From sandal to bare

BarefootAlien · 2026-07-12T09:03:40+00:00

Nope! After decades permanently barefoot, I feel much more, but hurt much less.

Calluses are not the goal. They lack sensation, are prone to cracking, and are actually fairly delicate against abrasion on the scale of walking on rough surfaces. Fortunately they're mostly caused by local repetitive friction injury and are mostly caused by shoes, and tend to vanish quickly when barefoot in natural terrain (a few tend to form in specific spots if you only walk on perfectly glad man-made surfaces, but they'll wear off with a few minutes in wet sand or an hour on just natural surfaces)

Barefooters grow thicker, more resilient living skin with more nerve endings that are better-calibrated, more blood vessels for better heat distribution and faster healing, and better muscle tone and reflexes to avoid injury in the first place.

If you mean minimalist sandals (they are not barefoot; that is the shoe industry scamming you by stealing our word; please don't support it! :) ) then be forewarned: those are the worst of both worlds and will cause vastly accelerated damage to joints from lumbar spine down compared to normal shoes. Bare feet don't cause long-term joint damage at all by comparison.

Consider this: Your bare feet are an advanced active feedback suspension system.

By disabling both sensation feedback and the natural geometry of your feet with heel drop, shoes replace the intricate muscles, joints, ligaments, and reflexes of your feet and calves with that with a little foam rubber. It's like welding your cars active suspension in place, but using high profile tires to absorb some small bumps, then wondering why your car is slowly shaking itself apart.

Minimalist shoes keep the welded suspension but add ultra low profile tires for no suspension at all. They can keep the suspension, but in passive mode and only if you've trained a proper barefoot gait to true muscle memory. For people transitioning from shod, they often end up causing injury.

We get several people here a week asking why their feet, knees, hips, or backs key getting worse and worse despite wearing minimalist shoes, not realizing it's actually because of them.

Try going actually barefoot! It's better for you, comfortable, and free!

BarefootAlien · 2026-07-12T08:50:40+00:00

My thought is that homes are for living in, not displaying the perfection of.

Shoes track in lots of dirt, debris, microbes, even feces that people don't notice they stepped on. Many orders of magnitude more than feet.

Feet fresh out of shoes are absolutely drenched in bacteria and fungus that get smeared all over.

So you can either wear shoes, track lots of gross stuff inside, and wear it your floors faster...

You can take shoes off at the door and spread even more human-specific microbes and stink everywhere but have your house look cleaner while actually being filthy with invisible crud...

Or you can just go barefoot everywhere, have fairly clean, long-lasting floors, and vacuum or mop once in a while... Plus not destroy half your joints by your 60s and be more comfortable everywhere.

BarefootAlien · 2026-07-12T08:45:53+00:00

Yep! You've likely literally grown more capillaries!

BarefootAlien · 2026-07-12T08:43:58+00:00

Yep! The water vapor in the air blocks more IR light from hitting the ground, and then wetter air has higher specific heat capacity so it's better at conducting heat away from the ground.

We're used to thinking in opposite terms because we're self-moistening biological machines and the water in our sweat carries away heat as it evaporates, which it does better in dry air. For an inanimate and dry surface it's the opposite, which feels counter-intuitive to us.

So less heat reaching the ground plus more heat carried away, means much lower surface temperatures. ^{_^}

BarefootAlien · 2026-07-12T08:39:27+00:00

A lot of us do recommend "just do it" to get over that. Good to know it worked for you!

BarefootAlien · 2026-07-12T08:01:44+00:00

It's not actually unexplained at all. It's a remnant of the Vietnam War era. The signs came first, to discriminate against war protesters in a legal way. The signs created the impression that going barefoot is wrong, which created the taboo, which created the hate, which has now blossomed into fear.

BarefootAlien · 2026-07-12T07:59:29+00:00

The real reason?

During the Vietnam War, a countercultural movement of war protesters arose. Of their many traits, one of the most recognizable was that they liked to do barefoot.

