getting injured is probably the best thing that happened to you. In fact, you may want to go out and get injured today. We're going to find out more about that on today's episode, not episode, episode of the movement movement podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a healthy, strong body starting with the feet versus those things down there are your foundation for everything about that. We break down the probably end of the theology.
Sometimes the outright lies you've heard about what it takes to run to walk the hike to play a lift to do cross it yoga, whatever it is you like to do on your feet and to do that enjoyably and healthily and dimension enjoyably because if you're not having fun, do something else until you are. I'm Stephen Sashan from zero shoes.com, your host and we call this the movement movement podcast because we're creating a movement about movement. The creating a movement means that involves you. I'll come back to that in a second.
The about movement is that we believe that we can help people rediscover that the natural movement is the obvious, better, healthy choice the way people currently think of natural food. The movement part of the natural movement means that you are the community that spreads this message and when we hit a certain critical mass, eventually everyone's going to remember this and it's not even discovering it anew. It's the way human beings are living since the beginning of human beings. If you want to know how to be part of the movement, it's really simple, go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com.
That's where you can find all the previous episodes and all the different ways you can interact with this content. You can find us on YouTube and Instagram and Facebook and all the different places the podcast is. And of course, review, like, share, give us a thumbs up, hit the bell on YouTube and short. If you want to be part of the tribe, please subscribe.
So let's jump in with this question. Do you want to go out and get injured and to answer this question, we have Petra Fisher on here. Petra, how are you? What are you doing here?
I see, and it's delightful to be here. I am a person who got injured. It changed my life. So it's good to be talking about this today.
So we before we get into talking about you getting injured and why you think injury can be a really valuable thing. Actually two thoughts. I'm going to do it in this order. It's funny.
The way we talked about saying this was, what's the simplest thing we can say in the most incendiary way possible? And I'm reminded of a friend of mine who gave me that idea who was going on at Oprah. And I said, he's a psychologist. And I said, how are you going to say on Oprah?
He said, I'm going to say that an affair is the best thing to happen in your marriage. And everyone's head is going to explode. And I'm going to say, well, what that means is if someone had an affair, there was some unspoken truth that led to that. And if you can have articulated and have the courage to articulate it, that could actually resolve things and make your relation to be better than it was.
But here's the other thing before you get started in your white injury. So awesome story. Often because it's the movement movement podcast, we ask people if they want to share something that people could do to move, whether they're walking around or in their car, they're probably not their car right now, or just sitting around. So I don't put you on the spot.
We didn't prefer this. Can you think of a movement thing that you would want to share with people? And if you can't, that's cool. We can go on.
But I thought I'd throw it out there and, you know, push under the highlights. I can always thank the other movement. Thank you. Movement is what I do, Stephen.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'm going to share.
It's such a simple thing. And anyone can do it in your doorway. It is one of the best stretches that you can do. And all you need to do is need to be a solid doorway.
You don't want to flimsy doorway for this. Nice solid doorway with something to grab onto. You snake your hand onto the other side of the doorway and you grab on and you start stepping your feet into the doorway and leaning away from the doorway until you get a nice stretch happening at your shoulders. And then you turn yourself sideways and that is going to help you undo all that tightness.
Yeah, you're totally nailing it. I love it. Just leaning backwards is going to be a way to get some of that awesome hanging juice into your shoulders. So they miss out when you're on computers and meetings all day.
I love that because so Elena and I, when we're not at the office, you will find us in what is our second bedroom, which is where we have our television. So it's our guest bedroom slash television room. And we have a chin up bar. There's a bathroom as part of this bedroom.
So we have a chin up bar there. And as we walk in, we always do a stretch, but this is perfect for those times where you don't have something like that. And just that hanging stretching to open up their shoulders is so, so good. And most people don't think of that.
So that's the other side of your body than your feet, but also really, really overlooked. So love it. Cool. All right.
So jumping in. So let's chat about injuries and how wonderful they can be. All right. So let's frame that a little bit.
I obviously know I want to get injured. And I certainly didn't. And I have a long history of chronic injuries every time I tried doing any kind of sports. And the reason it's being wonderful for me was because one of the most recent round of really difficult injuries was when back in my corporate days, I was a lawyer working in Toronto doing the most corporate evil type of law you could imagine.
And my sister was running and I have flat feet. And so I started getting up all the running injuries you could possibly imagine. And it was really frustrating. I'm going to pause saying, you're not getting injuries because you had flat feet.
