 Hey everybody Rob Greenfield here and today I'm gonna talk to you about my barefoot life. And of course I am barefoot as I usually am. I have been for about the last decade and today I'm gonna talk to you about why I'm barefoot, the benefits of being barefoot and what maybe you could get out of it too. And if I could sum that up in one thing the reason why it's because I believe these things work. I believe that hundreds of thousands of years of evolution has it more figured out than the last couple hundred years of humans and shoes. But there's a lot more to it than that so stay tuned and I'll share it all. So I haven't always been barefoot. I have to be honest I think always there's been a little bit of an interest at least. Even when I was in high school growing up in northern Wisconsin with frigid cold winters I seem to remember trying to go outside barefoot and I seem to remember going to parties and college in my sandals even in the middle of winter. So it's always been a part of me. But it wasn't until my early 20s I was in New Zealand and Australia and I had a mentor. I was doing a study abroad program and this guy his name is Gary. He's from Tasmania a pretty wild guy and we'd be climbing over mountains on our hikes and this guy would be doing it barefoot. Everything we were doing whether it was climbing or hopping over rocks or walking through town this guy was barefoot. And I saw that and it just intrigued me and I thought hey if Gary can do this then I have to be able to as well. So I started to take my shoes off and walk with Gary and at first maybe I'd only make it a half mile or a mile but pretty quickly I was making it a little bit more and a little bit more and that's what I did. I started off small and built it up and built it up. A few years later I remember I was in Northport New York and there was a 10k the Cow Harbor 10k and I had never run a competitive 10k that's six kilometers of not really a competitive person but I decided hey I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna try to do it barefoot and see what happens. So I started out in the back of the pack thinking that I would be pretty slow with everybody else having shoes and wanting to take it easy and I started out and I just found myself passing dozens and dozens and then hundreds and hundreds of people and I finished the race in about 44 minutes I think it was. It was the fastest that I've ever ran you know really one of the fastest I've ever ran in my entire life and it was barefoot. So what happened was I just found myself continuously exceeding what I thought that I could do with my body and I found my body working naturally and I found myself working within the boundaries that I had with my body and I just grew into it. Now a lot of people they can understand walking barefoot you know at the beach or maybe in a nice field or hiking in a you know smooth place but I go barefoot pretty much everywhere even in the streets of New York or in the alleys I'm generally always barefoot. Now I put on shoes sometimes of course especially when I'm visiting colder climates but generally my goal is to try to be barefoot as much as I possibly can. So being barefoot for me is definitely about freedom. I get a great sense of freedom from being barefoot but it's about so much more than that. For me it's about allowing my feet to do what they've been designed to do. So there's a couple of things that I want to talk about that I'd like you to think about. First of all let's talk about the modern shoes and we'll start with arch support. So arch support this is your arch right here and the idea of arch support is it supports that arch. Now the problem with that if you've ever broken a bone and had to wear a cast or know a friend who has what you've seen is that by not using something it atrophies and the problem that I see with arch support is when you support the arch it doesn't have to do its job anymore and it atrophies. So these modern shoes actually can create weaker feet and it's not just the arch it's the muscles it's the ligaments and it's the tendons. Our feet have a higher concentration of muscles, ligaments and tendons than many parts of our body and wearing these shoes that give that support actually allow for the feet to not have to be strong and not have to be able to do what they naturally do. Now it doesn't just end at the feet though. Of course we know everything about us is intricately connected. It's very easy to remove things and say this is your eye and that's your foot and it has absolutely nothing to do with each other but of course we know that's not true. Everything is intricately connected. So when your feet aren't working in that natural way and you have that support that can throw off your legs it can throw off your lower back it can throw off your back and so these shoes can actually cause not just foot problems but problems throughout your whole body. So for me being barefoot is allowing it's about allowing my body to work as it has been designed over hundreds of thousands of years. Another thing that's really special about the feet is the feet have more nerve endings in the bottom of our feet than most other parts of our body. I have to imagine that the lips would have more nerve endings for example they're so sensitive but of all the places of our body this has one of the highest concentrations of nerve endings. Now why would that be? Why would that be the case if