Sensing the Ground

This week I found myself talking about the importance of shoes with multiple clients and how they relate to posture. And it led to some very fruitful conversation about why structured and supportive shoes are better for your brain and body than minimalist or barefoot shoes.

So much of our posture is subconscious and formed by how we sense the ground through our feet. When we talk about shoes and how they help us sense the ground, we have to take into account that there are different types of ground.

Barefoot or minimalist shoe proponents rely on the evidence that our ancestors walked around barefoot all the time and had very strong feet as a result. But our ancestors weren’t walking around on concrete, pavement, and man-made floors most of the time; they were on natural ground.

Natural ground has variations in the topography and that variation gives our brain information through our toes, arches, and heels, kind of like binary or Morse code - it is the patterns in 0s and 1s or dots and dashes that tell the brain what’s happening under the feet. Flat manmade ground is just a series of 0s or dashes - it gives our brain the same signal over and over through the entire foot, which results in a lot less understanding of the ground underneath us.

A more supported and structured shoe gives our toes, arches, and heels that variation of information that flat ground doesn’t. It’s not that minimalist shoes are bad - it’s that they don’t account for the modern ground we’re stepping on. So go barefoot as much as possible on dirt, sand, and grass. For walking or running on trails, wearing more minimalist shoes is a great way to work on foot strength. For walking or running on concrete, your brain needs more information from structured shoes because the ground isn’t supplying it.

If you’re interested in what makes a great structured and supported shoe, check out the shoe list from the Postural Restoration Institute.

If you’re interested in being fitted for the right kind of shoes for your brain and body, reply to this email and let’s set up an initial assessment!