Speaking of someone who had lifelong comic level flat feet, but nonetheless, just want to clarify for people who might have flat feet thinking that we're saying that flat feet causes injuries, which were not so anyway, continuing. I brought that up because I was given all the motion control shoes that existed in the world. Everybody wanted to fix my running for me with the shoes. And it wasn't until I started going deep into the world of manual and movement therapy that I started realizing that there was something much more fundamentally wrong with me.
And it wasn't really me. It was just because I didn't know the technique and I didn't have the right shoes. And it led to me going down this pathway, turning into a movement coach instead of a lawyer, which has truly been the best thing that's ever happened to me. So what kind of injury were you getting?
And then and what was I mean, was there kind of a pivotal moment that was the and one of those things with the angels blaring and the sky lightning and does flying overhead and chocolate flowing and fountains and what were the injuries? What was that transition moment? What was the first thing that you did? I sort of had, it was all of them.
I had shin splints. I had nerve issues. I had plantar fasciitis. I started having some hip problems.
Like everything that I did seemed to be a thing. There was less a single moment when I was like, this has to change. Actually, that's not true. There were two moments.
Number one was the first time I went to a rehab pilates specialist. And she showed me the way that I stood. And the way I was standing was the way that most people who wear shoes with heels stand habitually. So when you come out of your shoes with heels, you still stand like you're wearing heels.
That tends to carry forward into your body if you sit a lot and wear heels. So realizing that my pelvis was way forward and squashing my feet all the time was a huge like ball moment. Like one of those moments when you realize that by changing how you move, you can change everything and the heel and fix yourself. So that was a huge one.
And then the second light bulb moment was after I was doing this rehab pilates and seeing the surface, I was getting really interested in bodies and I started a personal training and I had a client who needed some help in her squat. So I started googling and I found Katie Bowman's classic blog articles on how the squat better and my life changed forever. All I wanted to do was to learn from Katie and that is all I did for the next several years. And so that was really the moment when I was like, oh my god, how you move changes everything.
Squatting is so funny. I think about how do you, I know it's a bloated question. So I'm about to turn 58. And the amount of time that I spend sitting on the floor squatting, doing all these things getting up and down, every almost every time I do it, I think that when I was growing up, I didn't know anyone who did that.
My parents didn't do that. No other friends did that. It's such a, you know, it's so common everywhere else in the world. And it's something that for whatever reason I've always done a lot of my friends do as well.
I mean, I got one of us first living in Manhattan. I don't think I owned any furniture because I couldn't afford it. So I have futon on the floor. I had some other pillows on the floor and seemed totally fine.
People of course, many people thought it was crazy. Other side was super cool. So you started squatting. And that's still how it's going to be.
Oh yeah, absolutely. I started doing everything Katie Bowman said to do. So I started with research about squatting and to help my client work on her squatting technique. But I don't know how familiar you are with Katie's work, but she's a bio-mechanist who sort of combines this idea that natural movement is the movement humans should have the same way that natural food is the food that humans should have with a sort of a series of small corrective exercises to restore the capacity to move in those ways.
So most of us, you know, as you know, we'll struggle to squat well because we're missing the capacity without doing the build up first. So what happened with that one client then? We fixed a squat. And she and I are friends to this day.
We worked together for a long time after that. She doesn't think fun food is fine. Well, and talk about then what happened for you moving forward. Just, you know, there was the light bulb moment, if you will, starting to learn to squat and start into research, you know, what changed?
I have my own version of this of learning about my running form and how that corrected my injuries and then I became a faster runner and master's all American sprinter and blah, blah, blah. But it's a question that people ask all the time, like, how long is it going to take for me to transition? Or what do I need to do next? And people are often looking for a very linear program.
And I was very idiosyncratic. You know, there's, there's too much individual difference. But I'm curious both what happened for you and then what you discovered as you've been working with people. Yeah, sure.
Well, I found Katie when I was still working in the corporate world, so I transitioned from law and I was working in a government office at that point doing policy work. So I studied Katie's work and I joined her certification program probably about a week after that. So I was studying and working. So I got a standing desk at work and I convinced my entire office they should all have standing desk.
So I'm sure that my managers weren't super happy about it. I started teaching at the office. So I was all in right away. So I was really cool to sort of practice that and learn it.
And I got certified by Katie about six months afterwards. So I switched from corporate world into movement coaching and pretty much committed kind of my life and my business both moving more naturally and to teaching. So that was a, it was a double edged sword because I wasn't certified in anything like Pilates or yoga. I was certified with Katie Bowman who nobody had heard about that stage.
