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FC2O Episode 3 - Barefoot Ted
44 Plays5 years ago
Barefoot Ted McDonald is possibly the most famous barefoot runner on the planet. Star of the epic best-selling Born to Run book, Ted is a true seeker of simplicity amongst the chaos. Listen to the entertaining wisdom of el mono - the monkey - and his extraordinary journey.
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Transcript
Introduction to Barefoot Ted McDonald
00:00:00
Speaker
A lot of people who had never really had an opportunity to tune in and to enjoy something as basic as moving well on their own two feet had a taste of that. After all, it was, you know, a lot of them were because of the quote unquote barefoot Ted character wanting to give it a try barefooted. Well, you know what?
00:00:20
Speaker
For a hell of a lot of people, that was the beginning of the ability to become a tried and true self-experimenter. If you're in that state, if you're in that place where you have enough confidence and enough willingness to believe that you may already have a lot of the tools in the toolkit ready to allow you to do the things that a human being is supposed to do,
00:00:42
Speaker
That's liberating, amigo. Rather than having an image of yourself as some kind of broken, dysfunctional, you know, critter that needs all kinds of freaking devices to help him or her do whatever they're supposed to do, it was at least for the first time suggesting you might want to riff on the idea that you have all the things you need and don't add anything until you're certain you need it and be careful and cautious about what you add.
00:01:39
Speaker
Welcome to FC2O with me, Matt Walden, and my guest today, Barefoot Ted McDonald. It's been great to catch up with my old friend Ted, Barefoot and minimalist ultra runner, founder of Luna Sandals, and star of the best-selling book, Born to Run. Ted is no Barefoot hippie. He's one of the most articulate men I've ever met, a talent which earned him both notoriety in the book Born to Run, as well as the name El Mono, The Monkey, which I'm sure you'll come to appreciate as you hear his chatter in the podcast.
00:02:07
Speaker
He's also not just a barefoot runner, but a barefoot ultra runner and a very good runner too, qualifying for the Boston Marathon where you have to run sub 3 hours 15, but Ted did it barefoot. As always, there are show notes at mattwarden.com under the podcast tab and if you listen to the end Ted has a special deal for FC2O listeners on his infamous high-end Luna sandals. A truly free and beautiful spirit, Barefoot Ted will explain in glorious technicolour why we were born to run. Hope you enjoy the show.
00:02:37
Speaker
you guys.
00:02:45
Speaker
So welcome to FC2.0 with me, Matt Worden, and my guest today, Barefoot Ted McDonald.
Origin and Impact of 'Born to Run'
00:02:51
Speaker
Now, Ted, I've known you a few years now, and are you still known as Barefoot Ted, or is that something you've managed to escape now, that moniker? No, no. I feel no shame to be known as Barefoot Ted. Basically, you get introduced as Barefoot Ted.
00:03:11
Speaker
Basically people's expectations are pretty low. It's like what kind of net case is going to be coming out here with that name and Half the time they're right and half the time they're wrong But in the end I've come to accept that name with some sense of pride Only because at this point in the history of the world that crazy book born to run Which is now the number one selling book ever on the topic of running. Yeah Yeah, I mean either I mean ultimately but that
00:03:39
Speaker
gave me that title, Barefoot Ted, gave me an audience to share some of my little insights into living. And at 55 years old now, you know, I can say with great certainty, I've been paying attention to the adults in the adult world very clearly for at least 50 years, even before that. But now I can say from five years old to 55, I've been watching and wondering and
00:04:06
Speaker
half the time complaining, but now finally at 55, actually enjoying all the things I've learned up until now. And I hope that I'm finally getting into a place where, up until now, I've always said, you know, we've been friends for quite a long time. I think it's almost 10 years, by the way, Matt, when it started coming to England, something like that. It's getting there.
00:04:33
Speaker
Early on, many people knew me because of Born to Run, because of the Five Fingers Shoes, which I was a proponent, still am a proponent of, and getting people to get back to the basics.
00:04:46
Speaker
Barefoot Ted isn't a bad name for a person who is telling stories like that, right? I mean, somehow that barefoot so many times is associated with like ecology or simplicity or back to nature or whatever. And ultimately, yeah, I accept it. But my full name is Ted Edward McDonald.
00:05:07
Speaker
And even that's a misnomer, but we won't go into that today. Yeah, yeah. Right, right. So as you just mentioned, I guess you became better known through the release of the book Born to Run. And do you want to give us a very quick overview of how that all came about? What was the story leading into Born to Run and how you're portrayed in that book?
00:05:31
Speaker
Yeah, look, it turns out, I just love that book. I haven't read it in a long time, but I was one of the first to be able to read it, literally, and actually wrote a review in, I think it's March 2009. Now the book didn't come out until May 2009, but I had been given the privilege of being able to read it, and I thought, this is a great book, you know?
00:05:58
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm one of the characters and it's telling the story, but I started realizing I might be, you know, I might have some bias. Well, but the book really is about a story that happened three years before 2009 May. And it's a story about a group of renegade runners, you could say, who found themselves all at the bottom of a canyon in 2006, first Sunday of March.
00:06:28
Speaker
getting ready to run a 50 or so mile ultramarathon race with a small group of gringos and a small group of Raromuri or Taromara Native American runners who are as a cohort among the greatest long distance mountain runners in the world. So we're down there in 2006 and the story that we experience
00:06:58
Speaker
we all knew was, I mean, it was an epic experience. Yeah, I was gonna say epic was the word that was on the tip of my tongue too. Yeah, it's, you know, it doesn't have, and then to have it turned out, you know, because McDougal was there and able to, you know, was, you know, as a reporter, as a writer wanting to tell a story, and then actually the situation, you know, the story was as good as,
00:07:26
Speaker
You know, we knew it. We knew it was great. So I was kind of like, I knew he was going to be writing something about the event or the thing down there. And after the event, it became like, wow, that was such a great event. What will he, how will he be able to turn this, this experience we just had into a story that other people will appreciate? I knew I appreciated it. And it took three years, you know, for him to,
00:07:56
Speaker
finally come out with the book in 2009. And when I read it, I have to say it was like, not only was he able to use the narrative of the story, but he was able to really in a way be at the forefront and help jumpstart to even a greater audience, a recognition of the roots of what it means to be a human being. And I believe the ramifications of that have continued going out.
00:08:26
Speaker
The five-finger shoe was an example of that, you know, reminding people, hey, your foot probably, if it were working functionally, was probably pretty well adapted for the world you live in now. And then that carried over into foodstuffs and, you know, you've been hanging out with and aware of all these because of your background and what you were studying and particularly with Paul Chek and others. I mean, this has not been new, but what it became and the storyboard to run really was able to get enough people
00:08:55
Speaker
to have to make those logical steps in their own mind. And I think it turned out what happened. Well, a lot of people who had never really had an opportunity to tune in and to enjoy something as basic as moving well on their own two feet had a taste of that. After all, it was, you know, a lot of them were because of the quote unquote barefoot Ted character wanting to give it a try barefooted. Well, you know what?
Self-Experimentation and Health
00:09:23
Speaker
For a hell of a lot of people, that was the beginning of the ability to become a tried and true self-experimenter. If you're in that state, if you're in that place where you have enough confidence and enough willingness to believe that you may already have a lot of the tools in the toolkit ready to allow you to do the things that a human being is supposed to do,
00:09:45
Speaker
That's liberating, amigo. Rather than having an image of yourself as some kind of broken, dysfunctional, you know, critter that needs all kinds of freaking devices to help him or her do whatever they're supposed to do, it was at least for the first time suggesting you might want to riff on the idea that you have all the things you need and don't add anything until you're certain you need it and be careful and cautious about what you add, kind of.
00:10:13
Speaker
That's what i think that book did and in the end look at its dude at fifty five i can tell you with great confidence i am healthier stronger feel better i have regenerated myself more you know over the course of this now fifteen years of.
00:10:32
Speaker
being a self-experimenter and sort of ridding myself of some of the things that weren't benefiting me, foodstuffs, attitudes, concepts of exercise, and getting closer and closer to, you know, finding, for me, for solving the equation of Barefoot Ted, the best version of myself I've ever been able to operate. And damn, you know, that's
00:10:57
Speaker
that says something. There are times I think where I was almost willing in my 30s or whatever, the tired old story of how you're going to age and what's going to happen and how things you're going to lose this ability and how things are going to get stiff and how you're going to need this for your foot and how you're going to need that and on and on and so much of that is
00:11:25
Speaker
mismatched diseases that don't need to be there, that if we just took the time to get a better understanding of how awesome we are in our default state when we're not poisoning ourselves or are moving poorly, well, you know, like that. So that's the song I'm still singing.
00:11:45
Speaker
Awesome. Because I remember you were out with us when you were celebrating your 50th birthday. And so you've flown over to the UK to help us, you know, go around some of the stores because, well, I shouldn't assume that people listening to the podcast will know my background, but I was involved in distributing the Vibram five-finger shoes for 10 years. And so we flew Ted over a couple of times. I think he came over, didn't you? Was it three times, maybe? Four times.
00:12:13
Speaker
I mean, I spent a lot of time in England and not, man, I'll tell you, it's an awesome place. I love it there. And you were saying, I remember one of the sort of phrases that you had on your mind when you were here is that, you know, you were saying, if you want to make it to a hundreds, you better be feeling good at 50. And that was, that was, you know, both referring to your pending
00:12:38
Speaker
age, but also referring to your experience with running ultra marathons. Can you, let's say 100 mile race, if you're feeling good at 50, then... That's right. That's right. That's right. I'm working on that premise still to this day.
00:12:53
Speaker
Yeah, perfect. But just looping back to the book, so as you say, you went to the Copper Canyons in 2006. How did that all come about? How did you end up down in the Copper Canyons? Because it's quite a random thing, isn't it? In this race, which as MacDougall says, on the front cover of his book, it's the greatest race the world has ever seen. And I just think that's a brilliant strapline. At the time, that was true, right?
00:13:20
Speaker
that's no longer accurate because you know the race continues actually it's now known as the Caballo Blanco ultra marathon and there's other events going on down there I'll be down there in October for
00:13:31
Speaker
Stage race there's a new hundred-miler there. It's lots of great things are happening down in the canyons There's been some starts and stuff. There's a great film You can see on iTunes called run free the truth the story of Caballo Blanco or something like that Yeah, yeah, that's a great film. But why was I down there in the first place? This is a great question and I
00:13:52
Speaker
It has everything to do with my own journey in trying to solve the riddle of running for myself and also starting to riff on the idea of trying to imagine what I should be
Evolution and Significance of Footwear
00:14:06
Speaker
paying attention to if indeed, as I was starting to learn in my desire to ramp up and learn how to run a marathon, I was starting to realize, yeah, we have this skill. This is a skill set that is available to us.
