Koby Deane was born without shoes and has many years’ experience not wearing any. His wife, son and dog watch him write and illustrate in the beautiful state of North Carolina, where both mountains and ocean beaches call out for adventure!
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Koby Deane about why kids should go barefoot.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How there are fun and positive aspects to children and people not wearing shoes.
– Why a little bit of confidence can go a long way when choosing to be barefoot in public.
– How your response is critical if an authority figure tells you to put shoes on.
– How parents condition their children to put their shoes on before going outside and why that might not be the best lesson.
– Why putting your kid’s feet in shoes all the time stunts certain muscle growth.
Connect with Koby:
Guest Contact Info
Twitter
@barfooza
Instagram
@barfoozaofficial
Facebook
facebook.com/Barfooza
Links Mentioned:
barfooza.com
Connect with Steven:
Website
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
A number of years ago, I was talking to Dr. Irene Davis, who is the godmother about natural movement and footwear, and she said, “If we just got kids wearing minimalist shoes, in 20 years, we would not be treating adults for the billions of dollars of problems they currently have with their feet and everything above.” Well, we’re going to be diving into that and many more things I’m sure on today’s episode of The MOVEMENT Movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting feet first because as you know, those things are your foundation, and we also break down the propaganda, the mythology, and pardon me, sometimes the outright lies you’ve been told about what it takes to run or walk or hike or play or do yoga or CrossFit, whatever it is you like to do. And to do that enjoyably efficiently, effectively, did I say enjoyably? Yes, I did.
It’s a trick question because if you’re not having fun, you’re not going to keep it up. So do something that’s having fun. I’m Steven Sashen from xeroshoes.com, your host of The MOVEMENT Movement podcast. We call it that because we are creating a movement about natural movement, letting your body do what it’s made to do without getting in the way. And the movement part, the moving it forward, that’s all about you, doesn’t take any effort. It’s really easy. It’s all what you know how to do. Just give us a thumbs up and a like review and a share and a hit the bell icon on YouTube. I mean, you know the gist of it, if you want to be part of the tribe, just subscribe. And also go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com to find previous episodes to be alerted about new episodes and to find all the places you can find us on social media and wherever podcasts are podcastable.
All right, that’s all the intros. So I’m not going to introduce my next guest because you know I hate doing that because I never say things that are interesting as them. So tell people who you are and what you’re doing here.
Koby Deane:
You’re always very interesting. Steven. My name’s Kobe Deane and I’m the author and illustrator of the children’s book I Go Barefoot.
Steven Sashen:
I had one sitting on my desk when I left last weekend or last week. It was sitting on my desk here and it disappeared. So there you are. I Go Barefoot.
Koby Deane:
It’s probably backwards, but-
Steven Sashen:
No, no it looks totally correct.
Koby Deane:
Yeah, readable. Okay, cool.
Steven Sashen:
It is exactly correct. So tell people about this book and why you did it.
Koby Deane:
Yeah, I was inspired. I like to go barefoot myself and I wanted to create a book that would inspire kids and parents about the fun and positive aspects of going barefoot. I think a lot of times there’s just this fear about, “Oh my gosh, what’s going to happen if you don’t have shoes on your feet?” And it was just almost paralyzing and there’s a lot of things that we’ll probably discuss that stem from problems that stem from that mindset. So when I created the book, I love the subject and I wanted it to be fun and positive because there’s just too much negative about it or just even our mindsets like, oh no, I can’t do that. So that’s why I did it.
Steven Sashen:
So I’ve noticed … So wait, where are you located? I can’t remember.
Koby Deane:
I live in North Carolina with my family.
Steven Sashen:
So interesting. Neither of us are in places that people typically think of as barefoot friendly, basically a beach or somewhere that’s warm all the time. And I know that, and I bring that specific example up because when I’m walking around barefoot in Costco, which I do often, I’ve had kids come up and look at me and say to their mom or dad, “Hey, that guy’s not wearing any shoes.” And if the parents are hip enough to do it, they’ll say to the kid, “Well go ask them about that.” And my response is, “Have you ever been to the beach?” And they say, “Yeah.” And I go, “Do you wear shoes at the beach?” They go, “No.” I go, “Well, just pretend we’re at the beach.”
And to the parents, I’ll say, since I’m in Colorado, “Just pretend we have post earthquake beachfront property.” So I spent a lot of time barefoot, all seasons. But talk to me about how you A, found yourself spending more time barefoot. What was the inspiration and you noticed when you started doing that? And last but not least, what’s it like doing that in North Carolina? Not the most, depending on where you are, not necessarily the most open-minded state in the country. And I say that as someone who lived there for five years.
