Thoreau said, “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”
When you feel the earth, you can’t help but see the world in a more spiritual way, because even little things such as leaves, bark, pebbles, or clouds become so much bigger and clearer. In essence, by going barefoot, it’s as if you’re plugging back into Source—whatever that spiritual connection means to you—because you’re going back to the ground from which we came.
How can it not be spiritual when we’re feeling the beauty beneath our feet and suddenly we’re looking in childlike awe and joy at the world around us? We see the beauty of a flower again, the grandeur of the tree, the amazing wonder of the feeling of the dirt beneath our feet. We begin to see the grand design of things and how we are part of that design.
To us, there’s nothing more spiritual than plugging back into where we came from. Physically, that begins by going barefoot. Mentally, that begins with quieting our minds. And spiritually, that begins with the practice of letting go, surrendering, and just being.
For, as the expression goes, we are human be-ings. Our job is to let go, to be, to learn, to grow, and to see what happens. We can have this fully human existence, be spiritual beings having a human experience, only when we let go and be in the moment. And when you are fully barefoot, when your naked feet meet the earth (our shrine, our temple), in an instant you are present.
And what a beautiful instant that is!
Awareness begins with your first barefoot steps, awareness of the ground, awareness of your mind, and awareness of that still, small, yet growing voice inside calling you forward. That’s your soul, your higher self, reawakened by the ground beneath your feet. By going barefoot, you step through the doorway and into the temple of the great outdoors.
2
Why Barefoot Is Best
Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee.
—Job 12:8
Monday, June 6, 2011, is a day we’ll never forget. After holding a weekend retreat at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in the Berkshires, I rushed to New York City for a whirlwind day of meetings with the top publishers in the world.
Our literary agent, Stephanie, had miraculously planned ten back-to-back meetings in one day. To make each meeting on time, we’d have to walk at top speed from one corporate office to the next. But she’d mapped it out well and clocked each leg, so we were well prepared for the challenge.
Tromping through Manhattan to our first meeting, however, Stephanie’s feet began to ache. She wasn’t wearing anything overstated or terribly disfiguring on her feet, no stilettos or pointy-toed shoes. Instead, she’d donned a tasteful open-toed dress sandal, quite appropriate for late spring meetings with execs, though perhaps a tiny bit too narrow in the toe box.
But as we walked briskly down the city streets and Stephanie watched me going barefoot, she proudly declared, “Oh, what the heck!” and stripped off her shoes.
And her feet came back to life.
First her feet took to springing, then bouncing, and finally even bounding at times. Fortunately, Stephanie had read our first book, Barefoot Running, and she is also a burgeoning yogi, so she was already well practiced in barefoot movement. Even so, she was astounded by how much better her feet were feeling walking barefoot. We felt like kids, playing along the streets of New York. She was giddy with delight.
Into meeting after meeting, both Stephanie and I made our entrance barefoot. It became the topic of conversation among department VPs and senior editors, some of the nicest yet toughest individuals in the city. These were often no-nonsense New Yorkers with strong ideas, traditionally not quick to change. And yet when Stephanie showed up barefoot, they soon found themselves following suit and delightfully stripped off their shoes. It was contagious.
Table of Contents
Preface The Sakyong xiii
Foreword Dr. Mercola xv
Introduction 1
A Healthy Dose of Vitamin G 1
Prescription Earth 4
Great Healers Didn't Wear Shoes 5
Life-Altering Benefits of Barefoot Walking 7
Your Step-by-Step Walking Guide 9
Part I Why on Earth Would You Want to Walk Barefoot? 11
1 "Walk Your Way to Health and Happiness 13
One Foot in Front of the Other 14
Build a New Body 16
Feel the Earth, Free Your Spirit 18
2 Why Barefoot Is Best 19
Free Shoes for Everyone 20
A Lighter Step 21
Donald Duck Knew Best 26
Save Your Children's Feet! 32
Save Grandma's Hips! 35
