Why did I start taking an interest in barefoot walking?
The most important initiator was my wife Lucie Dědičová. She works as an instructor for Pilates, healthy fitness training and Port de Bras and is one of the freaks of the healthy movement. Now she takes the physiotherapeutic attitude to the body for the most inspiring.
I am not only husband and father, but also pediatrician. I found that many of my little patients have problems with flat feet or inverted ankles.
At preventive health checks, I try to talk to their parents about such problems and help my little patients in this way. We discuss that the children's shoes they wear are not suitable for them, that there are barefoot shoes, that the children have a good chance of strengthening their feet, that they should walk barefoot as much as possible in the summertime, and in this way they can increase the sensitivity of their feet.
I do not like the conservative attitude to the topic of flat feet - to put extremely hard orthopedic insoles in the shoes and to expect a miracle.
I would be very happy if the view of this topic changed or at least was not one-sided.
The transition from normal shoes to barefoot shoes or barefoot walking is such a multiplicity of exits from a box for me.
First we take out the boxes that we have worn on our feet so far and begin to walk barefoot. It is a change, we are gradually learning to discover our own legs, and after a while, we like it.
We want to give our feet as many experiences as possible that we can not make on a flat floor, so we come out of our brick- and concrete crates and walk through the meadow or the forest - over stones, sticks, cones, grass or in the mud.
And while we walk or run in the woods, we leave the imaginary box that we carry in our heads for a moment and look at us differently. We think about which existing movement stereotypes are no longer appropriate for us and how we can allow more impressions and experiences not only for our feet but also for the whole body.
I think it is very important to have an overview in life so that we could take necessary steps in life. It is incredibly beautiful to give such a chance to our feet and let them look around.
It is really refreshing to walk barefoot or in barefoot shoes and feel the surroundings completely through the power of the soles of your feet. It is about a way of life, the union with nature and the understanding of the environment on another level.
You only need to want. If you want, you can try everything, just take off your shoes and go barefoot, experiencing your own feelings.
It is not necessary to change all habits immediately. A long-term change can happen out of pure curiosity. Then you can just follow what this change takes along.
Feet, which are only a few square centimeters in size and still keep us in the constant course of life and being, I hold in my profession for some know-how.
In the literature, we always find more information about the importance of healthy feet for the proper functioning of the entire musculoskeletal system. Unfortunately, the condition of the feet in today's civilized world is not good. From a perfect tool with amazing mechanisms, the feet became a weak, dysfunctional and often deformed part of our musculoskeletal system. However, the feet are the crucial system of posture stabilization and locomotion.
Personally, I met barefoot five years ago. During my PhD thesis, I studied available literature and found that most of the world's scientific research on barefoot walking demonstrates a significantly positive health effect of barefoot walking in comparison with the negative impact of wearing footwear. The benefits of barefoot walking have also been confirmed in my research, which dealt with the treatment of children's flat feet. But it's not just about the benefits for children. On the activity of the leg muscles, the diaphragm and the breast react by changing their position and respiration (Čumpelík, Kolář, 2009, MRI study). In its function, the position of the sole of the foot is closely related to the pelvic floor (Paoletti, 2009). Barefoot therapy may be used to treat chronic back pain or pelvic disorders (stress incontinence, functional sterility in women, etc.).
Of course, barefoot walking has a big impact on our mental state. I really like the article by Erskien (2009), which says that the world around you changes when you walk barefoot. When you are barefoot, you feel more connected to the earth and other people, and everything slows down. On the contrary, our shoes isolate us from the ground and from the people. In the shoes we hurry more and we are more stressed. If you walk barefoot, you move like a child - playful and receptive at the same time, but purposeful and self-confident.
The right barefoot walking technique can positively affect the function of the pelvic floor muscles and our way of breathing, has a strong impact even on our good mood and mental state in general.
It always depends on how we walk. Barefoot walking does not have to be good for everyone. There are situations, places and also diagnoses that refer to walking barefoot.