So I really had to go through a long period of just trying to get this message out. And it's so exciting to see, you know, your work and what other people are doing this field now because this word is getting out now, which is great. But I started teaching and it's been a really interesting process for me because I am definitely a very hyper mobile person, typically much harder to work with than a stiff person. So my injury healing has been still a slow process.
But what's cool about it is that you really get to know yourself and you get to know your body and your movement in a way that you never do if you take it off or granted. So now I'm at the stage kind of coming out the other end where I'm able to do more athletic type movements where my body's more balanced and able and capable and a bunch of issues that just kind of cleared up along the way. You know, I really don't have any of the conditions. I mean, those all cleared up very quickly.
I had pelvic floor stuff going on that I didn't even realize was pelvic floor stuff. I just thought it was cool. Even though they have pelvic floor, you know, you know, if you say pelvic floor to many people, they will think that's what you discover when you fall on your hip, onto the ground. Not your pelvic floor.
Yeah. So, you know, I was like, Oh my God, not only am I learning how to fix pelvic floor issues, but I have one. But that's been cool because that's really cleared up completely and that cleared up very quickly as well. And what's so neat is that, you know, even even if you haven't cleared up all of your stuff, as you do this transition, you get all these tools that you feel like you have a path forward.
You've got much more empowered and able to fix your things. So I think that's kind of where I'm at in my journey. And we've really transitioned kind of to the deep end of national movement now. So we, I was teaching in Toronto for about five years.
And then we bought a Toyota 4Runner and went traveling. So for the last two years, we've been camping and living outdoors and surfing and hiking and doing all the things that might be could never have done when I was living in appeals to use as corporate lawyer. Well, and I'm sure, you know, like that lifestyle that ever you miss putting on essentially a suit of tie and rid of shoes and, you know, hanging out in office, I mean, my God, who wouldn't? Pencil skirt, Stephen.
Pencil skirt. Oh, pencil skirt. Yeah, that's really. Elena and I were affected, like, retired from 2000 to 2009.
And I say to people, you know, you need to have some time where you're not working for a living because then you really appreciate what it means to not work for a living. And sometimes it can take like a couple of years to get over that idea that you should be or need to be or whatever it is. A friend of mine called me, Elena, we're staying with a friend who had a house right on the water in, in, in, on the big island of Hawaii. And a friend of mine was talking about, Hey, you know, if you do this one thing for a couple hours of day, you can make extra $10,000 a month.
I said, Brian, I don't think you get it. The gap between doing a little every day and doing nothing every day is infinite. And you can't get me a bad. Now I say that.
And in 2009, we had this crazy idea to start zero shoes and you know, we've never worked harder or more in our life. So it's been very satisfying. But I do, I do enjoy not having to do anything part of my life. Well, the irony is that I actually have been working the entire time on the road.
So my boyfriend has been surfing and living the entire life. But I'm lucky because I really love it. So I'm still coaching because we've had very internet internet, all of my work now is online program creation. So I have a membership program where I teach people how to move better.
I'm in the middle of creating a super sites like a signature program. It's a build better feat foot strengthening course that's a mashup of footwork and hip work and walking skills and very excited about that. So a that's super exciting be obviously, give you a post it so we can share that with people because that's brilliant. It really is amazing that there are so many programs that are whether it's a program program or you know, fill in the blank for whatever different exercise programs there are.
But people don't get the both the simplicity and the value of an actual foot based program until they experience it. And I think maybe this is our next thing if you will is to have foot based programs be part of what's available at gyms and spas and places and it becomes something that people recognize as valuable and experience the benefits thereof. That's a whole other thing of what would it take to make this ubiquitous to make it so that people recognize that this is a thing and know how to find it. Yeah, well, you know, I think that you were so right earlier when you said that everybody's journey is unique and there are certainly people who can transition to barefoot and do it smart you know, don't overdo things but transition to barefoot without doing any foot exercises at all.
And there are other people from whom you're just not going to get the best results when you do that. So I think that some attention to it's a good idea for everybody and you're going to optimize your results if you start paying attention to your mobility and stability and training barefoot. Like it's incredible the difference that you can make. So yeah, I mean, it's your foundation, right?
