I have always derived great benefit and balance from the simple freedom of just taking off on a walk or run into old growth forests and mountains. There seems to be a special wisdom and understanding I connect to, that evokes a sense of peace, power and belonging.

This simple act of putting one foot in front of the other, sucking the wind, making contact with the earth and all its elements, puts me in a state of clarity. My heightened senses awaken a primal animal state deep within me. I reconnect a missing link that … feels closer to a real life.

Many people experience running as a therapy to enhance physical, mental and emotional well-being. I ran to stay connected to something not documented in the health manuals. Walking and Running was my freedom.

I had never been comfortable with popular modern thinking around fitness. Technology seems to have an answer, and product for everything making us almost dependent on technology to be fit. We seem to respect technology over the natural instincts of our own body.

Experts with research funding, (that could have easily fed a third world country for decades), were dedicating expensive cycles of time proving their theories and products.

I began to notice how products that protect us from harm were about a thicker insulation against the elements. Protection became insulation because nature was just not safe to encounter without technical support and guidance.

Follow the Pain

Yet it wasn't really helping me on my quest to walk pain-free. My feet hurt, and this chronic pain was growing in intensity ,making even simple walking painful. The pain soon spread from my feet to my knees, into my low back, and eventually my neck. I was walking in the forest less and less, missing my stress relief workouts. And yet, I persevered into more shoe remedies, podiatrist consultations, inserts, homeopathic, chiropractic and hands on healing…still no relief.

At the same time another pain that was growing in me. I was uncomfortable, not with just the pain in my feet, but in my life, in the life I was living. I was feeling disconnected, lost, confused, bored and frustrated. It felt like no one was listening. Maybe it was me?

Something was wrong with life, the way I was living, and it had to do with the pain in my feet. This pain was trying to tell me something. Some how this pain in my soles wanted me to look at my whole life. I knew that I had to follow this pain.

So I followed the pain and discovered a path into a deeper way of connecting, a path that lead my soles out of confinement, into naked contact with the earth, healing what I was missing, my touch of the earth.

This is a story, a map of how I found that touch, of a barefoot journey, a discovery of an old walk that is hidden in our body memory. A walk that I went on beyond myself, beyond the edge of the city, to get to my true self, the steps it took to get there and the transforming gifts it brought me… that inspired this sharing.

True connection to yourself and the earth comes through your sole

Healing is growing. When I am growing, I feel whole and complete. When I do not grow, I feel disconnected… separated… I loose a critical sense of wellness.

My grandfather introduced the idea of healing powers walking through old growth forests. He felt they served a purpose in helping him adapt to living . He told me the two most important things in life were your word and your body. When you are healthy in both, you smile, so don’t loose your smile. Well, I was losing my smile.

So in desperation, I turned to yet another medical authority that promised a cure-all scientific plan. They would seal each foot in a plaster cast, an to keep them still for six weeks, allowing the tendons, the muscles and nerves to heal. After six weeks they would remove the casts, and I would start rehabilitation. More restriction and less movement was one thing I hadn’t tried.

Then came the worse point in this treatment program -- I agreed.

I decided to do my “healing” in a cabin I out in the Olympic Rain forest. A place called the Hoh, the wettest place in the lower 48 states. A place near where my grandfather took me as a boy. Maybe, since I couldn't’t run, I would be close enough to feel some of that stress-reducing magic I was longing for.

So I was sitting in my cabin, with a fire, my feet casted . There was a stack of National Geographic Magazines left there by my grandfather. I picked one up and opened it to page on Chinese women who had their feet wrapped because of a cultural story. I just stared at the pictures stared at my feet. Until the realization came to me and the words popped out of my mouth. “What have I done?” A question that came deep from in my core. I looked at all the shoes in a neat line, under the cabin window, and the most obvious shoe on the end of my feet, casting!

By morning I had taken my hunting knife and cut off those casts and was out walking around in the old growth forest with a couple of deformed white puffy feet. Feet that had been distorted and crippled from wearing shoes and walking on flat square surfaces. I walked around for several days, confused, horrified as to what I had done to my feet.

I finally came to a clear pool of water, looked down at the reflection of my body, strong muscles and feet that did not fit it. I vowed to make things right. I would walk, barefoot in the old growth forest and grow my feet back on to my body, and I was in the best place in the world to do it. The old growth forest know how to grow things. I took my first steps.

Being transformed

I stepped out of my shoes on a journey of exploration, and the first thing I discovered is that I did not know how to walk with out shoes. I had to learn how to walk naturally., to step into the plantar neural roots, instead of pounding on my heels.

Touching the earth with free soles changed everything about my walk and my talk. When I touched the various textures of the earth’s terrain around me, I felt a new sense of awareness. The soles on my feet grew stronger with each step . I learned to walk again, with feet now free of the confinements of a shoe. With this practice came a light , a new path to follow. As I followed this path I reconnected with my inner spirit . my smile grew along with it. I was feeling a level of energy and health that I did not know was possible.

Freeing my feet from confinement and exposing my naked soles to all the natural surfaces of the ocean beaches, forest trails and mountain passes, brought me into a deeper and older way of knowing things.

After awhile questions began to rise up questioning this cultural voice, and these questions became my quest.