00:14:19
Speaker
But it might be, and for a person like me growing up in Southern California, barefooted all the time and so forth, I was actually having, as you know, some difficulty learning how to run in the modern running shoe, even though in my own mind, it was clear to me based on just looking at shoes that, oh, I'm going to need some kind of padded
00:14:42
Speaker
footwear and support and all this because I'm bigger and yada, you know, heavier set body or bigger, whatever. Yeah, if anyone's not seen Ted's thighs, they're quite impressively muscular. Well, it doesn't look like an ultra runner in your in your mind's eye. That's for sure. Yeah, that's right. Exactly. So in that sense, I was like thinking I'm going to need some kind of, you know, some and as I investigated that I realized, you know, that's not working.
00:15:10
Speaker
And then I started finding out, Oh, indeed that's for other people too. That's not working. And there's reasons for that. And as I, once I realized, Oh my gosh, once I found that it was really the way you move and how your foot functions that ultimately allows you to get into the efficiency and move smoothly and run in a way that, you know, your ancestors wouldn't scoff at.
00:15:33
Speaker
You, then I started wanting to riff on the idea of what is, I realized barefoot isn't best in every situation. Go try to run a hundred miles through the Rocky Mountains in, you know, under 30 hours and see how well you do it in your own bare feet. It's not going to be fun or pretty and many other situations too. So I began to riff on the idea, what does it look like? What's the natural selection of footwear?
00:16:01
Speaker
in human culture, in human society. And that was an interesting one, because when you really start down that road, you start realizing, and it became clearer and clearer for me that through personal practice, you know, I was pushing the limits of what's possible in pure barefoot, in the mountains anywhere. And one of the things I realized early on, like when you're
00:16:25
Speaker
barefoot in the mountains or in terrain that is, you know, most people would assume is impractical or impossible in bare feet. It's amazing how far you can get. But once your feet start getting sensitive to the terrain and no longer happy about it, it's amazing how little it takes to help you instantaneously and quickly realize, and our ancestors, it's clear to me this would happen pretty much
00:16:54
Speaker
It would be an early recognition is, let's say your feet are tender and you're walking along and you happen to step in some mud or in a cow patty and then you step on some dry grass and then suddenly you realize pretty quick that with some proper stepping, you can put a little barrier between you and the ground pretty quickly and easily and immediately understand, whoa, that feels better.
00:17:21
Speaker
and then quickly realize that our ancestors, since moving over the land, let's say in this concept of what's known as the persistence hunting, connected to our evolution and our ability to move faster and move efficiently and actually hunt without even the necessity of weapons because we basically
00:17:42
Speaker
run down an animal by overheating it, overtaxing it through running. Google persistence hunting to learn more about that. But you quickly learn that our first weapon is our own two feet and our ability to trap. You had Lewis Leibenberg
00:18:00
Speaker
at the Barefoot Connections conference and his book, The Art of Tracking, The Origins of Science, will get you your mind tripping out on, wow, yeah, indeed we were and still are an incredibly complex hunter and tracking hardware creature. And you add sandals to that equation and certainly, you know, it's an early
00:18:29
Speaker
It's an early skill and an early tool to help improve our range without changing our form, basically. I was going to say, what's been your investigations into the earliest footwear that's known from an archaeological perspective? Because I saw about 40,000 years, but have you seen any other numbers?
00:18:48
Speaker
No, no. In that case, in this particular case, I just speculate based on feeling. I don't know what the actual anthropological ... I mean, people are constantly trying to narrow that down. Look, every time ... The Ice Man's a great one of look at his incredible boots that he had in which I had several kinds of skin and were put together so well.
00:19:13
Speaker
having good footwear radically extended terrain of human beings and the sandals so easy to imagine. It's certainly, in other words, I'm even saying it predates even making it. You know what I mean? Yeah. When you really get out there in a place where you have no footwear and you find out how easy it is to improve
00:19:38
Speaker
the feeling by just doing some of the things I just suggested. So I just play around with that. Yeah, anthropologically, though, I'm sure, you know, one of the reasons they say it's the oldest stuff is going to be difficult to find, although heck, I guess they'll eventually be able to find some maybe prints on that got that got on clay or something. But the foot where they would have been early making would have been, you know, pretty either through cordage or
00:20:04
Speaker
a vegetable matter that didn't last. But there are very old ones, like you just said. They're in a cave here in Oregon. I think they found stuff as old as you just described. I pay attention to all that stuff. But in the end, I'm really just riffing on the idea of what it feels like to just get your body out and move in real nature and see what you might figure out because it doesn't take long for a creature like us with our intuition and our skills.
00:20:32
Speaker
to make things, to figure out how to solve the problem of making sure our feet feel better than the other guy that we're chasing. Yeah, yeah. Because one of the things that I picked up was that the archaeological evidence for shoes dates back to about 40,000 years, which, of course, it could well go far beyond that, as you say. But one of the interesting things, and I think this ties in with the whole barefoot movement, is that
00:21:02
Speaker
When you look at the migrations out of Africa, what you see is that the migrations out of Africa seem to occur around 65 million years ago and they went mainly through sort of lower Asia and then down towards
00:21:17
Speaker
the, what's it called, the Polynesian Islands and then on towards Australia, et cetera. And it wasn't until about 40,000 years ago that you start to see migrations into Europe and up into Russia, towards Siberia. And I just thought, well, that's really fascinating that those two things seem to correlate. So was it the invention of the shoe that allowed people to go into
00:21:43
Speaker
Europe, you know, Northern Europe and Siberia? Or was it the fact they moved into Northern Europe, perhaps during the summertime, and then it got cold and the cold necessitated the invention of a shoe? Because, you know, one of the things that you certainly I used to see on the barefoot forums when I was frequenting those a bit more a few years back was people, you know, almost sort of showing off their chill planes and their frostbite as, you know,
00:22:09
Speaker
Kind of badges of honor because they're still running barefoot in the snow and I was thinking well That might be taking a little too far. But what's what's your thought there? Yeah. Well, let's so Back to it. I mean, we're still in the process of answering the question. Why am I down in the canyons in two thousand? That's true Connected to this. It's all connected to this. So yeah, I want your listeners to know that we are gonna answer that but You know, one of the things I would say is it would quickly become
00:22:39
Speaker
to any group of humans living in the way past. And when we get a time travel machine, we can go verify all of this. Would be the importance of, you know, you have this extraordinarily vulnerable piece of equipment that also is your lifesaver and your food ticket.
00:23:02
Speaker
And you're not going to F around with that too much. You're going to take care of it. I mean, it is robust. There's no doubt about that. But it's also instrumental in your success. So the care of and the precision with which you can move through your and safely move through your terrain would be you would be getting rewarded.
00:23:26
Speaker
very, you know, your tribe or people or group would be rewarded for people who were not reckless or stupid with their feet. For example, freezing them off their body would not be a good idea. You can't get reconstructive surgery back then so easily. Yeah, and you said numb feet or dumb feet, right? Numb feet or dumb feet. It's so true. It's like so. It's a Bevlet 10 quote.
00:23:50
Speaker
That is indeed. So I'm down in the copper canyons because through my investigations of footwear and barefoot running and all this, I started really wanting to start thinking out loud and investigating.
Inspiration from the Tarahumara People
00:24:05
Speaker
Well, what groups of people are still doing ethical kinds of things and they're either bare feet or with what we now would call minimalist footwear or minimal footwear.
00:24:19
Speaker
And certainly the Tarot Amara, the Raromori people of northern Mexico, ended up becoming an easy group of people to glom onto because in the end, here they were. They'd been periodically famous in the American press for the entire 20th century, early in the 20th century.
00:24:44
Speaker
people started becoming aware of these incredible runners down in the copper canyons of northern Mexico. All kinds of tales and stories about their endurance and stuff were being written about in accounts of people traveling down in that area. Then in the 1920s you see
00:25:03
Speaker
some situations where some of the taruumara come out to do some, um, different kinds of races and some kind of like invitational long distance races way, way beyond the marathon, you know, 70, 80 miles and so forth and, and that became, you know, part of the popular press and mythology of the late twenties. Then you have, um, cut to the 1990s and 25 years ago.
00:25:30
Speaker
During a pretty severe drought down in the Copper Canyon areas, many of the famous, well, good runners from that region found it necessary to come out of the canyons, which is, you know, in the canyon lands down there are more extensive and deeper in many cases than the Grand Canyons in the United States. Wow, wow. Come out of the canyons in order to basically save themselves.
00:25:58
Speaker
These people in these canyons are, and this is one of the reasons why their prowess in running is so great, is they are able to move all over from subtropical down at the bottom of the canyon to alpine at the top in some cases, and they move through the entire place. Now what's great about their lifestyle is that if they have rain,
00:26:24
Speaker
Then they already have, they have land and they know how to grow things. If they have rain, they can do everything. They, there's no problem. But during this drought, they didn't have rain and people literally were starving. I mean, they're, they're in the middle of nowhere. So it's not like there's, uh, they're being monitored and there's relatively small groups of people, but it hit them hard. And Manuel Luna, uh, which we'll go into a little bit.
00:26:48
Speaker
Later. Yeah, the name the you know where my company Luna Sandals is named in honor of him He was one of the fellows that came out in 1995 to come to the Copper Canyons or excuse me to come to Leadville, Colorado to participate in the Leadville 100 mile endurance run which was one of the old one is one of the oldest 100 mile runs in the world and
00:27:17
Speaker
And at that time, I think some people decide, hey, this would be a great way to get them to come out, help them. You know, they can get some people can learn about the situation. They could get some some monetary and help and whatever. And it worked. And Manuel Luna came and a bunch of other runners from the canyons and.
00:27:38
Speaker
Manuel Luna came in fifth, another guy wearing sandals came in first, and boy, suddenly their name was on the map. And then the following year, 25 years ago, this August, they came again. And again, Araromudi, Taro Madarana running and sandals won this 100-mile race. So it really kind of like put a marker there and got people wondering about who are these people and so forth and so on. And then the kind of drought reduced
00:28:08
Speaker
During that time though, Cabayo Blanco, the character known as Cabayo Blanco in the book Born to Run, met for the first time and got charmed by these people and ended up starting to go down there more and more. And so, by cut to 2005, I'm investigating and looking where are people in the world who are still
00:28:38
Speaker
uh you know running barefoot or using um footwear that has a tried and true old school tradition to it and well you couldn't help but see this was going to be the the taro mara and the san people of south africa you know were were two that came right out um you know you could quickly find out about and both you know i was interested in well it turned out living in los angeles california
00:29:07
Speaker
Chihuahua isn't that far away in the end, at least as the crow flies. So I started reaching out and I found, looking into how I might be able to get down there, that's when I found out this guy, Cabayo Blanco, was trying to put on and calling gringos to come down to participate in a foot race, an ultramarathon, in their territory and I thought, wow,
00:29:31
Speaker
And how long did you find that out? Was that on Google or was it in a magazine? Google. No, no, I was... Great God is Google. I mean, I did tremendous amounts of research and, you know, it's even better today. But yeah, I was able to find all that out. I was communicating with Kibayo and I wasn't able to make it in 2005, although I was hoping to. But, you know, the stars aligned and 2006,
00:29:59
Speaker
which we, as we mentioned is the, uh, the narrative in the book, born to run is talking about 2006 and the race. It turns out I was able to get down there along with, and very most importantly, a bunch of other important people, including at the time, the best ultra marathon runner in the United States at the time, a guy named Scott Jurek.
