Do you know why going barefoot is healthy?
Going barefoot has health benefits, but why exactly is this the case? For starters, there's the foot massage. Also, the sense of touch is enhanced by going barefoot.
It is healthy to walk barefoot, but do you know why? First of all, because we get a foot massage. The feet contain many delicate nerve endings that are connected to the whole body by innervation. Easterners even have maps of how to massage the feet. Walking barefoot is also about seasoning, not just about massage.
It is also important that the feet and legs get air. Access to oxygen helps the skin to regenerate and helps to avoid various skin defects. It is also good prevention against fungal diseases. In addition, walking barefoot promotes the tactile or touch experience.
The health benefits of going barefoot
When we walk barefoot, we unwittingly get a foot massage. In many places, there are so-called barefoot paths with different textures, cones, stones, and all sorts of things that allow our feet to feel and react to different kinds of stimuli.
There are a lot of subtle nerve endings in the feet that are connected to the rest of the body through innervation processes, so what the foot reacts to has a deeper echo in the rest of the body. Easterners even have whole maps of how to do foot point massage or acupuncture to help other parts of the body.
Scientific medicine neither confirms nor denies this, but folk wisdom has it that going barefoot is one of the sure foundations of our health because it is not only a story of massage-it is also a story of soaking because the feet are exposed directly to water in the rain.
In colder weather, they freeze faster and our body has to make an effort to warm them up-so we have to work on circulation. On top of that, walking-whether barefoot or shod-gives us at least a momentary break from our sedentary lifestyle, all of which benefits our bodies.
But alongside what has just been said, there are things that we think about less often in our daily lives. For example, it is healthy to have air everywhere. There is some truth in that, and we can see that today. Like fungal diseases, which some people struggle with, which are present on toenails and between toes and everywhere else-we get them inadvertently in the swimming pool and we can't get rid of them for years.
Access to oxygen helps the skin regenerate, as most fungus develops when the feet are in a confined space, sweating. It is the lack of oxygen access, plus the humidity, that gives free rein not only to fungi but also to other skin defects. Going barefoot is also a purely elementary form of prevention of foot health.
Not only massage but also tactile experience, as such, is very important. When you go barefoot outdoors, you perceive the world around you more fully. For example, you can tell whether the ground is dry or slightly damp, or whether it is properly moist. You can tell if it is just a little bit cool, or if it is cool just on the surface, with warmth coming through from underneath—like in summer after it rains.
Or sometime in early spring, I can tell that the surface has warmed up, but there is still a chill coming up from underneath. You can compare the surface of the ground: walking barefoot in the city, you can feel that the asphalt is something else, and the white surface that is the stripes of the zebra crossing is something else altogether - it caresses your feet.
And this tactile or touch experience is very important for us. Why? Because the rhythm of our lives today allows us very little of it. But the tactile senses are just as important and give just as much information as the other senses, but the environment we are in now is mainly oriented towards visual and audio information, and there is much less tactile information.
Going barefoot is a wonderful way to make your life more colorful, more complete, and full of impressions. And impressions that I can choose, that I can feel myself, not that the outside world throws on top of me and I am forced to watch or listen to.
When it's more than plus 10 ºC outside, equal to 50 degrees ºF, the body no longer freezes when walking barefoot. At first, it may feel like everything is digging into your feet, but that is also a blessing because when we learn to walk barefoot, we learn to hold our bodies better, use our vestibular system better, and improve our posture.
And in this connection, the words of a poet come to mind: May the earth have no pain when my feet tread it. Of course, it is about our emotional attitude towards Mother Earth, but it is also about the physical-when my feet are barefoot, and the earth does not hurt.