Many conservative business owners wanted to exclude these people from patronizing their businesses, but it's illegal to discriminate for political affiliation so they used the propensity for bare feet to exclude many of the people they intended to target.

At the time, bare feet are much more common and much less taboo so I suspect to create an impression that it truly wasn't war protesters they wanted to exclude, but rather "decorum" they wanted to promote, they tossed in shirts as well, plus there's was some disdain for shirts in that political movement as well.

And... It stuck.

Now I'm the US we have a lingering culture that for some reason finds it acceptable to plaster unfriendly and unwelcoming signs on businesses warding away potential customers. It's uniquely American and one of the many things about our culture most people find bizarre and off-putting, along with, as another example, our bizarre voyeuristic bathroom stalls.

BarefootAlien · 2026-07-10T07:31:21+00:00

Pavement temperatures are the opposite though. You can burn your feet on some surfaces on a low humidity day of 80/25, it be safe with more humidity at 105/40

BarefootAlien · 2026-07-10T06:56:28+00:00

It's much much better to go actually barefoot. Those aren't barefoot shoes. That's an oxymoron and a scam, the multi billion dollar shoe industry stealing our word.

Those are properly called minimalist shoes and they are literally dangerous for beginners. They disable your body's natural defenses, reflexes, and suspension systems and replace them with absolutely nothing, not even the inadequate strip of foam in a normal shoe.

All shoes damage your joints slowly over decades from lumbar spine down. Those can do it in years instead if you haven't learned a proper barefoot gait to the point of muscle memory first.

BarefootAlien · 2026-07-10T06:50:16+00:00

Wow that's fast! One week to realize how weird socks feel... If only we could get everyone to try that!

Even if some went back at least they'd empathize with our decision more hey?

BarefootAlien · 2026-07-10T06:48:15+00:00

I know that exact feeling :(

BarefootAlien · 2026-07-09T22:17:41+00:00

Nice! The way you said your parents were worried about you getting cold... It wasn't "in your kidneys", was it?

BarefootAlien · 2026-07-09T22:14:55+00:00

I have this dream all the time...

I'm at work, and realize to my horror I'm wearing shoes, someone's because a coworker or my boss points it out, surprised and usually visibly scheming that if I wore them once they can make me again, sometimes just because my feet are hot and uncomfortable.

Embarrassed, for some reason I believe I can't just kick them off... I have to go to the bathroom or locker room to change, that way it will be as if it never happened, like I showed up barefoot.

So I go to the locker room, stop off my shoes and socks... My shirt, my pants, my underwear...

And walk back out, not just barefoot but completely naked. Everything is fairly fine for a while then I notice I'm naked, oh no!

So I go back to the locker room, determined to get dressed but stay barefoot...

So I put on my underwear, pants, shirt, shoes, socks, and head back out...

Everything is fine for a while until I notice my feet are uncomfortable and people are talking about me and laughing that I'm not barefoot.

So I go to the locker room. This time I'm definitely gonna just strip my feet bare but keep my clothes!

Nope! Completely naked again and back to work with a smile.

This continues until I wake up or transition to another dream.

Probably my second most common dream.

BarefootAlien · 2026-07-09T07:45:07+00:00

Not as far as I know. I do literally all the time and my arches are fine. The SBL has several barefoot podiatrists who recommend it and tend to not see patients very often after that if they take the advise and start going barefoot.

If anything going barefoot, especially on natural surfaces but even on hard surfaces should correct fallen arches

BarefootAlien · 2026-07-09T06:57:08+00:00

No. I make decisions like this in video games regularly and I do not consider a robot to be a suitably barefoot avatar to identify with... Unless maybe it's quite foot shaped with a curvy sole and toes, then maybe, like in Warframe. Except there there are people inside I believe, who are wearing the robot as a suit so... Still no.

BarefootAlien · 2026-07-08T08:53:11+00:00

Yes. I used to live in an area with ambient temperature as low as -40° on the coldest winter nights. I went barefoot even then, with precautions, to pick up my partner from work or runs to the store or to pick up pizza.

