In our human past, we had a much greater and deeper relationship to the natural world and knew more intimately how to move through and interact with our environment.
Today's first installment in this series of rewilding your movement focuses on the feet.
Our feet have on the whole atrophied.
We no longer allow the muscles in our feet to serve their function as stabilizers and deny the toes the opportunity to grip the earth. Through the advent of hard-soled shoes, we have forsaken the incredible potential for our feet to serve as sensory organs.
The ubiquitous nature of concrete has further disconnected us from the tactile experience of gripping, balancing and reacting to the world around us. Can you feel the Earth through your feet? Have you awoken your ability to receive feedback through your soles?
Engaging Barefoot
Rewilding your movement can come in a variety of forms, but the most accessible and easiest to practice is simply engaging in the natural world barefoot.
The sundry of sensations, textures, layers and planes helps to stimulate the bodies natural tendency to react and engage with its surroundings.
Our feet have most often been trained to be bound in shoes, but we can always liberate them for times that allow the toes to grip, muscles to strengthen and instincts to kick in.
Kick your shoes off and walk through the woods, on the bank of a creek or even on a 2x4 in your own home.
Our feet have amazing abilities that we've forgotten: our feet can grip, flex and splay if given the chance. There's a a vast history of human evolution where the feet were used to for their intended purpose, to walk on the earth. It's seems even silly to say, but our bodies are built for upright walking and the feet are the first place to begin addressing the extent of your domestication.
Considering your feet is the best place to start rewilding your movement.
Get out into whatever ecosystem you live in and start rewilding your movement today!
How do you like to express your human wildness through movement?
