Go Barefoot!

      "Barefoot walks help tone the muscles of the feet, keeping them young and strong. An early morning barefoot walk on cool, dewy grass is refreshing and invigorating for the entire system, not just your feet. -"Walking Barefoot"

My grandmother once took off her shoes to show me her knarled feet, with twisted and contorted toes tumbling off weirdly sideways.  "See?! That's from wearing high heels!" she warned. Frightened, I looked down at my perfect little feet, and shuddered, hoping to avoid that unhappy fate. But avoiding the fate of the feet has been no facile feat.

One day, while I was recovering from an ankle sprain, my right foot just went flat. (I've always had high arches.)  In the several years that followed, walking gradually became more and more painful. I responded with more and more supports and orthotics. I could no longer walk without pain unless I was laced up tightly in padded running shoes with stretch bandages all around.

The foot doctor could only offer more orthotics, or surgery that requires you to be off your feet for many months, and might not work. I began to google around and only found more of the same. Except one little article...

...Which said that foot problems are caused by wearing shoes! 

It suggested an unusual therapy: walk barefoot every day in the morning dew! 

This works! 

Within two weeks of shedding the shoes, and daily walking barefoot in the morning dew, the pain was gone. This was in the spring, and I was able to stay out of shoes all summer and well into the fall. But come November or so, I began to feel reluctant to leave the house. I can handle going outside barefoot down to about 40 degrees. The cold feels good to there, but colder than that, the feet start to go numb.

 So I found some barely there flat shoes to keep warm in. The next year I also had the extreme good fortune of finding a good physical therapist who could support me through the changes my feet were going through in the process of healing.

Now I wear comfortable shoes around in the world, but still go barefoot a lot when and where I can. And almost always nowadays I walk freely, normally, and without pain.  (125 Reasons To Go Barefoot:)

"You learn a lot when you're barefoot. The first thing is every step you take is different." Michael Franti