00:30:19
Speaker
along with a couple other young up-and-coming ultra marathon runners, along with a running coach, along with Christopher McDougall, the author and a person who's investigating this angle about running and the history of it and minimalism even back then. Was he working for Runners World at the time? Was that a job that he held?
00:30:44
Speaker
He was writing, he wrote for all of it. Yeah, he wrote for Runner's World, he wrote for Men's Health, he wrote, you know, he was, I think, mostly freelancing. But, you know, yeah, in the end, I know he...
00:30:57
Speaker
He had already written about, and it was chiming well with my own investigations. I was already known. By 2004, I started a blog called Barefoot Ted's Adventures, and I was already starting to share this story about my own investigations.
00:31:17
Speaker
Back then, you know, there weren't a lot of people telling this story. And so my blog was pretty popular and I was keeping up to date with everything that was coming out, including in 2004, Daniel Lieberman, a Harvard evolutionary biologist, had written an article called Born to Run, which basically went into the details of how he was working on a new way of describing
00:31:47
Speaker
Um, one of the, uh, you know, primary skill sets of human beings for success happened to be the kind of running we're able to do, which is, um, you know, back to the persistence hunting, which is the ability to kind of go, not necessarily, we're not the fastest, but we, uh, uh, with the right training, um, we can be the
00:32:07
Speaker
We can go the furthest and if you can manipulate that skill set into chasing big animals in the heat of the day that get tired and get overheated in between 18 and 28 miles in two to five hours, you can learn how to do that.
00:32:25
Speaker
You can feed 30 people for a month with one catch. Not too bad. That's called nutrient dense food right there. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I was down in the canyons primarily because I wanted to investigate, see up close and personal, uh, and indeed run with and get some samples from these people known as the Taro Madararumuri. And I was like, I did it. I made it. And, um, that became.
00:32:54
Speaker
an investigation that turned into an avocation, which turned into a vocation. I mean, I became a saddle maker. Literally, I went down there and at first, you know, what I call it now is I like to think of particularly the last, the latest generation, the cutting edge for that amount of footwear is basically a tire tread strapped to their foot with leather laces.
00:33:25
Speaker
At my investigations at the time, I was thinking, oh, these poor guys, they need something different than this. But I came over time to realize.
00:33:34
Speaker
If you can, some sandals that look rather thick and dense and rigid, not really the flexible sort of ideal concept of a perfect minimalist shoe, which would be just like adding fatty pads to the bottom of your feet so you could just go over anything without too much sensitivity, but still feeling the pressure of landing and all the rest. What I started seeing in sandals, and now I kind of describe it as like portable ground.
00:34:02
Speaker
Finding a way to bring a little piece of certainty that I'm going to land on, but having it affixed to my foot in such a way that the least amount of change to the overall dynamics of what my foot is doing in real time, splaying, flexing, moving, cooling down, yada, yada.
00:34:22
Speaker
And indeed I've continued to riff on that very basic simple sandal design. And now, you know, I like to say the simplest solution that works the best is the best kind of that's been an attitude I've had all along. And I would have to say, yeah, yeah, exactly. And then Luna sandals continues to play. I mean, we're refining it and riffing on it and playing with it. But in the end, the basic concept is how do you get a nice piece of portable ground?
00:34:50
Speaker
If you could run on hard packed sand a lot of the time, it's not a bad material to run on. It's pretty nice. Of course, in the health of the foot, it turns out there's a little bit of everything. There's different tools in the toolkit. And that's what I'm finally, I like to say, Luna Sandals, back to my personal roots, which are in the surf and beach culture and skateboard culture that I was an early proponent of.
00:35:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of like these are platforms and surfers call all their different boards their quiver, you know Like where they have all the rights. Yes. Yeah, and you know depending on the you know now it turns out that
00:35:31
Speaker
footwear, in a way, these are tools. Yeah, we're, you know, living in the 21st century of access to all kinds of different opportunities to try and see what what we might like. Luna's just is one of the let's say surfboard manufacturers, we like to say we're like surfers making surfboards, you know, yeah, we're embroiled in the process. We're going by feel design and access to materials and we keep playing and riffing on that. And in the end,
00:35:58
Speaker
We're paying homage to the foot and also to that tradition of making good shit, you know, that has a soul to it. And so that's been one of my funnest, that's been one of the most, you know, that trip to the copper canyons changed my life, obviously. And it turns out because of the book Born to Run has now
00:36:20
Speaker
been able to achieve, you know, the number of people that have been positively influenced by that is getting to be astronomical. And ultimately, the underlying story behind it all that we already mentioned was just getting people to once again to riff on the idea that, you know,
00:36:36
Speaker
Boy, the simplest thing might be the best. Just letting the body get back to its basics and see how it operates in that space before all the accoutrements and additions and props that you need to add, that's a good place to get familiar with again. And there's nothing simpler than just reconnecting with your own body if you have the time and the patience. For sure, for sure.
00:37:05
Speaker
Now, so you ended up down in the Copper Canyons, and Chris McDougal's there, and obviously McManual Luna, and I know you have an image of him actually crafting your first sandal, your first warachi. That's right. But am I right in saying that at that time you, because you ran that race in Five Fingers, is that right? That's right, yeah. So it had just been months before that I'd gotten, you know, I'd ridden and
00:37:34
Speaker
ended up chatting with and convincing the Tony Post, the president of Vibram USA at the time, to send me a pair to test. And I was realized, because I knew I was going to need something more than bare feet to do that. So yeah. Right, right. And so tell me about how, because, you know, I think you are quite instrumental also in opening Vibram's eyes to the fact that this wasn't just a sailing shoe, because that's really where they're at when you first spoke to them, wasn't it?
00:38:04
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that's right. I mean, yeah, I mean, I think they were pretty much, you know, I think Tony post maybe at first thought, you know, what am I supposed to do with the clown shoe like this? And then, you know, and then what what if it came from me, though, in the end, I know you know this from past talking together, but I ended up writing a blog post about it. It was called Vibram Five Fingers, paradigm shifting Trojan horse.
00:38:34
Speaker
And I really thought that barefoot, you know, at the time, I mean, I'm not quite as cynical, but in the sense, it was like, you can't sell free, you know, there was no telling people to take off their shoes. For most people, it's impractical, it's dirty, or there's, you know, it seems dangerous, all the various things, you know, if you live in a city, you probably don't want to walk around all the time bare feet in all the different places. And once I realized, though, what
00:39:02
Speaker
What the Five Finger Shoe really did was help people recognize that the awesomeness of what they already had through a purchase, and then actually now, all these years later, those shoes still sell, people use them because they're good. There's many situations where it's very useful to have something, and that particular thing is finding a way to just
00:39:31
Speaker
to do what that shoe did basically just give you some extra fatty pads on the bottom of your foot and some protection from abrasions and from hot and cold. Well, not a bad, that was a pretty, nobody was able to make a shoe quite like that before the 21st century. I mean, in the past, the Japanese had tabby. Nobody ever bothered to make a glove shoe though. Yeah, right. Except for as a joke, right? Yes, exactly. When they finally did.
00:40:00
Speaker
But that really did end up becoming, and actually MacDougall just described it to me the other day in such an interesting way. He's getting ready, Christopher MacDougall, who wrote, he's the author of Born to Run, Natural Born Heroes is another book of his, and he's getting ready to release another really interesting book that your listeners will definitely wanna check out called Running with Sherman. And it's a book about,
00:40:30
Speaker
Um, a donkey that has been terribly, uh, abused. It's a, it's going to have to be put down. Somebody had kept a donkey. I don't know what exactly the situation is, but the thing had been basically in a stall, not moving for long enough to make it so that an animal, a horse like that, a donkey needs to move in order to digest properly, to, uh, to, to just to get, to be healthy. Like, you know, practically any other living being.
00:41:00
Speaker
In this particular case, this animal was so bad off, had gotten so out of condition that it was going to have to be put down. Somehow, McDougal, he has a little farm out in Amish country in Pennsylvania in the eastern side of the United States. He had some room and he was kind of
00:41:23
Speaker
already started dabbling in doing some little farming and just, you know, he had some space. And he thought, I'm gonna see what I can do with this guy. And I haven't, I know the story, but I haven't, the book is not out yet, but I know the underlying story. This is a sneak preview. Sneak preview. Yeah, yeah. And it's basically, it's a preview of all of us. It's almost like born to run in a story in my mind. Basically, this animal's gonna die because it's not been taken care of itself. It's not been taken care of.
00:41:52
Speaker
But somehow, by getting this creature to get back to doing the things it was designed to do, move, eat the right foods, and so forth, he used a race that happens in Colorado, where it's the state sport of Colorado, which is burrow racing. He and the burrow, that's another name for a donkey, started training. And long story short,
00:42:35
Speaker
What was I, how did I get this body? What does it like to do? What does it like to eat? And if I let it do what it likes to do and let it eat what it likes to eat or what's good for it, what happens? And it turns out for most people who are bothering to make that experimentation on themselves or on any other living creature,
00:42:42
Speaker
it all worked out.
00:42:56
Speaker
They're going to find out that what it equals is vitality, health, and happiness when you allow the thing to do what it was designed, evolved to do. It's like that's what happens. I like telling that story, and I like encouraging anybody every time, always, to get on board with the concept of getting into a regenerative state of mind, starting to realize that there are steps you can take
00:43:24
Speaker
right now in your life that are not radical in the sense of it's not like you necessarily need to buy another thing. It's more about what you should stop eating and start doing. Something like that. Stop eating poison and stop not moving well.
00:43:44
Speaker
And I have, I'll go more into that because I don't want to, you know, one of the things I like to say, I think you'll appreciate this, but the way I say it now is like too much we got into the idea that we just need to exercise more. And I want to say this.
00:44:07
Speaker
Imagine your body is like a brand new Mercedes Benz, you know, it drives up, it's all beautiful and everything. Now, if you start putting bad fuel in that car, and let's say it's not tuned up, and you've got bad fuel, so it's not tuned up, it's not moving the right way. And it's got poor fuel in it. Running it harder and more is not going to make it better. Yeah, yeah.
00:44:36
Speaker
So just exercising to keep yourself fit, if you're fighting bad fuel and bad tuning, you've got to get the fuel and the tuning right too. You don't just do more. You make sure that you've got the fuel and the tuning right.
00:45:00
Speaker
The book, Born to Run, really launched a lot of people wanting to do more and more. So ultra marathon farther and farther and more and more. And in the end, I really wanted, I started realizing there's kind of almost, you know, you can go, you can get imbalanced on either end of this. You can either move not enough or you can move too much and be doing it in a way that's not building you up and I'm making you stronger and healthier. So finding that middle path.
