Dr. Emily Splichal, functional podiatrist and human movement specialist, is the mind behind Naboso. With a spirit to challenge conformity, Dr. Splichal has taken her conventional Podiatric Medical degree and combined it with years of experience and expertise in human movement and sensory science to found Naboso.
Dr. Splichal believes that our experience in this world is built around sensory stimulation and our ability to process, perceive, and integrate this information effectively. Since 2012, Dr. Splichal has been traveling the world to share her unique approach to human movement, foot function, and barefoot science. Having taught in 35 countries and to over 25,000 professionals, Dr. Splichal has quickly become a sought out leader in barefoot training and rehabilitation.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Dr. Emily Splichal about the longevity power of sensory stimulation.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How natural movement and foot strength directly correlate with longevity and overall health.
– Why being hyper-aware of one’s body in space and providing necessary feedback through movement is crucial.
– How sensory insoles and mats with textured surfaces have yielded positive results, especially for individuals with neurological conditions.
– Why barefoot training on textured surfaces can enhance foot strength and overall health.
– How Naboso Technology uses tiny pyramids on insoles and mats to stimulate nerves and enhance sensory perception.
Connect with Dr. Emily Splichal:
Guest Contact Info
Instagram: @naboso_technology @thefunctionalfootdoc
Facebook: facebook.com/nabosotechnology facebook.com/dremilysplichaldpm
Links Mentioned: https://www.naboso.com/
https://www.dremilysplichal.com/
Connect with Steven:
Website
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
It’s amazing. We go to the gym or we go to the doctor or we go to the wherever to improve our bodies, and we pretty much focus on everything from the ankles up, not paying attention to what’s from the ankles down, which is the stuff that supports everything from the ankles up. Well, we’re going to be chatting about some latest evolutions and things you can do from the ankles down with a dear friend of ours, Dr. Emily Splichal.
But first, just a reminder, hey, welcome to The MOVEMENT Movement podcast, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting feet first, those things at the end of your legs. We break down the propaganda, the mythology, and sometimes the flat-out lies you’ve been told about what it takes to run or walk or play or do yoga or CrossFit, whatever you like to do, and do those things enjoyably and efficiently and effectively. Did I say enjoyably? Trick question. Of course I did, because that’s the most important one. If you’re not having fun, you’re not going to keep doing whatever it is anyway, so make sure you’re having a good time. I am Steven Sashen from xeroshoes.com. I’m the co-founder and Chief Barefoot Officer over here. You try it.
We call this The MOVEMENT Movement podcast because we’re creating a movement about natural movement. The way we are creating this, that includes you, is really simple. Go to our website, www.jointhemovementmovement.com, find the previous episodes, find the places you can find us on social media. Give us a good review, thumbs ups, like, five stars, whatever it is, and spread the word. Basically, if you want to be part of the tribe, just subscribe. It’s really simple. Now let’s have some fun. Hey, Dr. Emily Splichal. How the hell are you?
Dr. Emily Splichal:
I am doing amazing. That was quite the intro.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, yeah, I do what I can. After like 300 of these, it’s kind of a — Look, I can barely remember my middle name, but I can do that thing, not perfectly, obviously, but good enough to get from the beginning to the end without having to take a break.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
I love it. I love it. That’s how I am when I talk about the nerves in the bottom of the feet. I literally get into a recording of a speech that I’ve given many times.
Steven Sashen:
So in just a matter of 30 seconds, we just told everyone we’re a bunch of geeks.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
And we’re proud of it.
Steven Sashen:
I just don’t argue. It’s just not worth the effort. It’s as simple as that. Where do human beings find you right now, or more accurately, where are you right now and human beings don’t know where that is or whatever I’m trying to say?
Dr. Emily Splichal:
I’m currently sitting in Chandler, Arizona, in the Naboso office trying to get ready for the end of the year, wrapping up, hitting some of those key revenue goals, but also planning some big things for 2025, which is my favorite. I love designing products. That’s really where my head is at right now.
Steven Sashen:
And that is why we’re here. Do me a favor. Back up a half a step and tell people who the hell you are, what you do, and how you got to the point where we’re going to be talking about these products. FYI, for people who don’t know, I never let anyone on this podcast to talk about a product if I don’t think it’s for real. I’m going to tell the story about how we first had that fun interaction. But tell people who the hell you are if they don’t know.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Yes, Dr. Emily, functional podiatrist, so not just a podiatrist, but functional podiatrist, human movement specialist. I’ve been traveling the world educating about feet, barefoot science for the last 12 years.
Steven Sashen:
Wow.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Then I’m the CEO and founder of Nobosa, which is a sensory-based product line, Xero Shoes proudly resells, and we partnered on some products with Nobosa, which I’m absolutely very honored by. Then I’m an author of a book called Barefoot Strong. I’m writing my next book, and I have to talk about it so that it actually happens. But I have a book that is almost done, and we’ll be launching that soon. Jesus, that takes a long time. But, yeah, I’m everything about spreading the message. My focus, as much as it is feet, is actually movement longevity. As much as people initially think movement longevity means that you want to move well when you’re 100, I actually believe that to live to be 100 or plus you have to move. So I’m an advocate of movement, which I know you are.
Steven Sashen:
What? Look at my face. Well, look, there’s research. These are not just opinions. One of the things that gets on my nerves is people will say things to me like, “Well, you believe?” I go, “No, no, I don’t believe any of this stuff. This is a fact.” There’s research behind it, and there are now hundreds of thousands of people who have… Well, there’s actually millions of people, but just from Xero Shoes alone, we have hundreds of thousands of people who said, “Here’s what happened to me once I started moving better.” But to your point about if you want to live to fill in the blank, you need to be able to move, there are a couple very interesting bits of research about that.
One, and feel free to jump in on this, but here we go. One is there’s a direct correlation between trip-and-fall accidents, which is a very high cause of death in people, including my dad nine years ago, and foot strength. If you don’t have foot strength, then that impairs everything and makes you highly likely, not highly likely, more likely to have a trip-and-fall accident where you could break your hip and die not too long after. That’s number one.
