If You Want to improve Your Body, Change Your Environment First

 

If you follow me (or Unshoes) on Instagram, you know that I advocate walking with your feet pointed straight forward. I often compare our bodies to cars. If the wheels are not aligned, then they wear out quickly and you get horrible gas milage. One of my own personal struggles is correcting this in my own gait and stance. I tend to walk and even stand with my feet pointed outward. In order to correct yourself, you need to have awareness of what actually needs to be changed. It is difficult to always be aware of how you move so I use outside things to help me measure my body alignment and increase my own awareness. One of the things I use to increase awareness is by looking at my footprints. I often feel like I’m walking really well with my feet pointed forward and then when I turn around and look at my footprints in the dirt, I see that what I felt was not the same as reality! While this can be discouraging, it is also liberating.Continue reading→

Your Calves are HUGE!

I don’t mean that your calves are literally huge. Well, they might be, and that’s cool because calves are awesome! What I mean is that the role your calves play in your overall health is huge. For the most part, I think we tend to simply forget about our calves when it comes to our health, however, ignore your calves at your own peril!

It all starts when the calf muscle begins to shorten. You might be thinking that your calves are not short. You don’t have pain in your calves, so they must be doing great, right? Actually, it often isn’t your calf that feels pain when it gets shortened. It shows up in other areas, and this is why it can be tricky to spot issues caused (or amplified) by shortened calf muscles. While working at Unshoes, we have sometimes gone out to different events to market our sandals. One of the most frequent comments I get are, “I would love to wear those but I have to have arch support”. Or, “Those look awesome, but I have plantar fasciitis”. I’m no podiatrist, or biomechanist so I’m not going to claim that plantar fasciitis is caused by tight calves, but I feel comfortable telling you that tight calves can affect it. Really, it’s just basic logic if you think about it. Plantar fasciitis is a pain that shows up in the bottom fascia (flesh) of the foot, often near the heel. It feels like the tendons are being pulled and tightened like a guitar string. According to webMD, (which is always right because it’s on the internet!) plantar fasciitis is caused by “strain” on the ligament that stretches between the heel and the toes. Guess what part of the body your calf muscle is connected to through another ligament? Yeah, the heel. If your calf muscle (which is pretty powerful by the way) is pulling on your heel then chances are it can affect other ligaments that connect to the same bone. It’s basic mechanics. Of course there are other factors involved as well but the two parts of the body are connected. Literally.Continue reading→

8 Reasons You Should Go Barefoot More

Get out of your comfort zone and allow your feet to have freedom from shoes!

This was a self portrait that I took for a photography class in college. We visited a specific location (Parowan Gap) and our assignment was to create a photograph that reflected our experience without actually including a photo of the place. My experience was that I was very much at home while the other students were not comfortable in the desert without phone service. To convey this, I thought about what I do when I come home. The first thing I have always done when I come home is to take off my shoes. This was taken before I understood the benefits of going barefoot. It just felt right!

 

You may have heard of the book “Born to Run”. It was a New York Times bestseller some years ago. The story was all about the theory of how humans evolved to run and that many of our ancient ancestors hunted by running their prey to death. The book follows an ultrarunner who finds his way into the Copper Canyons of Mexico among the Tarahumara tribe of Indians. They are a running tribe and often run over a hundred miles through incredibly rugged terrain. I have my own theories about running but that is a post for another day. Another main theme of the book is about how the Tarahumara don’t need expensive and padded running shoes to run these long distances. They use sandals they make out of old tires and leather lacing. The book discusses some research that supports the idea of barefoot running and the fact that many running injuries could be caused by our shoes. This sparked a huge surge of people trying out barefoot running and many new companies came out with minimalist shoes that allowed people to run while still having some protection without providing too much structure.Continue reading→

Zombies! What you really need to survive

Zombies! They are everywhere! Not literally, of course. I mean in entertainment. For some crazy reason our society has been on a zombie kick for a while. If you want to make a show that will bring in money no matter how low budget, make a zombie show. People can’t seem to get enough. Personally, I haven’t joined the bandwagon and I don’t get the hype. However, the zombie craze phenomena has made me think. I’ve been wondering what draws us to that subject so much. Why is it so insatiable?