00:45:30
Speaker
that is taking in, because in the end, and that's 55, this is what I want to tell people, in the end, find a way to move and eat and live that is palpably by virtue of how you feel, the better way to go. There's no magical number, there's no magical, it's all about learning how to get into that zone where it's clear you're becoming more vital, you're becoming stronger,
00:45:54
Speaker
and you're feeling better those all need to go together and it's going to be because you're fueling better and you're moving more like a human being and not just doing reps of something that's poorly done just for the sake of burning calories I mean that just yeah that old style of thinking
00:46:14
Speaker
may have short-term benefits of some kind or another, but it's not the way to solve the long-term equation, which is health and vitality and happiness, right? So that's just another one to say about that. Yeah, that's great. That's really good. I always think it's a little bit of fun.
00:46:31
Speaker
a concern as well when you when you think a lot of people will say i'm going to go for a workout or i'm going to go for a run so i can have this big meal or because i've eaten badly today or whatever it is and you just think i understand where they're coming from because i think we've all experienced that train of thought at some point but when you think of it from an environmental perspective the idea that i'm going to eat more calories so i can burn more calories it's just like no you know you want to be
00:46:57
Speaker
It's taking in the relevant amount of calories and moving, as you say, in a way that supports human health and function. And I think one of the things that I'm pretty sure we've talked about before, because I remember you coming on one of my Primal Lifestyle boot camps. And do you remember camping out? And I was talking to the group about the idea of biomechanical attractors, so the idea that
00:47:24
Speaker
there's a certain number of movement types and rest positions and sleep positions that could be termed homeostatic or attractors. And when you're looking at movement, of course, then human gait is the strongest attractor. It's the thing that we've done the most of throughout our evolutionary history. And Dan Lieberman, who you mentioned earlier from Harvard, he says that, in fact, running gait has had the biggest influence on our biomechanics.
00:47:54
Speaker
Wow, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so if we're not running and yet that's the thing that's kind of shaped us, and I know some people can't run, so I'm not saying that, not trying to be too purist about it, but if you're able to and get yourself to a position where you can run, then that's got to be very healthy for you on multiple levels. Now, what has your experience been of the benefits of running to the extent that you have?
00:48:22
Speaker
Right.
Personal Breakthroughs in Running
00:48:23
Speaker
Well, so early on when I started to realize, you know, from the book board run, many people remember that the reason why I was kind of like my 40th birthday was coming up. It was on the horizon. And I had made a commitment to myself that I wanted to see if I could at least try to do a marathon by the time I was 40.
00:48:44
Speaker
I wasn't having, I was having some bad luck. And then because of, you know, some of the things I started discovering and started experimenting with, I started realizing, whoa, this is going to be possible. And then, then it became possible. And it turned out, for me,
00:49:03
Speaker
It was going to barefootedness and learning how to run barefooted and the technique that I was able to tune back into really, really started like wondrously for me, helping me make huge gains and actually realize not only is a marathon possible, and it turned out in my case in bare feet, growing up in California and
00:49:28
Speaker
develop mastering this technique, which is extremely light on the feet and not pounding at all, really. But I started realizing and then started getting fascinated by, like I said, the natural selection of footwear in human culture, but also this skill of running. If indeed it was being suggested this is our
00:49:51
Speaker
one of our evolutionary hallmarks well then indeed there will be people all over the world who have been doing this and indeed that's what I started finding and then oh indeed you know living cultures as I discovered and then of course I'm a human being too so maybe I can do this so I started wanting to find out what are those limitations what how far can I go what is it and so how far did you go? How far did you go barefoot? What was the the furthest distance you ran barefoot?
00:50:18
Speaker
The furthest I've ever run barefoot was, well, I did a 100 miler road. It was called the Route 66 100 miler back in 2008. And I ran the first 80 miles barefooted and then got off, it's a long story, got off course and ended up wearing my five fingers to finish it off. But if everything had gone well, I was,
00:50:46
Speaker
This was running on old tarmac in in Oklahoma, right? So and then indeed other friends my friend and actually ambassador for Luna sandals Andrew snow who's gonna run the Sparta on this year in Luna sandals Okay, this year set the world world record for distance barefoot in 24 hours 133 miles so Wow
00:51:11
Speaker
So he's finding his, he's pushing and extending that realm, that region. But for me, back in the day, I started wanting to see how far I can go and I ended up, I've run many hundred mile trail races. And I'm actually, I'm planning on going and running the Leadville 100 again this year. I'll wear sandals. I've done it in five fingers. I've done it in sandals a few times. But I just got interested in that longer distance.
00:51:41
Speaker
I was going to say, tell us what, I know the Leadville obviously is, Leadville 100 is 100 miles, but just let people understand a bit more about the kind of terrain.
00:51:52
Speaker
Right. Well, so, you know, one of the difficult things about the Leadville is not only is it a hundred mile foot race, that's, you know, already tough enough, but it is the whole race is above 3000 meters and goes up to, I think almost 4,000 meters at one point. You have to cross over a couple of times. So it's, it's in the Rockies of Colorado. It's, you know, it's, it's, it's definitely challenging a particular, I mean, challenging enough. Um, but it's, it's particularly challenging for people coming from sea level. Yeah.
00:52:22
Speaker
because you have the other disadvantage of having not as much oxygen. It became a good test. In the end, I ended up being able to achieve way beyond what I had really expected.
00:52:38
Speaker
And was even seeking really but I just couldn't help but want to see where the envelope the edge of the Possibility for me was and and it was a fascinating journey in the end what I gained from it though was well obviously some discipline to stay at it and And and be able to keep going and and stay injury-free and all that. Yeah, but in the end what I started really recognizing was and
00:53:06
Speaker
trying to use running, movement, and the things that I do in my daily life. Primarily not, I didn't want to get too focused on performance for a lot of different reasons. I see that we're like, I think there's something incredible about learning how to develop yourself, to reach a goal, whatever it is. And I think there's something really special about people who do perform and are wanting to continuously improve and get better and all that.
00:53:35
Speaker
But in the end, my whole thing about running came about by really just wanting to be fit, healthy and happy and find a way to, it was all together, it was finding ways to help me be more vital, be healthier and happier, fitter. And once I found that, then it's more now, these days,
00:54:00
Speaker
Finding ways to have, to be moving, and every day I try to find, I'm always doing little things throughout the day that I'm always thinking about. Oh my gosh, I'm trying to, I've made it so that my fitness comes by just basically being. You know, how I live my daily life.
00:54:28
Speaker
I don't have any really rigid schedules, but I do, I live in Santa Barbara, California, so I am very blessed with great weather, and right outside my door, I have all kinds of activities that I can do. And by just moving well throughout the day, throughout the week, and making sure I'm not spending a lot of time not moving well, i.e. sitting poorly or holding myself poorly or whatever, all of those things over the course of 15 years,
00:54:57
Speaker
I can say with great confidence I've never felt healthier and happier and stronger and more vital than I do now at 55 and I'm starting to think and I haven't really tried you know I mean of course I'm doing stuff but I'm not methodically doing anything I'm not really trying to reach any particular thing at this time yeah but I'm starting to realize I do
00:55:21
Speaker
I'm now, I'm kind of curious. It's like, wow, because I've gotten over through self experimentation, gotten certain things out of my diet. I've eaten certain ways. I live in certain, you know, I voted with my body and got to somewhere where I feel good to be outside and so forth. I'm kind of curious. Wow. We're, you know, is it, is it possible to just keep feeling better and better and stronger and stronger? How long can you do that? What's the, I'm kind of riffing on that idea.
00:55:51
Speaker
What the hell? I'm stunned about the regenerative capacity of human beings when they're fueling themselves well, when they're moving well, and when they're not moving poorly all the time.
Exploration of Playful Movement
00:56:05
Speaker
It's remarkable. I have to say, it's a remarkable capacity that I think
00:56:10
Speaker
If you can get it reignited, it becomes its own reward and it's easy to avoid doing the things that you know don't feel well more and more. We always make mistakes and have our setbacks and whatnot.
00:56:25
Speaker
What once you start once the body and the mind starts feeling better and you start recognizing it's because you didn't do x or you didn't do y. You know the wisdom of ages that you'll spend more time doing the better things and less time doing that not so good.
00:56:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. And the reward is feeling better. Exactly. Well, I remember when you were last here, you were talking about the idea of the minimal effective dose. And you were talking about, you know, I think, I think you said something like, I think a mile or a mile and a half is just about the minimal effective dose for me to, to keep my fitness levels at a level where you could, if you needed to just go out and run a marathon or whatever you wanted to, to put your mind to. But I just, I wanted to bring that up because
00:57:10
Speaker
I can imagine some listeners might be thinking, well, this guy's just a freak. You can run 100 miles. I couldn't even think about running 10K or a marathon or whatever. But obviously, you've built up to that. But also,
00:57:26
Speaker
you don't do that the whole time. It's not, like you say, it's not a sort of regimen that you go out training X tens of miles per week. You do live quite an accessible lifestyle, don't you, that other people could access as well.
00:57:43
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. I mean, on some level, that's that was my goal, because in the end, these days, I'm quite busy, you know, I have my company, Luna Sandals, I'm playing a role in it all the time. But I'm also trying to the other thing, you know, because of the modern tools that we have, and whenever it's possible, being able to have time to, you know, all throughout the day, not I want
00:58:12
Speaker
whenever possible people to, in this case myself, find ways to get nice movement patterns throughout the day so that if you have a standing desk, or you can do some stretching, or you can go for a walk, or you can get out and breathe some fresh air, or you can do...
00:58:31
Speaker
Just constantly, and so being very aware of how you're sitting, how you're moving, and get used to doing that better, because we're doing that all the time. That's been sort of a strategy for me. And then trying to find the playfulness and the adventuresomeness that comes with having an open-ended not sure where you're going to go, how far you're going to go,
00:58:59
Speaker
I mean, there's a, it's not like a rigid line, but I'm always like playing around with that aspect of it, because I guess my personality just rejects too much of a rigidity. I've always been, you know, I mean, it's just, yeah, and this comes down to personality. Some people will have all, you know, some people have a very regimented, and that works great for them. I'm just letting you know
00:59:27
Speaker
Rigidity in and of itself isn't what's necessary. What's necessary is that you're getting a little bit of something every single day rather than just moving well all through the day. It's not just like once a week or at the gym or whatever. It's everywhere all the time learning how to move and feel better in what you're doing and how you're doing it.
00:59:55
Speaker
The better you do that, the better you are. I mean, it's basic, but what I can say with great confidence at 55, practicing it for 15 years,
01:00:05
Speaker
you know, as best as I know how, it has its rewards. It's well worth the effort. In the end, it's more effortless than it is effortful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So you mentioned the Leadville 100. Leading into that, will you be doing some serious training runs? You know, are you going to create any kind of schedule or you'll just go with the flow and just gently up?
01:00:32
Speaker
Well, that's a good question. It's coming very quickly. I started training for it the same time last year. I started June 23rd, and that is not the way you're supposed to be doing it. Ultimately, I have this base of daily movements.