Number two, this one’s even more interesting to me. I met a woman, she was a nurse at Duke University, who started doing this research that shows that if your natural walking gate, your walking speed is under a certain number, and sorry, I don’t remember the number off the top of my head, your likelihood of dying over the next five years has increased by 70% or 80%. Now, interestingly, of course, if you’re walking really slow, it’s mostly because your feet aren’t doing their job. They’re not strong enough to support you. They’re not getting the feedback they need. They’re not creating the stimulation your brain needs, all the things that we’re going to talk about.
So when you say something like longevity requires movement, you’re not just pulling that out of your butt. This is not just a belief. This is demonstrated, and there’s research coming out happily starting in January about this. Now that we’ve been doing this whole barefooty thing, well, we’ve been doing it 15 years, more and more people are doing more and more research to back up what we all knew anecdotally, just to demonstrate that, no, this is for real. Anyway, I just wanted to throw in these are not things that we just think and we’re trying to convince people of. This is stuff that we know is real and we’re trying to wake people up to.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. Sometimes it is looking at a research study and applying it into a real world way. That’s why I think people like you and what I do and in this space of consumers, in a sense, or the real world is taking what’s happening in a lab, and then they just publish things, and that’s cool. But they don’t know how to actually word it or spin it or package it to be real world so that everyone who’s listening can actually understand and use the powerful data that was demonstrated through a research study. That’s why I like what you’re doing here is to then help people be like, “Okay, I get it. Now I understand walking speed, but when I read it in the research article, I don’t get that. How am I supposed to?
Steven Sashen:
Let’s be clear. No one’s finding these articles on their own. It’s not the kind of thing that normal human beings are going to stumble upon unless they have insomnia and they just need some way of getting to sleep without medication.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
They’re not on Google Scholar all night reading research articles?
Steven Sashen:
You may be surprised to discover that the answer to that question is no. The average person doesn’t even know what you just referred to, nor do they know what PubMed is, nor do they know… I would say it’s actually the other way around. Because of what we all started doing 15 years ago-ish and the response that was created from that, or more accurately, what happened when people started using their feet in ways they hadn’t for ages or ever, that just piqued a lot of curiosity in the research community. The bad news is it’s not their job to market what they’ve done in a way that it gets to consumers. The worst news is that the big shoe companies will put out studies that are very badly designed.
My favorite… There’s two things lately. I don’t know if you’ve seen these that I keep seeing all the time in studies. One is a line like this one, “Despite the advances in footwear running shoe technology over the last 50 years, running-related injuries have not decreased in that time.” Now, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to go, “If injury rates have not decreased, then there haven’t really been advances.” That’s the first one.
The second one is we took some habitually shod, a word that no one outside of the barefoot shoe world uses, people don’t use the word shod, we’ve taken people who are habitually in regular shoes, let’s just call it what it is, and wanted to test that against barefoot. So we gave the people that we were going to have in the study some time to acclimate to running barefoot by having five minutes on a treadmill. It’s like, yeah, that’s not what it takes to acclimate. You wouldn’t say that you acclimated to a new shoe in five minutes on a treadmill. So there’s these horribly designed studies that people who are on the pro giant, big, thick shoe, padded motion and all-arch support whatever thing, they will try to use to combat anything that we say because people aren’t going to discover that the studies were really poorly designed and really poorly constructed.
One last one, and I’ll stop ranting on this. There’s a guy who used to work at the University of Colorado who did a study that was trying to prove that barefoot was bad for you. He said that he took 12 accomplished barefoot runners. Over the first and last beer we had together, and I think I made him pay for it, I said, “I know all the barefoot runners in town. I’m one of them. Neither I nor anyone that I know was in your study. I know who was in your study. They’re not accomplished barefoot runners. They’re accomplished runners who do a little bit of barefoot training on the grass at the end of their workout. That’s it. So your little study is not really telling anybody anything meaningful.” But here’s the kick. Nobody would know that unless they knew this guy and they were part of this community. Otherwise, when he says, “Accomplished barefoot runners,” why would you argue? He’s got a PhD and a blah blah, blah, and whatever else. Anyway, a little rant about problems with research.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Well, I’ve seen that with textured research because… Obviously, I’m not a minimal shoe company. I’m a sensory-based product line using texture. You see that same thing where then people will try to call bullshit on the power of texture, on foot awareness and reducing injuries and improving gait parameters, etc. But then when you actually look at the study, it’s the same thing. They’re in a pillow of a shoe with a textured insole, and then they’re saying, “Wow, texture does nothing,” and a thick sock, like a thick wool sock. I’m like, fine.
Steven Sashen:
No, no, no. Because people know that you can stack up a whole lot of mattresses, and if you put a pea under the bottom one, people can feel that. So the fact that there’s a whole bunch of cushioning and a sock and whatever, that doesn’t make a difference. We all know that. That’s irrelevant. But because you said textured and sensory, let’s just jump into that for a second. Naboso is a Czech word that means barefoot, and we’re going to get one step further down. How did you pick that word? You are not Czech.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
They think I’m Czech.
Steven Sashen:
Emily, that is cultural appropriation. That is Eastern European appropriation.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
I know, I know. Really what it was is I was designing Naboso, and this is interesting on how these things work in life. So I was concepting out Naboso, working on our first product, couldn’t think of a company name. I wanted a word that was not English directly, but had something… Do I pick something in Swahili or something? I don’t know. So I paid this company $10,000 to try to come up with a name, I know, or my company in a way that it wouldn’t put a ceiling over my head because I had no idea what this was going to become.
Anyway, that’s happening. I go to Prague to teach a workshop through my education company. They’re all there, and they’re so excited because there’s a Czech American who’s coming to Prague. I’m like, “I’m not Czech.” But there was this huge conversation around that I’m Czech. They swear I’m Czech. Anyway, Dr. Janda, who was a Czech physiatrist, is someone who really influenced my career. So I had this… I was drawn to Czech.
