Leveling Up: Part I — What is a Leveled Up Human?

All humans to varying degrees must bear the weight of their circumstances. While most people would love to have the ability to snap their fingers and magically improve them, life isn’t exactly fair and unfortunately no such magic exists. These circumstances may work to benefit some while proving truly burdensome to others. Although they may have been determined by some combination of good and bad luck, we must not fall victim to them. For example, if you are reading this, you are one of the lucky ones, as your circumstances have allowed you enough freedom to end up on this blog. It is with this “free will” that you have the choice to rise above the perceived limitations they present. We must choose to focus on the things in life we can control, because focusing on the things we can’t is a waste of our energy. So while there are times most of us may not be able to control our circumstances (outer environment), we may be surprised to learn how much control we have over how we perceive and react to them (inner environment). With practice, we can construct our inner environment like an athlete training to build strength, or a musician learning and mastering an instrument. Over time as we develop our inner environment, our outer environment naturally will follow suit. Classically, the development of our inner environment is called self-development. This is the environment we must learn to master in order to take our first steps towards leveling up.

Before we embark on our journey of self-development we must ask the question — what does it mean to level up as a human? Development means progress, as such there has to be some sort of measure by which we can gauge our development by. The athlete may measure their progress by gauging the amount of weight they can lift compared to the last workout. The musician may measure their progress by seeing how efficiently they can play common chord progressions in different keys. In both these examples it is imperative to keep some sort of practice log or diary if one wants to measure and thus maximize their progress. So before we can even begin to answer the initial question, we have to go deeper down the rabbit hole. We need to come up with the variables we are to measure in order to track our self-development. One question leads to another and we are left asking — are there optimal values? We don’t know where we are going until we determine what set of values are important to us, which will in turn determine our trajectory and thus help us answer the initial question.

Before reading further, write down on a piece of paper what you value.

Self Development: Coming Full Circle

Life can be more or less characterized by its cyclic nature. We orbit around the sun once every approximately 365 days. We have the seasons of spring, summer, fall, and winter. We are greeted by the sun every morning, which regulates our circadian rhythms, allowing us to repeat the cycle of sleep every night. We have the hydrologic cycle, where water circulates between the air, bodies of water, and living things. I posit that our conscious development is also composed of cycles akin to those found in nature. The question then becomes - where are we going when we are going? What is our destination? What if I was to say that the ultimate destination of life is independent of concepts, and dependent on our consciousness instead. This change of consciousness allows us to make a return home instead of running away from our problems.

I want to introduce the idea of coming full circle. That in our journey of raising our consciousness, our long winding paths eventually lead back to where we started, albeit with a new perception. We can start off first with the example of going for a long run, you look outside with anticipation, put on your running shoes, and step out the door. You may be running ten, twenty, or thirty kilometers, but after you finish, you end up back home. Along your run may encounter difficult emotions that percolate to the surface. Maybe you have to contend with a pain in your knee or foot, or you’re thirsty and regret not bringing extra water, or maybe you are feeling fresh and tap into a flow state. Regardless of what you experience, the person who enters the door all sweaty and ready to take a shower and eat a big meal, that is a changed person. This process is one of many, where once completed, we end up where we started.

Why does the journey of raising our consciousness bring us full circle? How can it be that after all our so called progress and hard work, we end up closer to where we started? It is because there is nowhere else to go but home, you are you, and will always be you. The only thing you can truly gain are new perspectives. Anything else is ideology, religion, and dogma. To traverse the path towards higher consciousness, we must abandon all of those things, and what we are left with is ourselves. What I mean by you will always be you, is that your existence is independent from concepts. The man who is a pilot is not a pilot, but is merely playing the role of one. We cannot really determine whether something is absolutely good or evil. And thus instead of unnecessarily limiting ourselves to paths away from certain behaviors as a way of leveling up, we must do things consciously. It is from the new perceptions that result from changes in our consciousness that we are able to be free to choose to do the things we truly want, which generally form from an evolutionary generated morality of good. We must become conscious of our choices to be free from our unconscious patterns. It is by becoming conscious of our participation in reality that we are truly able to level up.

