Sensory Deprivation Chambers for Your Feet

Over the past few years I’ve heard a name come up from many coaches and physical therapists whom I respect. I finally went to relentless.com and ordered Phillip Beach’s Muscles and Meridians. Beach is a DO who specializes in the integrated way the body functions. Put another way, he looks at how everything works together to help us move, be stable and navigate the world.

I flipped through the pages this morning as I opened up the package and the first headline that caught my eye was this:

“Free your feet from the sensory deprivation chambers.”

Beach goes on to explain that by wearing shoes, for fashion opposed to function, has reduced our feet to a “jumble of oversensitive, delicate and disordered tissue.”

He makes the comparison of wearing a mouth guard over your teeth for 40 years. The bones would become misaligned and sensitive to normal function when you took it off.

Just this weekend I saw a friend's one and a half year old running around. I complimented his shoes, saying they looked nice and flat. The mother responded by saying she didn’t think there was enough arch support for him.

The point Beach is making, throughout the whole book, not just this small mention of feet, is that we’re an integrated system. Everything works together to function and move. Everything is there for a reason. Blocking the sensory information we can get from out feet has negative effects up the chain. 

The nerves that irrervate the bottoms of our feet are the same nerves that innervate the deep muscles of our pelvis and lower back. Spending most of our day in shoes that desensitize our feet can have negative impacts on our lower backs.

You don’t need to ditch your shoes all together. That’s not the point I’m making. I am however hoping to shed light on to the fact that we’re integrated. Our bodies don’t work in muscular groups like the bodybuilding training plans I started following when I was 15. We’re much more complex than that. 

Justin Miner

@justinminergain