I’m there. Someone who’s attending my workshop has a T-shirt on that says Naboso on it, and I’m drawn to that word. No idea why. I’m like, “What does that mean? What is that?” It’s a Barefoot Shoe store in Czech Republic. They now sell Naboso. Anyway, I was like, “Oh my God, that is so perfect.” So it is trademarked in the United States, even though it’s a common word in the Czech Republic because it’s a Czech word that means barefoot. Actually, it’s a Slavic word. We argued with the patent office, the Trademark Patent Office, that there’s such few Czech speakers in the United States that I could trademark the word Naboso. So there you go. That is how we chose it.
Steven Sashen:
But you still had to pay that 10 grand to the people who gave you nothing, right?
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Yeah, but I just think it’s the irony of something that pushed me in the direction. I don’t even know.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, no, no, no. If it makes you feel any better, we spent more money with a marketing group when we started the company. When I started Xero Shoes, actually, I called it Invisible Shoes. I built a website. I needed a name. That’s what I came up with. We spent way more money than that at about two years in on a branding company. I’m going to show this on the camera, and then I’ll describe it for anyone who’s just listening, but I’m going to show you. This is the name that they came up with. Wait, there we go. Can you see?
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Okay, yep.
Steven Sashen:
I’ll spell it for people who aren’t watching, X-O-I-C-S. What’s wrong with that word?
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Xoics.
Steven Sashen:
I don’t know. Yeah, you’re doing the same thing. How do you say it? Is it Xoics? Is it Xoics? It was meaningless. They said, “Well, you could own this word.” I went, “No, no, no. People need to know how to say it and spell it. We’re going to have a website.” The next day I’m at track practice, I finished track practice, and I’m thinking, “I like that thing of starting with X, though. What can I do with that?” and I came up with Xero. So I have no problem that I paid them a stupid amount of money. Because without their bad idea, I wouldn’t have thought of a good idea.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Yeah, it’s very similar. That’s why I am very into the world. The world guides you in these ways that you’re supposed to. You know what I mean?
Steven Sashen:
Okay, eh, all right.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Whatever. I make stuff up to make me feel better.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, that’s okay. Yeah, we can rationalize our way into pretty much anything. So, so, so. So that was part one in a way. Part two, I’m going to do it from my perspective, because why not, is that you reached out to me. We already knew each other, but you reached out to me and said, “Hey, I have developed this product. It does this thing about stimulating your feet and has all these benefits. I want to send it to you and see what you think.” I’m thinking, “Oh, crap. I have tried so many of these things. They never work.” How am I going to pat you on the head and go, “Thanks so much. You’re totally adorable. This is not going to happen”?
So you send me these insoles. I put them in my shoes. I walked around the office for about an hour. Then as I tend to do in the office, I kick off my shoes. I’m doing some work at the computer. About an hour later, I stand up to go probably to the bathroom, and my feet are grabbing the ground, and my calves were totally active, and I’m going, “What the hell is happening?” I called you and said, “All right, we need to talk.”
So let’s talk about that first product, and then we’re going to launch into everything that’s happened since then. For people who already are hip to what we’re going to talk about, feel free to skip ahead. But why bother? Because we’re entertaining. So talk about where this came from. Wait, I don’t remember if it happened before or after. I was at the International Foot and Ankle Biomechanics conference, and there was a company from Australia or a researcher in Australia presenting a paper that was about a similar product. I can’t remember if that was right before or right after you. But this has kind of been brewing in some little way, but you discovered it. Tell that story.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Remember I’d mentioned there’s some textured insole research study that we had referenced. I was reading those research studies when I was traveling around teaching about barefoot science. “Let’s get people out of shoes. Let’s get into minimal shoes, but we still need to do some barefoot work, too. Then go back into minimal shoes. So let’s be calculated on both sides.” Anyway, what I would start saying is, “Okay, once you get out of your shoes, or if you’re training minimal, then you need to start asking yourself, ‘Well, what surface are we going to train on?'” Nobody is talking about surfaces. Still no one is really talking about surfaces and the best surfaces for training, especially athletically and things like that.
So I got into texture. I was like, “I wonder if I could create a barefoot training surface that when people took their shoes off that we could get even more activation and function out of the foot when it was barefoot.” Then we came into texture. So the first product was a barefoot training mat, which is now one of our mats, even though it’s slightly different. Think of a yoga mat with tiny little pyramids across the entire surface designed to stimulate the feet when you’re doing, let’s say, kettlebells or squats or lunges or whatever.
Then people started using that and saying, “Well, that’s such a limited… It’s so niched out, and my exposure is only when I’m doing kettlebells or whatever. So what if I could get that into my shoe?” which led into the insole design. That made me a little bit nervous because you had the research over here, and then you have reality over here in the sense of they weren’t using textured insoles to do insole research study. They were making random stuff and cutting materials and flipping over things, putting sandpaper in shoes. They were using random materials. But I used that to then design our insoles, which is what I sent to you and you tested. But maybe it’s just me being a doctor and I’m always scared of being sued, that I was like, “Oh my gosh, what if I give it to someone? They get a blister, it gets infected, their leg is amputated.” I’m just thinking like a malpractice thing.
So getting into it, it was actually less textured than what we have now on our products because I didn’t know how the mass consumers were going to respond to this. They responded positively. Actually, people who started using them happened to have MS, happened to have Parkinson’s or a stroke or neuropathy. So we started getting demonstrations of this huge benefit of our products within the neurological and neural rehab space that I would’ve not thought of initially, even though there is some research data around it, so it led to that, which then led to, “Oh, what if I put it on a ball like this? What if I put it on…?”
Steven Sashen:
Pause there before the “what if” part because that’s where we move into the new world, but I want to back up a half a step. If you can describe a little more, so you said it’s this pyramidal thing that was on this mat, describe a little more about the actual technology so that people who have never seen it, experienced it who are already watching, so you can show it. But there are people-
Dr. Emily Splichal:
I’m going to show it now and then describe it.
Steven Sashen:
Go ahead. Go for it.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
I’m holding up, this is our Kinesis Board.
Steven Sashen:
All I’m seeing is fuzz, because your camera has not figured out where… Okay, it’s-
Dr. Emily Splichal:
…lower it. There’s little tiny pyramids on it. Can you see the little tiny pyramids?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, I can see them on the ball even better. So little tiny pyramids.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Little.