Koby Deane:
Yeah, I heard that. I was listening to the podcast about your Duke experience, so that’s pretty cool. I’ve always, when I was younger, I didn’t go barefoot as much as I do now. I had a mom who’s very protective I guess, or she would just say, “Oh, you need to put your shoes on,” et cetera. It was kind of like the default. And so as I could make my own choices as I grew up, and I was a lot of happier that way. I just didn’t like the feeling of shoes on my feet. And there was some hurdles. Sometimes you just wonder what other people will think of you, but I just pushed past that. I just knew that it was just part of who I was. So that’s kind of my journey in an outcome.
Steven Sashen:
Do you still find yourself having the thoughts that people will think you’re crazy or fill in the blank, but you just don’t care that those thoughts come up? Or do they not come up?
Koby Deane:
So here’s what I found, that if you, it’s a confidence thing. So if I’m in an environment where if I’m going to a store and I choose to be barefoot in the store, I’m not going to make a big deal about it. I’m not trying to make a statement, that’s just part of who I am. So I’m just going in and I’m not looking at my feet and I’m not looking around. Wonder what people are thinking of me because when you do that, it’s like you’re a magnet, an attention magnet. But if you’re pushing your cart through the store and you’re saying, okay, I need to go this section, and you’re just not like as if you had shoes on. You had the confidence to be barefoot in that environment. I find people don’t really even pay attention for the most part.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting.
Koby Deane:
And sometimes, okay, here’s an interesting story. You were talking about your kids in Costco. So I was in one of the big box home improvement garden centers a couple, about a year or two ago. And I was barefoot. And so I was walking past like a grandma and her young grandson. He was probably about, I don’t know, seven to 10 anyway. And it’s funny that he said to her as I pass by, he says, “I hate wearing shoes.” And I think it gave him a voice in a way for, or gave him opportunity to dialogue about how he really felt.
I’ll give you another example. I go to a chiropractor and I’ll go there barefoot. And one day we were waiting for the chiropractic office to open and we were standing around. There was a couple people, one, a couple older ladies, a man, he didn’t say too much, but one of the women said, she was like, “Oh, that’s really amazing that you’re going barefoot.” And I said, “Yeah, well, this is part of who I am.” And she said, “Well, thank you for being brave and being a leader in that because honestly, I wish I could be as brave as you were.” So sometimes it just takes that confidence that we have in ourselves. This is not a wrong thing to do. It’s a very natural part of living, and it inspires others to that they would want to do it as well.
Steven Sashen:
You ever had, it’s been a while since I’ve been in this situation, but have you had a situation where you were hassled for being somewhere barefoot? And how did you respond to that?
Koby Deane:
Oh, this is a great story.
Steven Sashen:
For anyone listening, the moment that I finished the question, you got so ridiculously excited. That was wonderful to see.
Koby Deane:
I was in an airport, okay, not a huge international, it was an international airport, but not a huge one. And so I had just left my wife at the gate to be checked in and I was kind of standing out in a hallway because you couldn’t go past a certain point. And I was waiting to hear back from her on the cell phone about she got on and stuff like that. So as I’m standing there minding my own business, I guess she was a stewardess or somebody walked by and she was like the matron, all right. She was like, “Where are your shoes?” And I just politely said I didn’t wear any. And she says, “You need to wear shoes in this airport. You cannot be here barefoot in this airport.” So my reaction was this. I said, “Wow, okay. Thank you very much for telling me. Thank you for taking the time to tell me that, so much. Have a good day.” And she was like, I guess she was expecting an argument or something like that.
Steven Sashen:
Oh no, you just froze. You froze after you said she was expecting an argument.
Koby Deane:
Yeah, and so I said that, and it diffused her and she was like, “Oh, okay, well yes. Bye.” And I said, “Have a good day.” And it was just over. And I just continued to stand there. I think I moved off to the side, so I wasn’t like out in the open at that point, but it was just our response is critical. In, I don’t know, navigating through that situation. I mean, I just put myself in a very, I wanted to be gracious, I guess. I didn’t want to be a jerk about it, but I didn’t also want her to intimidate me either because I knew that there was no real rule about that. But I was just being polite and I just “Well, thank you for taking the time to tell me.”
