Category Archives: Barefoot

I Wore Shoes Today

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Well, sandals actually, but given I’ve spent much of the past 4 months barefoot that does deserve a headline.
image

I wore sandals someone bought me from Pakistan that have flexible soles, don’t constrain the toes, and have a heel strap so that the foot strike isn’t dramatically altered.

When I went to Pakistan for 10 days, I chose to wear shoes (flip flops) in order to avoid any delays or confrontations with foreign authority, and to avoid drawing extra attention to my blonde, 5-10, blue-eyed self. I was attending a friend’s wedding, after all, in a semi-hostile country, so this wasn’t the time to make a hard stand for my foot freedom.

In those 10 days, probably within the first 5-7, I lost a protective layer my feet had built up. Basically one layer of skin on the balls of the foot (and a patch on the heels) turned white and shed. Up to this point I hadn’t really known how the feet had adapted to mostly concrete sidewalk-walking. I knew my feet felt more “plasticized” on the bottoms. So that was interesting. Seems a layer of skin just somehow adapts to the rugged pressure but dies when not used. I got my “baby feet” back pretty quickly.

So upon my return from Pakistan, it took about a week of city barefoot walking again and the skin on my foot started getting too sensitive to walk on. But this time, a new complication. I think that the sandal-wearing for 2 weeks actually helped my arches build up a bit more than barefoot walking does (when I keep the same ball-of-the foot striking emphasis). Also, I became dehydrated/malnourished and experienced bad foot cramping upon return. So when I started walking barefoot again I could really feel my arches cramping, especially in my left foot.

And the cramping was not in where one typically thinks of the arch, it was more in the middle of the sole of the foot, where the arch also exists, and where I know my “arch” is more atrophied. So it was actually kind of nice to feel that area activated for the first time in my life. I spent some time massaging it, which helps, and am still dialing my nutrition and salts back to a healthy range. I became riboflavin-deficient as well, evidenced by cracks in the corners of my mouth. I hadn’t experienced that since I was a vegetarian. I digress.

So wearing sandals yesterday and today enables me to keep my arches activated while letting the sore spots in the balls of the foot recover. I think I might go ahead and do 6 weeks in these sandals just to build the arches up, since I’m failing to “exercise” them at home. The downside is that I will lose a little bit of my balance capability, my foot toughness will have to start over, and I don’t get to be barefoot, which is simply an awesome continuous sensuous experience.

I’ll give it a week and re-evaluate I suppose. The other thing is I will get a lazy and start heel-walking more, so I will have to stay on extra conscious alert.

Finally, I have been putting more emphasis the past few days on walking with the feet slightly farther apart. It feels amazing on the sacrum/low back, even if it still feels awkward due to my current calf bone shape and femur rotation, which I suspect will take another 6 years to re-shape!

Warning: Feet Haters – Graphic Images

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I thought as a followup I should post the bottom-sides of the feet at the 12-week point of barefoot living in Berkeley/San Francisco, CA! People seem to be curious what the bottoms of my feet look like after walking barefoot everywhere. Are they all thick and nasty and calloused? No…not so much.

Feet Crossed, No Weight on Them

These are my bare feet after a shower. I have not done ANY maintenance on them in the past 1.5-2 months probably. I could easily file off the small amount of permagrime (and will after posting this!) – it’s about what you’d have walking around your house barefoot I suppose. I don’t have “callouses” built-up. That would be counterproductive to the feet’s “job” of sensing the ground and helping you make adjustments.

Bottoms of Feet

My arches, or still lack thereof…

Arches

Arches

You can see the amount of new skin my toe has had to grow as my pinky toe uncurled, it’s a bit darker. It’s this type of shit that makes me feel like an old school Chinese princess. Frickin’ foot emancipation society. My toes love me more now and that’s all that matters :-) <3

New Toe Skin

12 Weeks No Shoes

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Today is a big milestone for me in my barefoot experiment – 12 weeks/3 months sans shoes!

I was very pleased at how well my feet recovered after having to wear shoes all day for one day this week. My thin skin healed up well and I was able to walk without the extra sensitivity today. Back to normal! The feet heal so fast!

The changes in my feet are subtle to detect in pictures.