Steven Sashen:
How tiny for people who are just listening?
Dr. Emily Splichal:
One and a half millimeters.
Steven Sashen:
High?
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Tall, yeah.
Steven Sashen:
One and a half millimeters high, and, again, pyramid, so four-sided pyramid.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Yep. You have a pyramid that’s one and a half millimeters tall. Peak to peak, it’s two and a half millimeters.
Steven Sashen:
Got it. So spread out two and a half millimeters.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
They’re very close.
Steven Sashen:
Got it.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Yep, very, very close. So the entire insole, as an example, again, it’s from a distance, but the entire insole is covered in the little pyramids.
Steven Sashen:
So talk-
Dr. Emily Splichal:
The entire sock is covered by the tiny little pyramids.
Steven Sashen:
We haven’t gotten to the sock yet. Hold back on the sock, baby.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Sorry.
Steven Sashen:
So talk about a) how you came to that height, that spacing, etc., and what it’s actually doing.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
That shape, there is a research study that was done. There is a researcher out of Australia, her name is Hatton, H-A-T-T-O-N. Hatton, did research to look at a triangle versus more of a circle, more of an oval, so different shapes of deformation. That’s essentially what you’re doing is you are indenting the skin, which stimulates the nerve.
We happen to be stimulated in the same nerve that you stimulate when you read braille. So think of braille, go to the ATM or the next time you’re at the ATM, look at the little braille dots. They’re a certain distance or a certain height when you touch them. If you touch them and shut your eyes, your nerves are sensing the two points. That’s how you read braille.
So technically it is two-point discrimination. The pyramid will be more acute, small, finite, more acute deformation to the skin. What we also found out then is that the point of the pyramid will actually go deeper into the dermis, which is where your circulation is. So on the foot, when people use any of our products, they get little indents that stay there for a little bit. We consider that the Naboso effect, which means you essentially touch it and you’re like, “Oh, I have all these little indents on my finger, on my foot.” That is showing that that point went into the dermis.
Steven Sashen:
Got it. So-
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Then-
Steven Sashen:
Oh, sorry. Go ahead.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
I was just going to say, then when you stimulate these specific nerves, these are called mechanoceptors, you stimulate, as part of your peripheral nervous system, not to get too complicated, but stimulate your brain, which is called the somatosensory cortex. The somatosensory cortex is your brain map to essentially shape your body in space. The brain map, which creates a homunculus, you can Google the word homunculus, you will see this person with really big hands and really big feet. Anyway, it’s a funny looking person.
The most sensory, sensitive parts of the human body take up the largest area in the brain to shape how your brain sees your body in space. What I tell people is that I can only control my body as accurately as I know where the hell it is. How do I control my body or not fall or not trip over something if I don’t know where my foot is in relation to the curb or where my hip is in relation to the table I just bumped into or whatever. So that is perception. Perception is a sensory process. Touch, which is what Naboso stimulates as touch, is one of those inputs that helps your brain see itself in space.
Steven Sashen:
Perfect. Now, I think there’s one other fun part to add to this, and once I’m done clearing my throat, there’s a great book called The Brain That Changes Itself. It’s features mostly a guy named Dr. Michael Merzenich, who talks about how, if you don’t give your brain the stimulation it’s wired to get, it’s meant to get, it will literally change its shape and essentially shut down, because why waste energy if I’m not getting the information that I need? The example I like to give is if you taped your first two fingers together and left them like that for a while, your brain would literally change its shape and so that if you remove the tape, you would still act as if you only had one finger. They would move, come together, not independently, and they would feel like you really only had one weird finger. But, happily, if you then stimulate them properly, then your brain will change back and it will re-differentiate and start functioning naturally.
So people have been in a… My favorite thing to say is, “Given that you have more nerve trainings the sole of your feet than pretty much anywhere but your fingertips and lips, how much can you feel? How much feedback are you giving your brain through the shoe that you’re wearing if it has a big thick sole?” They go, “Huh? None or very little.” I said, “You know that if you stepped on a grain of sand, you could feel that normally. You’re wired to feel that, and you’re not getting that information. So what’s that doing to your brain?”
So what we’re talking about is whether people are already hanging out barefoot and walking over all over the place, or if they’re in shoes and they haven’t been doing that, is getting the brain to work properly by letting the body to give it the signals that it needs properly. This has, as we’ve seen, dramatic effects. So for the fun of it… Wait, do you want to say anything about that before we jump into how things have evolved from matte to insole to all the other things that you’re using? Because this is where things get interesting to me. Is there anything else we want to fill in about the why about this?
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Yes. If I go in a direction that you didn’t think I was going to go, I apologize. Now we have our Neuro Ball, which is a release tool. We have a Neuro Stick. So we have these recovery tools that you could put texture on to, again, wake up the nerves but also stimulate circulation. So it’s another benefit of what we advocate. Then we have our rehab category, you could say, which has our Kinesis Board, which is like a single-leg platform. We have our Sensory Sticks that are weighted. We have some Pilates equipment. We have our mats. We essentially radiate out.
Then we have our socks, which honestly is one of my proudest in the sense of my legacy I really want to be the socks and have them in hospitals where there’s a stroke rehab center or something like that where you’re thinking, this person just had a brain injury. I need to access that brain through the gateway, which I consider the bottom of the foot, the gateway into the brain is I need to be bringing neurosensory feedback from that access point because it’s so critical to movement, which we just said is critical to longevity. So that would be something that I would envision from it.
Now, what I will say real quick, and then we can divert into any direction. We got our utility patent, and our patent was granted after quite a few years of defending it and making a case that it is a unique, innovative patent to bull pattern that is helping people in a very specific way. I spent a lot of money to get that. We got our utility patent. So what I try to think about is, what can I design to continue to demonstrate the power of texture but the power of sensory stimulation on human movement and longevity?