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, you’re a better man than the last time I was in a local grocery store and one of the people said, “You can’t be in her bare feet.” And I said, “Why?” She said, “It’s a health code issue.” I said, “It’s actually not, just so you know. There’s no health code about it.” And she said, “Well, it’s about sanitation.” I said, “I’m really not worried about my feet getting dirty.” Not what she was expecting.
Koby Deane:
I mean, you’re not picking up the lettuce with your feet. In fact, you’re picking up the lettuce with your hands, which are probably just as unsanitary as your feet are.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, no, no, much, much more.
Koby Deane:
Probably.
Steven Sashen:
Someone told me that there was some study that they read that the most unsanitary thing in a grocery store is the handles on the carts you’re pushing, right? Because they never get cleaned. But it cracks me up. It’s like I’m much more attentive to have how clean my feet are than I’m to how clean my shoes might be.
Koby Deane:
Yeah, that’s right.
Steven Sashen:
That struck me as a good one. What was my favorite one? Oh and Whole Foods, which ironically they’ve hassled me a couple times,
Koby Deane:
Unbelievable.
Steven Sashen:
Just as they’re hassling me. And I said, “What’s the problem with being in bare feet?” And they said, “Well, you knew you could step on something.” And at that point somebody walks by with their dog. And I went, “Well, what about the dog stepping on something?” And there’s just no response to that. So I mean, haven’t really been hassled. My favorite thing is if I wear shoes, and people have probably heard me say this, if they’ve listened to this before, I’ll wear mismatched colors, which I’m doing right now. And I’m in line at the pharmacy at Costco, and the guy behind me says, “Hey, your shoes don’t match.” And the pharmacist without even looking up says “He’s wearing shoes?” So they know. I was going in there for years without anyone saying anything. And then they kind of hassled me at one point, and I just showed them a letter from the Secretary of State saying, there’s no law that says that, you can’t be in here without shoes.
It is something where people can have a rule and they can, what’s the word I was looking for? Enforce. That’s it. Enforce that rule. But there’s no law that I’ve ever heard. Now the airport one’s interesting. I got in a habit for a while after I took my shoes off. When I had to do that, I’d take my shoes off to go through TSA checkpoints, and then I just wouldn’t put them back on. And then I just not, didn’t put them on to begin with. And I just walked through, not a problem. Not a problem. For years. And once getting on a Southwest flight, the guy at the counter says, you have to wear shoes. I said, why? He goes, “It’s the law.” I said, “Nope, it’s actually, there’s no law about that.” He goes, “Well, it’s my law.” I said, “Nope, there’s no such thing.”
Well, it’s like if you don’t wear shoes, I’m not going to let you on the flight. So I put them on just enough to get by him. Then I took them off when I was on the jet way, and then annoyingly, he had to run down the jet way for something and he saw me and he got furious. It’s like, all right, I’ll put them back on. Now here’s the thing that’s interesting about this. He was kind of right. When you get an airplane ticket, you’re actually, entertain, God, I can’t even think of the words that start with E. Today you are entering into a contract with the airline and they are giving you the right to fly on their plane contingent on certain things. And one of the things is they can remove you from the plane for any reason. And it explicitly says for being in bare feet. Now, if you look into why that was written in the ’60s, early ’70s when they wanted to keep hippies off the plane.
Koby Deane:
Oh, wow.
Steven Sashen:
And they just never changed it. And there’s no reason for it. It’s just one of those things. So I go back and forth depending on whether it seems like someone’s going to give me a hard time or not. I’m not trying to, I don’t want to be combative, but I can’t say I don’t enjoy it.
Koby Deane:
I’m surprised you’re able to get into Costco and successfully like that because in their bylaws they do say.
Steven Sashen:
Never had an issue there. The other grocery stores that I go to again, I’ve had one person make one comment and then I go, “All right, next time I’ll do that.” And I never do. And I love to say that on a hot summer day, going into the produce section in bare feet and standing by the produce when the mister is going off, that’s the closest thing you can do to being a kid, running through the sprinkler when you’re an adult.
Koby Deane:
Right.
Steven Sashen:
So when did you start your barefoot journey, if you will?
Koby Deane:
I guess it was gradual. Once I got out of college, as I was just regular life, I just started doing it more. I had a job, I worked in quick printing for about 10 years, and the owner worked without shoes. So yeah, that was awesome. So I started working without shoes and sometimes I’d walk to work without shoes and it was a great experience. I enjoyed it so much.
Steven Sashen:
What about the rest of your family? Are they doing it as well?