they were designed to just be stuck inside of a foot? My belief is that the shoes cut off the body's ability to receive information. So when I'm running barefoot and I'm walking barefoot my body is able to receive all of that information and have me be more connected to my surroundings more connected to the earth that is underneath me and I believe that cutting off those nerve endings can have very meaningful implications as well. There's something that happens when you start to let those nerve endings do their job and this is a part of being barefoot and that is that you develop calluses. So I like to say that it might appear that I'm not wearing shoes but in a way I actually am they are naturally built in soul right to the foot. So my soul is very thick and I can step if I step on thorns for example most of the time they just go in a tiny way not even to the sensitive part not not to the part that hurts because the callus has been built over it. So I'm able to step on little pieces of glass for example which I do sometimes and it generally goes into the callus and doesn't go deep in. So a lot of people worry about these things like that. People always say well doesn't it hurt? Don't you get injured? Well first of all you build it up over time. If you've been wearing shoes for decades it takes you time for your feet to reliberate and become a part of the land but also again just remember these were designed to function in the first place. A lot of I think shoe shoe industries today are multi-billion dollar companies. This is a huge industry. Do you really think that the way they design everything is always for the best interest of our feet and our health or do you think that money may play a large role in the way they do things? There's actually studies out there that show that once shoes get above 100 dollars you actually see more injuries and that's the next big part that I really want to talk about and that is that by by being barefoot what I've found is that I'm actually able to stay within my boundaries. Think about this for a second. Our shoes are designed with absorption, shock absorption in them. You see on these commercials how it shows the perfect shock absorption. Okay I'm not a very good impersonator but what where do we see the most knee replacements and hip replacements? It's from sports like basketball, like tennis, like track and field on concrete where people are wearing shoes and just pounding their feet down. So by being barefoot what happens is I am required to take that impact naturally. I use my legs and my feet to to step down and jump down in a way where I take that impact in but what happens with the modern-day shoes is they allow us to really hit down hard and it does take some of that impact but not nearly enough. So what I found is that the modern-day shoe actually allows me to go beyond the natural limitations of my body and allows me to injure myself even more. So like I said I've injured my feet a few times but the injuries that I've had are minor compared to the long-term damaging injuries that you see in this societal way of just allowing ourselves and pushing our bodies beyond what they're actually capable of doing. So being barefoot forces me to stay within my body's capability. Now speaking of forcing me to do what my body is designed to do and what I want to do being barefoot also keeps me out of places that I don't want to go. You know the sign no shoes no shirt no service well a lot of places won't allow me in barefoot. One of those places is bars. I don't really want to drink very much I don't really want to go to those places so being barefoot actually prevents me from going to those places even when I might slip up and go to them because I'm often out and about with no shoes at all. So being barefoot just kind of keeps me outside and keeps me if I'm not outside in more chill places the places that I want to be rather than in shopping malls and consumeric consumeristic places and bars. So being barefoot really just kind of forces me to live the life that I actually want. Another thing that being barefoot does is it forces me to slow down. I have to pay attention to where I'm going with shoes you can just plow over everything and not have to think about the ground beneath your feet but whether I'm walking or I'm running I mentioned that wearing shoes really connects me to my surroundings because I have to look where I'm going. So people worry about stepping in dog poop for example well I actually am watching where I'm going so I'm less likely to step in dog poop than with shoes because I have to pay attention to my surroundings and I'll notice glass people often that are walking with me are like stop Rob there's glass I know there's glass I'm the barefoot one I have to pay attention to that so you start to pay more attention to your surroundings but again it slows me down I want to live a relaxed life I want to live stress-free and largely anxiety-free and being barefoot really slows me down it makes me have to pay attention to where I'm going I can't as hurry as much and it really just as much as it keeps me working within my body's capabilities it also keeps me slow and helps me to live a more you know relaxed calm stress-free life and again a big part of that is keeping me out of the places that that aren't a part of that back to the dog poop thing what about the hygiene of being barefoot the interesting thing about it is that