So any product ideation really, I do that and I look at… We have the hands, so we actually have some different hand tools. We’re launching one in a couple week, a hand kit. How do I continue to push that category? Because that category is ultimately my legacy, just like your legacy is that the minimal footwear category is beyond you. It is forever a category in the footwear space. It is not a trend. Texture is not a trend. To be barefoot and access your feet is not a trend. This is like talking about breathing and saying breathing is a trend. That’s not. That’s not a trend.
Steven Sashen:
Although there are all these people who teach various breathing methods, and they would argue that what they’re doing is real and they’re creating a trend. Anyway, yeah, everyone’s going to try and carve out a thing. Yes, our goal, and I like that you said it that way, because for me… My wife asked me a while ago, “What’s different about Xero Shoes than the other companies that I’ve started and the other products that I created?” Literally, some of my previous companies/products changed certain aspects of the world. I invented some software that changed film and television writing forever. But she’s, “What’s different here?” I said, “This one’s way bigger than me.” That was my little community, and that was a fun thing to do. It was important, and it was a big deal. But this is much, much bigger. Because that was just like helping people do their job better, being a little more creative. This is literally improving people’s lives in a way that is so profound that it has to transcend me because I’m not the important person here. What we’re doing is the important thing.
Anyway, what’s interesting is the people who are in this world, you, me and our friends who are also in it, we all feel the same way. And that’s really interesting. It’s really unusual. Contrast that to the people that we’re kind of fighting against who they would claim that that’s what they really want to do, but they have no evidence they’re actually doing it. In fact, they have evidence to the contrary. Their number one goal is clearly, “How do we make money out of this? Not, “How do we help people?” Anyway, that’s a whole other whatever.
In your goal, I like that it has expanded beyond let’s just do foot stimulation to all these other things about stimulation and the value there. That sounds like where we’re making the transition to talk about these other things and what they do, who they do it for, and what things people could expect when they start exploring this whole realm of providing stimulation that they probably haven’t gotten that frankly in other parts of the world and other times were more natural, and now we’re just doing… We’re faking natural, which is a fine thing to do. I’m not trying to say that derogatorily. But if we’re not going to have it naturally, sure, we go do it. If we’re not going to build a house by carrying rocks from the river to where we’re doing it, we go to the gym. That’s cool. With that wacky little preface, please back to you for the win.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Yes. My evolution through Naboso and just my career is I’m uniquely fascinated with sensory stimulation. That is well established. Foot as a gateway into the nervous system, that is clear being a functional podiatrist. But really where it starts to expand in the evolution of how this could make a bigger impact is I think looking at a broader category of just what is neurosensory stimulation.
I’m uniquely intrigued by resistance, like weight, weighted vests, weighted apparel. It helps people to feel their body in space. Compression, so compression sleeves, compression apparel, what is that doing to the proprioceptors? What we have found with our Sensory Sticks, which are two pounds each, is they have the texture but then the weight. If you hold them on one side, both sides, you shut your eyes and you kind of focus on how you feel, see your body, when you have a light resistance pulling on your joint capsules and all the proprioceptors of your fascia, it wakes up the brain in a different way. So that’s very unique. I said compression. Vibration is another one. I’ve been using whole body vibration for years. I absolutely love it. I’ve worked with whole body vibration companies before, but trying to bring that in and having a different type of utility of it. Then how can we combine these sensory stimuli to achieve something greater?
My heart will always go towards neuro-rehab and helping people who have had stroke, Parkinson’s, concussions and to go back to the basics of you have to be able to perceive your body. I need you to shut your eyes and see your body as it’s moving in space and have accuracy as you’re doing that. A lot of people are sensorily disconnected. I think technology is making us sensorily disconnected. People are emotionally disconnected. It’s about how to try to get back in touch with your physical body. They don’t have physical education the same anymore. People just aren’t moving the same way.
Movement is how we reestablish or how we established, when we were born, this perception of ourself, this perception of your brain. I often say that sensory and perception feeds mood, memory, and movement, and they’re very deeply incorporated. It’s your emotional regulation, your cognitive performance, so that’s the memory, and then your movement movement, movement accuracy, movement efficiency. Those are very interwoven. One is reliant on the other. One calibrates the other. Then I truly believe that sensory is really the roots of those three. And that’s my next book.
Steven Sashen:
Well done. It’s interesting, I think about people’s, in general, poor proprioceptive skill. I think back to when I was a young gymnast when we just were starting, and the compulsory floor exercise routine had two parts where you had to put your arms parallel to the ground. It took us weeks to learn what parallel was. Because when you put your arms parallel to the ground, it doesn’t look parallel. It looks like you’re pointing down. What people think is parallel is actually above horizontal.
Or when I had someone email me and say, “There’s something wrong with the rubber you’re using on your shoes because look how much I wore out the heel.” I said, “Oh, well, that means you’re over-striding and heel striking.” The guy said, “I don’t do that.” I said, “Send me a video.” So he sends me a video. I had to show him the video frame by frame, drawing lines with a protractor showing that he was landing with his foot way out in front of his body with his ankle way out in front of his knee. It took literally 20 minutes till he went, “Oh, yeah. Okay, I see that.” His next line, I swear to God, was, “Yeah, but I don’t do that.” I said, “Dude, this is a video of you that you sent to me.”
The point is simply that we aren’t… I think in general the default mode is not being hyper-aware of where our body is in space. I’m marvel at the fact… My wife and I got a dog. It’s our first dog ever. We got him two and a half years ago, a little over two and a half years ago. When I take him for a walk, it blows my mind how he doesn’t step on things that he’s not looking at. He’s just very aware of where every limb is, except when he tries to climb the stairs and it’s dark at night, and then it’s pretty entertaining.
But by and large, it blows my mind how aware of every part of his body he is 99% of the time in ways that most of us are stubbing our toe on something or dropping something because we grabbed it wrong, or watching the soon-to-be president again try to grab the door handle of a garbage truck. We really aren’t that good. To get better, to your point, requires some kind of feedback, and the stimulatory stuff that you’re doing is the easiest thing to do, frankly, because anything you would do in the wild is going to be pretty unusual, and I can’t even imagine what many of those things would be. Your video comes in and out again a bit. But happily, when your video freezes, you have not done it yet with some really insane expression on your face, so you can be happy about that.