It's crazy not to work on your feet. You know, I don't know if you know the research, there's two women who I met at the International Foot Reniacal Biocanetics Conference. One is in Brazil, her name is Isabel Sacco and Isabel. Her research was that she literally took a like a $7 minimalist shoe from this made in Brazil put it on a bunch of elderly women and so just wear these and what she was looking at is Neocir arthritis and found that many of them cleared up mostly because one of the things that causes Neocir arthritis is just pounding on the joint and just doing that by using your muscles like this tendon that no way.
So she gave people no training whatsoever and just said you do this. Similarly Sarah Ridge, BYU, her research was basic, similar to somebody who appears in the middle of the shoe, put it on, just used that for walking and compared that to the put strengthening program and found that they both developed foot strength. She didn't think to have a group that was wearing the middle of the shoes and doing foot strengthening but the point being that they did a trial by fire just threw him into the deep end and basically everybody was okay. That doesn't mean that there isn't a better way to do it but to prove that especially if it's walking or just standing, to prove that you can just make the transition and your body will figure out most of it is great news and now if we optimize that so much.
Yeah, I think that's exactly it. It's clear that lots of people get tons of benefit just to make the transition but then how much more benefit can you get once you get more hip mobility, more big toe mobility, where can you go with it? So I think it's an exciting opportunity for sure. I love pointing out that there's some people who say, well here's a requirement before you can try going barefoot or something minimalist and I love pointing out all the tests that they have to prove that or things that I can't do and after 12 years of the week, I'm totally okay.
And some of it is, let's call it coordination. And some of it is, I've got a final thing so I just can't do some of these movements but it hasn't stopped me in any way. So I think that's another, it's ironically, this is going to sound contrary to what I was saying some moment ago. On the one hand, we want to give people some program they can progress through.
On the other hand, everyone's trying to come up with a program so they can have their own individual thing that they're marketing which can sometimes make it more of a barrier to entry where people don't know what to do next because they have options today and they want to pick the best option. I don't know how to solve this but it's again dealing with humans who, especially maybe I don't know how much it's western or American but we're not well versed at doing something you were saying which is just listening to our body and figuring it out. And now I think it's one of the big advantages of starting to go on this path is that you learn how to become your own coach and then all your finding is cool tools to help you do that better. Yeah, exactly.
I think that's ultimately the secret to learning to be a more effective mover is to be a more effective observer of your own movement. So listening to cues that aren't just pain but also listening to fatigue or stiffness. You know your body's telling you what's up, we just are very poor at listening to it. So better shoes are huge because you'll be able to feel more stuff and then just practicing listening.
It's very meta when you get right down to it. What do you do with people who have challenges that the one I'm thinking of is I remember way back when to make a long story short I asked somebody how to go I was asking to pay attention to sensations in their body. Some sensations in their body and this person was like what are you talking about? I just had no frame of reference.
I said well you know it was about lunchtime. I said so are you hungry? Yeah I said how do you know? Because what do you mean I'm hungry?
I said well are you getting any signals anywhere telling you that you're hungry? Like I'm thinking pit of your stomach, empty feeling, holding you, whatever anything that I would attribute to pay I'm hungry. And the guy had like no frame of reference for what I was saying. And my brain very quickly went from that's a problem that he can't do that to.
That's just not the way he relates to his body. And I don't have a I haven't landed yet on how to deal with that whether it's just like that's the way you are versus let's see if we can do some things to tweak that a little bit. What's your experience with people like that if you've had any? Yeah.
There are tons. I mean I think so the way I think of it is very much you know again contextualized a natural movement. If you had been a naturally moving human you would have participated in your own movement from day one. Your parents would have carried you as a forage and hunted you would have grabbed you would have been outside.
You would have done more things, more barefoot all of those things. And so you would be a mover more like a wild animal as you would have a much clearer brain body connection. And we're at a state right now we're almost all of us have this very fuzzy connection. So when you're trying to develop connection I think the best approach is to throw a bunch of tools at it and see what sticks.
So you're not me like throwing farmers at people and seeing if they're magnetic. Will this all hurt you or not? Here's black and dead yourself. Wham!
So give me an example. I never throw a tool in a movie. Absolutely. So there are a million ways that you can start to sense and notice what's happening in your body.
So an obvious one would be to move in front of a mirror to see if the way you're moving is the way you think you're moving. You could do a movement lying on the ground and explore the way pressure changes in your body. You could videotape yourself. You could roll on a squishy ball and start to feel those sensations.