There are many theories out there. One of them that I heard about is that as primal beings we are simultaneously drawn in by and repulsed by violence. We have to avoid it to preserve our lives but there are times when we have to embrace it to survive. The theory is that in a “zombie state” the people are beyond saving. They are dehumanized enough that it is easier for us to justify watching violence against another person.

I have another theory. Zombie shows are all about the people who have somehow not been turned into zombies and are trying to survive against a horde of living dead. I wonder if maybe it is a symbol of our own existence. As a society we are slowly becoming more sick, more mindless,more pathetic creatures who live only for consumption. Those may be harsh words but they are motivating! On the other hand, something inside of us knows that we aren’t meant to live like this. Deep down we know that we have more potential. We know we have a mission in life to fulfil besides sitting in a chair all day memorizing meaningless facts and then coming home and staring at a screen, and eating nothing but junk. The zombie survivors are a symbol of this part of us that is fighting a seemingly impossible battle with the outer zombie and is desperate to live. My theory may be wrong, but it is food for thought. (Insert witty pun about eating brains.)Continue reading→

Falling… with style!

When I was a single guy in college, I was invited to go on a hiking trip. By chance, it ended up being me and 6 girls. Of course, I was pretty happy about that! It was a fairly easy hike but it goes up into a somewhat narrow canyon in the red sandstone of Southern Utah so there are a few places that require some scrambling and balance. I was pretty confident in my scrambling abilities and I was able to climb up and down the steep areas with ease. I wouldn’t say I was showing off, exactly, but I was secretly hoping that I would impress the ladies. (C’mon, I was a single college guy, of course I was showing off!) I probably did make an impression because, although I managed the more difficult areas of the hike with ease, on a particularly easy section of trail, I was not being mindful and tripped over a rock! It was the only rock in the trail and it was big enough that I should have noticed it. We were moving quickly so I had some good momentum to make the fall even more humiliating. I popped up off the ground and continued walking like nothing hContinue reading→

Movement Is Life!

"Nothing happens until something moves." —Albert Einstein
My wife and I were recently watching a webinar about healing cancer by Chris Wark. In one of the modules he said that movement is the signal to the body to live. I’ve had similar thoughts but I really liked the way it was articulated. The more I thought about it, the more I liked it. While there are probably many ways in which this is true, I came up with four major ways in which movement signals life in the body.Continue reading→

Not all Competition is Created Equal

All my life I have believed that I am a non-competitive person. I think it all started when I was about 9 years old on a t-ball team. I was an active young child and I thought that I’d try some kind of sport. I knew someone who played t-ball and he seemed to enjoy it so I thought I’d try. My experience was not a pleasant one. I still remember my first turn to bat. I had been looking forward to it for a long time and I felt like I was the last kid to get a turn. I don’t remember exactly what the coach said but in my sensitive little brain it translated into, “if you miss, you’ll be a failure and you will disappoint everyone!” All the parents were watching and yelling. The pressure was too much and I couldn’t stop thinking about how badly everyone would feel if I missed. I don’t remember exactly what happened but I remember that feeling of letting everyone down. Continue reading→

Comfort Kills

My wife and I bought a “fixer-upper” home in the country. It is a very unique home and while the original construction was sound, much of the house was in poor condition and needed some serious updates. This is still a work in progress. One day my brother-in-law was over and my wife was telling him what our long term plans for the house were. She mentioned that we were going to get rid of the couch. He asked if we would get a new one and my wife told him that we would not. He wondered what we would replace it with. We said we were not going to replace it at all. With a quizzical look he asked us where we would sit! We explained that we would keep a few chairs for company but that we would mostly sit on the floor. He was understandably shocked and stated that that didn’t sound very comfortable! Well, for him it isn’t very comfortable but we are growing used to it. Typically, I prefer sitting on the floor to sitting on a cushy couch. (I’ll write more about that decision later)Continue reading→