Anyway, all that said, I love the way you framed that mostly because, like you said, physical education is disappearing from the elementary school system. We don’t have a built-in method of getting people to get that kind of stimulation, to have their brain aware of what their body is doing, to learn new movement patterns, etc. So what you’re providing is, again, I would argue, one of the simplest ways of doing that kind of faking natural in a way that’s demonstrably beneficial.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Yeah. It’s also something that most people are not thinking about, so I’m just trying to-
Steven Sashen:
Why would you?
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Exactly, until someone falls. Like what you had said about trip and falls being a leading cause of morbidity or mortality, one of my best friends from New York, her father-in-law, this is last week, 81, so he is a little bit older, but in his kitchen, stepped on a sponge that was on the floor, something fell, hit his head on the kitchen table, and then he must have fallen back and hit it again. He passed away. They were watching a movie on a Friday night, and he was just like, “Oh, let me go grab some more popcorn.”
It gives me goosebumps to think about that, that now that family and his children are going through that where it’s just like… It was something that he, and many people, take for granted, just the simplicity of moving around the home. It’s like, no, no, we need to have spatial awareness. We have to have foot-ground awareness. It’s just the whole thing and that should not be happening.
Steven Sashen:
There are a number of things that fit into this. Strength is an important one as well. Having some facility with movement. I spent so much time as a gymnast and then doing martial arts where I don’t typically worry about falling because I’m pretty good at not landing in weird-ass ways. Granted, I’ve gone down pretty bad on the ice when the dog sees a squirrel and yanks me, and whoops. But even then, not so bad.
Again, the part that people are not paying attention to, I wanted to say aware of, which is kind of a bit of a pun in a way, is the sensory component because it’s just not something that we pay attention to, it’s funny, I just had this thought, unless you’re in a situation where there’s just something that’s bothering you. The thought that cracked me up is I’m always hypersensitive to labels in my shirts. Or when I was a kid and I had to wear a suit, I would wear my pajamas under the suit even if it was 90 degrees out because the seams were a little itchy. That’s my thing. So this is something that’s near and dear to my heart. But that’s just because I got some sort of brain deformity, I mean, bottom line.
Again, bringing this to people’s awareness, pun intended, is so important. So let’s go down the list again of the various things that you now have where people can start exploring this and finding the benefits thereof.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
We still have our mats, so the Naboso Mats. Picture a yoga mat size that is covered in these tiny little pyramids. Some people, we use them when they do yoga or workout. We have a Standing Mat, which is a two-foot by two-foot version. A lot of people will put that in their kitchen, next to their bed and their bathroom. So you could use it as really just a house mat in any sense. So that’s one.
We still have our insoles. We have our flat insoles, so three different versions that are totally flat. They’re purely a sensory insole, very thin. They’re available on the Xero Shoes website. Then we did launch one that has an arch in it, so this is a little contrary to… Don’t stop breathing, Steven. This is a little contrary with the arch. Now, the reason is that certain people, there are certain people in the world who need an arch support because they have ligament laxity. I just wanted to access all people on that. So we have that one. Or if someone is doing it because they’re standing on their feet all day like a nurse, and they’re just like, “Bleh!” I am defying physiology. How I use them is I have them in my slippers. So when I wake up in the morning, literally every aspect of my foot skin is touching something because I have a higher arch, so it’s actually touching the inside of the arch as well.
Steven Sashen:
Well, to pause on that one, once you said you built something in with an arch, that was the first thought I had is, if you do have a higher arch, to give you that additional stimulation is a great thing. The fact that it’s not super rigid is what makes it cool, even if you don’t have a super high arch. My thing about arch support is simply that if it’s too rigid and it isn’t letting the, we’re not going to get technical, the bones in that arch function properly, then anything that doesn’t let joints move makes things weaker. It makes the tissue around it weaker. We’re just trying to avoid that. But for people who do want that extra stimulation who do have a higher arch, perfect solution.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Yeah, yeah, 100%. Steven, I’ll send you these, so can try them in your slippers.
Steven Sashen:
Hey thanks. Oh, that’s so cute you think I wear slippers.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
I know, right?
Steven Sashen:
Hold on. Are they fuzzy, or are they Hugh Hefner slippers?
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Oh, well, yeah, you want the smoking, smoker ones, what they call them?
Steven Sashen:
I’m just thinking, if I was going to buy a pair of slippers ever in my life, what would they be? I would go for something with bunny ears probably.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Oh my gosh, so cute. All right, that’s your Christmas gift. Then outside the insoles, we have different socks. These are also available on xeroshoes.com. We have a traditional sock. We have a toe sock shape. We have with grip, without grip, so those are an incredible way to get that texture. Those are an awesome form of recovery. I wear those at night. We have our balance board, which is our Kinesis Board. We have the Neuro Ball, we have the Neuro Stick, we have toe spacers in several colors, Sensory Stick. So that would be really the main product line. Then we are launching a hand activation kit this November just to wake up the hands.
Steven Sashen:
Say more about that. That’s an interesting place to go since we typically think our hands are pretty sensitive.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
We actually have 20,000 nerves, mechanoceptors, in our hands, and this is mechanoceptors, and about a thousand or so in our feet. Meaning, there is a large difference in the sensitivity of our feet versus our hands, which makes sense because of fine motor skill, etc. But here, same thing, hands, you’re texting, swiping, whatever you’re doing. We need to focus on the hands. A lot of people will use our Neuro Ball, or they’ll use our Sensory Sticks, which are weighted. They’re for the hand. But we have our hand activation kit. I happen to have one right here.
In it, this is using a different material. It is actually compressible because there’s air in it. So you can squeeze them and compress them, so you’re actually strengthening the hand muscles, but you have the texture which is going to wake up the nerves. Also, what we have found, this is just from our own consumers demonstrating to us, we are very big in certain sports in certain countries such as baseball. We are very well known in the Asian countries. They’re very embracing to barefoot obviously, because it’s part of their culture. So a lot of the sports in Asia, baseball, basketball, etc., very much love Naboso for their hand. So we want to actually push a little bit into it.