01:00:52
Speaker
you know i go hiking in the mountains a lot i run on the beach i pull a rickshaw i i have various other kinds of sports that i'm doing um one way or another uh and activities nearly every day um i've got yeah actually uh some guys making a trying to create a tv show called the work
01:01:11
Speaker
wanted to came out and told me three weeks ago, what's my exercise routine, right? And I'm like thinking, well, shit, I don't really have that, but I figure, okay, I'm going to show them my... So I have a couple rickshaws, 1920s, those things that the people, the guys would pull.
01:01:31
Speaker
And I find it to be just a remarkably excellent and fun little tool to pull, and to push, and to play with, and, you know, with- And you have people in them, or not?
01:01:43
Speaker
Well, I've done that too and then I've created a hip belt so I can run with my hands free. I ride a high wheel bicycle, a penny farthing, that's a whole other thing. I have a machine that it's called an Aqua Skipper. It's a human powered hydrofoiling machine that I can ride across the top of the water. I sometimes go surfing, I body surf. I've taken on, I did some training with Laird Hamilton and learned how to do
01:02:13
Speaker
This thing where you me and a couple guys here locally go out and about 15 feet of water and with a kettlebell and drop it down I mean constant plane. Yeah, you know like that
01:02:26
Speaker
Yeah, amazing that you mentioned Laird Hamilton, because my first guest on the podcast was Mark Sisson, who also knows Laird and Gabriella, his wife. And I've got Paul Chek on the podcast coming up. And he also is friends with Laird. So the three of you, Laird connects the dots there. That's amazing.
01:02:48
Speaker
Well, yeah, I think actually the funny thing there is Laird has a, you know, he has a place in Malibu that he's been doing his, his training method over there. And it turns out it got influenced. He uses the hot and the cold, along with water stuff. And they, he's part of a book club and they've read Born to Run. They read Natural Born Heroes. They read John Durant's book called The Paleo Manifesto. And in that book, John talks about
01:03:15
Speaker
hot and cold stuff. The reason he does is because I spent 10 years experimenting with that in Seattle and had told him a lot about it and how it had benefited me. Indeed, I really gained a lot when I couldn't have sunshine. The hot and the cold of sauna culture in Seattle was extremely useful for me. I learned a lot from it. There's a lot of interconnections there.
01:03:43
Speaker
I'm stoked to see that there are, you know, indeed it goes beyond, yeah, we're all riffing in a similar vein. Yeah, amazing, amazing stuff. Fantastic. So look, one of the stories that I know is told in Born to Run and that we didn't touch on yet is this idea of these kanggu jumps.
01:04:04
Speaker
um which which um yeah and is that is that all told uh you know sort of true to life as true as oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah do you want to explain about that yeah yeah so you know tango yeah so you know back to when i was
01:04:19
Speaker
back to wanting to really like making, okay, I'm gonna, 40 years is on the horizon. I want to master this marathon. I started researching and I like to say it's like spinal tap, you know, the movie spinal tap where they have their amplifiers made with an 11 on it so they can go to it.
01:04:38
Speaker
I thought, okay, I've got a, it's 21st century now. There must be some totally awesome new technology that will help me deal with the quote unquote impact that I need to deal with because I'm, you know, heavier, yada, yada, bigger, bigger leg or whatever. So I started doing my research and I found a couple of different things. One was some kind of almost like a,
01:05:00
Speaker
uh stilts that had springs in it and the other was this thing called kango jumps that had like leaf spring built on the bottom of a boot yeah and i saw it and i just thought that has got to be it that you know and they were touting it as the lowest impact and all this stuff and now
01:05:16
Speaker
What I discovered is that I could get about an hour in running, and then I would just reach the point where I couldn't go anymore, not because I didn't have enough juice. I had plenty of energy still, but the building pain in my back and in my feet, I mean, it just began to become intolerable. And I just wondered what kind of painkillers, what is it that these guys are doing? And then when I saw these, I started thinking, okay, I probably just need more padding.
01:05:46
Speaker
Yeah, and I'd already had the best you could get basically in the running shoe world at the time 15 years ago was which was all about padding Yeah, these can go jumps were like gonna be it so I was so stoked. They were quite expensive I finally got him the newest version that they just come out with came from Switzerland I put him on now. I think they could be fun in their own, right? I'm sure there's some I mean, I love all kinds of tools. I'm not like a Luddite
01:06:16
Speaker
But here's what I'm going to tell you. Instead of an hour, I was thinking I was going to double my running time because they were so great. But instead of an hour, it was 15 minutes later that I was feeling all these. It was such a conundrum and it really got me literally starting to want to go from 11 to zero.
01:06:39
Speaker
Yeah, right. That's been the story of my life. I'm a learner that way. I like to test out the extremes and then start tuning in to find the perfect dosage. In everything, it's like that dosage, finding the least amount that works the best in any thing.
01:07:00
Speaker
It's a great place to find, you know, a great, it's good to find the dosage. What is it that you need? And in the end, it's, there's so many variables in it. I mean, there's, there's some fundamentals, you know, just being a human being and all the rest and gravity and yada, yada. But the fact of the matter is there's the way people will solve the equation for themselves may not be the same as mine, but being able to be tuned in enough to who you, what you, how you feel and how is it, how is it working for you?
01:07:30
Speaker
and being able to stick to it to get good data for yourself. It's one of the privileges of being alive, is that we get to experiment and we get to find a better way. And it turns out we are rewarded for those journeys, those experiments. We begin to gain a mastery
01:07:57
Speaker
over understanding of ourselves. And in the end, we're always evolving and changing ourselves. So being able to reach stick to being able to enjoy the process, particularly when you're not getting, you know, misfed data. I mean, so many aspects of
01:08:14
Speaker
health and fitness have been junk science and mass merchandising. We didn't know any better, basically. We were told by very legitimate authorities that this would be the better way to go. Many, many times, unfortunately,
01:08:32
Speaker
And now we're cynical and have to become self-experimenters. The advice we were given was not being given by people who had spent eons practicing whatever it was. It was new and ultimately in many cases ineffective.
01:08:47
Speaker
I remember at one stage during my Five Fingers journey we spent some time with a marketing company and they were developing a marketing plan for us and one of the things that they came up with as a kind of strapline was that it's
01:09:06
Speaker
It's about the journey, not the destination. And that's really what you're describing, I think, there in many ways. We can have these goals, but the journey is what informs us as to how to reach those goals. And it's learning on the job, as it were, and adapting as we go.
01:09:25
Speaker
And, and, yeah, I thought I thought I was actually a perfect kind of way of describing the whole journey into barefooting or minimalism or, you know, really any any endeavor. But, yeah, that was great. Now, obviously the Kango, Kango, Kango jumps, they
01:09:43
Speaker
They are quite spring-like in their mechanism. But one of the trends that seems to have emerged after the minimalist trend peaked was maximalism. And I obviously was aware of this because of my involvement with the Vibram 5, because it was like the pendulum has swung from one extreme to the other.
01:10:05
Speaker
But I haven't really kept track of it in any great detail. What's your impression of where maximalism is at at the moment? Because just to clarify again for listeners that aren't familiar with this, these are shoes that are ultra thick. So they're much thicker cushioned shoes than standard running shoes. But the thing that they have taken from the sort of new understanding of barefoot running is
01:10:31
Speaker
the idea that there's no drop on the shoe from the heel to the forefoot, so they're trying to keep this very flat, I guess,
01:10:40
Speaker
midsole underneath the foot, but provide a lot of cushioning. Now, have you experienced that at all yourself, Ted, or? Well, no, I haven't experienced myself in the sense of any of the, I mean, dude, I'm barefoot Ted, right? I hardly, you know, I do, I have experimented with footwear in the sense that we created some tabby booties, I'm fascinated by, and I am fast, I mean, I'm sure,
01:11:07
Speaker
if I can ever get caught up with all the other, I mean, projects that I have include, we have been experimenting with what kind of shoe would Barefoot Ted make. And the joke was, we called it the Taboo. For the Tabby shoe we made, it's like, Barefoot Ted a shoe? Certainly that's Taboo. So, T-A-B-U. And I'll be working on that. But ultimately, I, you know, look,
01:11:34
Speaker
I love the idea that we're all experimenters and what works for somebody, one person may not work for another. I think certainly these bigger cushionier shoes, one thing they're not, or at least would get me concerned is if they're trying to suggest that they're fixing your foot to do something it couldn't do. I think it's more along the lines of,
01:11:58
Speaker
The people who, in the longer runs in the mountains, particularly when you're shooting down hills and doing all these kind of things, it became clear to me that, boy, it's hard to do that within the timeframe that you have to do it and not be just getting, it's hard to run light after you've been running for 20 hours or more.
01:12:22
Speaker
Yeah, it's hard to be like and I could see ultimately apparently and indeed Luna sandals even has thicker sandals We have one called the mono Gordo and I just started recognizing. Oh, okay This is kind of a piece of portable ground and for some of these people who are trying to push
01:12:39
Speaker
run faster, which in some cases would be rather unnatural, you probably wouldn't want to bomb downhills at high speed. It seems a little bit reckless and absurd.
01:12:54
Speaker
If it works and people like it, it's helping them get these races done. I'm not so shocked and terrified that such a thing exists. I think it's way better than trying to train people to think that they've got to have this or there's some kind of
01:13:16
Speaker
giant arch and pointed toe. And I mean, anytime you're effing with the foot, you might be effing around with biomechanics that are more subtle than you understand. And that's why I like ultimately footwear. If your real goal is just to have a healthy, happy foot,
01:13:33
Speaker
letting it move and breathe and splay and flex and feel is probably a good way. If you have some other goal or thing, you know, uh, you know, who knows what you're going to do. I mean, look, man, I can't tolerate rock climbing shoes. Um, they're just too, it just, you know, once it's just too much or, or even for that matter, I think part of the Kango jumps thing was they are also in kind of almost like a ski boot. And I can't, when you have a healthy foot,
01:14:01
Speaker
I mean, when my foot's healthy and let's say it's pretty, I don't carry pain or my foot is not suffering. It doesn't have like a background suffering that it's already just gotten used to.
01:14:16
Speaker
It recognizes when it's not feeling good anymore. And it's classic whenever native peoples, when they've had to conform to the conventions of society, at first, wearing the shoes is always a god-awful experience for these people. It's like, how can you do this? And then you can kind of get used to it and so forth.
01:14:37
Speaker
That's why Nike made the Nike rifts, isn't it? The rifts, I should say, because it's named after the Rift Valley, where many of their elite athletes are signed up from. And those, many of those athletes have grown up barefoot. So to put them into pair of Nike running shoes was uncomfortable. So they separated the big toe to make it more comfortable for their their sponsored athletes. And then it became a kind of trendy thing for a while. And I don't think people understood that there was a
01:15:06
Speaker
biomechanical background to that. But, you know, one of the things that I was going to mention with regards to the maximum of shoes is that I saw a study by Irene Davis, who I think you're aware of, but she's one of the leading researchers in this kind of field of running mechanics and barefoot running mechanics and so on. And she was assessing people running barefoot, running in a standard running shoe.
