Some of you may know of the barefoot running "craze" that has recently. I've become interested in the whole thing because it made an intuitive sense to me, and because there was something about the subtle energy of the practice that my inner guidance was telling me to explore. I have no intention of entering into the fray on a purely scientific basis, rather to describe the effects on subtle energy in the body of walking and running unshod and how, in a very real way from an energetic viewpoint, shoes make us stupid.

We can't separate the issues of biomechanics from the issues of subtle energy, so let me try an summarize those principles first. I recall vividly how, as a kid, I watched the barefoot Kenyan runner, Abebe Bikila win the gold medal in the 1960 Olympic marathon. I also recall the dismayed reactions among sports commentators, all with a snide, and even racist, tone, implying that there was something primitive and inherently ignorant about this practice, as if he just didn't know better how to run in good shoes.

But, long time runners collect a variety of cumulative and chronic injuries such as plantar fasciitis, ankle and knee pain and inflammation, hip and lumbar problems. The solution? They are prescribed more cushioned, more stabilized, more expensive running shoes to counter these problems and continue with the sport. Now some are saying that this "solution" may actually be responsible for causing and worsening these chronic injuries.

Sensation, sensation, sensation

Here's the basic notion: the raised heal and cushioning of shoes encourages a longer stride in walking and running because you can "heel strike," i.e. land hard on the heel, and the cushioning limits sensory feedback as to the unnatural shock to the joints. Heel shock is because the long stride actually creates a momentary "dead stop" where all the forces of movement have to be absorbed by the body and then re-initiated. So it's also very energy inefficient for the body. In one study shod runners spent 10% more physical energy than unshod runners.

A video at the bottom of this page details the dead-stop which heel strike running (shod) creates and the forces generated into the joints from this.

Becoming Thudless

Try walking barefoot on a hardwood floor. Do you notice the "thud" with each step? Now try walking even more briskly and pay attention to how the thud creates a jarring impact and shock jars up into the joints of your legs, ankles, knees and hips. Slow down again, and see how you would have to walk to become "thudless." If you listen to your body's feedback and experiment you will have to adjust many habits of your gait, your stride length, and how you land on your foot. In order to land in front of your heel to roll through rather than heel strike, weighting in the arch or behind the ball of the foot, you will have to counter habits of longer stride and straight leg extension (locking your knee as you reach your foot forward), and you may find you have to bring your head and spine more into alignment over your hips instead of thrust forward.

Senseless Movement

It's not just the heel padding that's limits sensory feedback (feet-back?) that would otherwise allow us to be self-adjusting. The so-called "support" of many shoes in the arch, to limit pronation, etc., in trying to "stabilize" the foot, actually further limits sensory feedback from the joints, muscles and tissues of the foot and ankle. These parts, normally responsible for adjusting on-the-fly to changes in terrain and balance no longer do the work of flexing and responding to variations in lateral and compressive forces.

The more we limit movement of our tissues, the more we limit sensation. And without sensation the natural feedback loop of movement-sensation-adjustment-movement can't function. Our most fundamental adaptive intelligence of the body, is rendered null. We become movement-stupid.

When you first start barefoot running, sensations that feel wrong for the body quickly become quickly apparent. If you land wrong, lengthen your stride more than you should, whatever, you get instant sensory feedback, and you gradually start to adjust-unless your habit is so strong you can't sense the alternative. If you give your body time to develop and strengthen previously unused muscles and tissues, eventually your stride shortens, you land in front of the heel and roll through the foot, your knees flex and act as springs and the muscles of the leg act as shock absorbers. Similarly, the muscles and tissues of the arch and foot, no longer "supported" inflexibly by shoe, act as shock absorbers transferring energy efficiently.

It actually takes less energy to run barefoot because of this than to run shod. Really, look it up. You can also look up the principles of barefoot running on numerous web sites as well as YouTube. At the bottom of the page I've embedded some video examples brief examples of experienced. Notice the wonderful spring-like flexion of the arch and mid-foot.

It's the energy...

Ah, but the subtle energy side of this is even more cool to a an energy healer, also known as an energy junkie! Once muscles and tissues become activated that before were restrained, senseless and inert, the feet and legs freed to perform their function as part of the energy pumping system: sucking up chi from the earth and transferring it into the bones. This happens because of the activation of tissues which we tend to ignore in favor of the more obvious muscles, which actually have a significant impact on the transmission of subtle energy: the ligaments, fascia and, most especially, the periosteum.

The chakra frequencies or energies are not confined to the auric field, nor to the regions of the body each chakra is located in. Each organ, in fact, has all the chakra energies within it, intrinsic to its very structure. Rosalyn Bruyere is in the side chart. Note that the periosteum is in the yellow frequency of the third chakra, or mental body. When we commonly refer to "mental" we usually mean intellectual, but this is only when most of our mental body is concentrated around the brain (the yellow auric layer pulled upwards around our head), hence "I'm in my head" or talk-news as "talking heads."

But what the mental really is, or should be, is intelligence: as in the capacity for knowing, the coordinated transmission and use of information, the Universal quality of Intelligence of God's mind, and so on. Looking at the chart, we see the periosteum, the fibrous tissue covering every bone in the body, is the tissue layer of this frequency. This means that this quality of intelligence should be around every bone in our body!

Now it may be revealed the secret esoteric reason for the title of this blog. Our fundamental source of energy for the earth is through the soles of our feet, what the Chinese call the Bubbling Springs right below the ball of the foot. But anatomically this is the arch. When the arch acts like the flexible shock absorber it is designed to be, the very movement of walking creates energy results related to this intimate relationship between tissue layers, subtle energy frequencies and qualities of consciousness each frequency carries.

Flexing of the arch moves muscles, ligaments and connective tissues, all of which tug on e periosteum of the metatarsal bones. This flexion, along with similar flexion of the ankles and knees, generates a burst of yellow energy through the periosteum that rapidly propagates up the leg and pelvic bones. And this also means that the quality of intelligence becomes energized and connected throughout throughout the body. But most of us have feet rendered stupid by being shod. And stupid feet, from an energetic perspective, promote the restriction of intelligence in the body to more limited areas, and support the fixation of the mental energies in the head.

At Pathways For Healing we are creating ways to directly activate dumb feet and turn them into arch-ful geniuses! Okay, that's an exaggeration. But using subtle energy and flexion in the right way "remembers" the tissues of the feet how to move and generate this yellow energy via the periosteum, and when we help this connect to the rest of the skeletal system, some amazing things begin to happen. Contrary to our expectations the generation of all this yellow does not make for more mentalism, the elastic torsion of the periosteum, all beautifully connected together by ligaments that cross from bone to bone, actually seems to push

orange into the bones. In other words, the bones become fed and strengthened by the energetics of the periosteum just as they do by the nerve and vascular aspects of the periosteum. Embryologically speaking, our bones are actually formed by the

periosteum. Periosteum first, then bones. So the nourishment of bones from periosteum tissue is age-old.

Prof. Leiberman's Presentation

Kenyon Runner Brief (note the long racing stride but no heel-strike)

Expert Barefoot Runner Brief