Barefoot Revolution: Unleashing Natural Performance | Steven Sashen #134

Prepare to transform your understanding of foot health and athletic performance.

This episode promises to unravel the secrets of minimalist footwear and its profound impact on conditions that plague so many, including bunions and plantar fasciitis. With Steve, a top sprinter with age-defying speed, we explore how maintaining physical function as we age isn't just a dream but an achievable reality. Get ready to rethink your daily routines and the very shoes you wear, as we invite you to consider how a barefoot lifestyle might just be the key to a stronger, healthier you.

As Steve divulges the intricacies of sprinting, you'll gain insights into a sport that demands both explosive power and mental resilience. We also peer into his personal life, revealing a morning routine that primes him for success — from sunrise sprints with his dog to soaking in a hot tub. This isn't just about elite athletes though; it's a testament to how our choices in footwear can have ripple effects on our entire biological well-being. Learn why your feet are the foundation of your health and how you can unleash their potential by stepping into the world of natural footwear.

From the ethics of conventional shoe making to the truth about grounding and natural movement, this episode is packed with revelations. By the time you've finished listening, not only will you be inspired to embrace a more 'barefoot' lifestyle, but you'll also be equipped with the knowledge to make choices that could profoundly impact your feet, and in turn, your overall health.

IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

ABOUT OUR GUEST: Steven Sashen

Steven is the visionary and marketer for Xero Shoes. He is a Masters All-American sprinter (one of the fastest men over the age of 50 in the US) and former All-American gymnast. He was also a professional stand-up comic, cognitive psychology researcher, and taught Tai Chi and Zen Archery. Steven is also the creator of Scriptware, the industry-standard word processor for film and TV writers.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Coming up on 62. So for men in my age group, 60 plus, I'm like the 15th, 20th fastest guy in America. Why modern running shoes look the way they do, reminding your brain what's possible and function, which is use it or lose it, and just spending more time barefoot. We have gotten thousands of emails from people saying that our shoes have changed their lives. Stronger is demonstrably better. They've basically done everything in their power to convince people that what we're doing is bad for you. This is really the number one thing.

Speaker 2: 0:42

Welcome to the Vital Veda Show. I'm your host, dylan Smith. I'm an ayurvedic practitioner and holistic health educator and someone that deals with a whole range of musculoskeletal conditions in my clinic online and in person, and what is heavily related to so many conditions of health and biology is, of course, your feet, because they're the foundation of your body. So in this episode, we are going to learn how to optimize the course your feet, because they're the foundation of your body. So in this episode, we are going to learn how to optimize the health of your feet, and particularly if and when you want to wear shoes, because, of course, we need to wear shoes at different times. So how can we optimize that? And how can we optimize the health of our feet when we speak about specific conditions in this episode, like bunions, plantar fasciitis, sports injuries, performance enhancement, and we talk about walking bare feet, how to introduce shoes to children and babies, and we talk about toe spaces, birkenstocks, it goes on. We've got a lot of good juice.

Speaker 2: 1:43

Stephen is a freaking awesome guy. He is the visionary, the marketer and the founder of Zero Shoes, which is really ruthlessly competing against these high-tech conventional shoe companies that are dominating the market in a rather unethical, shall we say, way and a way that is not conducive to health. So I really love Stephen's sovereign confidence and we talk about how he was on a TV show someone wanted it's called Shark Tank and they wanted to buy his business and he just said no. But yeah, you're going to love, gonna love this episode. He was the used to be, and still is, the one of the fastest man in in america for his age group and, yeah, his smile is contagious. So, yes, enjoy this episode. If you want to get yourself some zero shoes which I recommend if you wear shoes is hit up vitalvatorcomau forward slash zero shoes. That's x-e-r-o shoes and you can get there. And if you want to get yourself toe spaces and anything else that we truly, genuinely believe in health, you can hit up vitalvada website and go to the friends of vitalvada in the resources section, and that's where we have different products, companies, movements, practitioners, anyone that we generally recommend in the name of health and that we we're doing a lot and we we genuinely do it from the heart and because we truly believe that. So that's one great resource.

Speaker 2: 3:24

Another resource I want to share with you before we start is that my teachers, the raju family of doctors, one of the few families of ayurvedic doctors that have that unbroken lineage of authentic knowledge. They're coming to australia very soon. If you listen to this on time, they're coming in april 2024 as well as may 2024 and they're touring Australia and they'll be offering pulse consultations, masters in pulse diagnosis a great opportunity. Like you'd get your annual blood checkup. If you get that, or any scans or colonoscopies, endoscopy, whatever you do routinely, it's also wise to have an expert Ayurvedic doctor, known as a Vaidya, to feel your pulse because with pulse diagnosis they can get a very deep insight onto root cause and something that's before it manifests to any of these scans or blood tests or diagnostic methods can see it. So it's a great way to prevent. It's a great way to investigate any niggling health conditions. They're also offering the famous banana treatment, which is for hormonal health, which I highly recommend you read about that, and they are going to be running a retreat for ayurvedic practitioners, for health practitioners and for anyone who wants to deepen inner healing, self-healing on a deep level.

Speaker 2: 4:39

That's at the end of april in byron bay area, new south South Wales, australia, where that's an international retreat where people will be coming from all around the world and that is going to be on advanced Ayurvedic techniques. And even if you're new to Ayurveda, with an introductory call with me, we can potentially you can join the retreat. So there's a whole lot to check out all these things. Just hit up the website and you'll see all this under the services page of vitalvatorcomau. And that's that's all for now. Enjoy this interview with the, the high energy, beautiful steven session. Steven, thanks for joining us on the vital vator podcast. I'm excited you're, you're you. You said you're tired, you've had a big day, but actually you, you're full of vibrancy.

Speaker 1: 5:29

Like you have this wonderful energy, this upbeat energy, and oh, that's because you haven't seen me on the weekends, when I like I fall over for about three hours all right.

Speaker 2: 5:38

And then, when you got the energy, you also use that for running right, are you still? You're still one of the fastest man, over 50 years old.

Speaker 1: 5:44

Well, first of all, I'm over 60 now, so I'm 61, coming up on 62. So for men in my age group, 60 plus, I'm like the 15th, 20th fastest guy in America.

Speaker 2: 5:53

I'm a sprinter, all right, and when you were over 50, or I guess in the 50s, you were up there as well, right, yeah, we all sort of just progress along the age groups.

Speaker 1: 6:04

it's the same gang all the time, until somebody frankly dies wow.

Speaker 2: 6:09

So that I mean I see, as a practitioner, I see athletes and it's not common you get their 50 like a lot of them are injured and they generate fast, especially marathon runners, and their bones have degenerated, their joints and unfortunately. I mean you would be different because you have a different approach, perhaps a healthy approach to athletism, but it's hard to find people.

