What better time to take your shoes off?
Acupuncture - Although Traditional Chinese Medicine is riddled with pseudoscience, acupuncture has been found to exert anti-inflammatory and analgesic effects. Being barefoot can stimulate the nervous system in the same way. When the entirety of your body weight is resting upon dozens of often sharp and pointy rocks, which often hurt just like tiny needles penetrating the skin, you can’t help but liken the experience to acupuncture.
Massage - At certain points during a massage, people often experience some form of discomfort and pain. This is due to the stimulation of tense muscles and tendons. The varying hardness and texture of earth’s surfaces allow for your feet to be massaged in a multitude of ways which allow for them to be softened up, just like the way your body feels after a massage. Think of running on grass versus running on gravel. If you are on a soft surface, your foot will tense up to compensate. If you are on a hard and varied surface your foot will relax to compensate.
Yoga - The biofeedback encourages you to connect your movement with your breath in order to relax into each step. You become more conscious of where you place your feet, and in return you will be more gentle on your body. This slowing down of your natural pace will allow you to re-calibrate with your body and your surroundings, often leading one to take on a new found gratitude and appreciation.
Posture - Your whole body is more easily able to move in harmony without elevated footwear, allowing for a more natural alignment of the spine.
Meditation - Barefoot forest bathing increases the need for you to pay attention and the elevated sensation allows for you to not 'be bored'. This is flow, being, oneness, failure, success, pain, pleasure, sadness, joy, fear, and love all wrapped into one activity.
Memory - You need to watch your step =) Researchers found boosts to participants working memory after subjecting them to barefoot running experiments. This is hypothesized to be because of paying increased attention to the ground.
Proprioception - Whilst being shod our feet are mostly out of the picture. We get a better sense of our movement and position in space when the proprioceptor neurons in the bottom of our feet are activated. This triggers a chain of conscious and unconscious neuromuscular adjustments; your body acting in harmony to achieve balance. An active individual will spend a large amount of their time standing, walking, or running. In these cases the feet are almost always the first chain of command. Shoe wearers effectively turn the most important part of human locomotion into their ‘weakest link’.
Earthing - Wearing shoes insulates us from the Earth’s supply of free electrons, which are hypothesized to influence our bio-electrical processes by decreasing markers of inflammation, improving sleep and recovery, and reducing stress levels.
I would not necessarily trust anecdotes, but I do feel better after being barefoot for a while, and have experienced the benefits above. However there is room for skepticism; the claims made by pro-grounding proponents have been heavily criticized. There is a possibility that we have formed positive mental associations with being barefoot, and that we generally tend to be in nature when we walk around without shoes, so all the benefits of being barefoot could just be confounded by all the things that come along with it (you’re probably not at work).
Connection - By taking off our shoes, we open up a whole new dimension of sensation and get to know the earth beneath our feet. In this new state we are inspired by the balance of order and chaos we see in nature. In this increasingly connected world, it is increasingly difficult to remain connected to nature and to our humanity.
Fun - This is the other side of meditation. In the end it doesn’t even matter. But the strength in overcoming that nihilism is that we do it anyway, for the shits and giggles. How do we know unless we try it? It is our duty to reconnect with our inner child.
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