Steemians! It's been a while since I've been posting regularly, as I was traveling since July. Running a business, I also had to follow up with work currently in progress. I am very excited, as this is my first post using the naturalmedicine.io front end. I love the green hexadecimal 82BC69 btw.!
The past few months have also been an amazing experience, as I have been busy on boarding people on steem and showing them how it works. It's a great way to refresh the proof of brain concept with the newly segregated front ends and their tokenisations. Showing and explaining the various front ends and their purpose, staking, voting power and the proof of brain concept behind curation and publishing original content, as well as the awesomeness behind sharing value with others just gives me more passion for the Steem community.
I would also like to mention that I am staring a group account with some awesome Steemians very soon. Some that we all already know and love and that have agreed to help, as a lot of valuable and creative content doesn't get curated enough or still gets lost in the feeds. With respect to all Steemian tribes, we also want to act as a powerful addition and support to the existing communities and strengthen our bonds.
In my previous post on Barefoot walking I covered some topics about the Fascia and briefly mentioned what I am about to write about in this post. My Journey to the following post is compiled experience and trying various things since 2011. I was often confronted with disdain attitudes for my indifference when it came to my dressing style. Not only due to my color, but also at times my cultural disposition, gave me a very different conscience from western societies. Specially while growing up in a neighbourhood where all asians are Chinese and well, all people who look like me are from Africa in my generation. Sharing very different views living in so many different places on our planet and speaking several languages, people often tend to hold on to what they know and where I live, aren't often open to new perspectives. Currently I am actually loving the deride faces of people who look at my shoes. I specially enjoy them when I enter a grocery store barefooted. A comment by 
"We made the whole world with our hands, while we learned to ignore our feet" -
Speaking to an aspiring doctor, her argument against this was that we don't need our toes to climb trees. Right there, I didn't wanna get into the missing link and why most primates have 48 chromosomes and we have 46 and that it's very well possible that we might not share a common ancestor with the great apes. I am not denying evolution either. She was convinced that we focused on evolving our minds and got really good at thinking instead. Basically I fell into a trap. I told her that whatever muscles we don't use or stimulate become redundant, so the body tends to degenerate muscles that aren't used and focuses on the ones that are used more. Thinking about nerves and sensations or stimuli, it almost reminded me of people who tell you not to think too much. Well maybe I do, but if someone says this to you, you're not gonna wanna ask them if they do the opposite? Her argument was that the body rebuilds and retrofits rather than degenerates, which I strongly took into consideration. In my opinion, I still believe that our big toes should have a slight distance from our smaller ones, similar to our hands with our big thumbs. Balancing and landing on our footballs more than our heels and using our hips more, which is a healthier way to walk and surely less impacting on your joints.
In my previous post I went over a few aspects of stimulating the fascia in our feet and also about why most shoes people wear aren't actually good for us. I wrote about a Workshop on Bio-Mechanics that I attended in Zurich and how life changing that experience was. The lift of a heel can cause arch problems and pushes the foot more to the front of the shoe. When pointed, this causes our toes to squeeze together and creates rather unhealthy feet. They also grow to look unaesthetic. Also the tilt forward, causes our upper spinal columns to take more pressure because our head weighs as well. Another factor that ties into why people have back problems in our age is seating positions and chairs in general, which is a known fact. The trend of standing desks is great, but I remember Sonja telling me something that I really loved, which is to keep altering ones position. These seats that we use relieves our lower spinal columns so much, that they often stiffen and cause many to develop unhealthy postures. Western societies should learn to sit in squad positions to train these muscles.
If you are interested in reading the details, here is a link to my previous post:
My Mom's parents were Yoga teachers, taught and lived really healthy most of their lives and practiced Ayurveda in every way they could. Also, my ancestors never really ate meat. Since my dad's mom was a Sanskrit scholar and teacher, a very ancient and strong cultural heritage was passed on, that I am still exploring and trying to understand better. Som of it still truly a mystery for the part of my mind that's still too western. My mom got into Reflexology and Shiatsu at some point, which is from where I have the image above. The image is a mobile shot from one of her books gifted to her by my Dad back in 1999. Although I haven't had the experience to confirm if these pressure points are actually related, I do believe that these quite literally could be connected through the fascia and maybe could be the holistic approach to treating stiffness in the muscles, swellings and other issues with the various body parts mentioned to be connected through just the feet.
Anyone should have some fascia balls at home to massage trigger points, because Myofascial release is the key to optimal and healthy kinesthetics and physical wellbeing.
All summer I was trying to walk barefooted as much as I could, enjoyed it so much and really felt a significant difference, as well as feeling connected to the earth. The various terrains of lawns, rocky paths, trees that stimulated the fascia felt like they gave more stimulation to the mind. I have always been Barefooted since I was a child, so putting on shoes seemed like a strange thing to do. Getting into those hulks for my toes?
When I met Sonja(who did the Biomechanics workshop) for the first time, I mentioned to her that I think high heels are a strange fashion. We went for a walk and I had no idea what all she was into.