01:15:32
Speaker
and then running in a Maximus shoe and she was using accelerometers to measure the impact and what she found was that they had the least impact when they were barefoot, the second highest when they were in running shoe and the highest in the Maximus shoe and in fact it went so high that it went beyond what the accelerometer could measure.
01:15:53
Speaker
kind of broke the system and you know I was actually explaining this on a conversation I had with Mark Sisson for his podcast and you know the thing is is that if the nervous system can't feel where you're at in space because the whole function of the nervous system is to provide information as to where the body is at in space so that you can move effectively through your environment and if you can't feel that well then you're going to hit the ground harder until you can feel
01:16:21
Speaker
the firmness and the stability of the ground underneath your feet. Exactly. It's kind of an amusing study. The other thing that you just said a moment ago, you're talking about allowing the foot to do what it's evolved to do, to splay and to twist and to accept load and to recoil and all of these good things that happen when you're running or moving.
01:16:47
Speaker
in a relatively natural way, let's say. This sort of ties into back to the born to run story, but also to my experience with the distribution of the five fingers was that we got a phone call one time from a guy who was a podiatrist. And he'd been in the podiatry profession for 25 years and he'd done his basic training, he'd gone on and done a master's degree and he got involved in
01:17:13
Speaker
orthotics manufacturing as an advisor. Eventually he got to the point where he felt like he could produce the orthotics better himself. So he set up his own orthotics company.
01:17:25
Speaker
And then he read Born to Run. And it just completely shattered his entire paradigm. And he was brave enough to say, you know what? I'm going to do this N equals one thing that you've just been describing. I'm going to experiment with this on myself. And he went completely barefoot for three months. He didn't wear a shoe at all to work, out to dinner, to the shops. He actually got in the local newspaper because he got thrown out of their supermarket Tesco's.
01:17:54
Speaker
for being barefoot in the store. Anyway, so and he transformed his entire practice and that of course now calls himself the barefoot podiatrist and he says that from you know he said in his experience in podiatry is that
01:18:15
Speaker
most podiatrists would agree that probably around 80, 85% of people would benefit from normal floor tech. And he was totally of that opinion until he read the book Born to Run. But he said, now that figure has inverted. And in fact, he said it may even be that it's higher than the number of people that can go barefoot because exactly as you just described, when you allow the foot to do what it's evolved to do. And of course, you got to do that with some degree of
01:18:43
Speaker
know, sensibility and awareness. But, you know, it just, he says, you know, there's always going to be medical cases, people with rheumatoid arthritis or with, you know, certain medical conditions, diabetes, for example, where they do need specific supports or cushions or whatever. But he said, he thinks it's actually closer to 90 to 95% of people
01:19:06
Speaker
will completely rehabilitate if they can go barefoot or as close to barefoot as they can effectively adopt. So I just thought that was a fascinating story and a very brave man to do that because of course he's come under some fire. But a really fascinating example of there being
01:19:28
Speaker
simple solutions to what would appear to be very complex. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And matter of fact, you know, I carried over into back to the Kango jumps, you know, how and so much footwear has been about how it's going to help you return more energy and this and that. And, you know, and the concept of springs and all of this and all of those are interesting and in some sense true in the sense that
01:19:52
Speaker
That would be great if you could spring yourself and it turns out that's indeed what we are. I love getting people. In other words, if you get somebody in their bare feet on a hard surface and you ask them to pretend like they're jump roping, but before they start, you're going to tell them, I want you to jump rope
01:20:13
Speaker
and land on your heels and I want you to do it slowly. You know, jump up, land, jump up, land. And then let them feel that, the jarring and the amount of energy. And then ask them to jump rope now as if they can. I realize not everybody can do this. This was something else that I just only recently learned. But if you learn how to jump rope more, let's say four foot focus
01:20:39
Speaker
you know, you get into that right rhythm, you're loading and you become the friggin' spring. If your heel's not out in front of you and you're not landing on it, and you instead are getting, your landing is coming closer and closer to your center of gravity, more and more towards your mid-foot, such that you load your foot, your arch, your leg, your lower leg, and you become the spring, my God, that in and of itself is a, when you taste that, and when you can reduplicate that,
01:21:07
Speaker
You can't easily ever go back to running like a clot, you know, you've got to run with some fitness and it's riffing on that feeling and that's the other thing I started putting into my own practice and the reason why I keep telling people to learn how to feel, pay attention to how they're, you know, over time, how they're feeling is because when you're moving well, particularly running, it's perfectly clear. You're getting, I mean, you get into a state where
01:21:36
Speaker
you're being rewarded. And indeed, it goes so far as to being rewarded the runner's high, which is now another science. Daniel Lieberman told me about it back in the day. He said, 2011, we were giving a talk before the New York marathon. He's up.
01:21:55
Speaker
You got to Google endocannabinoid. I'm like, what? He said endocannabinoid, endogenously created cannabinoids. That is, a researcher friend of his was researching endorphins, endogenously created morphine, is more about reducing pain and inflammation
01:22:13
Speaker
Whereas the euphoria, this researcher was saying, that molecule is too big to get to the place that's causing the euphoria. What the hell is going on? Well, now if you go and study endogenously created cannabinoids, endocannabinoids, they're connected to these kind of steady state flow states that are really about smoothness. And it's not the fight or flight.
01:22:35
Speaker
It's about that euphoria that comes through the smoothness of flow movements, which I recognize in many of the things that I do. That's actually what I'm seeking when I run, when I move. I want to get into that flow state.
01:22:53
Speaker
feeling that euphoria, and that euphoria is tuning into a feeling of, I don't know, that perfect balance between, you know, contact and non-contact, so that when you're, yeah, it's an absolute, you know, it's amazing that we literally have an evolutionary tool to help us stay in that state more, or to pay attention to that state by getting rewarded with euphoria. How's that sound?
01:23:19
Speaker
That's amazing, isn't it? I think it ties in with so many different areas. I know that you know the guys at Run and Become in London and the whole Shri, Tim Noy approach to running. Of course, the name Run and Become is the name of their shop, but it's
01:23:38
Speaker
is part of their philosophy and it's this idea of reaching a transcendent state whilst running and getting into that that zone or the sense of flow and you know one of the things that struck me about that is that of course when you're in that
01:23:55
Speaker
sense of flow, then the brainwave state is down somewhere between your alpha brainwave state and your theta brainwave state. So it's, it's in a kind of meditative state. And, and so, interesting enough, that's around the sort of 7.8 Hertz range. So that's kind of waves per second is Hertz. So that if you're reading an electrical chart off of the brain, so an EEG,
01:24:23
Speaker
then you would see it's fluxing about 7.8 times per second. And that's the exact resonance of the planet, the human resonance. So you're kind of becoming a resonant with the planet's very rhythm as you're running.
01:24:38
Speaker
And you experience these transcendence sort of sensations and experiences, and you go into the state of flow. But do you remember, Ted, when Louis Liebenberg was presenting at the Barefoot Connections Conference, he was talking about how
01:24:54
Speaker
um because he was obviously talking about this persistence hunt and how you know you're chasing after this animal and you have to get into the rhythm of the animal and feel where the animal will go because you're going to lose sight of it and so of course yes you're going to track but sometimes that's not easy you can't find tracks on the ground and you have to feel whether the animal's fatiguing
01:25:15
Speaker
you have to sense which way it may have gone. But he says that, you know, when you look into getting into this kind of meditative state, and what allows you to get into that state is rhythm, breathing, and intent concentration. So, you know, he was talking about how, you know, different tribes, different indigenous people from all around the world use those things, it might be the rhythm of a drum, it might be bouncing up and down. But normally there'll be a rhythm involved, there'll often be
01:25:43
Speaker
breathing, rhythmic breathing, and there'll be perhaps something to focus on like a fire. But in this case, in the persistence hunt case, you are focusing on the prey and on your intent to, you know, hunt them down. But those three things are what take you know, help to drive you into that, that state of, I guess some people will say more of a transcendent state, but but a state of kind of connection with everything. Yes, yes, including
01:26:11
Speaker
pray. Absolutely. So I imagine you've experienced that flow state a few times in your running plan. Well, let me just put it this way. It's so important to me that I actually, if I were to write a book, it would be something along the lines of learn how to be in that state always, in everything you do. And the more you can be there, you become
01:26:39
Speaker
the most productive, happy, satisfied, valuable person to yourself that you'll ever be in anyone else around you. It really is, it's that state where all the good stuff happens actually. And the more we can stay there. And so I'm literally building on, it's a philosophy of that.
01:26:58
Speaker
Being the marker of validating the space that you're in and what it
Self-Experimentation and Body Awareness
01:27:04
Speaker
turns out for me is the most productive interesting experiences in my entire life or in that state whether they're in business my relationships my All the various things that I might do I'm using that as a barometer of determining whether I'm on the right path
01:27:22
Speaker
So it really, it's become literally a philosophy of living with its roots literally in the movement patterns that are as fundamental to our species as you can get, right? Makes sense, right? And all in all, it's like that's, and it's like our modern life, you know, so many of the benefits of modernity have also come at the cost of getting out of that rhythm, but it's not because we're not able to get back in it. That's the beautiful thing about tuning something.
01:27:49
Speaker
Once you get it's the tuning comes in it instantaneously is affecting every cell and micro one in your body all at one time and indeed our minds are doing that too how we think about what we're going to do how we Imagine what we can or cannot do will it instantaneously influence?
01:28:10
Speaker
all of those literally every cell in our body is going to be influenced by how our minds thinking in one way or another so therefore it ends up becoming extremely important it seems if our goal is to be healthy and happy to pay attention to these things and try to stay in those states as much as possible and learn how we can do it for ourselves
01:28:29
Speaker
and learn from others who have done it and sort of see where we can resonate with what they're describing and what we can do. In the end though, I think we ultimately are such complex critters that each of us have to figure it out on our own to some degree. I mean, there are easier, there are kind of like shortcuts
01:28:50
Speaker
You know you can follow a book and just go step by step and just try to stay to it and that will probably do you better off than if you did nothing but ultimately my whole goal is to try to help people realize that.
01:29:02
Speaker
If they can develop a facility for riffing on themselves, experimenting with themselves, paying attention to themselves, learning from others and applying it and seeing where it takes them, that is back to your whole thing. It's the journey. It's the journey. And you got to get good.
01:29:22
Speaker
you might as well get good at what you're gonna be doing all the time. Being in a now, going somewhere, doing something, doing that well all the time is not a bad practice and not at all. And that's what, I mean, that's my message in the end right there. For sure, for sure. And talking about the journey, you know, one of the things I remember you saying, the first time you came over to the UK to meet with us, you were talking about when you're,
01:29:47
Speaker
truly barefoot so completely barefoot and you're covering obviously miles and miles of terrain that you get a sense for the fertility of the land underneath your feet. I think you said something along those lines or you might have said the energies in the area but I think it's kind of like yeah
01:30:04
Speaker
And so I was listening to a podcast with Paul Chek, where he was interviewing a guy who I've met actually called Dr. Nick Berry. And this guy's a fascinating guy. He has a background in pharmacology and worked in pharmaceuticals for a while, but then decided it didn't really fit with his values and wanted to explore. I think he had some experiences, shamanic experiences and healing experiences.