Here is Week 1, Compared to Week 12, topsides:

Week 1

Today, Week 12

I feel that my 4th and 5th toes have more knuckle functionality, and that they have untwisted slightly to face more downward instead of inward.  They operate a bit more independently. They are also slightly longer, as the skin underneath has broken and stretched the toes to nearly full length. There may be an additional 2-3mm more of stretching to take place, ouch! The spacing is also a bit more even, the weight is being distributed more evenly.

I feel the biggest difference is probably in the strength of my hamstrings and the shape of my calves, neither of which I bothered to collect data on along the way! I walk totally differently now. It would be fun to find a video of my walk before and make one after. It is night and day. My legs spend so much more time behind me, and my steps land under me instead of way out in front of me. One of these days I’ll get on a ham/quad machine and test my relative strength. I used to do about 2 times more work in my quads than in my hams. For example, if I was extending 110-120 pounds on quads, I was curling only 50-70 pounds in my hamstrings for the same number of reps and fatiguing just as fast. I probably could get this data from my college workout cards. A new acquaintance remarked at how differently I walk compared to other people, in a complementary way.

So many things have changed, that I sometimes get discouraged that my arches haven’t developed drastically just yet. But they are coming along. This week I finally started to feel some perpetual soreness in the muscles in the arch along my 4th toes. The entire structure of the foot and the way it lands has had to change, in order for me to have a foundation on which to reconstruct my arches. I suppose it is all happening in due time. Now I nearly have the hamstring and calf strength to perform additional strengthening exercises for the arches. The calf muscles really have to support the arch work, I have found, and the calf muscles are still not fully developed, as they are sore every day I walk any distance. I predict it may take another 6 months before I see major, lasting change in my arch shape now.

All in all, still a very satisfying experiment. I have learned so much about my fantastic feet and have come to appreciate them and the muscles that support them so much more.

82 Days Barefoot

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Well, today I had to wear shoes most of the day, for the first time. I had worn the skin down too far on the balls and toes of my feet on my 6-mile hike earlier in the week, that further barefoot walking would have damaged my feet.

It was actually quite nice to have the opportunity to work on my arches with the shoes on, as I could put more pressure on the balls of the feet. However, of course my last two toes were quite unhappy, as were the backs of my heels from the shoes rubbing on them.

I found out yesterday I had inspired a new acquaintance (a fellow yogi) to walk barefoot across San Francisco (Dolores to Potrero). He loved it, and noticed he felt more connected (yes, you are!) and noticed he spent more time watching the ground for glass, etc. He also noticed he got lots of disapproving looks from strangers, which I predicted and sympathized with.

There is something meditative about feeling the ground with each step you walk. It is a conscious “being-present” with each step. For me, it has transformed the very way I walk (slower, more use of hamstrings and balls of the feet).

I chose to wear shoes today because I had to walk a few miles. It turned out to be a very good decision as I took the wrong BART stop, which doubled my journey! The arches are tired now, which is great. I need much more arch work, so perhaps I can alternate shoe-wearing days the next couple days to keep the arches going. And it’s probably time for another beach run soon too.

Life is good.

11 Weeks No Shoes

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The end of my 11th week no shoes had me walking 6 miles through Golden Gate Park and out Lands End toward China Beach in San Francisco.

I had brought shoes along “just in case”, as it was advertised an 8-mile hike and I didn’t want to burden the group should I find some unforgiving trails. I pulled them out at one point, but didn’t need them after all!

However, my lower calves were achey and locking up after about 4 miles, as I believe my arches are just not strong enough yet to take their fair share of the load.

I am thinking I may have to do calf raises to condition my arches to take more work. Simply walking around the cities isn’t doing it for me anymore.

My feet are becoming more flexible on tops due to my stretching them more often, but after Sunday’s hike the feet are quite sore and stiff again. The soles of the feet have become super-sensitive again too after that hike. I was kind of getting used to my reduced pain levels but now they’re back again after that long walk. Perhaps the cold weather had been blissfully numbing my feet all along and now that spring is here (in California!) it is back to usual? I suppose I’ll know better in a week or so as my feet recover from those rocky trails.

Body Modifications – Weekly Update

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Barefoot Journal

It’s now been 10 weeks and 3 days barefoot. My feet are much tougher and only the roughest patches of road or asphalt will bother the feet now. I’ve noticed the tops of my feet need to be stretched out more. As I gain more use of my arches, the top of the foot has to be stretchy enough to accommodate. The right foot especially has trouble flexing all the way forward. There is a small, calcified lump 2/3 up the top of the foot toward the ankle, which seems to be a clue as to why that foot is less stretchy. When I massage it really hard, I get nerve sensations in my first 2 toes. Those first two toes are the ones that went numb in 2008 after standing in a new pair of shoes all day. But I know I have had that calcified lump since high school, I believe. Perhaps it was a holdover from an old ankle injury (I used to get them often), or maybe I dropped something heavy on that foot as a young lass. I don’t remember.

