Lose your shoes

Do you remember reading “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and reveling in the idea of walking around barefoot all day, every day? Huck didn’t have a care about convention or the stuffy expectations of the more civilized townsfolk. From the muddy riverbank to the civilized planks of the local chapel’s floor, he was famously footloose and fancy free. Ah, the notion is still as ticklish as grass between the toes! These days, few of us brave our own backyards in bare feet, and even fewer would dream of traipsing through town that way. But did you know that walking barefoot is actually good for you? The soles of our shoes, even the comfy ones, are keeping us from feeling the wonders of the ground beneath our feet. Earthly lumps and bumps that we encounter when we walk barefoot massage a zillion nerve endings on the bottoms of our feet, in essence offering a foot massage that benefits the whole body. Cramping More Than Our Style Walking in shoes forces us to move unnaturally, which ends up causing cramps and misalignment of bones and joints from the feet up through the rest of the skeleton. An article in Podiatry Management reported that “it took 4 million years to develop our unique human foot and our consequent distinctive form of gait, a remarkable feat of bioengineering. Yet, in only a few thousand years, and with one carelessly designed instrument, our shoes, we have warped the pure anatomical form of human gait, obstructing its engineering efficiency, afflicting it with strains and stresses and denying it its natural grace of form and ease of movement, head to foot.” Naturally, our feet undulate with understated grace, rolling happily from the heel to toes before boosting us into our next buoyant step. But shoes don’t allow our feet to work that way, and they certainly don’t allow us to be massaged by the terrain below. Even flip-flops, which feel almost shoe-free, have been blamed for altering people’s gait to the point of creating aches and pains all over the body. No matter what shoes we wear, it seems we’re more likely to hobble, tiptoe, lumber or stomp our way to discomfort. If Kids Can Do It… If you have ever watched kids at play, you know that as soon as the grass greens up in the spring, they are overcome with the urge to shuck their shoes. It doesn’t matter where they are; they will clamber around yards, playgrounds, campsites and creek banks on blissfully bare feet. I’ve marveled at how my granddaughters will toddle across pebbles with absolute ease. It’s as if they have perfect little paws! When my own kids were young, I had no scientific studies to back up my hunch, but it seemed counterintuitive to burden them with shoes until they started learning to walk. Even then, I let them go bare as much as possible. It just didn’t seem right to confine their developing feet to the rigidity of so much rubber. And modern science now confirms mother’s intuition: kids who go barefoot more often actually develop stronger, healthier feet. Do You Dare? So, the question is: do you dare go bare? I recently asked a fellow farmgirl, and she replied, “I admit to being a tenderfoot. Boots are my comfort zone! Some people love walking through the grass without shoes, but not me. All I can think about are bugs and pricklies and chicken poop. Seriously — who wants to step on any of those things?” But after talking about it, she has mustered enough bravery to tiptoe out to her backyard fire pit. “It’s surrounded by slabs of nice ‘clean’ rock, so I can meander around carefree, massaging my feet as I go.” Granted, I’m not implying that we should all start showing up to work without footwear. I’m simply suggesting that if you find yourself wearing shoes from dawn till dusk, or if you never wear anything gentler than stiletto heels or steel-shanked soles, you might consider setting your feet free more often. The dirt will wash off, I promise, and grass stains will fade. But the delicious skin-on-earth sensation that sinks into your soles will linger long after you slip back into your shoes. And in case you were wondering… Neither state nor federal governments prohibit the public from entering places of business without shoes (or shirts). Apparently, those kinds of health codes apply to employees only. However, individual businesses have every right to refuse customers they deem “underdressed.”