Speaker 1: 6:39

Well, there are a couple of components. So one look, I can introduce it to marathoners in their 70s and 80s. They're doing just fine, but that's typically because they've been using their body naturally and not wearing footwear that gets in the way of doing that and puts additional strain on the joints, on the bones, on the ligaments, on the everything basically. But here I'll say it this way 15 years ago I was at the World Masters Track and Field Championship in Finland and I spent a lot of time hanging out with the people who are over 85. And I asked them all the same question. I said is it nature or nurture? And they all had the same answer. They said it's genetics that I'm here, it's training that I beat that guy today, and so that's kind of the way it looks.

Speaker 1: 7:20

Sprinters in general are genetic freaks. There's not a whole lot of us to begin with, but just certain kinds of athletes. I actually had another thought just now. There's a guy named Ralph Mann. He wrote a book about sprinting. He's a former Olympic silver medalist in the 400-meter hurdle, if I'm remembering correctly, and he became a biomechanical engineer. He wrote this amazing book about sprinting after analyzing the 600 fastest people in the world and he said there's eight things that go into making a good sprinter. Seven of them are genetic and the eighth is how well you maximize your genetics. So with a lot of different athletics and a lot of different activities, it's very much the same that the genetic component is very significant. But then what you do to keep your body going, that's a whole other story. What is it?

Speaker 2: 8:04

that you experience as a sprinter, Because I lack the empathy. I mean, for me sprinting is just not charming at all. I mean, how unique is these species of humans that have these?

Speaker 1: 8:14

genetics. I'll tell you the thing about sprinting. Sprinting is a lot like gambling. It's a lot like going to Vegas, and what I mean is there's a lot of intermittent reinforcement. You can never do it perfectly. There's always a little something that you could do better, like at the end of a race, when someone comes up to me and says how'd you? Do I now answer? Do you just want the number, or can I give you the excuse first? And so part of it is just that.

Speaker 1: 8:38

Part of it is also I don't know how to describe it but because it is such a short, intense thing, there's something that's just attractive about trying to make that work rather than just putting in the miles where you're just doing this. And also with sprinting, there's four phases to the race. There's the drive getting out of the blocks, there's the transition to maximum velocity, there's the maximum velocity and there's the holding the hell on until you make it to the finish line, which sounds silly, but literally, once you get past your maximum velocity, which you can only hold for about a second, second and a half, you're just trying to slow down as slowly as possible. And there's another part to it that's really fun, which is that, even though you're competing against other people, it's your own race. So learning to just do your thing and not be swayed by the people around you is a whole other fascinating psychological thing.

Speaker 1: 9:31

Like if anybody watched some of the most recent indoor track and field races Noah Lyles, who now world champion and one of the fastest guys in the world he wins the races in the second half of the race. I mean he's often behind, maybe sometimes races in the second half of the race I mean he's often behind, maybe sometimes last, in the first half of the race. And to be able to still keep going without trying to change anything, without doing anything that gets in the way of doing what you can do, it's a crazy headspace. I mean there is coming from behind in sprinting, like there is in an 800 or a mile or a marathon, but it's not the same because you don't have time to do it. It's just like you're banking on the fact that it's going to work, and so there's a lot of just psychological components that I really like, and also I mean this is going to sound silly I finish my workouts in the time that most people are still warming up, and I like that.

Speaker 2: 10:24

So she's a busy man, so we're going to get into more things. You know, for those who aren't runners or athletes, of course, we're going to be speaking about feet, we're going to be speaking about shoes, we're going to be speaking about how those influences on the whole biology, which is going to be relevant for everyone, and I want to just start with a question that I ask all my guests, and that is what did you do this morning? What is your morning routine?

Speaker 1: 10:48

Yeah, Okay, my morning routine has changed because we recently got a dog, and so I was amazed at how, literally overnight, I went to be someone who rolled out of bed, walked a dog. So actually, actually, I'm going to be completely, 100% candid, because that's what I do. I roll out of bed, I sit on the toilet, I do whatever seems to come out while I'm sitting on the toilet. I use the iPad and play a couple of Sudoku games while I'm doing that. Then, when I'm done with that, I put on enough clothing to deal with the weather, walk the dog for about an hour, sometimes run with the dog which he is way faster than I am and I've learned that I can go full speed.

Speaker 1: 11:30

No warmup at 6 AM, because the dog will. Then I will come home. I will make breakfast of varying kinds oatmeal, rye bread with lox that's what I did this morning, I don't know things and then check my email to see if there's any emergencies that I need to deal with. If there aren't, I will go chill out in the hot tub for 20 minutes or so, then get out of there, put on some clothes, head to work and that's my morning.

Speaker 2: 11:55

Nice, Beautiful. So just to give a context of how you got to Zero Shoes I mean, you're on Shark Tank, which is a TV show about. I mean, how can you explain it?

Speaker 1: 12:07

Well, the UK version and the Canadian version were called Dragon's Den. I don't know what the Aussie version is, but the way most people think of it is it's a show about business where potential investors five potential investors, the sharks evaluate businesses and decide if they want to invest in those businesses. The reality is it's an entertainment show that's loosely about business, and so the way you actually see it, where it looks like a conversation and it looks like they're really considering things, it's not the way it actually happens in real life. It's a very different thing in real life. But suffice it to say when you go on the show, ideally what you're hoping for is for one of these. You go on the show. Ideally what you're hoping for is for one of these well-heeled and influential people to invest in your company with a deal that makes sense for your company. That's less common than it would seem.

Speaker 1: 12:56

Many people are going onto the show because they're kind of desperate. It's their last ditch, something. Some people are going on the show because they're really confident. Some people are going on the show and they're really confident. Some people are going on the show and they're doing fine and the Sharks had different opinions about their business.

Speaker 1: 13:08

So, in fact, the biggest thing that most people don't know inside secret is they don't tape the show in the order that you're seeing it. They tape a whole bunch of different segments. The Sharks if you watch during a season, they're wearing the same clothes every time. So they tape a bunch of different segments and they put them together however you want or however they want. And the reason that's interesting is because it may be that during the first half of a day, when they're shooting maybe 20 segments, the sharks spend all their money, but they still have another 20 to go and they have no money to spend. So they might be passing on deals and making it look like it's some big dramatic thing simply because they're tapped out of cash or they just came back from lunch and they're tired, or they're competing with one of the other sharks. I mean, there's so many things that go into whether a deal happens or not that you can't know if you don't know all those other weird little factors that happen throughout the day.

Speaker 2: 14:00

Yeah, so you and your wife went on it with Zero Shoes, which is your company, which is mimicking barefoot. As close to that as possible, would that be right?