Koby Deane:
My wife was a hardcore barefooter when she was younger. She doesn’t so much anymore, but she doesn’t care about my going barefoot. She’s not embarrassed or anything like that. And my son, he’s just content to wear shoes, so I don’t push it.
Steven Sashen:
It’s so funny you said she’s not embarrassed. It never occurred to me to ask my wife how she felt when we were together and I was in bare feet, and in bare feet is a weird way of saying it when I wasn’t wearing shoes. And I’ll have to ask her. She certainly has never said anything. And of course, the number of things that I could possibly do that would embarrass her way beyond not wearing shoes is just legion. So I’m sure this one’s just like, “Yeah, that’s no big deal compared to the other stuff he says and does.” So then you decided at some point though, even though your son is not particularly in a barefoot lifestyle, which by the way, I can imagine for kids, there’d be more attention to how other people respond and peer pressure, et cetera. So I would never push it as well. But what made you think, “Okay, I got to spread the word,” and then decide to write and illustrate a book?
Koby Deane:
What was my motivation for that?
Steven Sashen:
Why that versus any of the myriad other ways that one could try to get the word out?
Koby Deane:
Well, it’s just a fun topic for me, and I felt like there was enough need in culture to talk about it or to bring it up in a book form with kids to be exposed to. Because too often, for whatever reason, parents are like, “Okay, we’re going put your shoes on, let’s go.” It’s like the default all the time. And so kids are conditioned that, “Okay, I’m going out. I need to put my shoes on.” And I felt like I wanted to counteract that a little bit and present another way, in a way that broke the paradigms that people have about going barefoot that. And in this book, it’s based in a beach town, I guess people, there was a lot of things, activities you can do barefoot that you do at the beach, but some things you can carry over it in non beach environments.
So it’s 44 pages, 44 fully illustrated pages. And I never thought I would have that much material on the subject. I just started doing it and I thought, “Oh, about what about that? And I could do that.” And then it came into a rhyme. I came, it’s prose, and then it’s actually a song. I’m a musician as well. So it’s a rap song and you can download the audio book. It’s literally a musical audiobook that goes along with it. And again, that’s the type of thing that, it’s music got a very strong hook for the chorus, and it’s one of those things that gets in you. Music has a way of getting inside of you and in your head as well.
So I wanted just to push the envelope, so to speak, and help people break free from some paradigms as I did more research about the benefits of going barefoot, man, I’m really glad I did and I’m really glad you’re doing podcasts like this because it really is something that needs to be addressed. The whole movement thing, being barefoot while you’re moving. So important in the development of children. Huge.
And I worked at the public school system as well. I did that for about 14 years. And as I started out and progressively I saw things that were happening that were more regulations, more restrictions on children, for example. And basically where that came from in the policymaking for schools was they were fearful of lawsuits. So they would make these rules. For example, no monkey bars, you can’t be on the monkey bars. Now you talk to people, and I’ll mention this other woman, right now, I might as well, her name is Angela Hanscom. She wrote the book Balanced and Barefoot.
Steven Sashen:
Oh yeah, yeah.
Koby Deane:
It’s a fantastic book. Oh my goodness. If you could get her on your show, dude, that would be amazing.
Steven Sashen:
I’m making a note right now, because I should have and didn’t think of it.
Koby Deane:
She is an occupational therapist by profession, and she reads the mail of culture in the public school and even in American culture or western culture, I would say western culture because it’s not just America, it’s also England and other English speaking countries, something like that. Whatever you want to say. But she assesses in the first part of book, it’s an epidemic of developmental disabilities, statistically compounded over the decades of problems that our children are currently facing because of lack of physical movement in an unstructured outdoor environment. And she even goes as far as saying with shoes on.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Koby Deane:
There’s a section of the book that talks about it’s okay to go barefoot and it’s probably better for them to be barefoot.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Koby Deane:
I’ve been reading the book lately and I got to read some … The first part of the book is so like, oh my gosh, all the problems she addresses, why can’t my child sit still? Why does my child need therapy? Why can’t my child pay attention? Why can’t my child physically keep up? Why is poor posture the new norm? Why are they frail like grandmother’s fine china? Why does my child fall so often? Why is my child so aggressive, have difficulty reading, so emotional? Why doesn’t my child like to play? And she’s presenting all these things and she’s giving the stats. So if you’re a numbers person, it’s not just her opinion. She’s in the field as an OT. She did the research with the percentages of increase and the amount of all the kids have developmental disabilities. There’s not enough OTP people to go around. And she’s saying, “Look, part of the problem, basically the root cause is we’re not getting enough physical movement outside in unstructured free play.”
