Barefoot

Making the most of what has always been there all along

I am confessing to a practice of walking around outside, bare footed. I don't do it in town and this is not a cringe Eat Pray Love version of connecting with the ground. I wont be closing my eyes, biting my lip and reciting phrases about awakening the spirit and connecting with Mother Nature as I nestle my feet into a dewy patch of grass. This begins as something purely functional - we have the ability to walk across almost anything without wearing shoes. Why wouldn't you want to make that possible for yourself?

This latest fad started when I saw an Instagram post of a guy literally sprinting across some rocks not wearing any shoes and I was inspired. He's got an always-on, always available pair of sneakers built right into his foot. I want in.

leo.urban

A post shared by @leo.urban

So I began; at first just a few awkward and shaky steps outside my house. While that sounds trivial, my lovely house is surrounded in a moat-like fashion with very angular stone chippings. I really felt each step, especially when a stone was orientated in a way that made it stand a lot prouder than its peers. Oooh, it gets right in there. Just like a foul Lego brick.

But then I began to notice things about the terrain I was engaging with. Such as these stones flattened out when I reached the place where cars are parked and thus became much more pleasant to walk on. Not stride-inducing, but not bad. I continued across them until I reached the soil that forms the border of my vegetable garden and I immediately felt relief as my foot settled on the warm earth. It's currently summer in Britain - and I use the seasonal term lightly for thanks to a kink in the jet stream placing it directly above the UK it has been a turbulent summer of rainy, windy, cold and cloudy conditions with just the odd sunny day. But right now it's dry and I've found that this radiantly warm soil is my favourite substrate to walk on, of all that I have tried so far.

And I have tried a few. While visiting Montana recently for

Sophia Li

and @laz_d wedding we were staying on a lovely permaculture farm. Far from the meteorological effects of the jet stream we were basking in temperatures upward of 30 degrees celsius (As a UK resident I appreciated this).

With the wedding featuring a subtle wellness and spiritual spin there was a part to the weekend where as guests, we were all introduced to the concept of 'a vow of silence' and asked to try it out for ourselves. This lasted a few hours and I wont lie, as a person with ADHD, I was slightly worried about disrupting it. So, instead of becoming the guy that distracted everyone during this period I decided to create another layer to this experience and not only be silent, but take the vow to walk around barefoot for that time. I decided to walk a little out of the farm, through a small pine forested trail and up a hill that overlooked it. While it was lovely to move silently through the landscape observing birds and beetles I enjoyed the varied feelings on my feet as I traversed the trail gave my attention to the places that were damp, dry, cool or warm. It reminded me of observing microclimates while studying for my Permaculture Design Certificate. I made the 3 or 4 hours of silence without distracting anyone and felt like a true adult.

After the wedding's conclusion, my wife, our friend Sam and I went to stay in a lovely wooden cabin on the West side of Yellowstone National Park. We'd planned to make the most of our flight out there and take a 'working holiday' spending a week working in the mornings while our colleagues in the UK were still clocked in and use the afternoons to explore or work on personal projects. That led to two more larger barefoot walks. We'd decided to meet the bride, groom and their family in Yellowstone Park and so the first time was bare-footing with the groom, another endlessly curious mind who asked me lots of questions about my intention to train my feet and was attracted to the idea of being more present with each step. We walked back from the upper viewing point of the beautiful Grand Prismatic Spring. The second time I was out for an out-and-back hike with Lydia and Sam along a stunning river and while I'd walked the in portion with shoes, I'd walked back carrying them. I was noticeably a little slower, especially on the sections with loose stones, than my trainer-clad company but I did feel the accomplishment of covering the full 2.5 miles.

After all this and with the vision of being a person that could someday sprint across rocks on his tippy toes I was wondering if I was making any progress on the physical condition of my feet. Then today, I noticed I had a thorn in my foot - and I didn't even know. I mean, I think I remember it being a little sore in that specific area of my foot in the evening after my silent session of bare-footing at the wedding farm but it had quickly faded away. Now here was the culprit - lodged in the bottom of my foot and not causing any painful sensations. It was just suspended there in calloused skin. This felt like a minor breakthrough, it's almost as if it were just in the bottom of my shoe. The skin on the bottoms of my feet are thickening and becoming soles... yay.

The skin may be toughening but it doesn't desensitise the many nerves in the bottom of your feet. I still very much feel stones, especially if they are loosely spread across a surface vs gravel where there are lots. Walking across them requires a level of meditation whereby you are able to mentally desensitise the area. Maybe it is a spiritual thing for me after all? I also have to be conscious to try and relax my body and breathe normally as I found that my muscles would tense up in anticipation of each step. I have read that with enough practice, your brain 'clicks' and learns to filter out the signals. I'm not quite there yet, but I'll keep at it.

So am I going to be barefoot any time you see me now? Well... no.

I used to have a manager that would go running barefoot in and around Soho, London during lunch times which left me with a cognitive dissonance swirl of equal parts admiration and disdain with a thin seam of 'ick' between the two. Yes this is how nature intended but also, those streets hide broken glass, vomit, needles and other things that you wouldn't want going beyond the skin barrier to your soft and fluid inner.

Unlike my brave manager mentioned above, I can't ever see me ever doing this in a social setting unless it's 'funtime vibes'. I just recalled convincing a group of people to take their shoes off and enjoy barefoot dancing on the grass at the wedding afterparty. I do still want to wear my best trainers; one must preserve their status and display tribal cues within the cesspool of consumer culture. Barefoot is a social cue unto itself and I'd assume that said manager may have had a few conversations with other curious or like-minded individuals while out on the streets with his naked feet but for me it's just not what I want to represent day-to-day.

But I do look forward to having the ability to walk on anything. Just for shits and giggles… Why not? And it would be great if more people did it from time to time, because it's important to recognise that all able-bodied humans have the potential to walk on any terrain without footwear. It's inherently part of us and like all self-development, it just takes practice to strengthen and condition our way to making the most of what has always been there all along.