You may remember from the last newsletter I told you about the benefits of going barefoot in nature and how grounding/earthing can change so many things for the positive (didn’t read it? Here’s the link).
There’s another bonus to going barefoot – even though this one doesn’t have to be done in nature.
There’s a ‘use it or lose it’ attitude going on in our brain. If there are pathways that are not being used, they decay.
I’ll give you an example.
Let’s say you lived somewhere for long enough to get to know the area really well. You know all the back streets and shortcuts and rat runs to avoid traffic. And you know how to get from A to B pretty easily, even when it’s not the way you would normally go.
If you move away and don’t go back for a while, that mental map of the area will start to decay. You may remember the routes you took all the time but the less frequented ones will have vanished from your mind. If you stay away long enough even the ones you used all the time won’t be available in your memory banks.
How does this relate to being barefoot you ask?
Well….we also form mental maps of our bodies – including the soles of our feet. If the soles are constantly encased in shoes and don’t get all the different planes of them being pricked and jabbed and having different textures and contours to adjust to, we don’t keep an intricate map. We lose how to manipulate the various muscles to account for different textures/contours so when we’re old we become teeter-tottery. And that’s when we have falls.
So keep your mental map strong by going barefoot on as many different surfaces as you can. If you make those outdoor surfaces then you can kill two birds with one stone by getting your grounding/earthing in as well.
That way you’ll be the chillest, healthiest, most stable senior in the world (when the time comes of course).