The evolutionarily generated morality of good

Humans are operating under more complex and diverse cultural operating systems that constrain their consciousness to function at certain frequencies. In these narrow bandwidths the human brain cannot fully tap into its ancestral knowledge or instinct. It is with instinct, a type of post-stimuli calculation we can call a context-dependent value judgement system, that we are able to derive good. This is opposed to religious thinking, which relies on a type of pre-stimuli judgement we can call context-independent value judgments. There are religions all around the world that operate on vastly different value systems, however they all are similarly context-independent. A system which enforces a set of values allows for cohesion within a group, however it can create high-levels of xenophobia. If we could learn to tap into our instinct more often, we would feel more aligned with our choices without the need for a context-independent framework which alienates us from each other.

“Don’t hate the player, hate the game.”

All of these circular journeys can be characterized by three main stages; the beginning, the middle, and the end. The key here is to understand that the middle of the journey is characterized by a state of chaos, the radical and unpredictable opening of possibilities. It represents the lifting of the veil of ignorance, which is often accompanied by the pain of knowledge and awareness. It is the beginning and end of the journey that are characterized by a state of order. The beginning can be understood as a state of ignorance is bliss, and the end state as knowledge is power. But they actually occupy two sides of the same coin. You start at x, and you make the journey towards growth, plunging into chaos and exploring infinite possibilities, but as you grow more conscious you are pulled towards the end y, which inevitably is the other side of the same coin. For example, birth is opposite to death, and in your journey between the two states you are plunged into the unpredictable nature of reality where you are free to live your life as you choose, but you will inevitably reach the end state. It is in your death that you will have made the round trip back to where you started. In this example, if you were to remain alive forever, you would be stuck in limbo and would have never completed the journey, as death is a fundamental property of life. I want to highlight some more examples of going full circle which will hammer home this concept.

Within the dietary paradigm we have a lot of contention as to what is the right and the wrong diet. The modern diet culture is populated by two extremes, the vegan diet and the ketogenic/carnivore diet. While growing up, many of us do not receive any sort of dietary education. You could say most of us eat a “see-food” diet, i.e., we see food, and we eat it. This includes anything from candy bars at the convenience store to home cooked meals at our grandparents house, and everything in between. Like a dog with kitchen leftovers, we tend not to discriminate. However as we grow more conscious about the impact of our food choices on how our bodies feel, the state of the environment, and the lives of other creatures, we may decide to change our dietary habits. This is where our journey begins. Whether that is veganism, which is focused on ethics as it’s basis, or ketogenic based approach, which is focused on health as it’s basis. What usually starts off as self-education and experimentation quickly evolves into dogma and religion. There seem to be examples of people thriving in both camps. But by choosing to fall into one of these categories when we seek solutions for the health, environmental, or ethical reasons, we limit our possibilities. Our vision of what is possible narrows, and if we face struggles or feel dissonance down the road, we often resort to solutions within the paradigm we have trapped ourselves in. In truth, all other animals in nature follow their natural diet. It is the overabundance of processed foods that have perverted our intuition about our food choices, and thus we require education in order to get back on the right track. However in most cases this education only leads us further from the truth. As we become more conscious, we realize that the truth is not found in any of these paradigms exclusively, rather it is synthesized out of the partial truths that they each contain. In the pinnacle of this evolution we go from living to eat, to eating to live, and regardless of whether we stick to eating exclusively plants, exclusively animal products, or a healthy balance of both, we realize that it’s real food that matters more than macro-nutrient ratios or elimination of entire food groups. We know having a Snickers bar or a glass of wine won’t kill us, but we understand the benefit of eating real foods consistently. In a way we go back to a “see-food” diet, but instead what we see is now filtered through a higher consciousness, which influences our food choices to be healthier overall. You are not a vegan, you are playing the role of one. As soon as you make the journey of coming full circle, you realize you are a human being whose behavior does not fit into this context-independent value judgement framework.

This pattern of going full circle also exists within the religious paradigm. Similarly to diet, the contemporary spiritual climate is also populated by two extremes; the dogma of religion, and the rejection of that dogma, atheism. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and thus the atheist is steadfast in their skepticism. While the religious individual is unwavering in their faith.  These two camps actually share more similarities than one would believe at first glance. They both have limited what type of evidence they will accept, and fail to appreciate the constraints that the ego projects onto reality. In essence what we see is only a shadow, or a distortion of what exists like in Plato’s allegory of the cave. Like the diet example both camps will inevitably resort to the limited conclusions that their worldviews allow them to have. Children raised in a religious environment have the idea of God imposed on them by secondary sources, it is only as a result of experience that we may come to the conclusion that there is more to the nature of the universe than what meets the eye. Our spiritual evolution can be understood as going from indirect experience i.e. the meme of God or science, to the direct experience of God or awareness. The middle in this case can generally be characterized as either a rejection of the belief systems that you were indoctrinated with, or a doubling down of your faith. It is in the pinnacle of this evolution that both paradigms converge into the same realization regardless of whether you started as a believer or a skeptic. Ultimately there are altered states of consciousness that confirm the existence of God, whilst denying the meme of God, leading you back to where you started, albeit with a new perception on your atheism or spirituality.

