Walking Barefoot

    In my last post, I mentioned I'd give some tips for anybody considering walking barefoot for the first time. So, here they are! :)

    1. If you're the sort of person who wears shoes inside the house, start there. Take your shoes off when you're inside your home and get used to the feeling of feeling the different textures of carpet and tile beneath your toes.

    2. If you're the sort of person who avoids wearing shoes inside the house, start on your lawn, if you have one. Grass is one of the most forgiving outdoor surfaces to start going barefoot on, and you'll want to get your feet used to that first. It's relatively rough compared to carpet, but still so much gentler on the feet than going straight to concrete. You will want to watch where you step if your yard tends to have twigs or pine needles in it, though--I've been going barefoot for years, and I still avoid the lawn directly around our spruce trees.

    2.5. If you live near a beach or have a sandbox in your back yard, walk barefoot in the sand. Like grass, sand is a very forgiving outdoor surface, and it has a nice change in texture from standard lawn grass.

    3. When you're confident on grass, move on to concrete. Make sure you step carefully, because concrete sometimes has things like gravel, twigs, or wood chips on it, and stepping on those on the hard surface hurts a lot more than stepping on them in the grass.

    4. At this point, if you have a garden, start going barefoot out there. Do try to avoid wood chip mulch, as that takes a tolerance level similar to the one in the next step, but if you've got regular old soil, walk on that. It's always better to get the garden dirt damp first, though, because where I live, dry garden dirt is like asphalt's little brother in terms of heat level. Also, make sure you take time to enjoy the sensation of squishing your toes into the soil and mud--let your inner child loose! Plus, all the different textures you can find in various places around the yard can be really good for your feet.

    5. When you're really confident in your barefooting abilities for a short walk around the block, start trying to walk on landscaping rocks. The landscaping rocks in newer developments in my area, I've noticed, tend to be sharper and less pleasant than the round river-ish stones we have at my house, so do be careful of those--there are at least three difficulties of rocks to step on, and sharp landscaping stones are on the higher end! Definitely make sure to look for landscaping with smooth, round stones to walk on, because your feet will be feeling their pressure points enough already without adding pointy bits into the mix. Also, when walking on rocks, I've found that it's generally nicer to stay on the balls of your feet--my arches, at least, are very sensitive to pressure, and my heels don't love it, either. But the balls of my feet are tough and leathery, and at this point they can take most of the rocks in our yard.

    6. The next level of rock-walking is actually gravel, I would say. Because gravel is small, stepping on a single piece of gravel on the pavement hurts like nothing else--but a patch of gravel is at least bearable. It's like walking on Legos--the more of them you step on at once, the less it hurts overall because the pressure is being spread out over your entire foot rather than one piece-of-gravel-shaped bit of it. The closer together the individual bits of gravel are in the gravel patch, the less it'll hurt--construction zones, I've found, tend to scatter their gravel across the road so that you can only step on three or four pieces of it at once, and that sucks. The more gravel you've got under your foot, the better off you'll be, I promise.

    7. The top level of rock-walking is those sharp and pointy landscaping stones I mentioned earlier. I actually haven't made it to this phase yet, and I still avoid sharp and pointy landscaping stones wherever I can. (I also don't love walking on gravel, but I can do it if I have to.) I have, currently, no advice on how to get good at walking on these, because I don't do it if I can help it--and if I can't help it and I'm just on an average walk around the neighborhood, I'll just turn around and go home.

    Other warnings:

    1. I once put both feet into a patch of puncture weed/goathead/caltrops/thorns. I was walking out of my karate class and across the gravel parking lot (see, I can walk on gravel if I need to! [At least, I could 3.5 years ago]) and saw a plant on the ground by our car that looked like a much softer place to step, so I stepped on it. IT WAS NOT A NICE PLACE TO STEP!!!! What was worse, once I realized what had happened, I couldn't just hop out again without pushing the thorns farther into my feet--the safest place to go was inside the car, so I had to stand there for a second and wait for my mom to unlock it so I could open the door. Once I was in, I had to unstick between ten and twenty thorns from the sole of each foot before I could get fully into the car. When you're out walking barefoot, don't step into any old plant willy-nilly! You never know if it'll be sharp and prickly or not. I was lucky, because I had tough feet at the time and the little holes in my soles sealed up pretty quickly; I could walk from the car to the house just fine by the time I got home. Still, I never went to karate totally barefoot again. (I have to admit, I felt a great deal of sympathy for Toph from Avatar: The Last Airbender when her feet get burned in Season 3. Having something painful in/on your soles sucks.)

    2. Even pale, white-ish concrete can get pretty boiling hot during the summer, so be careful. Always test the temperature before you go for an extended walk.

    3. If you absolutely have to cross a road with asphalt paving, my best advice is to get up on the balls of your feet and dash across as quickly and lightly as you can. You don't want to leave your feet in contact with the asphalt for long.

    4. Look out for sharp metal objects on the ground in front of you as well--if it's something rusty, you don't want to step on it for sure. Avoid thumb tacks, nails, screws, pins and needles, discarded X-Acto knife blades, and so on. These sorts of objects are most common around construction zones (are you noticing a theme here? Avoid walking barefoot near construction zones; their Pain-Tp-Your-Feet zones can be pretty massive.), but they can show up anywhere.

    5. Learn to identify objects on the ground with your feet before putting your weight down. This comes from a stalking technique I learned from a book about survival bushcraft (I believe the name of the technique is foxwalk). If you lay your foot on the ground gently and feel for sharp objects before you shift your weight onto it, you can make it so you don't have to look at the ground in front of you all the time. You still want to be aware of what's in front of you, but if you need to look up for a moment to know what your surroundings are like, let the nerves in your soles tell you what you're stepping on before you step on it.

    Well, there you go. I'm no barefooting expert--there are many people out there who do it better and more often than I do--but I've been spending my summers barefoot for years at this point, and to this day, if I'm going to a relative's house and someone else is driving, I'm likely to go barefoot. Same thing if I'm taking a walk and I feel confident in my ability to be extra aware.

    Finally, no barefoot jaunt is going to be completely painless. There's always gravel and splinters on the ground that you don't see before you step on them, and I've had to plop down where I'm at and pull little shavings of grass or wood (or thorns) out of my feet before. Still, if you can build up your feet and your tolerance to the outdoors, it's very rewarding to go on your first barefoot walk and realize just how tough your feet have gotten.

P.S. If you ever want a unique challenge, try dashing outside in the winter and running through snow barefoot. I never do this for very long, because frostbite is a real concern, but taking a quick plunge of five or six steps into fresh powder and racing back inside again always leaves me giddy and giggling. I will also dash out barefoot to get the mail during the winter, because that's fun too. From what I've read, it is possible to go barefoot in cold weather for long periods of time, so long as you're good about keeping your core warm (so there's always warm blood to keep your toes from freezing) and watching your feet. If your toes are ever not pink, it's time to go inside. Again, I've never gone out in snow for more than the thirty seconds it takes to run out to the mailbox and back, so you'll definitely want to do your own research into that element of barefooting.

P.P.S. If you want to try barefooting but you're scared to take your shoes off completely, barefoot shoes are a real thing. Basically, they're shoes with really thin soles that let you feel the ground beneath your feet without putting you at risk of toasting yourself on asphalt or taking a patch of puncture weed straight to your soles. Do keep in mind, though, that barefoot shoes are kind of pricey.