being barefoot I find it's easier to practice good hygiene than with shoes and socks that might be counterintuitive to a lot of people who think that the world is this dirty place and where germs are a bad thing thing that's a whole another thing to go into or that I have gone into in other videos but the important thing is there's a lot of problems that are created with shoes and one of those is bacterial problems and fungal problems think about this for a second where does fungus grow it grows in damp dark places if you have a wall that's in the blazing sunlight that's not where fact bacteria and fungus grows it's going to grow on the shady side of the house where it's cooler and where it is moist so with feet where is fungus going to grow in damp socks inside shoes where it's dark and moist or on feet that are exposed to fresh air and sunlight athlete's foot and foot fungus is a product of stuffing our feet inside of damp shoes damp socks being barefoot prevents that fungus and prevents athlete's foot so it's actually being barefoot is a form of good hygiene as far as the the dirt and stuff that gets on to the bottom of the foot well it's a wet day today so you can see that there's dirt on the bottom of my foot but the thing about being barefoot is i actually pay a close attention to my hygiene my feet are very important to me if i was wearing shoes i could easily leave dog poop on the bottom in those crevices but if i'm going to get something on my foot i'm going to wash it off so being barefoot actually creates naturally good hygiene another part of that is exfoliation you see a lot of people's feet who has just so much dead skin on it and these toenails that are just gunked up while walking barefoot is a natural exfoliation in fact my favorite way to exfoliate my whole body is to go to the beach and just use sand to rub my body but my feet are being exfoliated constantly so it it builds up the callus as needed but it doesn't hold on to all the dead skin so it's another form of good natural hygiene a couple more things one is minimalism and money and sustainability wrapping all those things together so minimalist wise some people have dozens of pairs of shoes the average person i don't know might have a dozen pair of shoes sustainability wise that's extremely destructive to have to need so much for me this is about saying i don't need so much i'm a human being with a human body and i can exist without so much of a need for such a large amount of modern produced stuff now companies like Nike tell you that you're supposed to replace your shoes every 500 miles that creates an incredible amount of garbage and pollution but it also burns a lot of money my goal is to live with very little money and my bare feet are definitely a representation of that i've been wearing i've had two pairs of shoes for the last about four years so you can imagine just how much less money i spent how much less trash that i create how much less dependent that i am on these this industry that i see as a destructive industry and of course as i said being barefoot keeps me out of the shops so i can actually spend a lot less money in that way so those are some of the reasons that i'm barefoot those are some of the benefits that i've seen from it and those are just things that i think are worth thinking about and it's not about you know any form of being dogmatic and doing something a hundred percent of the time my goal is to work with the earth to tread lightly on the earth to enjoy my treading on the earth and be connected to it and being barefoot as much as i can does that if i'm in cold climates again i wear shoes but if it gets up to 50 degrees fahrenheit 10 degrees celsius on a warm day i'll try to get out especially even the blacktop can be warm on days like that so i do what i can to be barefoot as much as i can if it's cold outside at least i can be barefoot at home and giving my feet that that fresh air and that connectedness if you are interested in walking barefoot and connecting to the earth in that way then i recommend starting somewhere you have to start with where you are and who you are in the place that you're in that is what you have to do is embrace the situation so start walking barefoot maybe just around your yard then maybe around the block then maybe walk a mile then go for a walk in the woods and you can start by walking in the easier places the places that are smoother and and softer rather than starting on you know really difficult gravel for example so start where you are start small if it's your desire to walk barefoot at the very least remember to question these basic things question these industries that we know their ethics are flawed and just go deeper with these things so i hope that you got a lot out of that at the very least just thinking about it thinking about the evolution of our feet and thinking about the very basic thought of what's got it better figured out hundreds of thousands of years of evolution or Nike in the last hundred years my bet is on evolution thank you all for tuning in i love you all very much make sure to subscribe if you haven't and you want more content like this invite your friends and share this video with anyone you think would benefit and go ahead and comment if you have questions last make sure you go to robgreenfield.org barefoot where i share more information links to details and my story as well all right love you all see you soon