Barefoot walking and running – a way to learn body awareness, become relaxed and build a healthier body. (Part 3 – How barefoot walking can help us relax and teach us more about our bodies.)
In this third article in my series about barefoot walking and running, I will go through how walking barefoot can teach us body awareness and help us relax as far away from the feet as the shoulders! My first article talked about my experience and how I healed my knee with barefoot walking and the second busted some common myths about barefoot walking and running.
Before I start however I want to clarify what I mean with “barefoot” because I use the word for meaning both “without shoes” and “in minimalistic shoes”. I wrote about it in my second article but it’s worth repeating here. For me barefoot walking (or running) means two things:
- To actually walk or run barefoot, i.e without any shoes at all, and
- To walk (run) in minimalistic shoes meant to be as non-intrusive as possible.
Sometimes these two produce the same, or almost the same, result and sometimes there is world of difference between them. I will clarify this with examples as I write.
Barefoot walking as a way to relax
When I started walking barefoot I was trying to use it as grounding tool and it meant that I had to try to be relaxed to be able to get the desired effect from it. In the beginning my feet pained me but I soon found out that the pain wasn’t caused primarily by the ground (although it definitely felt like it: The foot touches the ground, I feel pain. Quite a simple equation you would think) but I realized that it originates from the tension I have in my body. When I am tense it hurts me a lot to walk barefoot but the moment I relax the pain in my feet also goes away. For me it mostly sat, and still sits when I get it, in the shoulders and the neck. So the tension there is transferred to my feet (and the rest of the body) and when my feet are tense they pain when I walk barefoot. I realised through this that I have a system of direct feedback that instantly tells me if I have any tension in my body and I find it amazing because I don’t need to remember to think or be aware of it, the pain reminds me directly and without effort from my side. Once aware of the tension I can release it through the breath or simply by feeling it and let it go.
In the case of using barefoot walking as a relaxation technique, it is crucial to walk totally barefoot because all shoes, even minimalistic ones, will spoil the effect. Having a sole prevents us from feeling the ground and obviously, our feet don’t hurt any longer. That’s what a sole is meant for after all. When I walk in my minimalistic shoes it doesn’t take me long to totally forget about being aware whether I’m tense or not because I don’t have the direct feedback from the ground. So this is an example of where there is a difference between real barefoot and minimalistic shoes.
I’ll write a more detailed description how to do this relaxation exercise further down for those who are interested in trying it out.
Enhance body awareness through barefoot walking and running
Another way that barefoot walking, with or without minimalistic shoes, helps develop our body awareness is in the way it brings us to an as natural state of moving as possible. I’ve found that it’s really difficult to walk or run with correct use of the body in padded shoes, they just don’t allow me to move my legs and put down my foot in the right way. So by walking or running in a natural state, either in minimalistic shoes or totally barefoot, we can observe how we use the body (where does it hurt, does something feel out of balance etc) and we can be almost sure that it reflects our current state of being and not a body posture shaped by outside forces like the shoes. In the beginning it’s easier to do this in minimalistic shoes rather than barefoot because you can walk for long in them, and also walk or run at different speeds.
Getting outside help
You can find out a lot about yourself through barefoot walking and if you want even better results you can combine this with some sort of physical therapy. Old habits, deep-seated muscle tensions and maybe a by now slightly deformed skeleton can take a long time to heal by ourselves, so someone with a knowledge of the body can really help us in the process. Examples are osteopaths, a well-educated massager or an experienced yoga teacher.
If for some reason you can’t go to a physical therapist, don’t worry. I’ve done most of my barefoot experimenting and progressing without any outside help but on those occasions that I have had help, however, I saw a big change afterward in how I walked and used my body.
Coming to an end for this time
In my next, and last, article in this barefoot series I will give tips on how to start walking barefoot if you’ve never done it and what to think about if you want to buy your first pair of minimalistic shoes.
Follow me for more to come and upvote if you liked this article. If you have any comments or questions just ask them below and I will do my best to answer them :)
And for those who are interested in learning barefoot walking as a relaxation tool, keep reading cause below I have written about how you can do it.
Exercise: How to use barefoot walking as a way to relax and be aware of tensions
Here I will go through the actual exercise of relaxing through barefoot walking while in the article to come I will give general tips and advice how to start to walk or run barefoot.
So, you are out on your walk without shoes. Your feet have kind of hurt from the moment you started and you start to wonder if this was such a good idea. What to do? First, stop and breath. Make sure you are taking deep breaths, inhale and exhale a couple of times. Then try to locate the tension in your body. Maybe the breathing already relaxed part of you so you now can feel a difference in the body. If not, make a body scan with your awareness. Start with the feet and travel upwards and try to be aware how the different parts of your body feel. Are they relaxed or tense? If they are tense, should they be in this situation?
Sometimes just finding the tension and being aware of it will help you relax but if it doesn’t (that’s sometimes the case with me) try to “breath into the tension”. Imagine that every exhale is directed to the tensed part and is dissolving the tension a little more with each breath. Keep breathing like this and when you feel more relaxed, slowly start to walk. It’s quite normal that you start to tense up when you walk again, so just be aware of it and try to breathe into it while walking. The walking steps can be really small and slow, it doesn’t matter, as long as your focus is on being relaxed. If it gets too much, just stop again and breath. It’s important to not treat this walk as an exercising tool but approach it as a meditation and a way to gain awareness of yourself.
Sometimes you just can’t seem to relax no matter how much you breath and the more you walk the more it hurts and you can’t break the cycle. I have found that you can change the mind by giving it a visualization that will move the focus away from the pain. My favorite one is to imagine that I’m walking on soft grass. I visualize the green grass all around me, imagining that with every step I land on the soft surface and feeling the grass beneath my feet. Sometimes I further occupy the mind by repeating quietly to myself how soft the ground is and that it doesn’t hurt to walk here at all.
This simple visualization normally does the trick for me when I can’t seem to relax and my body then automatically starts to release the tension and my feet stop hurting.
When I’ve taken a long walk in this state of relaxation I come back feeling refreshed and better off than when I started. It becomes a walking meditation!
A word of advice born from experience
Always take your shoes with you when you walk barefoot. You never know what you will encounter on the way, maybe a stretch full of broken glass or you might just have enough of walking barefoot after a while. Sometimes you just can’t seem to relax no matter what you do and it’s no fun to know that you have another 15 minutes walking barefoot before you are home..
In my experience it’s important to not stress when learning to walk barefoot, the goal is not to be able to walk without shoes as fast as possible but to actually be relaxed and enjoy doing it. Some days you might be able to walk far, some days you can’t relax no matter what tricks you do. I still take my shoes with me when I go out for a walk, and I recommend you doing it too.