DISCLAIMER: I understand that God can trigger the atheists bullshit meter. God can be interpreted as the ground of reality (consciousness) from which all information processing takes place to give rise to the physical phenomenon we take for granted. The direct experience of God or awareness is then understood as the realization of consciousness as the fundamental ground of reality.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s diet, religion, career, or your relationships with people. If we are to participate in our daily reality, we must do so consciously, otherwise our decisions carry a heavier burden. This is the burden of cognitive dissonance. If we commit to doing things consciously, we have completed our task in making the most out of life, thus reducing our dissonance and increasing our feeling of being in alignment with our choices. By choosing to grow towards higher consciousness, we can increase the likelihood that we act in accordance with behaviors in aligned with our evolutionarily generated morality of good, or instinct. The reality is simple, you must understand that you really have the freedom to do what you want, you just gotta be woke to accept it. It is by understanding that all conscious development leads us in a circle, that we can finally begin making our way back home.

Self Development: What is an Attractor?

The whole point of life is to level up. That is, everyday we must strive to be better than who we were yesterday, not only to increase our chances of survival - evolutionarily speaking, but to enrich the lives of ourselves and others right now. Nowadays many of us have grown accustomed to the luxuries of modern life, and thus we remain in our comfort zones, disconnected from our primal nature. And yet our potential for personal transformation has never been greater. How can we embrace our evolution and look at our successes and failures as equal opportunities to learn? How we can avoid setting goals only to feel a sense of fleeting accomplishment when we achieve them? We must become more conscious and reconnect with ourselves. And in doing so we equip ourselves with the tools to create the life of our dreams.

Many of us have an inner voice that we feel we could listen to more. And it is likely that the source of most of our problems is this reluctance to follow it. We often blame procrastination for leading us astray, destined to repeat the cycle of not following through with all the things that we want to do. In order to break the cycle, we must leverage the power of the most complex organ in the known universe, our brains. 

The brain is a world builder. And to begin our self development, we must first create an image of our future, or an attractor. The term is borrowed from within the mathematical field of dynamical systems. An attractor is defined as a set of numerical values toward which a system tends to evolve, for a wide variety of starting conditions. The value of the attractor in terms of your self development is self-evident, it attracts. It does this by reframing your perception from wanting or doing, to being. Before going into detail about the benefits of attractors, I want to review two approaches to self development that fall short and the reasons why.

Goals

While there is utility in writing down your goals, they can often be vacuous. With goals you have built a frame of I want, and thus you are inevitably reminded of what you don’t have, and while that may act as a motivation to go towards creating a reality for yourself where you have the things you want, it can be a false promise. Imagine the number of instances where you have said to yourself, if only I had x, then I would be happy. If only that were true. Instead, the achievement of your goals can be anticlimactic. Oh wow, you finished the marathon Peter, do you feel any different? Oh wow Peter, your birthday is today, do you feel any different? You realize that it’s not in the arbitrarily set milestone, it’s in the journey to get there that you feel more connected to something greater.

Systems

The systems based approach is better in some aspects compared to strictly setting goals. By focusing on what skills you can develop over time vs. what short term goals you can achieve, you build a perception of I do, and thus you are identifying with your action and the direct impact those actions have on your life. This allows you to make progress over time regardless of whether you encounter failures, because instead of the goal being the goal, you develop transferable skills that can be applied to overcome future challenges. However, the systems based approach is inextricably linked to goal setting. I simply have the goal of becoming a better runner, instead of setting an arbitrary goal of finishing a marathon, I will develop a system of trying to run each day whilst increasing my mileage slowly. Over time I will be equipped with the tools to finish the marathon. The best runners spend most of their time running if possible, thus their system becomes training as much as possible without injury. If you are just interested in completing the marathon, you may focus on becoming a better athlete overall, which will grant you the capability of running 42 km while potentially having a balanced repertoire of movement patterns at your disposal. In this circumstance it is clear that following a systems based approach will allow you to develop a broader range of skills. Ultimately, neither thinking what skills can I develop or what short or long term goals I can achieve is going to create the optimal conditions for you to tap into your highest potential. It is time to realize that it’s not in the milestone, it’s not in the journey... it’s in your self perception.