So stretching the tops of my feet more is my goal for this week, in order to  continue improving the the health of my feet.

Also, there is more skin breaking between my pinky toe and fourth toe on the right foot, and the fourth toe is very tender on the pinky toe side, just inside the ball of the foot. I have been massaging it and trying to help spread the pinky toe away from that toe. Both are untwisting very nicely. I think what is happening now is that the pinky toe is beginning to get its knuckle functionality back too. The left pinky toe appears to have some functionality already, but not the right one. When I pull on the right pinky toe, it pops every time, so I keep stretching it out to open up space for knuckle development. I will probably have knuckle development in that toe within a week, esp. if I keep stretching the foot back and massaging between the last 2 toes.

There is some wear patterns starting right in the center of the ball of each foot, and on the second and fourth toe of the left foot. On the right foot, it is just the center of the ball of the foot, as if I had stepped on a rock/sharp object there and it wants to recover.

Whenever I get wear patterns now, I suspect that the feet are compensating for a weakness. Given the pain I am having in my right fourth toe, I think it may be an overall compensation for that foot.

Eyesight – 20/20 project

I got excited about my eyesight experiment again yesterday. This is really progressing in phases.

I noticed (again) just how important it is to relax the vision for up-close work, and to focus the vision on blurry distant objects. My eyes are so conditioned to relax when looking at distant objects due to wearing glasses or contacts for 20 years. But I noticed when I tried to focus on distant objects (while keeping the eyes relaxed), they would actually come into sharp focus for a little bit, accompanied by a lot of eye tearing. The extra eye water seems to help a lot with distance focusing.

Also, I would get good results by stretching my eyes really wide to “feel” oxygen hitting the eyes. This feels really good to the eyes, and it brings on more eye tearing. I suspect my eyes have been oxygen-deprived after many years of contact-lens wearing also. My eyes are sensitive to silicon, so the high-oxygen silicon contact lenses weren’t an option for me. I also suspect that the mercury (thiomersal) in my contact lens solution has denatured some of the proteins in my eyes, but I’m not sure of what long-term effects this might have.

I have always had a lot of eye “floaters,” which I’ve been studying about recently.

This week, I am back to doing about 15 minutes of eye exercises each morning. I have done this for 3 days now.

It’s probably worth noting that I ate 2 carrots yesterday, and a couple hours later had my breakthrough/renewal of commitment!

Back/Shoulders

As my third priority, I am also working on reversing the curve of my thoracic spine. Likely due to the way I walk, and I suspect also my low thyroid, I have developed excessive lordosis of the thoracic spine (I’m not sure what that term is – kyphosis maybe?) Instead of a hump, I have a slight dip.

The way I walk now more on the balls of the feet rather than the heels is helping with this. It lets my chest round forward a bit more. But it is quite awkward to try to let the chest be more concave while keeping the shoulders down and back. It is more challenging.

________________

Maybe I will try to make this a weekly update. Probably should be taking pictures along the way too…

Day 57: Barefoot Journal

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Today I did my first beach run specifically for more targeted arch development. And boy, was it effective.

I’m sure I did less than 1 mile of jogging with a handful of short sprints and lots of walking worked in. My calves locked up immediately when I tried to go up onto my tiptoes after a resting break standing in the ocean.

I could feel the arches very engaged on the beach sand (especially the weaker outer toes), it was perfect! I pushed it a bit too hard, though, considering I had spent much of the past 5 days in my room on the computer!

Something very frightening and interesting happened once I left the beach. The toes were a bit crampy, and my right big toe and 2nd toe were going numb in the very cool air (as were my fingers!). I went to a local cafe, warmed up a bit, was doing some passive foot stretching under the table, but found when I left the restaurant and hopped on a train, that my 2nd toe was still numb and very white.

I tried flexing it many times (it barely still flexed), rubbing my hands over it, breathing my hot air on it (a feat of flexibility!), and tucking the sole against my warm UV-radiated belly and leaning forward to compress the heat onto it. A few cycles of this and I wasn’t getting far. I was getting a bit panicked.