Also, because we work so much with stroke, spinal cord injury, Parkinson’s, you start to get into hand rehab, hand OT, and we want to bring in that sensory stimulation. We also have a lot of people on the neurodivergent spectrum, wherever you are on that, and people actually finding that our products really calm the nervous system, and they’re used in certain schools.
Steven Sashen:
I think something different. I think same idea, slightly different. We have a bunch of parents who have kids with ADD, ADHD, and autism who say, “Our kids only want to wear your shoes, and they’re seemingly functionally better with them.” My contention is that the stimulation is acting the same way Ritalin works. It’s a mild stimulant, which, for people who are hypersensitive in that way, feels is calming.
My joke, when people ask me about various things that I’ve done, I joke that everything I’ve done in life is because they hadn’t invented Ritalin when I was a kid. Ritalin is a stimulant. When I was living in New York City, I noticed I could meditate better on a subway than in my apartment. Because on the subway, the noise was just loud enough to be louder than my thinking, or just about as loud as my thinking. So everything was feeling kind of calm with that not insignificant amount of noise.
So my contention for those people is that the calming thing is the effect of… Wait, this is going to sound weird. I have tinnitus or for other people, tinnitus, depending on who you are, so I’ve ringing in my ears. The theory about why that occurs for many people is that, for whatever reason, your ears are not transmitting high-frequency sounds. So your brain is recreating what it doesn’t get. My suspicion, and I’m making this up on the fly frankly, so I could be completely cranial rectal reorientation syndrome, but my suspicion is that for people who are ADD, ADHD, etc., that stimulation is providing something that was missing and the brain was being hyper-responsive and hyperactive to fill in the blanks. Once the blanks are filled in, it can chill out. That’s my current theory.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Can I add on to that?
Steven Sashen:
Sure.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
I spent a lot of time thinking about this. All I do is think about sensory stimulation. When we picture someone, let’s just, ADD, autistic, all of that, so they are a little bit more hyperactive. Let’s say if I’m moving in a certain way, this is even me moving. Let’s say I’m a kid in school and I’m kind of doing this. Every time I do this, I’m actually stimulating the joint’s capsule, which has proprioceptors. That’s essentially what fidget toys do is you are stimulating mechanoceptors and proprioceptors from doing something, which is what you were saying-
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
… is that they don’t know a way to get it without… “I’m doing it, right?”
Steven Sashen:
Tapping yourself, rocking, yeah.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Yeah, I’m rocking, I’m doing something. That’s why compression works really well. That’s why I love compression. Weight, so wrist weights are used for children who have this, using texture, using minimal. It’s not in the sense of it’s stimulating like a Ritalin kind of thing. The way that I want people to think of it is this goes back to your perception of self and your need to feel safe. So when I feel myself in space, maybe I got a little compression on or a little bit of weight or something, I feel where I am. I’m grounded or anchored in this space in the world, so I feel, quote/unquote, safe.
By doing that with someone who’s, let’s say, hypervigilant in a sense, and they’re kind of up here, you give them minimal shoes, feel their feet. They have compression on. They have the Naboso insoles, whatever it is. Then they recalibrate to the perception of self. They feel safe, and now they can learn. Now they hear what the teacher is saying. So that’s how I approach it when I work with OTs and stuff like that within that space. It’s very calming. Especially when you’re talking to a parent, there’s a lot of sensitivity around it. But time and time again, these children, when you give them minimal shoes, weighted products, texture, vibration, they can actually hear, listen, etc.
Steven Sashen:
Have you ever had an experience where someone describes some condition and you recognize yourself in that and you go, “Oh my God, I didn’t know I was one of those”? I just had that, and this is going to sound silly. Well, anyway, I know myself, but I never thought about some of these things personally because they’re just part of my… They just seem like something normal to me and abnormal to other people.
The example that I thought of that made me crack up and go, “Oh my God, what a moron. I haven’t realized this is who I am.” I used to get together five times a year with this group of about 14 of us. We were just trying to see what we could do to change our lives. The first instruction was always, “If there’s anything anyone needs to say or do to feel that they are present and grounded and whatever, just ready to do what we’re going to do for the next five days, just say it, do it, ask for it, whatever it is.” My thing was always, “I’m going to lie on the ground and as many of you as possible pile on.” I found that so unbelievably comforting.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Huh?
Steven Sashen:
Some people wouldn’t do it because they were afraid or it had some other effect for them. Like, “Maybe I’m going to hurt someone.” I just put two and two together in a funny way. I’m super, super sensitive to how comforting it is to have pressure of various kinds and sensations of various kinds and hypersensitive to some.
I also just put two and two together, perhaps, I don’t know which came first, this is a chicken and egg thing, but I was a six-week preemie. I was in an incubator for four and a half weeks where, at that time, the basic treatment protocol was, “Don’t touch them. They’re fragile. Don’t touch them.”
I’ll tell you this story, an ex-girlfriend of mine, we were watching TV. It was some documentary about babies, and so it talked about preemies and how the treatment protocol changed from leave them alone to give them a lot of stimulation. Because when you give them a lot of stimulation, they grow more, they become bigger and taller, and they become smarter, etc., and then it cuts to commercial. There’s a long silence while I’m thinking about my version of that and how that was for me. My ex turns and says, “Oh, thank God they didn’t touch you.” My response was, “Yeah, I would probably be intolerable.” I’m pretty intolerable now too, but that would’ve put me over the edge.
The reason that I bring up all these things, the personal version of these is I’m realizing, and I’m hoping that it’s being transmitted in some wacky-ass way, the importance of what we’re talking about in a way that people don’t have… There’s not even a language for some of this. There’s not a context for some of this. I do hope, the same as you, that this becomes normalized and something that just seems an obvious thing to do the way that… I can’t think of what else I would think of it would be. It’s like, oh, yeah, you should eat well, lift weights, whatever it could be. Go out and get some aerobic exercise. This should be part of just a every day health protocol that we don’t even think of as a health protocol. It just makes sense as a thing that we do as human beings who are living in this world.