Attractors

The brain is a world builder. And we can use this feature to create a world that we are attracted to. In the creation of our subjective worlds we rely on others to build a sort of consensus reality which imposes limitations on our perception. The scope of the effects of these preconceptions can affect our outer and inner worlds, potentially imposing a self-limiting view of ourselves. Attractors represent the creation of your ultimate vision; whereas in some sense you can create goals and systems without having a vision. To have faith in your vision, is to build a perception of I am. Imagine two twins running a race and they are identical in every way, same nutrition, genetics, and training. The only difference is that while one followed goals, the other one has a vision, a faith. Which one will have the edge? The mind is a powerful thing, the one with faith will have an edge over the other twin because they are connected to something deeper, something pulling them forward. You have three choices, you can not believe in yourself, you can believe in yourself, or you can believe in the ideal of yourself. This latter kind of belief is a transrational self belief, in the sense that it is beyond rational thinking. That’s why they call it a leap of faith. 

"Nature rewards courage." - Terrence McKenna

You are that person; you are just doing what they did in the past to become who they were in the future. The attractor is your destiny; you must grow into your destiny, regardless of your failures. Failures are seen as an important part of the path to success. Everything is framed in light of the integrity of your future self having made it through all of this. It may be beneficial to establish a level of schizotypal thinking and dialogue with your future self to guide you on the path of being yourself. Goals and systems will not be able to motivate you the same way as creating a reality where you are fully aligned with your inner voice. That future self will act as an attractor. Think of how the zygote develops into an embryo, then a fetus, and then a child. During the process there may be a few mistakes, like the creation of a birthmark, yet the process will likely lead to the successful birth of a child, imperfections included. You can imagine that the cellular processes during the development of a newborn are not only successful insofar as they are in the right place at the right time but simultaneously the DNA acts as a holographic storage device of the finished result. This holographic projection is the attractor. 

Ultimately the power of attractors lie within moving the goalpost of success. When setting goals, you self-identify with success once having achieved the goal. When following systems, you self-identify with success based on your adherence. When in a state of attraction, you self-identify with success based on your emotional and intellectual congruence with who you are in comparison to your attractor. By shifting your perception from I want to I do to I am, you are essentially reducing the dissonance between where you are and where you want to be. In I want perceptions, you are only satisfied by some future state. In I do perceptions, you are only satisfied as evidenced by your commitment to certain behaviors. In I am perceptions, you are only satisfied as soon as you are congruent with your attractor. You can be whoever you want to be, but be that person, take responsibility, take action, evolve. The attractor is not a fixed state, it represents the embrace of the journey, a cycle of continual evolution.

We are able to achieve goals or utilize systems mainly by being in the right place at the right time, but attractors represent goal states through which multiple starting points at varying times can manifest and lead to the same conclusion - there are many paths to the top of a mountain. On a surface level, goals and attractors appear the same, however the difference is that the journey towards the attractor is part of your process, where a goal is something you achieve as a result of things separate from the goal. I am training for a marathon vs. I am a marathoner. An attractor is to the relationship between a black hole and a nearby star, as a goal is to the relationship between a lion and it’s prey. The lion must chase the prey down and has to make certain adjustments to achieve that goal state, whereas the planet is inevitably consumed by the black hole due to the fabric of the universe. That fabric is your faith. As time goes by, your vision crystallizes, you become more in tune with the reality of who you are, and more courageous to follow the earth’s heartbeat - to continue... to level up. 

10 Benefits of Barefoot Forest Bathing

Forest bathing or shinrin-yoku, is a practice that encompasses a multitude of movements in an outdoor environment. It is like meditating amongst the trees.

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.

Waking Up Early

“The early bird gets the worm.”