Speaker 1: 14:10

Yeah, I mean, the simplest thing is we're trying to let your body do what's natural, starting feet first, and the way you let your feet do what's natural is you get out of shoes. I know some people are going to say, well, wait, I need arch support. It's okay, I'm not going to argue with you about that. I will say something interesting about that in a moment. But this is just that. Left to our own devices, our feet are in fact made to function and support us for our entire life, and the only thing that prevents us from doing that frankly is what we've been told for the last 50 years by major shoe companies and from the doctors and physical therapists and chiropractors and physios and everyone who's been influenced, frankly, by what the shoe companies have been saying for the last 50 years. And just to jump ahead because I know that can sound like a conspiracy theory, but sometimes conspiracies are for real so and not just a theory the easiest demonstration about what I'm saying is, if you look, there's a page on the Nike website it's their Run Fearless page and near the bottom of the page they have they published a portion of a summary of a study that they commissioned about four years ago and the way the study was publicized. They've never published the whole study for a number of reasons. The way the study was publicized was new Nike shoe reduces injury by 52%, which is true. But they actually have the actual numbers on that Run Fearless page where they tested. It was their best-selling running shoe at the time, the Zoom Structure 22,. Versus a new shoe, the React Infinity Run. The best-selling shoe injured 30.3% of the people wearing it in 12 weeks. The better shoe only injured 14.5%. Now, injury rates go up over time. They don't stay consistent after 12 weeks. It's sort of apocryphal that 50% of runners and 80% of marathoners get injured every year and that data from Nike is consistent with that. Now this has to make you think. If that's the best you can do after 50 years, something is very wrong with this equation. The other question is if that shoe is the new shoe is so much better, why are you still selling that other one? The next question might be well, what'd you do in that new shoe? And the answer is they made it more like ours. They say in the study they got rid of many of the protective features, things like arch support and pronation control. They got rid of those things and it made people less prone to injury. So if anyone ever says, well, wait, it can't be the shoes causing injury, they just showed it. This shoe injured 30.3, this shoe injured 14.5. And the difference again is getting out of the way to let your body do what's more natural. Now, obviously, if we injured 14.5% to 30.3% of the people wearing our shoes in 12 months, let alone 12 weeks, we'd be out of business and I would probably be in jail.

Speaker 1: 16:59

So to suggest to clear up this idea that when I say big shoe companies or we like to say big shoe, big shoe companies are actually creating problems, that let's stop right there. There's the proof. And this is not unique to that brand. This is true for almost every other brand, because they're all basically making the same shoe. You go to a big, you know trade show for shoes and you could replace the logos on most of them and nobody would know the difference I love how you speak up against these big shoe companies and, of course, those are the majority of shoes that people are wearing.

Speaker 2: 17:37

How important is injury for the company and for the customers? Because I wouldn't think that many customers are thinking about. I'm going to choose my shoe according to how the injury rate I'm thinking more about. They choose it because of performance.

Speaker 1: 17:57

Well, we actually did a survey and asked both existing customers and people who weren't customers why they were even checking us out, and a large number of them have heard that, by letting your body do what's natural, it can be beneficial. I can't make a promise that we get rid of injuries. I'm not a doctor. I don't play one on the internet. I was a pre-med, but that doesn't count. So what I can tell you is, if you read the reviews on our website, you will hear incredible stories about people being able to do things they either haven't been able to do in years or have never been able to do, and to do them enjoyably and healthily, and sometimes setting personal best in various ways by letting their body do what it's made to do.

Speaker 1: 18:30

Look, let's just do a simple thing. Feet are your foundation. I mean, there's no way to argue that one. This is going to sound like a stupid question, but I'm going to ask it that way on purpose. Is weaker better than stronger? No, no.

Speaker 1: 18:44

So if you want to make your let's say, your arm weaker, how would you do that? Don't train, yeah. If you really want to go for it, put it in a cast. Don't let it move. That'll make it weaker. Well, if you put your foot in something that doesn't let your foot move, what's going to happen?

Speaker 1: 18:58

Your foundation gets weaker, and there's proof for this one. There's a research from Katrina Protopapas and others that they put arch support in the shoes of healthy individuals and over 12 weeks, they lost up to 17% of the strength and muscle mass in their feet. That's not good. Now, conversely, there's research that shows by just walking in shoes like ours, you build foot muscle strength as much as doing an exercise program, and there's research showing that that same exercise program reduces your risk of running injury over the course of a year by 250%. Stronger is demonstrably better, and so this has been. This is really the number one thing. Everything we're talking about is really about form letting your body work the way it's supposed to, proper alignment, et cetera and function, which is use it or lose it. I mean, that's really all we're talking about.

Speaker 2: 19:51

You planted a very clear vision in my mind. So a conventional shoe, probably the most molded aspect is the arch right, so that's really just that's, and it's like stopping the foot from moving. So without an arch, as in, the foot would be going kind of up and down right, or at least the arch of the foot.

Speaker 1: 20:12

It's actually. It's actually even better. It does a little up and down, but if I don't have my foot skeleton with me, I don't know where that disappeared to. We moved to a new office and I've lost my foot skeleton.

Speaker 1: 20:18

That's okay, we're on audio only, so you're going to have to explain it to the listeners. Well, if you decide if anyone is geeky enough to decide to look up bones of the foot online, you'll see that, whether you have a high arch or low arch, which is predominantly genetic, strength can play a part of that I can say more about that in a second but arch height is predominantly genetic, regardless any arch, whether it's super high or super low. Let's think architecturally you can have an arch that's really high, you can have an arch that's really low. It's the strongest structure ever made. So, while there is some flexibility in that arch, which is important one of the key things is doing when you're using your foot correctly is giving you support for your foot, and then that support translates upstream into your ankle, your knee, your hip and your back yeah, great, really wonderful.

Speaker 2: 21:02

So that's great. So let's go back to shark tank, because it's very entertaining. I highly recommend people to watch it on the zero website website, the episode. You have these two hippie looking people, which is Steve and his wife, nerding out and geeking out on shoes, but clearly are very intelligent about it and aligned with nature's intelligence. It's mostly ridiculed by the sharks and you walk away from a $400,000 offer. What did that show create for you and your business?

Speaker 1: 21:33

Well, before we even went on the show, just preparing to be on the show was really the biggest thing for our business, because up until that time, my wife Lena and I we thought of this as it was going to be a nice lifestyle business. In fact, I said to her about two years in, right before we taped the show, or six months before we taped the show I said wouldn't it be nice to have an internet-based business? Took a few hours a day, made enough money for us to live comfortably? She goes that's what we have. I went yeah, too bad, I can't stay that way. I mean, I knew it had to become more, but preparing to be on the show is what really gave us the conviction that we wanted to make it a bigger thing. And actually it was preparing to be on the show. And one other critical thing by that point, we've gotten thousands of emails from people saying that our shoes had changed their lives, and in fact, at that time we didn't have shoes. We had a do-it-yourself sandal making kit. So it's basically just some way of holding some protection onto the bottom of your foot. That's it and the combination of the opportunity that we saw and the response we were getting from our customers. It really, and what we've been learning about the footwear industry and some of the things I'd mentioned previously, it really gave us the conviction that we wanted to make this a big deal Not by making it, but we wanted to be part of that happening, by offering this to people so they could have this experience and discover for themselves what we've been talking about being on the show. Practically what it did is that the week following the show airing, we did about three months worth of business in that week and what was really added to our conviction was when we started the company.

