ReWilding Movement Starting With Our Feet
We introduced the concept and importance of rewilding as a practice to reconnect our current domesticated selves with our ancestral past in this post: Are Humans Being Factory Farmed? | The Truth of Human Domestication
In our human past, we had a much greater and deeper relationship to the natural world and knew more intimately how to move through and interact with our environment.
Today's first installment in this series of rewilding your movement focuses on the feet.
Our feet have on the whole atrophied.
We no longer allow the muscles in our feet to serve their function as stabilizers and deny the toes the opportunity to grip the earth. Through the advent of hard-soled shoes, we have forsaken the incredible potential for our feet to serve as sensory organs.
The ubiquitous nature of concrete has further disconnected us from the tactile experience of gripping, balancing and reacting to the world around us. Can you feel the Earth through your feet? Have you awoken your ability to receive feedback through your soles?
Engaging Barefoot
Rewilding your movement can come in a variety of forms, but the most accessible and easiest to practice is simply engaging in the natural world barefoot.
The sundry of sensations, textures, layers and planes helps to stimulate the bodies natural tendency to react and engage with its surroundings.
Our feet have most often been trained to be bound in shoes, but we can always liberate them for times that allow the toes to grip, muscles to strengthen and instincts to kick in.
Kick your shoes off and walk through the woods, on the bank of a creek or even on a 2x4 in your own home.
Our feet have amazing abilities that we've forgotten: our feet can grip, flex and splay if given the chance. There's a a vast history of human evolution where the feet were used to for their intended purpose, to walk on the earth. It's seems even silly to say, but our bodies are built for upright walking and the feet are the first place to begin addressing the extent of your domestication.
Considering your feet is the best place to start rewilding your movement.
Get out into whatever ecosystem you live in and start rewilding your movement today!
How do you like to express your human wildness through movement?
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Awesome episode! You've got some serious balancing skills, Ini.
I've been walking around barefoot out in the wilderness, but people keep telling me I'm gonna get bit by a rattlesnake... but I don't wanna wear heavy shoes! Do you have snakes where you are?
I heard you use the term Rewilding... are you familiar with Daniel Vitalis?
thanks!! hear you on not wanting to wear heavy shoes! the couple times i've seen rattlers in the wild, i saw them way prior to walking up to them and so was able to divert my trail. they are certainly worthy of being respected, but i think not overly feared. it's my belief that most snakes don't want to go out of their way to "attack", but rather get spooked or defensive when we get too close or step up on them on accident.
too funny you asked about snakes and i almost included it in the vid, but right after ini finished balancing, we saw a huuuuge snake swimming in the water. not certain on id, but it might've been a copperhead, one of our poisonous snakes around here.
yes, we wrote about ReWilding in that intro post link above, i'm not sure if it caught your eye or not, and referenced Vitalis at the end. he's certainly the inspiration behind this!!!
I'm new to this world of poisonous snakes. In the Pacific Northwest the only snakes I ever saw were garter snakes which aren't dangerous. I'll just keep my eye out...
Daniel Vitalis has had a huge influence on my life, and is one of the main reasons I'm living the way I am. Glad to hear you're familiar with his work.
wow, so cool to hear! yeah ini has been the main one who has gotten into his work, but everything he tells me i have been getting stoked on!!
Niiice!!! Excellent points made here! I am currently working on a post for rewilding your kids :) We're so in sync. Climbing trees is my fav way and rewindilg our hands and feet in the garden all day. @rawutah has absolutely adorable monkey feet and hands. We call them hand shovels and feet shovels. I'll have to snap a photo of his feet when he's not looking, lol! 😉 We've broken about a dozen toes between the two of us but they're stronger for it, haha! We also don't sit in chairs or at tables here. Squatting is where it's at!!!
Heck yes!!! Love to hear it. Climbing trees is so darn fun and if you find wild fruits it's an added bonus. I've accessed some paw paws that were only available if I climbed.
Snap those photos, would love to see 'em;) use those biological shovels!
Happy to hear the resonance. And YES to squatting, that's what I had next in the series.
Love to hear the kids side of things. It's in some ways easier as play is still natural and there's not as much to relearn.
Exactly! Not much for them to relearn but they pick up on our subtle nervous cues as parents. So it's more the parents learning how to trust their instincts and not freak the F out if they bite the dirt a few times lol! Sweet! I look forward to the squat sesh!!!
lol.....cheers to hands and feet shovels! this post is so damn good!
I can't climb with shoes on. I have to be barefoot to feel stable. Same with walking on logs.
yes, so interesting isn't it!? the shoes protect our feet in so many ways and we obvs need them in today's world, but they inhibit us so much in our full range of movement! thanks for sharing your observations :)
No doubt. I wear them pretty frequently here because sand is hot, and sand burs are awful, but especially on rocks, shoes make me nervous.
Ya. Like everything there's a time and place.
you are true...i see some bare foot old ppl are doing more healthier than us who wrapped our foot in shoes except sleeping time...i like it..followed
spot on!! this is so true... free the feet when appropriate :)! thanks!
not walking barefooted anymore is the only thing we lost to civilization, also walking naked is also part of it :laughing: we as higher animals have lost most if not all of our instinct i mean animal instinct like because we are not as close to mother earth as we used to be.
nice post
that's a great point. clothes are also restrictive and obviously necessary so often... that is a good point.. how do these things separate us from our Instinct... thanks for stopping by!
Walking barefoot is a pleasant sensation in a clean floor, walk barefoot porosities could not, When you have high temperature is good to be barefoot so that the toxins come out..and if I get a snake I would run, hahaha I'm a coward ... Good post .. I follow you.
I invite you to visit my profile, I would love to have your support .. thank you.
Clean floor indeed, especially of the forest. Glad you enjoyed the post and happy to hear you too like barefooting.
There is so much to this topic. You should have fun with it for quite some time. indeed, I think the reason we humans are headed toward an abyss is because we have lost, essentially, contact with the living Cosmos, and most importantly with Earth. I have recently begun to wear my elk skin moccasins as I walk the dogs out in the fields twice a day. Good energy out there. Blessings on your work.
infinite topic almost... you summed it up marvelously here, our connection has been severed, which has allowed us to act out of alignment. Love to hear you're appreciating the gorgeous earth we. dog walking in moccasins sound blessed. Thanks for you input and support.