As naturally lazy creatures looking to conserve energy in every way possible, the ‘quick fix’ is universally appealing. As opposed to the tried and true methods of a disciplined work ethic, we will often spend more time avoiding work than the time it takes to actually to do what needs to be done. We want to lose weight, so we take stimulants instead of eating whole foods lower in caloric density. We want to become rich, so we gamble instead of saving our money and investing in ourselves. In both of these cases the route with the least probability of ultimate failure is often the hardest route. You can lose weight using drugs, and you can get rich winning the lottery. But the chances of that working out for you in the long run is much less likely than if you were to get started on the tasks which you have been procrastinating.

There is no magic pill when it comes to turning your plans into actions. There is nothing that will allow you to circumvent the journey towards success. However, there are tools that can ease your travels on the road towards greatness. In the quest for a more fulfilling life, there are few habits that are as effective as waking up early. The benefits of waking up earlier include but are not limited to those mentioned below.

Benefits of waking up early

Better sleep (circadian rhythms)
Circadian rhythms refer to our biological clock; the endogenous physiological rhythms that dictate our hormone production throughout the day. If you listen to this clock, your body will function better. Most of us require at least 7 hours of sleep a night. So in your efforts to wake up earlier, you will go to sleep earlier, which will naturally put you in line with your circadian rhythm (increased melatonin production). As a result you will average more hours of restful sleep.

Increased energy and vitality (circadian rhythms)
Better sleep will naturally lead to increased energy throughout the day. Not only that but you will be healthier for it. Sleep has been shown to increase immune function, exhibit neuroprotective effects, reduce the risk of hypertension and cardiovascular disease, and helps to maintain a healthy weight 

I have listed some of the rituals you can incorporate into your morning routine that will make the rest of the day better by increasing your productivity and focus, while reducing your stress.

Breakfast
If you find yourself getting up in the morning and rushing to work without eating breakfast, getting up earlier will allow you the time to eat some food. Breakfast is a key ingredient in having stable energy levels throughout the day. Although there is evidence in support of intermittent fasting, suggesting that you go ahead and skip breakfast. You can just avoid having a late dinner, which will still leave you with a 16 - 18 hour period of fasting. This way you can still get the benefits of breakfast while avoiding habitual consumption of stimulants like caffeine to get your day started like so many people do.

Meditation
Meditation is underrated, the benefits are subtle but they permeate through your day to day being. By meditating you prime your day for productivity because you will have clear mind that is less prone to distraction and reactionary behavior. However there is contradictory evidence that suggests meditation may lower your motivation in the workplace as you realize the futility of your job. 

Exercise
When you are waking up earlier you will have more more time to devote on your hobbies or projects without being bogged down by the days responsibilities. I would suggest devoting some of this extra time to some form of movement practice (running, yoga, weight training etc.). There are so many benefits to exercise in the morning. It promotes better sleep by reducing parasympathetic nerve activity, and will increase your resistance to fatigue, helping you stay focused for the rest of the day.  

Now that we know the benefits, how can we start waking up earlier? Creating a schedule to follow works well. Waking up at the same time every morning will give you better mood and increased energy as you will be in tune with your circadian rhythm. You want to set a bedtime, there is no magic number but I encourage you to consider being in bed around 11pm at the latest. One of the ways to ensure that you have an easier time falling asleep is to limit screen time and mentally stimulating activities before bedtime. 

Remember it is OK to have late nights, you just don’t want to have them consistently. Consistency equals results, and consistent late nights equal fatigue and possible dependence on stimulants. It works both ways, overuse of stimulants can lead to a vicious cycle of poor sleep and subsequent stimulant use. 

Waking up early is often said to ‘not be for everyone’ but considering that our circadian rhythms are more influenced by our environment than our genetics, I believe that we can make it work. And in our efforts to do so, we have more time to create the life we want for ourselves.

Extra tip: If you are having trouble getting out of bed, countdown from 5 to 1. This is the 5 Second Rule, the science behind this concept is that you are not giving yourself enough time to change your mind. It commits you and gives you confidence in making the hard but necessary choices we need to make in our lives. Remember to count down from 5, because if you count up you can just keep going 5, 6, 7… 100… 1000.

Barefoot Series: Part V - How I learned to go barefoot and love the forest

My foray into the world of barefoot running was not exactly straightforward. 

I like to think that I was gifted at running from a early age. I was a tall kid with long legs; a typical ectomorph build. Even though I was glued to my chair playing video games for a large portion of my childhood, I enjoyed giving 100% effort during gym class and the annual Terry Fox runs at school. As I grew older, my cardio was good but didn’t develop much beyond high school basketball and riding my longboard around town to buy snacks and smoke weed with my friends. One year during our annual Terry Fox run at school, our cross country coach saw my potential and recommended me to join the team, but I just wasn’t interested. Little did she know that she would plant a seed that would grow into a passion over time.