Speaker 1: 23:11

It was a bunch of diehard ultra running, other hippie-like people, but Shark Tank viewers were just normal human beings. They didn't know about barefoot running. They had never read the book Born to Run, which kind of catalyzed this whole thing. They just called us and said I've hated shoes. I love being barefoot. My feet have been feeling horrible. I just wish I could be more natural and barefoot everywhere I go. And now you're giving me the chance to do that. And then we would see the barefoot runner in the family would buy one of our sandal kits and then a week later they'd order five more of different sizes, clearly for the rest of the family the kids, of course not barefoot runners at that time.

Speaker 1: 23:49

So all of that happened around the same time, around being on the show, and that was the biggest change and it gave us just a level of credibility that we couldn't get otherwise, even in the business community. People would watch us on the show and they imagined that it's a very high pressure situation and I thrive in situations like that, it's my favorite thing but they liked the way we handled ourselves. They liked the way that we dealt with it, even when the show made it look worse than it was. So, like anytime a shark says I'm out and they cut to us going what? We didn't care. It was like that's fine, we're on to the next thing, but that's okay. Again, it's a television show. It's entertainment first and foremost.

Speaker 2: 24:28

Yeah, you were definitely well-centered very well, and so entertainment first and foremost. Yeah, you were definitely well centered very well. Um, and so let's talk about born to run as well, because this is a. This is a best-selling book by christopher mcdougall, and it was it's about uh, it's a mexican tribe. Right, I've read a mexican how this mexican tribe longs runs long distance in tires that are. Right, it's, it's recycled tire. Is that mostly what they used?

Speaker 1: 24:53

yeah, I mean they're cutting the tires down, right, that's what I mean yeah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 24:58

So they take used tires, they cut it out to the shape of their foot. They usually uh, glue some leather on top of that and use a leather strap to just hold it on their foot and that's what they use to get around. Um, and they walk, they run, they play, they do almost everything either barefoot or in those, and so it's really about. It's about a couple of things. The book is wonderful, even if you're not a runner. It's a great adventure story. It's a great human drama about Chris McDougall himself, who couldn't run properly and he's a big, tall, heavy guy, not overweight, but the guy's like six, seven or something, weighs a lot and thought he couldn't run and learned that he could if he ran the way that the Tarahumara in Mexico run. And then it's a story about putting on a race the first ultra marathon in the Copper Canyon in Mexico, which was inspired in part by the Tarahumara coming up to do the highest 100-mile ultramarathon in America it's called the Leadville 100 and winning the first time in their Huarache sandals and the second time in bare feet, because they were given shoes to wear and after a few miles they all realized we can't wear these, so they just finished the whole race in bare feet. And it's also the story of the science, of what people were investigating about running running shoes, running form, running injuries, the cause and cure thereof. So it's just, it's a wonderful, wonderful book.

Speaker 1: 26:19

And, cutting ahead for the fun of it, chris was completely agnostic about promoting any shoe or any footwear brand for the 15 years since that book came out, until last year. So he and his running coach, eric Orton, put out Born to Run 2, which is called the ultimate training guide, and it is, it's great. And they called me a few months before the book was getting published and said hey, if you send us some shoes, we'll see if we can put them in the book. And we sent them some shoes and they said oh my, we never want to wear anything else. We're going to put these in the book. We'd like to be your partner. Let's make some shoes that are special for us and they're promoting us and we're promoting them, and we could not be more proud of that.

Speaker 2: 26:59

That's great. Yeah, I really recommend that book. How did that shape the running industry and the footwear industry?

Speaker 1: 27:07

What was the?

Speaker 2: 27:07

influence of that book period like that what was the influence of that book?

Speaker 1: 27:10

Well, it's an interesting how do I want to phrase it? A bunch of things happened At first. So the footwear industry is a bunch of mostly not very creative copycats. So something comes out and is doing seemingly well, every other company will try to copy it as fast as they can. So we see these trends that happen because something starts to sell well for some reason. It doesn't have to be because it's good for you In fact, it's often not. But if it starts to sell well, the other companies are terrified that they're going to lose out to whatever that other company is and they'll never be in, they'll be out of business.

Speaker 1: 27:48

So when Born to Run came out in 2009, although I think it actually came out like end of 2008, but when it got popular in 2009, along with an article from a Harvard doctor named Dr Daniel Lieberman, who published an article showing the difference between runners in shoes versus runners in bare feet, where the barefooted runners were putting less force into their body, less strain into their joints, had different biomechanics, different running efficiency Basically, he was saying it was better. Put those two things together and the first reaction the shoe companies had was to freak out and they were publishing articles or paying to have articles published that were basically saying don't try this barefoot running thing. If you try running barefoot, you're going to step on hypodermic needles, You're going to get Ebola, your kids won't get into college, your car won't start on Fridays. I mean it was ridiculous the things they were saying, and most people didn't even notice that these were paid articles, which amazed me. So that was their first reaction. 10 months later, 10 months to a year later, at the end of 2010, their reaction was hey, we have these shoes that are just like barefoot, and they were nothing like barefoot. So they used all the language for products that weren't delivering and that was bad.

Speaker 1: 29:02

Research actually shows that a truly minimalist shoe or truly barefoot shoe like ours has a number of benefits. Something that has a little more cushioning or a little more arch support or a slightly pointier toe box gets rid of all of those benefits and actually makes things worse. Because you're not getting enough feedback from the ground to, like I said, it's about form, not footwear. You're not getting enough feedback to make your form more ideal by letting your because basically running barefoot, wrong hurts and good feels good. Ideal by letting your because basically running barefoot, wrong hurts and good, feels good and you need the feedback to make the change from hurting to feeling good.

Speaker 1: 29:36

So that was their next response. And there was another response that they came up with, which is well, if you've been wearing big, thick, padded shoes, you need to slowly go down to barefoot, like if you're wearing something that's I'm making up a number 40 millimeters thick, go to 30, then go to 20, then go to 10. Then maybe you'll be fine there. Completely fiction, all made up. The reality is you basically want to go barefoot and then you just build up how long you're going and how fast you're going slowly. It's kind of like if you haven't been to the gym in a year, you don't go back to the same workout you did before. You start with a fraction of that weight and you build up slowly by listening to yourself.

Speaker 2: 30:14

That's a really good point. I just want to stop there because I think a lot of people listening have gone decades using conventional shoes and it's interesting to just say no, just completely go to either barefoot or barefoot mimicking shoe.