Steven Sashen:
Interesting.
Koby Deane:
And while you’re there, take their shoes off.
Steven Sashen:
I’m not suggesting, or I’m not, how do I want to say this? I’m not a doctor and I don’t play one on TV.
Koby Deane:
Correct.
Steven Sashen:
Or the internet. And there’s no science behind what I’m about to say. But there is a not insignificant amount of anecdotal information that is spontaneously given to us. And this is that I have parents of kids with ADD, ADHD, autism who say, my kids only want to wear your shoes, and they’re functionally better. And I said, especially for the ADD, ADHD thing, I said, “I think I know why,” from a neurological standpoint, I would contend that the stimulation they’re getting from either being barefoot or being in shoes like ours rather than big, thick cushion things has a similar impact to Ritalin. Ritalin’s a mild stimulant when you haven’t been letting your brain feel things and then you let it feel again, it’s a stimulating effect.
And in the same way that when I was living in New York City, I used to joke that the best place for me to meditate was on a subway because the noise of the subway was just a little louder than my thinking. And it was surprisingly easy for me to concentrate there or just relax there. And this is a thing that no one has researched yet, and I really would like to, there was research in Japan years ago that showed that kids who were barefoot were developing socially more quickly than those who weren’t. And they theorized just because they had to pay attention to what they were doing with their feet and how people were responding to them. And so it just accelerated their awareness about how to take care of themselves and how that worked just in relation to other people.
Koby Deane:
There’s a professor, his name is Steven Hepple, and he’s based in England. But several years ago he did, he was commissioned to do research on how to make schools better. And there are multiple facets to this, but going barefoot in school, having a shoeless learning environment was a big part of it.
Steven Sashen:
Interesting.
Koby Deane:
Oh yeah. He wrote the article. In fact, what I’ll do is I’m going to, any resource that I’m going to talk about today, I’m going to put down in my blog and I’ll make it available for everybody, okay.
Steven Sashen:
Perfect. That’d be great.
Koby Deane:
I have a link to his research, and first of all, we need to understand that shoeless schools, I depict that in the book. I wanted to depict that in the book because people need to know it really is a thing because most people, are you kidding me? A shoeless school environment? That’s crazy. But it’s not actually … They can’t really figure out why. But as they do the analysis, grades are improving, behaviors, bad behaviors are decreasing, school maintenance costs are decreasing. So I mean, that’s a trifecta right there. Better academics, kids are able to concentrate better, less bullying, cleaner schools.
Steven Sashen:
Very interesting.
Koby Deane:
Lower costs. I mean, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out, scientist to figure out. That’s pretty good. That’s a good thing.
Steven Sashen:
Yes. I would argue that is true. That is fascinating. There was a thought that I had that just flew right out of my brain. So this whole idea about the benefits of barefoot beyond just your own personal thing, just how fun it can be, how good it feels. And of course, for people who haven’t really tried it, I know, in fact, I’m going to toss this one out there, what would you recommend? I have some thoughts about this. I think I haven’t really entertained this thought before, so I’m watching them kind of bubble up into my head. If somebody hasn’t tried being barefoot in public, what would you suggest they do? What would you think they might need to be on the lookout for or aware of or attentive to? I’m not thinking about surfaces, I’m thinking about what might be happening inside their mind, for example, or whatever else you can think of that would be, that might give people the willingness just to give it a shot.
Koby Deane:
Well, in the book, I addressed that on a kid’s level. One of the first things it says is that at first it feels prickly. The ground is much rougher. But as I continue, my bare feet get tougher. And so what I’m saying is that it’s normal when you start going barefoot to feel like, “Oh my gosh, everything feel feels so loud. I don’t think I can do this.” And then, but if you push past that, it’s like, “Oh, yeah, okay.” You actually, it’s almost like you learned to appreciate, oh, and that’s the next phrase of the book, avoiding sharp objects like sticks and sand burrs. I learned to appreciate different textures.
Steven Sashen:
It’s interesting. I have the idea that your feet get tougher while you definitely do over a not insignificant amount of time, the skin does get a little thicker, but not what people think, where they think your feet become like a baseball glove and it protects you from everything. My suspicion is that at first, that feeling you described is from the fact that you haven’t been getting that stimulation and that your brain is a little hypersensitive.