I mean I ran after school occasionally. Usually because I felt guilty that I ate too many cookies at lunchtime. It was only after growing out of my adolescence that I started to really have a vision of myself as an athlete. I needed to let go of my stoner identity and pursue what my intuition and heart was pointing me towards. I started running more, and over time I really began enjoying the process of pushing myself farther and faster. In the beginning there was a lot of trial and error. One of the ongoing issues I would experience was that my footwear was too small on one foot and I would get blisters. I was due for a new pair of shoes. Being already familiar with minimal shoes at the time, I was quite interested in giving them a shot. After trying on multiple pairs but failing to find the ‘perfect shoe’, I stumbled across Luna sandals at a running store called Distance Runwear in Vancouver. Wearing them provided a whole new level of freedom and increased sensory input. They began to change my life and running in profound ways.

High Knoll

I would get my first true taste of being barefoot in May 2016. One day I decided I would go for a walk in the woods after eating some psilocybin mushrooms. I packed my essentials in my backpack and I put on my sandals, which I had grown accustomed to, and embarked on what would become a beautiful trip. I slowly made my way to the top of a local hike. Having journeyed here many times before, this area was familiar to me. The sun was shining and I was comfortable, so it just made sense for me to take off my sandals and let my feet reconnect with the earth. The sunlit rocks were warm and inviting, and the varying textures of the ground beneath me provided me with a sense of stimulation I didn’t know I needed. After a brief meditation I was ready to make my way back home, the difference was I decided not to put my sandals back on and proceeded to hike the rest of the way down in my bare feet.

Luna Sandals - Oso Flaco

On my return journey I needed to slow down because the trail was littered with rocks and roots. As I placed each foot one after another with careful precision, I began to form a dialogue with the ground. I was the student, and the pathway of communication between the forest floor and my nervous system became my teacher. Traversing the path became a form of yoga. I was highly focused but at the same time it was as if I had unlocked an innate potential for effortless movement. The sensation of each step imparted me with wisdom; about my own body, about my place in nature, about my place as a human being experiencing the ongoing evolution of the cosmos. There was a sense of truth in going slowly, in letting go of any fear I had. I began to love the forest, and to feel at home. I was present, and that felt familiar and safe.

Following this experience I gained a new confidence in my feet and started running around the block barefoot. Soon my 1 kilometer runs developed into 3 kilometer runs, and then into 5 kilometers and so on. Over the seasons I developed my barefoot running and ‘found my sole’. I can now run over 10 kilometers at a time barefoot without any pain or blisters. I learned so much by just trusting my own body. I make sure that I revisit that trail annually to experience the pure joy and wisdom that I experienced 2 years ago. 

Barefoot Series: Part IV

So you have made the decision to live a more barefoot lifestyle. Whether that's incorporating some barefoot running, walking to and from your mailbox, or going shoeless at the office. You are starting to notice the benefits; your posture is improving and your feet are getting stronger. However, we can’t be barefoot all the time. Highly technical trails, gravel roads, and even some city streets prove to be quite unforgiving surfaces for the barefoot traveler. Sometimes the temperature can be too extreme, whether it is too hot and the pavement is unbearable, or it is too cold and you start to put your feet at risk of frostbite. There are also cultural requirements that are set in place such as dress codes, e.g. when at work, eating out, and using public transit. If you have ever heard the term ‘no shoes, no shirt, no service’ then you are familiar with the cultural norms that unfortunately discriminate against the shoeless citizen, citing often that these rules are enforced because of ‘safety and sanitation’ reasons. If people washed their shoes as often as they showered I would understand, but it seems to me that shoes end up much dirtier than the average pair of feet. As for safety, the whole point of being barefoot is to walk around with greater control and awareness of your surroundings. Stubbing your toe or dropping a box on your foot whilst wearing sandals hurts just as much as being without them. Currently most public establishments mandate some sort of footwear. 