Speaker 1: 30:29

Yeah, walk to the mailbox barefoot walk around your house barefoot or barefoot, mimicking shoe and yeah, walk, you know, walk to the mailbox barefoot. Walk around your house barefoot. Walk around different surfaces, because you will walk differently on different surfaces. Like our house, we have a lot of tile, but we have a couple areas that are carpeted. And while the essence of my form doesn't change when I'm walking, how I place my foot changes, and this is another thing. People have this whole idea about whether you're supposed to land on your heel or the ball of your foot or your midfoot or whatever. As long as you're getting your foot underneath you instead of reaching out in front of you, how and where you land on your foot will change. If you're going faster, slower, accelerating, decelerating, uphill, downhill, on carpet, on tile, on rocks, I mean, you're supposed to be able to.

Speaker 2: 31:15

Great, so I just want to talk more about that.

Speaker 1: 31:19

Sorry, let me back up to answer your question about how the shoe companies reacted. They've basically done everything in their power to convince people that what we're doing is bad for you, despite all of the evidence to the contrary. And now and we've actually had people from major footwear brands say directly to friends of ours oh, this natural movement thing, that's legit. But if we did that we'd be admitting we've been lying for 50 years. So they're having a hard time with it.

Speaker 2: 31:52

It's not easy to maintain a lie. You'll eventually crash.

Speaker 1: 31:56

Well, if you have enough money, you can do it. You tell a lie often enough it becomes the truth in most people's minds. But the thing that lying does is it makes you susceptible to the truth. So when I say which is better, weaker or stronger, everyone knows stronger is better. Everyone realizes that if you support something in your body, support joints in your body, all the muscles, ligaments and tendons around that joint get weaker, and we know that's bad. That's enough to make people go wait what? Or just be curious.

Speaker 1: 32:28

Or a simpler thing I say, since we're doing this as audio, look down at your shoe and see if the toe box of the shoe, from the ball of your foot forward, is the same shape as your foot. It's usually a pointy toe box, and if your foot is shaped like that, guess what it's not supposed to be. And it's like that because you've been shoving a foot-shaped thing into a non-foot-shaped thing for a number of years. You don't do push-ups with your fingers all squeezed together. You do push-ups with your fingers comfortably apart. It gives you more strength, better balance, better production, better feedback. It's the same thing with your feet.

Speaker 1: 33:04

So, highlighting simple truths that we all know, you don't need to be a physicist. You don't need to be a rocket scientist. We know that feeling things, getting feedback, is better than being numb when you can't feel the ground underneath you because you have so much foam between you and the ground. We know that we can't react quickly enough because we're not getting the information we need to react. So these simple truths are the thing that make people go huh. Wait a minute, let me check this out. And there's no way that a big shoe company can object to those things, because we all know them and they're facts, that's great, yeah, so that that's a big one.

Speaker 2: 33:41

I think is the crunching of the toes, uh oh yeah conventional shoes and what. What else are some of the main? Uh, I know there's so many. You could talk for hours, but what are some of the main benefits of wearing a barefoot shoe as opposed to conventional quote-unquote performance enhancing? Uh, over complex technology? Yeah, yeah, the performance enhancing thing is highly overrated to conventional quote-unquote performance-enhancing, over-complex technology.

Speaker 1: 34:01

Yeah, the performance-enhancing thing is highly overrated. I'll say something about that in a second too. So the thing that makes a quote barefoot shoe and it's a horrible term, we all know that.

Speaker 2: 34:12

What did you call it? What's the best way to call these type of shoes?

Speaker 1: 34:17

I use the term because other people use it. That's what they're searching for. I just like to say this is natural footwear. This is a footwear that allows you to. Basically, it gives you natural comfort, performance and health, and so the difference is, like we just mentioned, the shape of the toe box. A quote normal shoe squeezes your toes together. A natural movement shoe is built with a foot-shaped and wider toe box so your toes can spread and splay more and be more functional. A quote normal shoe has a bunch of cushioning that we talked about foam cushioning. Arguably, that breaks apart and can change your biomechanics because the way it breaks down can have your foot twisting in one direction or another.

Speaker 1: 34:59

A true barefoot shoe does not have a midsole of foam that can break down and cause you those problems. A typical shoe has an elevated heel. When you lift up your heel, that tipped body forward and to stand up straight you need to adjust by leaning back from the ankles or the knees or the hips or the back, and whichever one of those is the weakest link in the chain will have a problem. A true barefoot shoe is flat from ball to heel. A normal shoe is pretty, especially with all that foam is relatively stiff, like you can't flex it or bend it in many directions or at all. A true barefoot shoe any of our shoes you can roll them up into a ball. You can stick them in your pocket. People always like to go oh, that's perfect for travel. Well, they also pack flat, which is even better. A true barefoot shoe is going to weigh much less than most shoes you're going to wear, I mean the newest you like super, super big, thick foam things that weigh next to nothing, that fall apart literally in one race or a couple of races. They may weigh a little less, admittedly, but most barefoot shoes way much less.

Speaker 1: 36:01

The first thing we hear from people when they put on our shoes is oh my God, I feel like my toes are spreading and then they go. Oh, my posture feels different. I can barely tell I'm wearing these things. And we've literally had people say they went to sleep still wearing their shoes because they forgot they had them on when they got in bed, which is pretty entertaining.

Speaker 1: 36:20

And then there's a difference with our shoes compared to other brands, including in the barefoot world, which is that we made a new material for our sole, a different kind of rubber. And we do this because we knew that regular shoes are made to wear out. Basically the outsole, the rubber part, is made to wear out when the foam starts getting compromised the midsole foam. Well, we knew we didn't have midsole foam. We wanted these to last as long as we could. And since we were inspired by the Tarahumara and their tire sandals, we said we want these soles to be extra durable. And in fact, the sole manufacturer that we first met, he said that's not how they make out soles for running shoes. We went yeah, we know, that's why we want to do it this way.

Speaker 1: 36:57

And so our souls have a 5,000-mile soul warranty. Are they guaranteed to last 5,000 miles? No, if you start and stop your car like Fred Flintstone, friction is friction, physics is physics. But even if you do that, we have a warranty program where you can get a replacement pair for a fraction of the cost, which no one else has done. What else am I leaving out? That's going to cover most of it. I'm sure I'm missing one or two things. That's all right.

Speaker 2: 37:25

And in comparing your shoes to other barefoot shoes. I don't know if I've seen them on your website, but people are making these shoes with the toes separated, so it kind of looks you know that, right? Yeah, we don't do that and I would would think thinking about that it's like the toes are still like.

Speaker 1: 37:47

If, at least if you have a wide toe area, then the toes can move around. I mean, what do you think of those? Um, it depends on the materials, because, uh, it doesn't let your toes come together, which they sometimes need to do. You need to be able to flex and stretch in all directions. The the joke is that it had those shoes fit my feet, I would not have started this company, but the shape of my foot doesn't match how those things are made, and so they didn't work for me okay interesting and I've, I don't know if you know of a shoe company.

Speaker 2: 38:09

I think it's an australian, it's called vivo shoes, it's it's also why vivo barefoot?