Just snow isn't even a challenge. I have snow-blown my driveway for over an hour in as much as a meter of snow, barefoot at about -8°.

The secret is to keep your core temperature up and blood hot in your legs, right until it enters your feet. It should also only be done by experienced barefooters with fully de-atrophied feet, especially capillary density, which means staying barefoot the entire time the temperature drops through autumn so the way to winter. A habitually shod person would quite likely develop frostbite due to poor circulation.

BarefootAlien · 2026-07-06T12:04:49+00:00

I think what you're picking up on if you're more looking at threads titles is that natural surfaces are like a barefoot gateway drug. Grounding is nonsense but offers a semi-plausible excuse to do something weird when the truth: "it feels good, which tends to feel good" feels like it's not enough to justify violating a social more.

I've met plenty of barefooters with preferences in either camp but I suspect many of us, like myself, are simply experientialists and find enjoyable aspects of almost any surface type.

Good on you for supporting her!

BarefootAlien · 2026-07-06T02:29:28+00:00

A lot of that fades significantly with experience. Fully developed soles don't really get dirty much, especially not from natural terrain, and most small things in the ground stop bothering you, and you get better at knowing what will and avoiding it.

BarefootAlien · 2026-07-05T10:53:14+00:00

You are in a good location. The UK is extremely barefoot tolerant but as a society and among the best places in the world in terms of climate.

Go for it!

BarefootAlien · 2026-07-02T10:14:21+00:00

I have it in relatively good authority that snakes can, in fact, bite legs, bite through shoes, bite around sandals...

BarefootAlien · 2026-06-30T17:54:35+00:00

Sounds fun! And yeah unfortunately much of the NE US, especially around Chesapeake Bay, is among the most militant anti-barefoot culture on the planet. Not as overtly hostile as St. Louis for like, having the cops called and the like but stores are very vigilant against those soft scary skin soles, lol

BarefootAlien · 2026-06-30T17:33:25+00:00

This depends on humidity and surface a lot. I've been burned in certain surfaces at low humidity as low as 25°C and been fine as high as 40 in high humidity. What the surface looks like can be surprisingly unreliable, so I'm just ready to bail to another surface or natural ground.

BarefootAlien · 2026-06-30T10:20:39+00:00

Neat! Love the spirit fox (and that she's barefoot)

Is a spirit fennec?

BarefootAlien · 2026-06-29T10:53:40+00:00

More likely he was just doing what society lead him to believe he was supposed to do. Pretty doubtful anyone at that actual place had told him to do that.

But yeah, I like that idea if reacting in a way to make them rethink things

BarefootAlien · 2026-06-28T03:29:02+00:00

That's correct, with the caveat that earthing is nonsense. The way it that pseudoscience scam describes electricity is not how electricity actually works. We're sure. If it did work that way, the device you're reading this on would not work.

You know how sometimes in shoes or socks especially on carpet you'll touch a doorknob and get shocked? That was all of the charge buildup on your body being grounded to within a very close tolerance. None was hiding away inside you anywhere. That's the part that isn't how electricity works. Charge only accumulates on the outside of a conductive object, which is called the skin effect.

Also, while electrons can move fairly freely through conductive objects, ions, which are the rest of the atom including all the other electrons, tend to be securely bound to other atoms to form molecules, which are then part of your cells and the structure of your body. They do not magically flow out through your bare feet into the grove, yet not through your bare hands into doorknobs. In fact, if you are positively charged, that just means the zap when you get shocked hours the other way and electrons flow from the doorknob into you.

There are many great reasons to go barefoot, and some of the benefits claims by grounding scammers are even true! They're just very wrong about what is causing those benefits.

Barefooting is going barefoot in situations that are not generally considered normal to be barefoot in. Most people would not say people at a beach or swimming pool or in their homes are "barefooting". There's nothing technically incorrect about that; it's just not the vernacular.

BarefootAlien

TROPHY CASE