PaleoJay Podcast # 50 Stop wearing casts on your feet and your head! And, proper breathing for wonderful health!

Summary: Almost everyone in the modern world is fettered in their movement, and in their eyesight, by the casts they burden themselves with. I am talking about shoes; which if worn constantly, make your feet incredibly weak and susceptible to all sorts of problems... like plantar fasciitis, flat feet, and just plain pain in the foot, which then tends to move upstream, causing pain in the knees, hips, and back! All of these chains of movement are interrelated, and if one link in the chain is weak, it alters the gait and just screws thing up throughout the chain of movement, and real damage to joints and resulting pain can and will result through bad planes of movement! This is all very serious stuff, long term. You can tough it out for awhile, but eventually you will become unable to move if you don’t address the imbalances.So, bottom line- at least for SOME of the time, your feet must be barefoot, and walking or best of all- sprinting! NOTHING strengthens a muscle and tendons like using them; the more vigorously the better! So, at a bare minimum, start leaving your shoes at the door, as the Asians do- do NOT wear your shoes in the house! It’s much more sanitary as well... Socks are fine- they do not force your feet into unnatural confinement and paralysis; they just keep your feet warm. So, that is step #1. Your feet will gradually strengthen, thru barefoot walking about the house...For step two, start walking barefoot around the yard, or park! It really is crucial to gradually accustom your feet to real work- walk barefoot outside as much as you can in the warmer months! Each step will gradually strengthen the complex tendon/ligament/muscular structure that is your foot. If you walk in shoes, your feet are in a cast, a cement overcoat if you will, that supports the foot like walking in moon boots- think about how fast, if you have ever broken a bone or witnessed someone who had their arm or leg in a cast- how incredibly fast that limb withered and became weak when so confined! Now, think of your feet, having been in a cast for most of your whole life-No wonder most folks wind up with foot, knee, hip, and back problems!!So, start at the source: fix your feet. Walk around barefoot! Jog around on green space (yard, park, whatever) barefoot! Sprint barefoot! Sprinting barefoot, which I do once per week or so, is the ultimate foot and leg and total body workout, bar none!! Just run sprints for a short distance, “wind sprints” we used to call them in high school track in the olden days- anywhere from 50 to 400 yards or so... no need to measure, just run really hard and fast (for you, there is no measurement of competition here!), and then stop, and rest a bit. When you have caught your breath a bit, take off the other way, back to where you started. Repeat, for oh, 4 to 8 more times... it’s your call, really!You are working your entire body, musculature, tendons, ligaments, heart and lungs- the works! Nothing in the world will lean you out like barefoot sprinting-And it hardly takes any time at all- if you go beyond 15 minutes you’ve done WAY too much! I always have flashbacks to little 8 year old Jay when I do my barefoot sprinting in my yard, since it makes me feel just like it did back then when I run all-out, barefoot, the wind in my hair and the grass against my bare feet... the only difference now is that my hair is white- and really, that is the only difference, and I am 61 years old! It really feels great!!The other really great thing about barefoot sprinting is that it forces you to breathe properly, i.e. COSTAL Breathing! Like most things in modern living, our breathing has also become adulterated, since most people breath shallowly, or “chest breath” a minimal amount, constantly...Like wearing shoes constantly, which drastically weakens your feet,