So what your brain does really well in all circumstances is it’s really good at filtering out unnecessary information. It’s one of the biggest functions that it has. And so over time, you actually learn that you don’t need to be that hyper reactive hyper responsive because it’s not problematic. And so it’s just that you’re getting used to something. You get more attentive to what is or isn’t something you need to pay attention to. I also, there’s so many things that I wish I had done, had the crystal ball known what my barefoot experience was going to lead to, because I would’ve A, taken an imprint of my foot to show my crazy flat feet. And then how those have changed. And the other is doing some way of measuring my reflex arc and just how quickly I stepped off of things. Because actually there’s a third, because I don’t feel like I’ve become numb or not feeling, I feel like I’m much more attentive, and if something’s bad, I’m just off of it more quickly. And mostly as a reflex, something intentional.
And I also think my feet have become, in addition to stronger, that’s kind of a no-brainer, but I also think they become more flexible. And that allows me to, things that when I first started doing this, things that I used to step on that were uncomfortable now are a foot massage. And the number of things that I step on that are uncomfortable has gotten to be very, very small. Now, pointy cactus things, that’s a whole different story. In the normal world, so I have a slightly different take on what happens as you progress in this experiment, but one thought that just popped in my head, and if I don’t say it, I’ll forget it. What cracks me up is when I am running around barefoot is people will say, “But what if you …” and they fill in the blank with things that just don’t happen. What if you step on whatever, or my favorite is “What if you step in dog shit?” And I say, “When’s the last time you did that?” And they go, “Well, I don’t know, 20 years ago.” I say, “Well, why are you going to start now?”
Koby Deane:
Yeah. I mean, it is always, some of the worst things I’ve ever imagined never happened to me.
Steven Sashen:
Like what?
Koby Deane:
Well, I’m just saying it’s a phrase sometimes.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, yes, yes.
Koby Deane:
The worst things that we imagine just never happened. So where’s the issue? It’s in our heads, in our heart. Some fear comes up like, what if, what if. I mean, it’s paralyzing.
Steven Sashen:
Well, I will confess, I’ve stubbed my toe twice in the last 15 years.
Koby Deane:
It happens. I mean, yeah, it happens. Risk at risk. There’s risks everywhere. And you get in a car to drive somewhere, it’s a risk. You go into the kitchen to cook something, boil water, it’s a risk.
Steven Sashen:
It is true. And to be clear, I did the same thing twice. Once I was at my sister’s house, I’m going walking up the driveway, I didn’t notice that the garage pad was about two inches higher than the driveway. And so I stubbed my toe. And then I’m in downtown Boulder, and I’m walking with a friend and we’re walking on the sidewalk. And I didn’t notice that one of the little tree areas, one of the rocks they had surrounding the tree had somehow escaped, was trying to go somewhere else. I don’t know where. And it was in the middle of the sidewalk. And I just wasn’t paying attention because I was engrossed in the conversation and stubbed my toe there. So many people will find this to be horrible, but I had to have a bandaid on my toe for almost 24 hours. I mean, that was a big deal.
Koby Deane:
It happens. But I think that’s what we need to get free of that fear, especially as we help our kids develop. Because this is not just a preference thing. I mean, yes, it is a preference thing, there is that aspect of it, but it’s also a huge developmental thing, because if you’re putting your kids’ feet in shoes all the time, those feet are not getting strengthened. And you know, you Google something like “Is it okay to go barefoot all the time?” And usually you’ll get some expert who’s a podiatrist who will say, “Oh, well, going barefoot is good, but you really need to have your feet in shoes in order to develop the support that they need to function well.” We’re shaking our heads right. Totally. Okay, so why are they saying that? I mean, let’s just be honest, and I don’t mean to insult any podiatrists. But really, what’s your motive there? I mean, do you make a significant income of your profession from orthotics?
Steven Sashen:
Do you know where It’s really hard to find a podiatrist?
Koby Deane:
Where?
Steven Sashen:
Any place where they don’t have indoor plumbing, any place where they’re not wearing the shoes that we wear. And I had a friend who went to Everest Base camp, and he’s watching these Sherpa’s who are just flying up the mountain. And at best, they were wearing flip flops and these amazing hiking boots, and they are totally fine and never had a problem.
Koby Deane:
Exactly.