Speaker 1: 38:14

vivo barefoot. They're out of the uk.

Speaker 2: 38:15

Yeah, they're friends of mine all right, yeah, because I, I've seen some friends with them and I've got, I've got a pair of your shoes, I've got the ridgeway hiking shoes. That's kind of the main time I wear shoes, when I hike or when I do when I do construction work. But, um, it seems the vivo is a wider at the toes. Yours it seems a bit more subtle. I don't know if that's just me or. Um, like it looks the vivo like, looks daggy, like yours. It looks the Vivo like, looks daggy. Yours looks more blends in with it. It looks more like a conventional shoe.

Speaker 1: 38:46

Yeah, that's been our well. There's a couple of things about that. One, it was always our goal to make something that looked as normal as possible, by still being wider and foot-shaped. The second is what something looks like from the top down. Is not the whole story about how it fits? In other words, people always want to say, well, give me the measurement, how wide is this thing at the ball of the foot? I go irrelevant. I go what are you talking about? I go well, your foot is not two-dimensional, your foot is three-dimensional. It's basically an oval for all practical purposes. And same thing with a shoe. A shoe is three-dimensional, so you can have something that looks really wide but still doesn't fit your foot because your foot may have a higher volume than the internal volume of the shoe or vice versa. So, yeah, we're trying to make something that.

Speaker 1: 39:34

The other thing is the foot shape and width, including that three-dimensional width, is on a bell curve. There's people at either extreme People have very, very narrow, very low volume feet, people very, very wide, very high volume feet and everything in between, and so we're trying to make shoes that cover the largest percentage of that bell curve as possible. There's some people who, again, very, very high volume feet. We're not the right brand for them. There's some people with very, very high volume feet. We're not the right brand for them. There are some people with very, very low volume feet. We may not be the right brand for them, but we think we've done some things in design where we know we can accommodate them as well. But, much to my chagrin, it's impossible to make something for everybody.

Speaker 2: 40:14

Yeah, absolutely Great. And some things which I'm curious about your view on Birkenstocks, I mean, they seem like they got a.

Speaker 1: 40:24

There's a similar flavor. So Birkenstock, again, wider foot shaped and basically typically flat. And the one thing about Birkenstocks they do have a built-in arch in the sandal, which you kind of need in that kind of sandal. Otherwise your foot would slide out and the cork footbed can be very comfortable after you break it in. But again, you're not getting the same amount of ground feedback from that shoe. It's not quite as flexible, it's going to be a little heavier. I know a lot of people who love them. The CEO of the company is a good friend of mine, and so there's some things they do that are wonderful. And again, I mean, this is a company that's been around for 250 years, so no, that's good points you make.

Speaker 1: 41:13

And toe spaces, they can be really helpful. So for people who don't know, it's like a silicone thing that you slip in between your toes. For anyone who's ever gone and had a pedicure, it's similar to what they do with pedicure they put cotton things between your toes to keep your toes from bumping into each other, and it can be a good reminder to your brain about what your feet can do. So movement isn't just about whether you're physically able to move. It's what you've trained your brain to, about how you can move. So if your toes are all squeezed together, your brain gets the hint oh, that's the way I'm supposed to be, but you can move your toes in a way that signals to your brain oh right, I can do something else. There's a whole body work methodology called Feldenkrais method, started by a guy named Moshe Feldenkrais, and that whole technique is all about reminding your brain what's possible, so that limitations that you think you have are really just habits that you can very quickly break.

Speaker 1: 42:02

I see this with the runners in my neighborhood. We have a lot of very good runners where I live and there's many of them in quote, normal shoes and they're running with good form. They're landing midfoot, bottle their foot and even with a big thick heel on the shoe, their heels aren't even touching the ground and they're training their brain to say, oh, their Achilles can only stretch a certain amount. And so when they get into shoes like ours, they go oh, these are hurting my Achilles, like, no, no, no, no, no. You've hurt your Achilles by telling your brain it can't move very much. Now all you need to do is very slowly remind your brain what it can do and you will find, without stretching your achilles, it's suddenly better. And so, um, uh, there was some reason for saying that that I totally forgot by now.

Speaker 2: 42:45

No, it's good it's, it's reshaping, and yeah oh, it's host brace.

Speaker 1: 42:49

So toes spacers, yeah, so they can be a great reminder and, uh, something I haven't used. I haven't had to, but I know a lot of people who've had great success with those. Yeah, I love them we've, we've got some.

Speaker 2: 43:01

I just like sitting with them reading a book, like putting them here and there. What about bunions, which, for those who don't know this bony bump which can come on the inside of the big toe joint, usually painful?

Speaker 1: 43:14

It can be very painful because you have the A the joint is not functioning naturally, naturally, um, and you're putting it under stress. B the tendons around that similarly under stress. You've stretched some out, you've compressed others. A lot of that happens from squeezing your feet into shoes that don't let your you know they're the wrong shape of your foot. Um, I have seen both with a combination of toe spacers and just spending more time barefoot, especially doing if you're doing any running in particular, that can be more helpful. Where I've seen bunions disappear.

Speaker 1: 43:45

I never had a significant bunion, I had a little bit of something where that bone seemed. It was kind of protruding that first metatarsal head. That's practically gone with no effort on my own. I'm not making any promises, but it's one of the things we often hear is, once you're letting your feet do what's natural, it gives them the opportunity to kind of get back in alignment. You might need to do some extra exercises again just to kind of make certain muscles wake up, make other muscles chill out. You might need something like prolotherapy, which is injecting into tendons that have gotten or ligaments that have gotten lax, to add a little tissue and strengthen those. So it depends on what's going on, but I've again. That's one of those things that is highly dependent. It's very individual where you have to look at it. If you're going to talk to someone about it, you want to talk to a medical practitioner who understands natural movement rather than one who just goes oh bunion.

Speaker 2: 44:38

Well, clearly, you need surgery. Yeah, yeah, and of course, a lot of the times bunion can. It drifts towards the lateral part of the foot, the small toes, and that's where I think toe spaces would be very helpful.

Speaker 1: 44:52

Yeah, there as well plantar fasciitis, one of the most misdiagnosed things in the history of medicine.

Speaker 2: 44:58

I believe okay. Well, let's just tell the audience what it is for those who don't know. But I'll just say one thing about what I've seen in my practice. It's related with digestion a lot, put it that way and in Ayurveda's method it's like if that person has a heavy dinner or something heavy, a lot of that indigested material will lodge in a joint or some part in the body as a kind of a toxic sticky thick substance. And if someone is experiencing plantar fasciitis, if you have a heavy late dinner, I guarantee you the next morning they will feel it more painful.

Speaker 1: 45:30

Interesting. Yeah, I've never had it so I have no way of testing that with my little N equals one sample of myself. But so plantar fasciitis, so itis, means inflammation and it's the inflammation of the tendons and ligaments in the bottom of the foot, especially around the heel or in the front part of the heel towards your toes, not the back part of your heel, although you can get both, but most people experience it in the front. And there's a couple of interesting things about it. One is it's often caused by the shoes that people are told to wear and the arch support they're told to wear. So let's back up to the history of why modern running shoes look the way they do.