Yeah, holy crap.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
I am hoping, like you said, that the listeners will identify or possibly understand certain aspects of themselves that maybe they could never put words to it. Then they’re hearing this and saying, “Oh, okay, that sounds kind of like me.” I absolutely love weighted blankets. I need weight on me for me to sleep well. In hotels, if they do not have anything heavy, I will put my clothes on me to weigh it down. It sounds crazy.
Steven Sashen:
No, no, I get it.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
When I speak, especially in the beginning of my career because I would be a little bit more in my head when I would do public speaking, is I would have to take my shoes off, and it was my anchor. If I had my shoes on, I was like, “I cannot think. There’s no way I can give a lecture or presentation with my shoes on because it’s blocking my creativity and how I need to process it.” Those are two that really jump out at me of how I respond to them. Yeah, I hope the listeners just be curious about it and just realize, “I push into things like that versus I’m a freak.” It’s just like, “Hey, that’s interesting,” and understanding, let’s say weight, like people laying on you, you just have to feel your body to get connected and anchored and grounded. It is just like, “It’s go time now. I’m going to embrace it and let me push into it,” versus analyzing.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. I can imagine there are people who are on the other side of this. They have no frame of reference for anything that I was referring to. But arguably and ironically, the point is still the same. If you don’t feel, let’s just say, comforted by some of these things, there’s still beneficial aspects to it that you may not even know until you have the experience. So it’s not that you’re trying to calm down, so I’m hyperactive or whatever, but it may be even just… Look, here’s a simple thing. Weightlifters, Olympic weightlifters, one of the things they do before they go out and grab a bar and try and throw a huge amount of weight over their head is things to stimulate other parts of their body. Basically, anything that’s waking up your brain is going to have a global effect for whatever you’re doing.
So if you’re on the other side of the things that I’m describing, there’s still a value here that you might discover that was completely unexpected. We’re literally just feeling that little bit of sensory information that you didn’t think made a difference, similar to my story of first trying on the insoles, then you’re going to go do whatever else you’re doing in the day and go, “Oh, wow, that actually did add something to it,” maybe for whatever the exact opposite reason is that I’m talking about. I wish I could think of what that would be, but I’m stuck my own private Idaho at the moment.
I’m dying to hear those stories as well for people to go, “Well, I was never sensitive to anything and I feel totally fine, but holy crap, I just did this and…” I’m sure there are those stories. I mean, I know there are. I just can’t bring one to mind at the moment. But I’m dying to hear what happens when someone who doesn’t relate to some of the things I might have said or thinks that I’m completely full of it or crazy discovers, “Oh, no, but in my world, here’s the way this works.” That’d be really fun.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Yeah, I would be totally curious. I am just so in the deep end of sensory that it’s very hard for me to somehow put myself in the other–
Steven Sashen:
Well, here, I’ll give you a way of doing this. I just remembered this once. Back in the days, way back when, I, among other things, was teaching. I developed some weird meditation techniques and was teaching those. At one point, one of the techniques involved paying attention to sensations in your body in a certain way. This one guy said, “I just can’t do it.” I said, “What do you mean?” He goes, “Well, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I can’t figure that out.” Well, it happened to be lunchtime. I said, “Are you hungry right now?” He goes, “Yeah.” I said, How’d you know?” expecting him to say, “Oh, I feel like an emptiness in my stomach, or I’m feeling these sensations here, or whatever.” He goes, “What do you mean? I’m just hungry.” I said, “But what tells you you’re hungry?” He said, “What the hell are you talking about?”
I realized there was nothing wrong with him. He just had a completely different relationship to certain aspects of his experience, to his body in this situation, that’s completely legit, and, oh, there’s another way around that. There’s another way… not around. There’s another way that he has to enter into the conversation that was news to me. We’re all pretty narcissistic in certain ways where we think the way we do things and see things is the way other people should. The toilet paper should be over the roll, not under the roll, which by the way is true.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
It should be over the roll.
Steven Sashen:
Well, don’t tell my sister who disagrees that she is wrong. I just spent a week and a half at her house. It made me insane actually. In fact, when Lena showed up, she turned the toilet paper rolls over, and someone in that house turned them back the wrong way.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Oh, wow.
Steven Sashen:
Anyway. There are people who are on whatever end of whatever spectrum, but this is just part of being a human being is getting sensory information and how that can impact how you’re functioning. If people want to explore that more, you mentioned we have a couple of your products. We have our Naboso Trail Sandal that we developed, a trail sandal, sports sandal which has the Naboso material already built into it. We are reselling the insoles and the socks, which are awesome. But for people who want to find other things, please tell them how they can find those things and you.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Absolutely. The website is naboso.com, N-A-B-O-S-O.com. We are on social media, naboso_technology. Then for those that are curious about what I do, how I treat patients, how I look at movements, everything is related to thefunctionalfootdoc. That’s my Instagram. That’s my website. I see patients virtually all over the world. So if you are open to that, go to thefunctionalfootdoc.com. My first book is called Barefoot Strong. That’s available on Amazon and on the Naboso website. Then my other book is called Sensory Sapiens, coming soon within a few months.
Steven Sashen:
To a bookstore near you if you know what a bookstore is.
Dr. Emily Splichal:
Yes.
Steven Sashen:
Well, Emily, as always, a pleasure catching up and sharing all these things that are evolving. It’s wild seeing how you’ve gone from a little something idea to where Naboso has gone. It’s a pleasure to actually see that, and more, to see someone who’s thinking about these things and developing new ideas based on them, not just sticking to a thing and being content with that. It’s like continuing to explore. So I do hope people check out where you are and what you’re doing, and I want to hear more what happens for those of you who do.
For everyone else, just a reminder, first of all, thank you for being here. Go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com. There’s nothing you need to do to join. That’s just the domain we have. But you will find previous episodes of which there are hundreds with very interesting people. You will also find where to find us on social media, and you’ll find where to get the podcast if you want to get it somewhere other than where you’re currently getting it. If you have any questions or requests or suggestions, anyone you think should be on the show, or if you think I have a case of cranial rectal reorientation syndrome about everything I’m talking about, that’s cool. You can drop me an email. I’m at move, [email protected]. Most importantly, go out, have fun, and live life feet first.