Steven Sashen:
This is the counterfactual thing that I like is so in our own private Idaho here in the west, that we are shocked when we go somewhere where they’re doing the exact opposite and they’re totally fine. And some people will then go, “Huh, wait a minute. That’s the opposite of what I thought. That’s a counterfactual. Maybe there’s something to that.” And other people will just think “They’re weird, they’re unusual, they’re special,” and nope.
Koby Deane:
I mean, you, you’d look at a guy like Paul Thompson who you’ve interviewed with. He’s the barefoot podiatrist in Australia. He lets his kids go barefoot all the time. And he recently posted something on social media. Those kids’ feet are like, I don’t know what you want, superman feet, I mean, he shows them climbing rocks and they’re rolling down the hills and they’re just doing all these physical activities that kids should be doing outdoors and barefoot, and they’re like healthy, happy kids.
Steven Sashen:
Well, and I’m going to brag a little bit because this is something that I just discovered. I want to be clear that just be, if people listening to this are not children, which I’m assuming most aren’t, you can start this whole thing at any age. There’s no reason to wait. There’s research showing that people in their ’90s, if they start doing weight training, get stronger. And there’s a study, it’s the RSI study. It’s a reflexive study. Basically, you put your hands on your hips and you videotape this at least 240 frames a second, super slow mo, and you jump up and down as quickly as you can. You want to use as little knee bend as possible. Basically, you’re just bouncing off your feet as quick and as fast as you can. And what you measure is the amount of time you’re on the ground and the amount of time you’re in the air, and you just divide the amount of time you’re in the air by the amount of time you’re on the ground, and you get an RSI score.
And if you are a very accomplished athlete, your score will be over 2.5. If you’re an extremely accomplished athlete, it’ll be over three. And anything over like 3.5, you’re a freak of nature. And so I’m 60 going to be 61 years old in just a little bit, and I got a 2.6. And this is all, it’s really fundamentally all about foot strength. And I don’t know what I would’ve scored 15 years ago before I started doing this, but I’m almost 61 years old, and I’m outperforming professional athletes who are half my age, no reason not to start.
Koby Deane:
Going back to Angela Hanscom, the author of Balanced and Barefoot. I mean, she was to her own admission, what we would call a helicopter mom. I think she has two daughters, and she would just make sure that everything was safe for them, everything was protected, everything was sanitized. And so she realized that she was doing her child a disservice because there’s so many things that children should be exposed to in an outdoor environment, in unstructured free play, barefoot that will strengthen their immunities, build their arches, strengthen their feet, and increase their stamina, stimulate their imagination and cognitive development. Her daughter had, I think, if I remember correctly, had flat feet up until the time that Angela got this revelation about being outside and being barefoot, and then she just let her daughter go without shoes. And what do you think happened? She got her feet back. Yeah, she got her arches, and she didn’t need orthotics or anything like that.
Steven Sashen:
And let’s be clear, arch height is predominantly genetic, but arch strength is what determines how much you’re maximizing the arch that you have. I was at a chiropractic conference a while back, and the guy running it said to the other chiropractors, if you need to pay Sashen five bucks to feel his feet, pay him. Because at that time, they were flatter, so they’re not what you would think is ideal from a just sort of visual perspective, but then check out how strong they’re and that’s the important part. And this is the thing that I harp on, is that it’s about strength and flexibility, not about some magic number of how high your arch is or not.
Koby Deane:
Yes. Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
This whole, do you know why this is a wacky tangent? Do you know why? Because I don’t. If you had flat feet that kept you out of the army back in the ’50s and ’60s.
Koby Deane:
That’s a good question. Because that is true.
Steven Sashen:
I got to look that up. I have no doubt that it was based on some complete bit of mythology that had no basis in fact.
Koby Deane:
Maybe it was because you didn’t have enough strength.
Steven Sashen:
I don’t know, maybe. I don’t know. We’ll look into this. This could be a fun one. And if anyone knows, let me know.
Koby Deane:
Like Paul Thompson is saying, you build strength from the ground up your feet and the rest follows.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, professional power lifters say that for every lift they do. They said, “Look, even the bench press starts with your feet.”
Koby Deane:
There you go.
Steven Sashen:
And we’ve had a bunch of, we’ve gone to a power lifting competitions and had a bunch of lifters try on our shoes at our booth. And then we’ve had more than a handful say, “I’m about to go compete. Can I wear these?” And then they go and set a personal best. And yes, it could be psychological, it could be a placebo effect, could be something. But they come back almost without question or without exception. See, there’s another E word that I couldn’t find almost without exception saying, I just felt like I was really pushing out of the ground better than I was before because their toes weren’t being squeezed together. And if you look at people who are in doing the deadlift in particular, they will usually be in barefoot or barefoot or be in socks or be in some pretty low profile shoe, but usually still too narrow for their foot.