Speaker 1: 46:09

In the very early days, when Bill Bowerman was just getting Nike started, he was in an office building with some I don't remember if they were sports podiatrists or orthopedic podiatrists, either way foot doctors. And Bowerman says I've got these runners who are getting Achilles tendonitis. What do you recommend? And the doctors immediately said oh well, clearly their Achilles have shortened from wearing higher heel dress shoes, so put a wedge of foam to make a higher heel running shoe to help accommodate that. Well, when you elevate your heel, if you had been in a flatter shoe before. Suddenly your natural gait, the natural way your foot is going to contact the ground. It's going to end up contacting the ground in front of where it used to, because you have something underneath your heel where your heel would naturally just miss the ground by fractions of an inch. Now it's bumping into the ground in front of you. Your heel, your heel bone, your calcaneus is a ball. So now you're landing on something unstable. So then they had to try and build in motion control to prevent quote pronation or supination, which are not fundamentally problems. By the way, there's no evidence that pronating or supinating is the cause of an injury, for what it's worth Anyway. But now you have this unstable thing and they're building in motion control. Now, quick aside, if you're 150 pound person and you're running, you're hitting the ground with four to 600 pounds of force. There's no amount of foam or stability material that can compensate for that amount of force, none.

Speaker 1: 47:40

But here's the other thing that happens If you're landing on your heel and you're a little unstable, by the time your foot contacts the ground it's basically stretched out, it's flat. So that's a weak position. It's imagined like doing bicep curls. You're weakest when your arm is fully straight and you're strong when your arm is like 90 degrees plus or minus. And in a similar vein, if I like, gave you a weight that you could hold with your arm bent at 90 degrees and asked you to try and lift that weight from an outstretched arm. You could pop your bicep tendon. It's too much stress at the wrong angle.

Speaker 1: 48:14

Well, the same thing happens when your foot lands flat. You're suddenly asking those ligaments and tendons, your plantar fascia, to be strong from a weak position. This can create some inflammation. But more often than not, when I said the most misdiagnosed thing I've ever seen, most of the time when I bump into someone who says they have plantar fasciitis, they'll often say I've had it for years. I go, you can't have an inflammation for years. It's not how it works. By then it's actually plantar fasciosis, which means the tendons and ligaments have started to erode. But even that is treatable. But more importantly, more often than not I mean well over 50% I don't want to say 90, but well over 50. When someone tells me they have plantar fasciitis, I look and I go looks like you have tight calves Now. It may be that they had some strain on the plantar fascia that was causing pain, and the tight calves were an adaptation to try to protect the foot, because the plantar fascia also connect up to your calf through your Achilles tendon. So what I've seen more often than not is people who have tight calves pulling on their plantar fascia from the well, the proximal side, from closer to your top of your body, rather than actual plantar fasciitis and the way that we demonstrate this.

Speaker 1: 49:32

I did this once with a guy. He's about 270 pounds, six foot five, 5% body fat. The guy was a special forces guy in amazing shape and he said all these guys in our I don't remember which military branch he was in, all these guys in our group we switched to some barefoot shoes and a lot of us got plantar fasciitis. And I looked at him. I said I think it's not plantar fasciitis, I think it's your calves. He goes well, my doctor, stop right there. Can I put my thumb in your calf? He said sure, and I'm 5'5", 142 on a good day, and I took this 270 pound guy and he was on the ground in two seconds. I could see the spot and I just put my thumb in there and just dug on it for a while and then after I did that, I said just one leg. And I said stand up, tell me how that is. And he walked around and he went holy crap, that's like 90% better. I said go back to the base, have your physical therapist do that for a week and tell me what happens. I see the guy a year later. He goes. That's what did it.

Speaker 1: 50:30

And so I see that often that calf tightness is not the cause of misdiagnosing plantar fasciitis. It's highly connected to the alleviation of plantar fasciitis and in fact, one of the treatments people have is like a boot that's supposed to stretch your Achilles tendon. That's just a bad version of the same idea. Frankly, people who are really hip to this whole natural movement idea suggest that one way of helping with dealing with plantar fasciitis. If you actually have hurt the tissue, you want to let that heal in some way. But while you're doing that, you also want to build up strength, because that's going to help you heal too. So find like some pea gravel or something mildly unpleasant and walk on that in bare feet. And the reason that that works is because to walk on that in bare feet you have to land with your foot basically flat, engaging your plantar fascia, making your arch strong to be able to do that in a way that's comfortable and so you can strengthen while you let things heal. And that's one of my favorite recommendations. It's beautiful.

Speaker 1: 51:31

Love it.

Speaker 2: 51:32

How have is your company getting to a big enough scale where companies like Nike and other big companies are feeling threatened or feeling scared?

Speaker 1: 51:46

well, that's a good question, um, or just the?

Speaker 1: 51:51

movement in general as well they're not worried about that because we're still, you know, as a movement. It's still pretty small. It's growing quickly, it's growing organically. They're not unaware of it, let's just say they're attentive to it. We have a number of athletes who we expect are going to start the next season of their professional careers wearing shoes that we've made.

Speaker 1: 52:12

And I called, I was talking to the agent for two of these athletes and I said the moment that one of your boys plays five minutes in a game, there's going to be some pushback. And he said oh, nike called me last week to find out what you're up to. So we know people are watching us in part. I've also I've done panel discussions where I debate people from Nike and Brooks and Reebok and Adidas, if you know how to say it correctly and be pretentious, or Adidas, if you don't, and cause it's Adidas who started the company, or Adidas, if you don't, because it's Adi Dostler who started the company. Anyway, I have, on more than one occasion, humiliated people from big companies by asking questions like really, where's your proof Right?

Speaker 2: 52:48

Okay, I'm going to ask you some questions from our audience. Quick questions. Oh, good so one is should we keep babies shoe free for as long as possible? Should we keep babies shoe-free for as long as possible? Yes, yeah, I mean the ultimate. All this is barefoot right as much as you can. What you're creating is just to buffer things that people can't take.

Speaker 1: 53:09

That's it. Look, I'll say it this way, dr Irene Davis, she was at Harvard.

Speaker 2: 53:25

She said if we just get kids staying barefoot as long as they can and wearing your shoes or shoes like yours, then in 20 years we won't be treating adults for the billions of dollars of lower extremity problems. They currently have Tips for clawed toes when you're an arborist and you need to wear tight boots to climb trees and chop them down.

