"put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground."
-- God to Moses, Exodus 3
"Only he who sees, takes off his shoes"
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Check out this video comparing the strides of a woman running barefoot and with shoes. She was given no instruction or anything, just told to run.
It is a rather clunkily produced but nonetheless interesting piece narrated by a doctor from a New Jersey sports medicine center. He appears to be one doctor who is persuaded of the benefits of running barefoot -- but the video establishes, whatever you believe from his narration, that there are definitely striking differences in how the same woman unconsciously changes her running form depending on whether or not she has shoes on her feet. When she is barefoot, the spring-like cushioning of the front part of the foot and the arch is very apparent, and it's apparent how with shoes that is replaced by the cushioning of the shoe, and how the shock aborbsion works just completely differently. According to the barefooting theory, the front part of the foot and the arch evolved as an effective spring to cushion the leg while running, while shoes give the perceptual illusion of cushioning while not actually providing enough of it. The difference in her strides also seems to confirm barefooter theories that the dense cluster of nerve endings on the bottoms of our feet serve the purpose of unconsciously guiding the brain in determining how we run.
Of course, nothing definitive is established by a video of one person, but it is highly suggestive. (From Barefoot Ted blog)
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