For some reason I felt compelled to sit on the foot with the toes flat. This was super-painful for the top of the foot. But after a good stretching, I put my foot down and color started coming back in. I noticed that my foot was sorest on top where the bones come together more, and that there has always been a kind of calcium or hard small lump fatty-deposit there. It was aching all around that area.

That told me that it wasn’t a temperature issue so much as it was a nerve impingement issue down the top of my foot. As I am developing my arch muscles. The bottoms of the feet shrink up, which means the top of my foot needs to open up and point more down, ballerina-like. It doesn’t yet have that flexibility, so I will need to train that more.

More sitting on my ankles and heels!

Heel Bruising – No Shoes Day 44

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They say lessons in life are repeated until learned.

Since I’ve been walking everywhere without shoes, I’ve finally realized I am still walking too heavy on my right heel. I have almost a permanent tiny bruise right in the center of that heel from catching a sharp pebble too hard there, over and over. It hurts like a mofo when it happens. And today when it happened again during my 3+ mile walk in the city, I realized it’s just on that foot!

Come to think of it, back when I used to jog with shoes on, I would have this problem where my right heel would clip my left ankle on the inside, painfully right on the bone. So my right foot probably tends to evert (I believe this because I have to invert it and move it further distal for it to land “normal”) naturally and land harder on the heel.

So now, I have to work extra hard on getting the ball of the foot down sooner on the right side. Instead of my whole heel aching at the end of a day when wearing shoes, I get instant feedback when my heel finds a rock too hard.

Still totally worth the tradeoff.

As an update, my feet are still getting stronger/muscle-sore each day. They feel and look muscle-y now, instead of like a withered sick and pale child that spent the entire winter in bed. My hamstrings are also getting stronger (as evidenced by their tightness).

I had some interesting borderline numbness today, and noticed my big toe and next toe were a little too buddy-buddy during much of my hike on the cold ground. Probably the longest my toes have spent in the coldest weather (not including surfing in the winter here when entire foot would go numb) Seemed like the more ball pressure I used the more they spread out, though.

Enough for today…

No more shoes: Day 42

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So yesterday was another milestone day for me in my no-shoes-healthier-stronger-feet experiment.

I went jogging barefoot with the pit bull in the Mission/Excelsior neighborhoods of San Francisco. I had only walked before, and gingerly at that. I was ready for a little more pressure.

And I got my first piece of glass lodged in my foot.

I felt it for about 3-4 steps before it bothered me enough to stop. That was about 2-3 steps too many apparently! Usually, when I feel something in my foot, it hasn’t yet totally penetrated the skin. This happens pretty often. It kind of warps into the skin and I have to reach down and brush it off or rub my foot on my leg or top of the other foot.

When I realized this piece of glass (about a quarter of the size of my pinky finger nail) was stuck in the foot my heart dropped. I wiggled it out and a big bead of blood immediately formed where I pulled it out.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have a bandaid, I was on a bridge where there was a LOT of broken glass pieces and small rocks, etc. And I had about 3 blocks left to walk home. From earlier experiences I had already learned that having an open “wound” on the bottom of the foot, as long as it wasn’t bleeding out, wasn’t a concern for infection. In previous weeks, the foot skin sometimes needed to break open and create a new bridge of skin across the opening to expand the available surface area. I found it was actually healthier to leave the bandaid off than to put a bandaid on for a few reasons. Sometimes the bandaid would trap dirt against the wound, and it would cause the skin around the wound to turn white and die.

But this one was bleeding and I didn’t know when it would stop. Something sharp had penetrated a few layers down, and it hurt to walk on it. I tried not to think about the small amount of blood I might be leaving with each step, and how “unhygenic” that would be.

A few steps into it, I got a small rock stuck in the same hole. It was very painful. I flicked it out. A few steps later, another small rock lodged in the same hole. Very painful, flicked it out. Stopped walking on the ball of the foot and walked on the outside edge of the foot for about 100 feet, to give the bottom of the foot a break. Once I reached the stoplight, I began walking on the whole foot again, and the pain was much reduced. It felt tender, but not sharp anymore. I looked at it after crossing the street and it was not bleeding at all. I walked the remaining 2 blocks home normally and went inside to the bathroom to clean the bottom of the foot.