Speaker 1: 53:34

Oh yeah, it's the same question for women in high heels, for example, or any other special or even rock climbers in specialty shoes. There's two components One well, the biggest thing is you want to get out of them as quickly as possible and into something like ours so you can start using your feet again naturally, which again will build up strength, can build up flexibility, can build up sensitivity, all those things that are important. So when you have a specific job to do that needs specialized footwear, you do it. It's just you get out of them as quickly as you can. There's a friend of mine who did a course. It was an ebook that was, I think it was called Catwalk Confidential. It was like how to walk in high heels, but it was a fake out. It was really a foot exercise program. So you'd be strong enough to be able to tolerate what those things were doing to you for a little while.

Speaker 2: 54:20

So you do what you need to do no-transcript and not grounding and I think he's referring to connecting with the Earth's magnetic field Correct? So are your shoes? Do they ground? Because the rubber usually is something which prevents that receiving the negative ions.

Speaker 1: 54:44

Yeah, that's not how well, boy. I'm going to try and do the politically correct version of this. If you want to be grounded, all you have to do is touch any grounded object every now and then, that's it. We don't make grounding shoes because the biggest reason is to do that. Would you end up with products that aren't as durable, aren't as useful, are more expensive and create other problems. Frankly, it's just what it takes to make something that's electrically conductive is problematic.

Speaker 1: 55:20

I will say one thing there's a lot of misconceptions about grounding and what it does or doesn't do and how you do it or don't do it. I know people have said to me well, why don't you just make shoes with a leather bottom? And they're not old enough to remember. Nor am I. I mean, I'm not old enough to remember this, but I know this because I was involved in electronics from a young age. Leather was used as an insulator in early electronics. Leather is not electrically conductive until it's so wet that what's conductive is the water and tanned leather in particular. It may as well be a piece of well like a board. The one thing I'll say about grounding just for the fun of it, that is misunderstood is people will say oh look, I'm getting an electrical charge on my skin and that's proof that it's bad. No, that's proof that it's good. And what I mean is your body is specifically and deliberately somewhat impervious to having electricity penetrate it is your body is specifically and deliberately somewhat impervious to having electricity penetrate it. 100% of trees. I'll do it the other way. 99.5% of people who get struck by lightning survive. 100% of trees that get struck by lightning blow up or burst into flames Because in a tree, the current goes through the tree, superheats the water in the cells and blows them up when they turn into steam. In a human body, because your skin is so reluctant to let electricity pass through it, the electricity passes around you into the ground. That's why you survive. So it's not what people it's not. There's some misunderstandings about how electricity works is the best thing I can say, and actually I'll give you one more.

Speaker 1: 56:56

The idea behind grounding is that you will you know if you're again. You don't need to be barefoot walking around. You can just touch anything and you'll see the same effect. The idea is that you're getting these. I love that. You said ions. Most people just talk about electrons, but most people say well, you know we need these electrons. They're going into your body and they're neutralizing free radicals. But you're smart enough to have changed it to ions, which is not what people say. Ions are electrically charged molecules, not just electrons. If it was just electrons, you could get the same effect from grounding by just sucking on a battery. By just sucking on a battery.

Speaker 2: 57:31

Yeah, and I think, look, whatever you do, however much you need to wear shoes or however much of a concrete jungle you live in or not, just if you are somewhere where you don't touch nature much, just sit on the ground, sit on the grass, take your shoes off in your lunch break and eat there, like yeah, just throughout the day, great Well, this has been awesome, stephen. A lot like yeah, just throughout the day. Great well, this has been awesome, steven, a lot of fun. I appreciate you coming on. Um, if you want to learn more, you can hit up xeroshoescom that's with an x e ro, shoescom. Steven is very, very kind, generous man is, I'm not going to say too much, but even on his website, if you have a query about shoes, you can even, and steven's probably like, oh, I'm already busy enough, no, no, no, yeah. But he offers like short, very short calls where you can even, and steven's probably like, oh, I'm already busy enough, no, no, no, yeah, but he offers like short, very short calls where you can consult about what's the best for me. And and they were very helpful for me I bought bought a hiking shoe because, as I said two times, I wear shoes is hiking, or whether I'm doing kind of work around the house involving construction and trade stuff and that's it's been great.

Speaker 2: 58:33

I I wanted to. I postponed this interview because I just went on a four-day hike with your shoe an overnight hike and I definitely feel the the toes are one thing, but definitely that connection and that that less foam, that less, uh, more connection to the earth. So I can feel what I'm doing and that you can feel after, when I take my shoes off, it's less of a change, whether I'm thinking of my old hiking shoe which I used for years. It's like I take my shoe off and it feels vulnerable, it feels like a baby and I'm like, oh, so definitely I can feel that strength and exercise that I get hiking for four days with a 20 kilo backpack. So yeah, I really appreciate your work.

Speaker 2: 59:19

And I love companies like you who aren't afraid to speak up against the big companies, conventional companies. And yeah, you have the courage to just stand in your authenticity and in the name of health and and share this with the greater audience.

Speaker 1: 59:35

So thanks, steven uh, it's truly our pleasure. We couldn't be more grateful that somehow we are part of uh this movement.

Speaker 2: 59:43

Thank you, hope you enjoyed that. And, once again, if you want to get yourself some zero shoes and check out the big catalog, hit up vitalvatorcomau. Forward slash zero shoes x e r o. And if you want to check out the big catalog, hit up vitalvatorcomau. Forward slash zero shoes X-E-R-O. And if you want to check out the toe spaces, you can hit up Vital Vator website. Go to the resources sections friends of Vital Vator and you will find all of our health promoting recommendations, such as feet health, and in the category of feet health there's toe spaces by the toe spacer and they're just so fun, easy, light, good to use. If you use discount code VITALBETA one word from the Toe Spacer company you get a discount. So hope you enjoy. Let us know if you get shoes, what you think and leave a review if you appreciated this episode. I really appreciate you reciprocating that energy and promoting Subscribe to this show.

Speaker 2: 1:00:35

There's so many other good episodes. You want another good episode to listen to? Hit up the Vital Vader podcast with Dr John Dulliard, episode 74, how to be vital and healthy in your second half of your life. Episode 74 with Dr John Dulliard. Him and Stephen Session have related communities because Dr John Dulliard also used to be an athlete, similar age group, and that's a really wonderful episode with an amazing doctor, amazing Ayurvedic practitioner, dr John Dulliard. Episode 74, how to be vital and healthy in your second half of life. And there's so many other good episodes on this podcast. Just go have a scroll. There's over many other good episodes on this podcast. Just go have a scroll. There's over 100, we're approaching 150, 140 soon, and we got episodes on health, consciousness, spirituality and the Veda, which is aligning with the laws of nature.

Speaker 2: 1:01:24

And particularly, we speak about Ayurveda, the laws of nature that promote perfect health, and there's so many other more aspects beyond this physical body and to the subtle, which we also speak about on this show. So, my dear friend, if you listen, keep. If you're still listening, I really appreciate it genuinely and would love to hear from you what you think. Send a review, send a screenshot on instagram, what you think, tag us about all better and also tag zero shoes. All right, much love. All right, much love.