1. Why do we need to wear shoes?
2. What is the correct way to walk?
3. Why do I feel so disconnected and could this be connected to the way my soles make contact with the earth, to my walking posture?
4. If I cut off my touch of the earth, is this not cutting off part of my thinking?
5. So, if I am not fully present, does this isolation mean that I am not developing fully?
6. If my perception is a fundamental part of my knowing, and I am insulating myself from exposure to these sensations.
7. Does the way I walk have any thing to do with the way I talk?
8. What about the way I perceive and believe,
9. The way I feel about myself?
10. The way I feel about the earth and how I integrate with it?

I queried medical doctors, to podiatrist, to spiritual healers, to body workers. I wrote to running and walking experts, fitness experts. I sat in medicine circles. The variety of responses and discussions boiled down to how we evolved from a primal animal state to a more highly evolved civilization and ....... there is no going back.

I listened but kept bare footing as much as I possibly could. I found bare foot wear to walk around in the city in order to support my new walk. I was motivated! I was on to something! I was healing the pain in my feet, my knees, and low back pain. I was even losing weight and my appetite. I was going through physical, emotional and mental changes, allowing my body's wisdom to show me the way.

Walk like an Animal

Then came the affirmation that gave even more strength to my smile and path. My walks in the mountains grew longer as I explored ways to open my soles to the growth, heal the emotional and mental pain and re-connect my roots of separation. I lost interest in cultural commitments. Friends and relatives became concerned.

One of these concerned friends, a religious man, joined me in forest for a walk. On the trail, he was in his boots, I was on my soles. He began to share his concerns about me. He remarked that I was “walking like an animal”. Yes, he said, “You walk like a animal!” I stopped in my tracks.

He went on about how, “ walking on your paws, is the way an animal walks, savages walk, primitives walk and we are no longer animals. We are highly evolved beings. We are civilized beings!” He walked along side me, landing on his heels, pounding on the path, stepping on a banana slugs, stomping on plants. The more he preached his concerns and marched on the path, the more I could see the difference in our walk. The less I trusted the talk, not him, but his talk.

Standing on the trail of the old growth, I was standing ‘IN’ the earth . I was learning and earning the walk of my ancestors ,the Celts. My religious friend was standing on the same path, pounding his heel into the earth, supporting the march of Rome, the walk of domination, wanting me to return to confinement.

I had a new teacher that day I was motivated and guided into my genetic memory. I was awakening to the walk of my ancestors, before the time of separation.

Could it all be so simple? Opening my soles to the earth, walking in this way, I would step into and uncover my original talk. A talk that I began as a child when I took my first steps.

My religious friend, scholars and historians agree Buddha and Jesus walked barefoot. Primitive man walked barefoot. Most children take their first step barefoot. Using the dynamic touch and agility of the naked foot to stabilize their balance and move forward , forefoot first .Have you ever seen a child walk heel first?

I now know my soles were being fed through a greater power, rooting past the voice of culture. My vision of how to live was changing. As my body grew and changed, my emotions grew and changed, My thinking was changing much slower, lots of old talk, old tapes to over come and root past .t My intuitive senses were growing.

I continued stepping into the path, healing my body pain, feeling good at every step, but still confused in my talk. No tribe to share what my soles are showing me and doing to me. No one but the forest, the elk, the cedar trees, the rivers, beaches, eagles, slugs. What was I to do? To go back!

To heal the body we must heal the community

Next Steps

I went for deeper and longer walks and runs, in the one place that I knew still understood how to grow things. A place that my grandfathers had made sure got into my memory. I went to the last of the old growth forest of the Pacific Northwest. Saying over and over again, teach me!, touch me! The earth spoke, and this is why I share.

My message is simple:

Grow your neural roots back into earth, awaken your original walk ,manifest your original talk, open your touch, to the earth knowing.

Hearing Disconnection

Try a small experiment. Take off your shoes, plug your ears, and walk across the space you now occupy. Then listen for the thud in your body. If you are a heel walker you will here the impact of your step. You are walking “ON’ your bones. You are walking ‘ON’ the earth.

Now, stand with your feet together, fall forward and land on the largest part of you foot, the front pad, get a feel for this. Then once again with no shoes and ears plugged walk across the floor in this forefoot manner, Then listen to see if you hear the thud. You are stepping ‘IN’ your joints. You are stepping ‘In’ the earth.

There is stepping in and stepping on. Focus on it, work on it, connect with these two varieties of walking and then read on, and take this practice out into the natural surface areas .

When you walk heel first, you pound your bones. When you step more into the forefoot, you step into your joints. I call this Integrative walking and it is a posture that you will grow and feel your way into. Changing your body posture .

It is critical you test this out for yourself… even if you are already a bare footer.

You may still have residuals of this heel walking posture in your body, cutting off vital tactile stimulation. The direct experience will demonstrate this connection and open your genetic memories for healing, and in order to heal. You need to touch.

Humility

A fundamental property of stepping with Integration is humility. For the first thing that a barefooter becomes aware of is that they must look where they are placing their feet. They must step into the earth, fit the foot in to the path.

Imagine that… you will have to watch where you are stepping. You will have to fit your foot in to the path. Your heart will take over,...... transformation begins.

Barefoot Bard