Shoes are indeed useful tools to have at our disposal. So in order to gain maximum benefit from all this time on our feet that isn’t barefoot we can wear shoes that mimic the barefoot experience as closely as possible. Over time all the hours spent being barefoot will cause your feet to change. They will get wider and more voluminous due to their increased muscularity. Footwear will seemingly get smaller as your feet grow bigger. You will become dissatisfied with the traditional selection of shoes at your local shoe store, for this reason I would recommend minimalist footwear.

To fall into the minimalist category, a shoe must adhere to the three commandments.

• Thou shalt remain flat: Your feet do not have an elevated heel. The shoe should be flat so that you can move through your gait naturally and to discourage striking hard on the heel.

• Thou shalt remain wide: Your feet are widest at the toes when you are born. The shoe should be widest at the toes of the foot to allow for maximum toe splay and stability.

• Thou shalt remain thin: Your feet are full of nerves that require sensory input to function correctly. The shoe should be thin to allow to maximum feedback to encourage a light step and accurate proprioception (bodily awareness).

Hence the minimal shoe can be seen as the antithesis to the modern shoe. Instead of adding supposed functions like improving stability or reducing fatigue, minimal shoes are built to mimic being barefoot as closely as possible while still providing the benefits of wearing a shoe. The result is a shoe that has very little in the way of extra features. They can be thought of as the spiritual successors to the shoes of our ancestors. They are unforgiving, they won’t feel like walking on clouds, they won’t magically fix your gait, and they won’t make you faster. They won’t do any of these things because your comfort, biomechanics, and speed is highly dependent on you, the wearer, and your individual fitness level. However, they will protect against cuts and scrapes, offer thermal regulation, and allow you to make a fashion statement whilst adhering to cultural norms.

The general rule of thumb is that minimalist footwear is going to be a better option for letting your feet do their thing when compared to traditional footwear. So ideally you want to incorporate as much barefoot style footwear as possible. Similarly to the wide selection of running shoes and all their gimmicky features, there are many types of minimal footwear. Some are better than others, and some are merely imitators. They call themselves a minimal shoe or a barefoot shoe, but they are truly not. Minimal shoes adhere to the three commandments closely, they do not have a raised heel, a narrow toe box, or come with excess padding underfoot. 

There are styles for all occasions including sport, casual and formal wear. The trick is to slowly replace all of your lifestyle and sports shoes with a minimalist alternative so that you can maximize the benefits of going barefoot in any circumstance. We can take a look at some shoes that I have had the pleasure of trying and see how they fare in terms of adherence to the principles of minimalist footwear. 

Altra Shoes
Altra offers the widest toe box out of all the shoes listed here, but since they are shoes they just can’t quite mimic the freedom of boundless toe space. They have a flat sole to encourage proper biomechanics. However, they are quite thick (20mm+ sole) so they do not allow for a lot of feedback from the ground. These shoes are good for a beginner shoe to use alongside with truly barefoot training, they will allow your muscles, tendons, and ligaments to rest as you adapt to running barefoot.

Luna Sandals
Luna sandals are epic adventure sandals. No shoe comes close to offering the toe freedom that sandals do. They have a flat sole to encourage a proper bio-mechanics. They are thinner than Altras, and allow for a lot more feedback from the ground. However they are still quite thick (10mm+ sole) and thus will offer a lot more protection from difficult terrain. These sandals are useful over rough trails, longer or harder workouts, and simply walking around town. 

Xero Shoes
Xero shoes are wider than the average consumer shoe, but not wide enough to allow for full foot splay. *Their sandal option offers plenty of toe space like other minimalist sandals. They have a flat sole to encourage proper bio-mechanics. They remain very thin (5mm - 10mm sole) whilst still offering adequate protection from varying terrain. Their Xero Genesis huarache style sandal offers the most barefoot like feel out of every shoe mentioned here.

Vivobarefoot
The width of Vivobarefoot shoes vary from model to model. Overall they are wider than the average but not wide enough to allow for full foot splay. *I have yet to try them, but I presume their sandal option offers the same toe freedom as other minimalist sandals. They have a flat sole to encourage proper bio-mechanics. They are extremely thin (3mm - 5mm) but they have multiple models more suited to offering protection from difficult terrain. They are by far the best looking shoes on this list and they offer a wide range of models to choose from depending on your lifestyle.

There are many other models by other minimalist shoe companies that I have not had the chance to try, but I will link to their websites for those who are curious.

Shamma Sandals

Earth Runners

Joe Nimble

Bedrock Sandals

Lems Shoes

Softstar Shoes

Vibram Fivefingers