01:30:31
Speaker
And within that exposure, he was given some essential oils. And he thought, well, hang on. I could take my experience with essential oils and my experience with pharmaceuticals to make super high grade essential oils, which are all organic. And he uses various resonant frequencies to give them certain properties, et cetera, et cetera. So he's a real technical guy.
01:31:00
Speaker
But he said, he was, so it's being interviewed by Paul and Paul said something, or he was explaining that, you know, where do you, he's asking, where do you put these, where do you rub these oils on the body? And so Dr. Berry's saying, well, you know, you rub it here, you rub it there, but the feet is a really good place to start. And he said, you know, I can't think where I've read it or who told me this, but the feet are believed to have sensory cells in them that almost kind of
01:31:29
Speaker
pick up on the smell of a given of a given oil. I've never heard of that because you know instead of anatomy that doesn't come up at all of course. But it seems like there's some connection there and so I dropped an email to Paul to say well you know that's interesting because Ted says this.
01:31:48
Speaker
When you think that it's our only point of contact with the planet for most of the day, it makes sense. It totally makes sense. I got blown away recently with Paul Stamets, this guy that's a mushroom dude. What's fascinating about that is how mycelium on the outer edges are really doing this fine-tune experimentation with what's there and what it needs to do in order to
01:32:16
Speaker
And we're closer to mushrooms than we are to even plants, according to Paul Stamets. And that's fascinating. And then in the end, our feet are our roots. These are our mycelium. All the nerves that we talked about in our feet, along with our hands, our genitals, our head, whatever, but our feet are really, really
01:32:37
Speaker
obviously capable of knowing more about what's going on than we can say in words, right? There's some kind of data it collects that is helpful for the body. And what I was learning with a lot of my bear feeding experiences was, yeah, you do get to, you can develop a,
01:33:03
Speaker
If you spent a lot of time barefooted on different pathways and different places, you do sort of, I mean, it's remarkable how much data you're collecting. I mean, basic stuff is, of course, the hardness, the softness, the textures are one thing, the hot or the cold of it, the hollowness or the, you know, there's just all this whole repertoire of feelings and data that the body's collecting and
01:33:30
Speaker
and aware of. But undoubtedly, there's got to be something to all the various pressure points and all the various things. And if the foot isn't getting a chance to experience itself in the way that it's capable of, certainly that's a loss, right? It's like if you wear blinders all the time,
01:33:55
Speaker
you are going to be able to be, it's not like you can't have a happy, healthy life and not see. You will find ways to get around it. But nobody would say, hey, but I don't want to see. If they could see, why wouldn't they? And so I think of looking at your feed
01:34:15
Speaker
and moving and reconnecting with them, the health of your feet and the comfort of your feet are going to tell you a hell of a lot about the rest of the body because it's the foundation of everything that you're going to do. If you don't have your feet and there are, unfortunately, situations where people don't, well, guess what? That's not like something they wish on anyone else.
01:34:41
Speaker
Having strong, healthy feet is the foundation of everything you're going to do when it comes to movement as a human being. And if they're not healthy and happy, you've got something to start working on. You've got something for sure. You've got a project.
01:35:01
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Influence and Story of Manuel Luna
01:35:02
Speaker
So Ted, I wanted to just touch on the whole Manuel Luna story, because of course, you've mentioned Manuel Luna already in the book Born to Run. And of course, your sandal company is named after him. Could you give a brief background as to why you named the sandal company after him?
01:35:21
Speaker
Well, Manuel Luna is a personal hero of mine. He's, we're essentially the same age. He's grown up in another, basically another planet, you could say. And he ended up becoming, he and I befriended each other. We have developed a
01:35:40
Speaker
friendship with each other over the course of over a decade of hanging out with each other now. He's the one who made me my first, you know, who really took the time to help me make my first pair of Warachi's back in 2006.
01:35:55
Speaker
And I've been basically riffing on that ever since then and playing with that. And we've actually recently, starting in 2017, we found out that he hadn't really been back to the States since he'd come down here to run those two times in the Leadville 100. It hadn't been much.
01:36:15
Speaker
and found out that he wanted to come again. So we got a lawyer and helped him get his passport and get all that. And he comes periodically to different events and gets to bask in his fame a little bit of being known. He's a well-known person, but more importantly, he comes and we love, he makes, we set up a sandal making like traditional style, not the,
01:36:44
Speaker
Luna's, I mean we have traditional style sandals which are a little bit more complicated to operate, you could say, taking a little more skill and a little more, but I think there's something to be said about learning how to take a, you know, basically a
01:37:00
Speaker
flat piece of material in a leather lace and learn how to tie it on your foot in such a way that you can actually go and do, run a trail race and do it in a pair of footwear that's quite an old style. He comes and he does that and I think he's able to make in about a day the cash money he needs for almost a year's worth of stuff that he does down in the canyons because
01:37:28
Speaker
In the end, he's got quite a bit of property and he's quite a good farmer. As long as it's raining, that part's all great. What he doesn't have are money that he needed for his daughter. They have a cell phone now and they needed a solar panel.
01:37:47
Speaker
You can't trade. It's hard to trade stuff for stuff like that. Early on, people would say, hey, what are you doing for Manuel Luna? It was like this automatic assumption that people who are not living in the modern world suddenly need a lot of help. It turns out they do. If there's a drought and you have no food, you've got to feed people.
01:38:10
Speaker
But the Taro Amara, these traditional living Native Americans down there, they're living that way because they can. They're proud of how they're able to live. They have a living culture. They have their own lands and they have the magic to be able to turn water and sunlight into food and children.
01:38:34
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, you know the basic thing, you know, it's like, you know, it's like, wow, you know, yeah, yeah, it's like, wow, pretty awesome, because you know, I can't do that. So yeah, putting that all into perspective is in the end, who's helping whom, I think in the end,
01:38:54
Speaker
treating everybody as equals and giving people opportunities and hanging out with cool people that's what you know and celebrating with other people that you trust and love that's kind of the kind of relationships that are on equal footing and nobody's really like you know better off than anyone else if they're being fed and happy and healthy and I always realized there was all that dilemma of like
01:39:17
Speaker
What do you give to whom for what? Have you ever studied the people who win the lotteries? Sometimes when you start getting something out of nothing, it ends up being just sometimes as big of a burden as if you have nothing. It's a weird contrast there.
01:39:37
Speaker
That all being said, every year I'm still encouraging more and more people as the canyons become safer. It doesn't make any sense. The cartels don't need to grow marijuana down in the canyons anymore because we have our own little industry here in America now. And then the opium poppies, it's easier to make fentanyl out of wheat in Tijuana than have to go down.
01:40:05
Speaker
the kind of the narrative wells are leaving the canyons more and more. That had been a problem. The border between two gangs runs along the Sinaloan and the Chihuahua border, which happens to run through the area where Manuel Luna lives. And that's kind of like petering out. The next wave of benefit for all of the people is eco-tourism and getting more people to go down to just see the wonder and the beauty of such a huge and beautiful natural landscape
01:40:35
Speaker
So I'll be down there in October, coppercanyons.com has this friend of mine down there, it's vetted, a lot of connections, is doing basically a package deal where you basically fly to wherever, Chihuahua. And then the whole vacation from there is paid for in one price. And there's a stage race, there's a hundred mile over, there's a marathon.
01:41:02
Speaker
all down in near Ricquet where the Caballo Blanco races, which I go to every, it's the first Sunday of March every year. It's just, yeah. So my relationship with Manuel Luna is a relationship with my hero, which is a relationship with his people, which is a building and long-term relationship with giving opportunities and opening up
01:41:33
Speaker
equal respect and communication and connection with a whole group of people that used to be as far away as you could possibly be and still live in the modern world. They're still far away, but there's more and more opportunities to go and meet with them. And believe me, they are absolutely to be
01:41:54
Speaker
To be respected for who you are, to have people recognize you for who you are and respect you for that, everybody can benefit and enjoys that happening to them. And Manuel Luna is certainly one of them. Him and his sons, he's just such a sweetheart guy.
01:42:15
Speaker
And so he's had many tragedies. He's lost a son to murder. His wife was recently killed, struck by lightning while they were working up on one of their higher pieces of property. Yeah. But still, he's, you know, he's an amazing character. So yeah, that's my story. Yeah. So yeah, we do support a little, it's called the Manuel Luna Education Fund.
01:42:43
Speaker
One of the things where it's a, it's a, it's a private fund that we use to sort of give scholarship money and also help with some schools, thought of motto schools. They, they have their own needs out there, but that's, you know, I'm looking for it. Actually, I'm looking forward to continuing to play my small role in sending good energy down there, getting people to visit down there and, and some of the other things we do. So that that's my story on that.
01:43:07
Speaker
Yeah, that's great. And so the, you know, the Luna Sandals company itself, you know, one of the one of the key tenets of that also is, is minimalism in terms of what the sandals actually made from, isn't it? So I remember you explaining, explaining the sort of lace system and all this kind of stuff. So can you just briefly explain that?
01:43:30
Speaker
Well, yeah, so lunasandals.com is the website where you can see all the different sandals. But basically we, yeah, looking for the simplest solution that works the best, it turns out that kind of design has popped up all over the world, as you can imagine. And the darumara, they're one of the groups that are still using them in their daily life, called the warachi or an akarachi to them. But we've, you know, it really is about,
01:43:58
Speaker
It's a kind of a style that really gets it down to one strap over the top of the foot, one strap around the back of the heel, one strap from the other side, and then adjustable at every angle. And our newest sandals called the Luna winged edition, they have these wings that one continuous strap of material goes through on each side. And ultimately people,
01:44:28
Speaker
You know, the hands connected to the brain that's connected to the foot can actually get those all adjusted in such a way that they're just like perfect and then slip on and off-able. And that's how I've improved, let's say, and made for modern people, a footwear that's slip on and off-able because of the way, you know, tying
01:44:47
Speaker
something your foot is great and learning that skill I highly recommend but it's very impractical if you're in a situation where you're trying to get things on and off and so we've just riffed on that design and I think if you look at what we make today 10 years plus later of continuously making sandals and evolving them and
01:45:07
Speaker
reaching a world audience, I think we're just getting to the place where we can say, yeah, we're experts in this field now. Yeah. Yeah, fantastic. And one of those one of those models is called the the mono. And I mentioned I did a kind of preview podcast just to let people know what was coming up in the forthcoming episodes. And I mentioned that we would be having you on. And I started to I think I said something about
01:45:37
Speaker
You being what was it? I can't remember how I brought it up, but I said, you know that you I mentioned the monkey thing, you know He's a you know, a bit of a monkey or something. That's right. And I said, but I'll let him explain that to you So go on just just just briefly tell the story behind that right? Well, so in the end many people in the book born run You'll learn about it to my spirit animal quote-unquote is El mono hablador the speaking monkey. Okay, and
01:46:07
Speaker
Is one way to say monkey in Spanish and so it just turns out it's a it's a great little war word that also has the word moon in it and you know, we're gonna samples moon is in monkey or in mono and we constantly riffing on the fun of that, you know that when when and then we played around it and
01:46:24
Speaker
When Manuel's making me my first pair of huaraches, I'm barefooted sitting next to him holding a banana, so the banana looks like a moon, and on and on it goes. We've had a lot of fun riffing on the monkey.
