Isn't it lovely to kick off your shoes at the end of a tough day at work or after a long strenuous walk? A soothing foot bath can be incredibly rejuvenating, and it’s even nicer to immerse your bare feet in crisp, cool river water, or stand on the shoreline and let the soothing tide wash across your feet. Walking barefoot on soft grass, feeling the earth under your feet, the sand between your toes, creates a connection with the natural world around us and gives us a genuine feeling of wellbeing. However, walking barefoot offers more than just an uplifted mood and a closer connection to the ground on which we stand, our feet have a crucial role to play in sustaining correct body alignment and brain development.

The health of our feet is essential for maintaining the integrity of our entire kinetic chain, including muscles, joints, and the nervous system. Well-developed foot strength serves as the foundation for optimal knee, hip, and back function. The bare soles of our feet allow us to create a deep connection with our brain supporting balance, strength, and posture.

Feet are one of the important nerve centres of our bodies with more than 200,000 nerve endings that contribute to proprioception and body awareness and may also aid in relieving pain. It’s not just nerves that help us to stay upright the way the foot is designed is crucial for our strength. The arches of the foot are engineered to flex and adapt during movement, offering stability and balance while absorbing impact from walking and running. However, with age, they may gradually weaken and lower. Slowly changing the shape and even the size of our feet over time. I have noticed this, my shoe size has increased, just like my years, which means my feet are becoming flatter and wider.

Walking barefoot isn’t something that I do much of. I’m a bit of warm sock and slipper kind of gal so it doesn’t come naturally to me but when it’s warm and I’m on the beach or in a field (usually at a festival) I love getting my soles connected to the ground.  As you can imagine with our UK weather this doesn’t happen that often. But the range of health benefits that walking barefoot offers, including enhanced flexibility and strength in the foot and ankle joints, improved leg muscle support for the lower back, and reduced risk of foot deformities caused by ill-fitting shoes makes it a strong argument for getting those bare soles connected to the earth even if it’s a bit chilly. It also promotes better control of foot movement, increased balance and positively affects overall musculoskeletal health. So, I think it is worth spending more time sockless.

Practising yoga has really helped me appreciate the wellbeing benefits of being barefooted. I love the feeling of my yoga mat under foot and practicing has given me a chance to get up close and personal with my feet. Offering me an opportunity to see how my toes are placed, how high my arches are, how stiff my ankle joints are. I always like to give my feet a bit of a rub when I practise yoga.

When it’s warm enough, as I have Reynard’s and get cold toes, I have started to walk around the house in bare feet to try and keep up the strength in my feet and encourage balance.

As well as bare feet benefiting our musculoskeletal system there has been fascinating research into the benefits of barefoot walking and brain development in adolescents. A 2024 study by the Keimyung University Bioethics Committee in Korea examined the effects of walking barefoot on cognitive development in adolescents. This study investigated how walking in trainers versus barefoot affects cognitive function in adolescent males. Fifty-nine participants were split into control, trainers, and barefoot groups. Over 12 weeks, the trainers and barefoot groups walked for 40 minutes four times a week, while the control group did self-study. EEG measurements showed the barefoot group experienced beneficial changes in brain wave patterns and improvements in cognitive speed, concentration, and reduced brain stress. The findings suggest barefoot walking may effectively enhance cognitive abilities in adolescents. These findings show the direct connection between being bare footed and our brain development and shows that getting our shoes and socks off is not only a pleasure but is beneficial for our overall health. Just look out for those long lost dropped drawing pins. Ouch!

Here are a few easy barefooted exercises you can do to keep your feet strong:

• Walk on your tiptoes and then switch to walking on your heels for a few steps.
• Stand on the outside edges of your feet, roll inward to stand on the inside, and repeat this movement.
• Try toe yoga: with your foot flat on the floor, first lift your big toe while keeping the other four toes and the ball of your foot down; then, keep your big toe pressed down and raise your other four toes—this exercise is trickier than it looks!

Reference - Kim, Seo DY, Bae JH, Han J. Barefoot walking improves cognitive ability in adolescents. Korean J Physiol Pharmacol. 2024 Jul 1;28(4):295-302. doi: 10.4196/kjpp.2024.28.4.295. PMID: 38926837; PMCID: PMC11211751. T

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