So there’s that component as well. And then guys doing the squat, that cracks me up because they think they need squat shoes, which if you look at a squatting shoe, it’s basically a wooden sole, stiff wooden sole with a bit of a heel lift. So the shoe does nothing. It’s basically the floor at an angle. And the guy who invented that was someone who had short femurs and needed that because the way his body worked, he couldn’t squat all the way down. And so came up with this idea of just elevating his heel, which helped. And then everyone’s so like, “Oh, I guess we need to elevate our heel.” It’s like, no.
Koby Deane:
That was just for me.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that happens. That is the nature of the professional sporting world is someone does something a little different, does really well, and everyone goes, “Well, we better do that too. Otherwise we may be at a disadvantage,” without understanding what the thing is or what it actually does or doesn’t do.
Koby Deane:
Yeah. Yeah. Funny, crazy.
Steven Sashen:
So as we bring this into a soft landing, how are you making people aware of the book?
Koby Deane:
Well, through podcasts like this and organic awareness of it. I am going to start advertising a little bit more because that’s part of the marketing of things, but it was released in November, so pretty new book. It’s a baby. But my desire is to equip parents really to be aware, to break free from really mindsets that are stifling their children. And it has to do with being barefoot. It also has to do with getting outside and doing unstructured free play. And the resources that I’m going to spell out in the blog that I’ll put on the website, we’ll list these Balanced and Barefoot by Angela Hanscom. And oh, another one is 1,000 Hours Outside, and that’s by Virginia Urich. You would like this too.
Steven Sashen:
Wait, who’s it by?
Koby Deane:
Virginia Urich
Steven Sashen:
Writing it down. What I can tell you from a marketing perspective is this, if you go after mommy bloggers and your basic pitch is, do you want your kids to grow up with fucked up feet? I was thinking of a better way to say that, but I couldn’t think of a word with E. So if you don’t want your kids to have their feet get messed up, which could be bad for balance and strength and agility and all those things, then we need to talk. Because no parent wants to put their kid at a disadvantage, ironically, if you make the same argument to them, they may have an issue, but if you say it’s about their kids, they have to be more attentive. And I say this because I have a friend who started a footwear company for kids, and that was her entire pitch to parents. That was her whole marketing was going after mommy bloggers. We are, by the way, going down in sizes to get smaller and smaller to be able to accommodate the people who think their kids need something or for when their kids do. But just as an FYI, that would be the angle that I would take if I were in your not shoes.
So if people want to find out more about your book and get a copy and hear the song that goes with it and everything else you’re doing, please tell them how they can do that.
Koby Deane:
Sure. Yeah, you could go to barfooza.com, B-A-R-F-O-O-Z-A.com. And if you can’t remember that, I also purchased igobarefoot.com, and that will roll over to barfooza.com.
Steven Sashen:
There you go.
Koby Deane:
And there you can order the book. You can get the download of the audiobook. The blog will be there for the links to, it’s under Footnotes to Parents, that’s what it’s called, Footnotes to Parents. And I’ll add all these links to it, which will help equip you as parents to really help in your child’s development.
Steven Sashen:
Awesome. Well, Kobe, this has been an absolute pleasure. I want to thank you for this way. This happened to you spontaneously and without any provocation, sent me a copy of the book and I said, “Oh, yeah, we got to connect,” and here we are. So I’m so glad you did that, and so glad we’re able to have this chat. And for everyone else, I hope you do go to Igobarefoot.com or barfooza.com and check it out. Grab a copy for yourself or a parent that you know who has a child that you would like to help grow up happy, healthy, et cetera. And for everyone else, just a reminder, go to jointhemovementmovement.com to find all the previous episodes all the way you can engage with us if you, and again, like and share, and give us a thumbs up and give us a review somewhere.
And if you have any recommendations, anyone you want on the show, I’m always looking for someone to talk to, someone who thinks I have a case of cranial rectal reorientation syndrome. I can’t seem to get them to actually join me on the podcast. Mostly because in the conversation we have leading up to the podcast, I think it becomes clear that they’re not going to have a good time or not the time they expect. But again, if you have anything, comments, requests, et cetera, drop me an email. I meant move M-O-V-E at jointhemovementmovement.com. But most importantly, just go out and have fun and live life feet first.