Barefoot Walking: Free Your Feet to Minimize Impact
Michael Sandler and Jessica Lee
Barefoot Walking: Free Your Feet to Minimize Impact, Maximize Efficiency, and Discover the Pleasure of Getting in Touch with the Earth
2013, Three Rivers Press, New York, NY
Barefoot Walking is a scientifically researched appeal to leave aching feet with the shoe designers and experience instead the miraculous value of shoe-free walking. Guiding novices through a strengthening conditioning period, every imaginable concern of the newly shoeless from injury to terrain is addressed. Turning your feet into living shoes allows you meet the ground correctly and connect to the earth's therapeutic restorative energy. Following a horrific skating accident, Mike Sandler was told he might lose his leg. Operations left him scarred, with one leg one-inch shorter than the other. Creating a conscious lifestyle of walking barefoot healed him physically and made him stronger than ever. Can something as simple as barefoot walking really have such dramatic results? Absolutely. "We're all born with amazing feet. And then we stuff them into narrow shoes." Shoes hamper foot movement, which creates weak toes, weak arches and weak feet. And depending on the type of footwear, you're messing with other body parts such as spine, knees shoulders, neck and back. The fix for years of unwitting shoe-wearing neglect is the gentle but extremely beneficial properties of vitamin G. G stands for "ground," but it can also stand for "good." Either way, on the ground is good for you and it's where your bare feet belong.
Gail Lord is a freelance writer living in Massachusetts. Please send book review copies to 51 North Street, Grafton, MA 01519 or email socbookreviewer@gmail.com.
