Recently getting back into thich nhat hanh, and he talks a lot about walking meditation, I also like the idea. Why? I have a passion for walking, all of my best ideas come from my feet, while walking, outside in the outdoors!
To first think, start walking!
Right now the big problem is that shoes are our casts with the environment. I think there is so much knowledge and wisdom in our feet, and environment. For example the extreme joy of just walking barefoot in the grass, or in the sand, or just having your naked feet in the beach water!
However, the modern day times we have been indoctrinated to somehow think that the environment is to be feared, that it is a bad and evil thing, also wonder how much of it is just kind of this weird consumer things; these corporation just tried to sell you more sneakers, to spin a higher profit. As a consequence, we are almost indoctrinated to become ashamed of our feet? I almost wonder if a bunch of these weird foot fetishes are precisely because of that; naked feet are seen as barbaric, ugly and backwards? This is also why you see a lot of women painting their toenails?
we the new barbarians!
I suppose I’m pretty happy that I’ve been wearing vibram five finger barefoot shoes for so long — because I’ve done it for so long and my feet have lots of sturdy and useful calluses, as a consequence other day I almost scraped my foot against something, and because I had a bunch of tough calluses on my feet, it didn’t hurt or harm me.
Also, I think the reason why people enjoy foot massages so much is that once again, there are lots of nerves and endings in our feet, which means maybe back in the past in ancient times, when man was barefoot, he would use his feet to almost 3-D scan his environment, almost like LiDAR, to almost create like some sort of GPS system for his feet. And as a consequence, an ancient man could navigate the forest at night without shoes.
Just look at children and kids; naturally natural realistically, no kid likes to wear shoes or socks or whatever. And assuming that it is not snowing outside, maybe the best course of action is just let your kid go barefoot as much as humanly possible. If our parents were able to do it, why can’t your kids or we do it?
People talk a lot about the dangers of stepping into sharp objects, but the funny irony is that when you go barefoot, you actually pay more attention, and as a consequence I almost wonder if you’re actually less likely to injure yourself because you’re actually paying attention! For example if you are walking barefoot, you’re probably not gonna be texting while walking, staring at your phone because you might be afraid of stepping into something bad. And as a consequence, you could actually be more present and enjoy the walk, truly the feeling of walking meditation.