I used a washcloth but no soap (avoiding anti-microbial soap and that was all that was at this house), to wash off the whole bottom of the foot. By that point, the hole had closed to a slit about as deep as it was wide. It had a little dirt on the inside so I rubbed the washcloth across it and it was a little cleaner. I considered peroxide or something harsh to totally clean it out, but decided it wasn’t needed. It wasn’t sensitive to the touch at all or red at all. It was just fine :-)

I remembered back to the time I snapped an ankle in the dark running back to my car after Coachella one year and got rocks lodged in my hand as the skin tore up during the fall onto asphalt. How I tried to clean out the wound in my hand and it started turning red and the red started creeping down my arm, indicating infection. How I went to the emergency room and I was told it would be a 5-7 hour wait, and how I decided I would take my chances and go home and sleep. And my body fought off the infection and won.

There was no apparent infection in this small wound, everything was fine. The wound had sealed up in less than 2 minutes. The human body really is amazing, and can handle much more than we think it can.

Guess my feet will need to toughen up a bit more before tackling glassy sidewalks. Perhaps some beach running would do the trick. Maybe I”ll work on that more first before going back to sidewalk jogging. But maybe not :-)

No More Shoes: Day 42

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So yesterday was another milestone day for me in my no-shoes-healthier-stronger-feet experiment.

I went jogging barefoot with the pit bull in the Mission/Excelsior neighborhoods of San Francisco. I had only walked before, and gingerly at that. I was ready for a little more pressure.

And I got my first piece of glass lodged in my foot.

I felt it for about 3-4 steps before it bothered me enough to stop. That was about 2-3 steps too many apparently! Usually, when I feel something in my foot, it hasn’t yet totally penetrated the skin. This happens pretty often. It kind of warps into the skin and I have to reach down and brush it off or rub my foot on my leg or top of the other foot.

When I realized this piece of glass (about a quarter of the size of my pinky finger nail) was stuck in the foot my heart dropped. I wiggled it out and a big bead of blood immediately formed where I pulled it out.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have a bandaid, I was on a bridge where there was a LOT of broken glass pieces and small rocks, etc. And I had about 3 blocks left to walk home. From earlier experiences I had already learned that having an open “wound” on the bottom of the foot, as long as it wasn’t bleeding out, wasn’t a concern for infection. In previous weeks, the foot skin sometimes needed to break open and create a new bridge of skin across the opening to expand the available surface area. I found it was actually healthier to leave the bandaid off than to put a bandaid on for a few reasons. Sometimes the bandaid would trap dirt against the wound, and it would cause the skin around the wound to turn white and die.

But this one was bleeding and I didn’t know when it would stop. Something sharp had penetrated a few layers down, and it hurt to walk on it. I tried not to think about the small amount of blood I might be leaving with each step, and how “unhygenic” that would be.

A few steps into it, I got a small rock stuck in the same hole. It was very painful. I flicked it out. A few steps later, another small rock lodged in the same hole. Very painful, flicked it out. Stopped walking on the ball of the foot and walked on the outside edge of the foot for about 100 feet, to give the bottom of the foot a break. Once I reached the stoplight, I began walking on the whole foot again, and the pain was much reduced. It felt tender, but not sharp anymore. I looked at it after crossing the street and it was not bleeding at all. I walked the remaining 2 blocks home normally and went inside to the bathroom to clean the bottom of the foot.

I used a washcloth but no soap (avoiding anti-microbial soap and that was all that was at this house), to wash off the whole bottom of the foot. By that point, the hole had closed to a slit about as deep as it was wide. It had a little dirt on the inside so I rubbed the washcloth across it and it was a little cleaner. I considered peroxide or something harsh to totally clean it out, but decided it wasn’t needed. It wasn’t sensitive to the touch at all or red at all. It was just fine :-)

I remembered back to the time I snapped an ankle in the dark running back to my car after Coachella one year and got rocks lodged in my hand as the skin tore up during the fall onto asphalt. How I tried to clean out the wound in my hand and it started turning red and the red started creeping down my arm, indicating infection. How I went to the emergency room and I was told it would be a 5-7 hour wait, and how I decided I would take my chances and go home. And my body fought off the infection and won.

There was no apparent infection in this small wound, everything was fine. The wound sealed up in less than 2 minutes. The human body really is amazing, and can handle much more than we think it can.

Guess my feet will need to toughen up a bit more before tackling glassy sidewalks. Perhaps some beach running would do the trick. Maybe I”ll work on that more first before going back to sidewalk jogging. But maybe not :-)