Help Our Returning Troops 36
Benefits of Barefoot Walking 36
Challenges of Barefoot Walking 43
3 Barefoot Walking: The New Fountain of Youth 46
Antiaging Benefits of Walking Barefoot 47
Barefoot Brainpower 50
Nature's Viagra 58
4 Vitamin G: The Lost Supplement 59
An Inch of Rubber Away from Nirvana 60
Nature's Drugstore 62
Getting in Sync 63
The Physics of Getting Grounded 63
Spiritual Grounding 69
Dirt-It Does a Body Good 73
5 Discover Your True Nature 79
Barefoot Is Human 82
Dance in the Woods 84
Nature Play 84
Bare Your Soles 88
6 Excuses Be Gone! 93
Love over Fear 94
Excuse #1 That Looks Painful 94
Excuse #2 I Could Step on Something Sharp 95
Excuse #3 I Have Flat Feet (or High Arches) 96
Excuse #4 My Feet Are Really Sensitive 97
Excuse #5 My Feet Will Become Ugly 98
Excuse #6 It Hurts When I Land on My Heels 98
Excuse #7 The Ground Is Too Cold 99
Excuse #8 It's Too Hot Outside 100
Excuse #9 I'm a Heavy Pronator (or Need Extra Support) 101
Excuse #10 I'm Too Old to Try Going Barefoot 101
Excuse #11 I'm Too Heavy 102
Excuse #12 There's No Place I Can Go Barefoot 104
Excuse #13 People Will Look at Me Funny 105
Excuse #14 I'll Step in Dog Poop 106
Excuse #15 I Have Bunions 106
Excuse #16 I Have Weak Ankles 107
Excuse #17 I'll Get Parasites or Diseases 108
Excuse #18 I'm Pregnant (or Planning to Be) 110
No Excuses! 112
Part II Free Your Feet and Experience the Earth 113
7 It's Barefoot Time 115
Checking In: How Do You Feel? 116
Warming Up for Barefooters 119
Grass for Starters 121
Step-by-Step Guide to Proper Barefoot Walking Form 122
The Three Methods of Barefoot Walking 133
8 Ninety Days to Barefoot Freedom 148
Michael's Two-Question Rule 148
"Hand Weights," aka Shoes 149
Start with Only 100 Yards 150
The First Thirty Days: Go Slow to Go Fast 151
Month Two: Walk Away from That Shoe 154
Month Three: Time to Say Whee! 155
Barefoot Beads 157
Building a Base 158
9 Philosophies of a Barefoot Walker 160
Be Present 163
Barefoot Meditation Walks 164
Be Patient and Listen to Your Body 165
Be the Humble Barefoot Walker 167
10 Turn Your Feet into Living Shoes 170
And Now … the Foot 173
Conditioning Exercises 179
Strengthening Exercises 182
Dynamic Stretching 191
The Foot Externals 193
Pampering Your Feet for Recovery 199
Getting to Know Your Feet 202
Part III Tips for Strength, Nutrition, and Total Health 203
11 Conditioning the Barefoot Walker for Strength and Balance 205
The Dangerously Wrong Way to Conditioning 207
Barefoot Drills 208
Barefoot Games 211
Building Core Strength 212
Weight Training 217
Treadmills 222
Cross Training for Barefoot Walkers 224
12 Stretching for Healing and Injury Prevention 230
A Little Stretching Goes a Long Way 232
Types of Stretches 232
Guidelines for Stretching 236
You Deserve a Massage 238
13 On the Right Path with Nutrition 240
Eat Nutrient-Dense Foods 242
Avoid Toxins 246
Dietary Cautions: Corn Syrup, Carbs, Cokes, and Cans 249
Our Path to Rawdom 259
Superfood Favorites 263
Drink It Up 267
Eat Nature's Food 270
Part IV Discovering and Rediscovering the Joy of Barefoot Walking at Every Age 271
14 Barefoot Children 273
No Running on the Playground 276
Barefoot Benefits for Children 276
The Danger of Footwear for Kids 279
Footwear for Children 281
Playtime Barefoot Activities 286
15 Barefoot Seniors Turn Back the Clock 288
Use It or Lose It 289
Barefoot Benefits for Seniors 290
Footwear for Seniors 300
Resuscitate Your Feet 301
Part V Dancing with Nature 303
16 Weather or Not, Here I Come 305
How Cold or Hot Is It? 307
Walking in Heat: Concrete Advice 308
Walking in Cold: Get Invigorated 312
17 Exploring Terrain 316
The Benefits of Exploring Terrain 318
Navigate the Roads Less Traveled 320
Hitting the Trails 325
Take a Hike 329
Ups and Downs of Hills 329
18 Overcoming the Agony of the Feet 331
First, the First Aid 333
Common Aches, Pains, and Injuries from the Bottom Up 337
Foot and Ankle Challenges 337
Lower Leg Challenges 347
Knee and Upper Leg Challenges 348
Hip and Upper Body Challenges 351
Part VI If You Really Must Wear Something on Your Feet 357
19 Minimalist Footwear-Uncensored 359
A Minimalist Shoe Versus the Moccasin 360
For the Times You Must Wear Shoes 362
Don't Trust the Shoe Hype 363
Natural Footwear 365
How to Wear Minimalist Footwear 370
Happy Feet 372
Part VII The Final Step 373
20 Leading by Your Footprints 375
Barefoot Running, Anyone? 375
Beyond Barefoot 376
Stewards of the Earth 377
Only the Beginning 380
Acknowledgments 381
Notes 387
Resources 393
Credits 399
Index 401