I told her, if I was an animal, to imagine high heel hoofs are someones feet makes up a strange creature. If those were to be feet or hoofs reminded me of superstition in mythologies, like believing in demons. I'm not demonising anything and specially not morbid, uncivilised corpse eating savages who happen to be the majority of our species leaving their fast food trash everywhere else but the public trash bins in my part of the world. One could just add the devilish horns to the creature I am trying to visualise. I am also thinking that the clown needs to be added in the make up of that creature when I think of excessive I shadow. lip stick and rouge. Like the flesh and lust depiction associated with this culturally so embedded fashion. With a creepy walk, quite an unstable the galloping sound the creature would make, seems like it could be dangerous. I don't think such a creature would survive in a jungle and either and get attacked by predators for making that sound and for looking so insecure and helpless. Injured pray is an easy meal. Completely irrelevant, because we live in a so called modern society of speciesists, right? I think women really held on to this as femininity while creating something they believe to be aesthetically pleasing amongst each other and maybe also appealing not only to men? Many now days would agree that it can't be good for their feet. Maybe it really is a fashion that does that since the 60s along with common beliefs that people still hold on to?
In an age of gender equality, I arguably witness various impacts of this movement of empowering femininity shape quite different. Depending on the country and it's level of patriarchy, I often also feel that women advocating an insecure and fragile image are also a part of the problem. As a man growing up with a stronger sense of equality it is quite hard, because chivalry is not appreciated by strong feminists and some men that are not so nice are just more successful because they are considered tough enough. I realised that in countries where women are suppressed to be an object of lust, housewives, babysitters and not considered equal in their vocational lives, they also beccom that suppressed image benchmark to themselves, but to other men. The idealistic depiction or image of a woman is also often creatively directed by their own gender. I therefore really see people instead of genders and a world where we are all humans from earth and not from venus or mars. To me, too much makeup and more than just decent mascara goes beyond aesthetics and becomes an image or ideal to hide behind for the masses. It also happens to make me realise that many of these women take these roles and also possibly unwillingly create this gender distinction. Compared to the movement of most hippie sort of meditating, yoga doing women who actually empower to achieve a sense of equanimity, I sense an uprise in the midst of this pop culture concept of pinup girls from the 60s that seems to still prevail and cause widespread attention. I don't wanna start talking about men and their shoes that look like envelope slitters. My point here is, you are leaning forward and your body can be straight.
When I told Sonja that part of the High heels and the creepiness, she looked at me, smiled, humbly listened and to what I had to say and observed me. She surely noticed that I wasn't walking right myself! At the time I had no idea that she was gonna flip my world like that. After her workshop I did a bit of Barefoot walking and tried wearing all the flat sole shoes I have and switched back to my beloved Tabis. After all, you can see that it actually matches my character.
I believe that we will see many changes in podiatry and the way shoes are made in the coming years. I am already seeing these changes happening, looking at various shoes.
Because trust me, this is not how you want your feet to look like or become, putting them in stiff and confining shoes.
Over the years I have seen companies like reebok improve the front of a shoe to adjust for more toe space, but it doesn't really help if your shoes are stiff. Shoes should be bendable and flexible in all directions and I am sure that experts will tell you the same.
<a href"https://trent.photo/1995/09/03/tarahumara-runners/">SOURCE
Their Diets being mostly plant based, the Tarahumara are the worlds top runners. Doing ultra marathons, they consume a lot of carbohydrates. Due to lesser meat and processed food compared to western diets, they also have very little LDL Cholesterol in their bodies. The ergonomical aspect of how their feet touch the floor makes me encourage anyone to look more into this.
For this purpose I would also like to share this video that I found on youtube:
Our shoes offer protection, but the way they are build makes us strike the floor 'heel first'. This was something that I literally did wrong all my life, thinking it was cool until I was at Sonja's workshop. Since then and through practicing what I learned at that workshop, I now find it pretty strange how people commonly walk.
Let me cut to the chase. Basically after returning from holland with 
Sonja recommends vivobarefoot shoes as well. Vivobarefoot shoes were also mentioned by awesome 
As I had mentioned in my previous post, I have been wearing marugos since 2011 and am very convinced by them. The company makes shoes since 1919, so they are literally a hundred years old! The company is famous for not just making shoes btw. During my trip I ordered a new pair of Marugos, because their new series really take advantage of this trend and I believe that they are the way to go. Now, when I got my first ones in 2011, I was concerned about toe pains, that quickly vanished and I attribute them to being slight muscles aches I had to get used to. I later realised that it was because of the other, common shoes I was wearing and the way I was walking in them. I still walked heel first until not too long ago. I sort of had to learn to sneak in them. I quickly got used to that by walking barefooted since we actually do walk most natural this way. Since we are talking about being barefoot here, I also think that if you have an option between vivo, tikki(awesome sandals), vibram and marugo, you have more than enough diversity. Lets be real, who needs that many shoes? Free the toes!
Looking at the ninjaya site, I actually only considered two models and I am sure you can make out which ones they are.
Here I will review one:
This is the Marugo Sports Jog 2. I am unboxing the pair and comparing them to the older Sports jog 1 Model I have since 2011. Unfortunately I am not sure they are completely vegan because of the glue. They contain no leather but a small PVC material piece in the inside of the laces made up of artificial leather.
My inference is that I have never had more comfortable shoes! I personally tried vivo and vibrams as well and love them, but Tabi shoes are like training to land on a football, separate the great toe(almost like our thumbs) and learning to grab with your small toes as well as exploring the undeveloped sensations in the 2ndto the 5th toes.
| Category | #busy, #naturalmedicine, #mindfullife, |
| Settings | ISO 4000 28 mm f/2.8 |
| Camera | Sony α 7 r ii |
| Lens | Canon FD 28mm f / 2.8 |
| Location | Zurich - Switzerland |
| Photographer | @yangyanje |
If your feet hurt from walking, maybe your should stop squeezing them in those hulks you're wearing? - Soan Shinobi a
[ NOTE: This post was created using the naturalmedicine.io front end.]
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