01:46:40
Speaker
concept. And then I have this straight line, I have what's called the Simeon crease on my hand, which is a straight line rather than a kind of a separate. And I had some interesting, apparently in Raromudi culture, that has some kind of mark of, you know, it's definitely a benefit to have something like that monster short. So I'm Ilmono Ablodora. Thank you for listening. Brilliant, brilliant. So
01:47:06
Speaker
To round off on a more philosophical note, one of the things I remember you saying in one of your talks here was how we seem to have this idea ingrained into our minds that we're somehow
Cultural Narratives and Body Perception
01:47:21
Speaker
broken by default. So when we're talking about the foot, the foot's broken by default. It needs support. It needs cushioning. It doesn't do what it's supposed to do. And indeed, some of the figures back that up from the perspective that a very high percentage of people, maybe as many as 80% over pronate, which is essentially the body not effectively resisting gravity in a dynamic environment, so as you're walking or running.
01:47:51
Speaker
But it seems like this has been kind of jumped upon by shoe manufacturers and often by medical people with, I'm sure, good intentions. But one of the things that struck me, and I think we chatted about this, Ted, is that
01:48:08
Speaker
you know, it really fits with this whole kind of cultural narrative that we have. And, you know, one of the things that Paul Czech and I have written about recently, but we've also talked about at length is the notion that, you know, when you live in a society that is from a Christian background, and essentially you are born a sinner, then, you know, unless that's the narrative of the religion, within
01:48:38
Speaker
You're already under the impression that you're born broken in some way. So it seems like the foot situation and the way we perceive our feet and the way medicine perceives our feet is almost a reflection of a deeper underlying set of beliefs, which, interesting enough, when you study consciousness and you study the way that the human brain learns early in life, it learns in a largely unconscious way. And so it picks up on
01:49:07
Speaker
the habits and rituals and practices of the culture that it lives in and the fascinating thing about that of course is that our parents did the same and their parents did the same and their parents did the same so actually the unconscious kind of perpetuation of ideas can mean that a lot of the kind of programming that we're working with
01:49:30
Speaker
is programming that is, I wouldn't say ancient, but several generations old. So you don't have to go back too many generations and you have essentially a population of God-fearing Christians in the UK at least, and in various parts of the world. But so, you know, one of the things that struck me about being barefoot is that
01:49:53
Speaker
When you go barefoot, you suddenly get this connection with the ground, with the Mother Earth, as opposed to the Father in the sky. So it brings you back to this state where you actually are engaged with your environment, as opposed to being stuck in your head.
01:50:11
Speaker
and I think one of the big challenges in the modern day as Eckhart Tolle likes to talk about is that we're constantly exploring off into the future in our minds and going back to the past in our minds and we're very rarely present but one of the things that being barefoot does is it brings you into the present by default you have to be conscious and aware and paying attention you can't be drifting off
01:50:35
Speaker
and worrying about the emails that need to be sent or the bills that need to be paid, you have to be present there in the moment. And I think that the value of that to our current society is not to be underestimated.
01:50:50
Speaker
Can you reflect on that at all? Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, I totally agree with you. I think that everything you said really is quite interesting for sure. And indeed, I find that, yeah, there is so many religions and sacred practices involved, you know, taking your shoes off anyway, before you enter, before you this, you know, and so there's that element of it. I mean, there's just so much to it. I mean,
01:51:20
Speaker
I couldn't agree with you more. So many other indigenous groups, they don't start with that premise. They start with the premise that everything they need already exists. They just need to find it or rediscover it or whatever. And I think there's so much to be said when
01:51:43
Speaker
If you start out with the wrong premise, you might make a lot of bad decisions. And certainly it's time to sort of wash away any of the elements of any of our religious or spiritual traditions that try to suggest that we are
01:52:01
Speaker
broken by default, let's say. It's just not accurate and it doesn't make any sense to make people think that way because then they are kind of like dependent on somebody else or something else to take care of them or help them get to where they need to go. But most people have known and recognized the sacredness of their body and the sacredness of the earth that it's enough.
01:52:27
Speaker
And tuning into that more, and I think that's another aspect of it all, is realizing that we, in a sense, being alive in a body on a planet at any moment
01:52:43
Speaker
recognizing as sacred, as a beautiful, sacred, amazing, it's even more supernatural than supernatural in a way, thing that we are, and being in that mindset and riffing on that for a while will absolutely change the decisions you make in any now you happen to be in, right? If you're in a now and your premise is that you're broken and there's
01:53:04
Speaker
you're terrible and you're... I mean, you'll probably make decisions that are not particularly, we wouldn't vote for from being in the perspective out of that. So playing, you know, being, yeah, and the idea of being spending more time in the now and getting more comfortable with being there.
Barefoot Movement and Holistic Presence
01:53:24
Speaker
Bare feet are a great tool. You go move around in your bare feet in nature.
01:53:30
Speaker
you will be connected and you will be there. And if you're not, you'll get a happy reminder of why you should be there. And that's such a beautiful analog of how life really is. Be there now. Be there now and get good at doing that. And you are set for eternity.
01:53:48
Speaker
Don't be there. Well, you're going to be in your head just like you said, and that could be good. That could be bad, but that can get bad real fast. And, you know, when you go down that road, probably you don't want to stay there long. So come on back, take your feet off, take a deep breath and go get some sunshine and wind in your face. And you're probably going to be a better off camper than if you do just about anything else.
01:54:14
Speaker
absolutely absolutely and it strikes me also that you know when you're running barefoot or in minimalist shoes that it turns the run into something that you know with that presence that's required it turns it into something that's
01:54:27
Speaker
not just a musculoskeletal and a cardio respiratory workout, but a workout for the nervous system. It's a game in paying attention and concentration. It's very much like a sport, more so than traditional road running in a pair of cushioned shoes.
01:54:46
Speaker
You have to be paying attention and if you lose attention for just a split second just like in a sport you can be enough to lose the game in that instance you might lose the run by trading on a stone trading on a roots.
01:54:59
Speaker
not spotting a rock that you're going to stub your toe on, that kind of thing. Oh, totally. Totally. Matter of fact, if you go to barefootted.com, there's a photo of me running on this little wooden beam near my house where there are all these broken rocks that I love to run on barefoot or move over barefoot. It's like getting into that state where every footfall is almost like a chess move, but the amazing, when you get into the zone, the amazing
01:55:27
Speaker
ease at which you can get into that. Once you're in that flow state, the amazing ease of which you can make these decisions in real time by just being there. I mean, that's one of my favorite training things is running over broken rocks. That will get you very tuned, very, very tuned. If you do it well, it just feels, it's just like there's no better. I'm going to go do that when we're done talking today, actually.
01:55:55
Speaker
Excellent, excellent. So it just really comes back to, you know, being present is essentially giving you the kind of getting into that sense of the joy of running for running sake, or moving for moving sake. And again, it comes back to this thing about it being the journey, you know, it's the actual joy of the journey,
01:56:15
Speaker
Rather than I think in our culture, we're so focused on results and so focused on times on distances. Can you run this far? Can you run it in this time? But actually just the joy of the journey, the joy of participating, of being part of a moving, living, breathing planet. That's right. So, yeah, yeah.
01:56:34
Speaker
Excellent. Well, Ted, I'd love, you know, I want to thank you for all of your amazing insights and the wealth of experience that you've
Conclusion and Farewells
01:56:44
Speaker
had. If people want to get hold of a pair of Lunas or learn more about you and your journey, what would you recommend to them?
01:56:52
Speaker
Well, lunasandals.com, we ship all over the world. We have distributors in different people in different parts of the world. In the UK, lunasandals.com, you can learn a lot there. I think it even has store locators or distributor locators or whatever country you're in.
01:57:12
Speaker
BarefootTed.com is just the little site that I, you know, it's been going for so many years. There's a link to like my old blog there. But in the end, these days I'm doing, you know, the Instagram and the Facebook and the social media stuff because, well, you know, it's a way for me. I'm more and more starting to
01:57:34
Speaker
want to share more of what I've learned now. And actually, I just had that story published in the latest in the book series called Chicken Soup for the Soul. In June, they came out with the Running for Good series. And it's 100 stories from 100 different runners. And my contribution to that, called The Roots of Barefoot Ted, I think anyone would enjoy
01:58:04
Speaker
it gives you a very good insight into
01:58:07
Speaker
how it is that I got to thinking the way I do and became who I am through sort of looking at my background, my roots in California indigenous culture, hippie culture, surf culture, all of those things influenced me to be able to make, become the kind of person that I am and see and do the kind of things that I've done that ultimately for me at least I'm satisfied to have succeeded at doing it is the way that I have up until now.
01:58:36
Speaker
Yeah fantastic and that's a great little piece actually I've read that so I think I said to you Chris McDougall's got competition. Yeah he even he told me did you uh when he read it he said um was this hard for you to write did this thing I said he says he says if you can write like this you've got more to more to and more to say and the truth is you know I think I will
01:58:59
Speaker
Even though I hesitate, I hate writing because I hate having to sit still for that long. I'm much more an improvisational jazz musician than I am a classicist. But on the other hand, I'm starting to realize now as I get older, I'm starting to feel more comfortable to share some things that I really truly believe in that I think could be helpful for others.
01:59:24
Speaker
and anything and everything basically we shared today are some of those insights that I've been able to accumulate from paying attention for so long now.
01:59:33
Speaker
Yeah, fantastic, fantastic. Well thank you very much for your time Ted, really appreciate it. It's always great to catch up with you and hear your stories. They never get dull and there's always new ones to throw into the mix as well, so really appreciate it. Yeah, well thank you for inviting me and I look forward, I'm sure one of these days we'll be meeting face-to-face again. I'll have to come and visit England again for some time. Yeah, for sure.
01:59:59
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Excellent. All right, we'll take care and we'll speak soon. Adios. Adios. Thank you for listening to FC2O. If you enjoyed that and found it useful, please do feel free to share it with your friends, colleagues and loved ones. If you'd like to learn more about Bedford Ted's adventures, you can read or listen to the book Born to Run from Amazon or Audible, or you can visit lunasandles.com.
02:00:25
Speaker
If you'd like to get hold of a pair of your very own piece of portable ground, as Ted describes them, then you can enter the code FC2015, that's FC20, as in the letter, 1515, as in the numerals, at checkout to give you 15% off until the end of July 2019. If you're listening to this podcast after that date, please just use FC20, which will give you 10% off the normal retail price. Thanks very much for listening. We look forward to seeing you next time.