So it's it's mindfulness. It's a process of developing mindfulness through tactile sensations and through visual observation. Can you give me an example of some something you would have somebody do in front of a mirror and the reason that I'm zeroing in on that one is the number of times I've had a situation for example where somebody says hey there's something wrong with the sole of your shoes because you know I'm wearing out the heel and I say well you're clearly reaching out with your foot landing on your heel and pulling back and you're causing friction and that's what's making it wear out faster than it would if you had a different gate pattern. They go no no no I don't do that.
I go okay well send me a video so I can take a look and I'll send a video and they're doing A they're doing exactly what I predicted and B they usually will not only have a hard time recognizing that at first but I've literally had three people after I showed them that they're over striding heel striking pulling back their heel literally say to me yeah but I don't do that. I go dude it's a video of you made by you sent by you it's you and there are some people and I'm not suggesting that that's how I'm not trying to you know bad mouth or be the meaning or whatever but there's some people who just don't have that good proprioceptive relationship where they what they think their body is doing is very different than what their body is doing and we all have a certain extent where some people you know more or less in different ways so it won't be something something in front of a mirror that we either let them know if they have some proprioceptive scale or point out something that they might want to explore. Yeah so the way that I teach a lot of gait and so feed are a huge part of walking and that's one of the reasons that feeder so fundamental in my work but standing is a part of gait and how you stand as a part of gait so I would start with anybody standing in front of a mirror and observing which way their feet are pointing and check in on which way your feet point and you can try to change it so there may be so one very common adaptation to poor ankle mobility is to have your feet kind of duck out all the time I'm sure you see it and a straighter foot normalizes the forces that happen on your ankle it's a debundion de-creator to straighten your feet to practice that you need to see it and to see it you need a mirror and a straight line and you need to okay look my feet have now ducked out again oh I need to straighten them so that would be a very obvious mirror focused exercise so what I would do you know start somebody with just straightening their feet and then I would take it on to an exercise like a calf stretch and have them work with a non-straight foot and a straight foot in a calf stretch so they could experience the difference and then take that straight foot practice into your daily life because you can practice having straight feet when you're washing the dishes so it's it's a skill building and a habit changing type of approach I would say there's a thing that I'm sorry I was just going to agree with you that having people look at this all done video can be very challenging because it takes a fair bit of practice observing movement to be able to see what's happening in the movement I think yeah it's true and you know you get better with it over time for sure one of the things that Irene Davis at Harvard does in retraining people when they've come in the running injuries they often do you know run with their feet you've heard it pointed out or their knees and duck in the end or you know various things like that and she has a mirror in front of the treadmill and says here's where you want to be and kind of helps actually she does it's even more fun she'll stick her finger in their butt cheeks and say squeeze right here and they'll notice that when they do that that changes what they're feet are doing say all right now that you know what makes your feet moving out run and keep your feet in line and just watching the mirror and what she does it's a classic sort of biofeedback training thing is like let's just do this with you watching the mirror and then at a certain point we're gonna have you run for two minutes while you watch and we'll put a curtain over the mirror for 30 seconds and we pull the curtain up and you see where you are you do another two minutes where you can see it and just so basically over time you get less and less visual feedback so it's more and more becoming an internal experience a little trickier to do if you're obviously standing in front of a mirror or another thing you might want to try is you know take that mirror and take that mirror and take that mirror and take it out of a treadmill or or or I can imagine put a mirror at the end of your hall and walk towards it and just have a camera so you can see what happens when you're walking or walking away or maybe maybe even the best thing is to tell your partner or whatever you're living with to a videotape or anyone you're not paying attention which could be a very stressful. I mean under certain specific circumstances I'm not saying you know hey I caught you in the bathroom I just mean you know you're walking out of the hall I can't have a camera but you know the point is that we are when we're when we know we're being watched even by ourselves we sometimes make subtle changes that we don't know that we're making sure sure I think over time you start to collect more and more data too so you know you already mentioned shoe wear patterns or a big clue in walking injury patterns or a big clue about what's going on as well and you're going to tend to see injury select on one side or in a pattern so you know what you know I call myself a movement coach and I think of myself as coaching movement quality both in terms of efficiency of making a move and in terms of overall whole life movement are you getting what a human needs and you just keep refining that refining it by checking in so what you say absolutely it would be awesome to videotape all of that stuff but you can get so many clues just over time by watching and focusing and checking in with mirrors with video with injuries with wear patterns with the beach if you're walking on sand you can see what's happening with your walk at super helpful yeah interestingly treadmill walking is very different than regular walking there are I know you're more of a runner but there's two basic propulsion systems in walking and one you can kind of lean forward and like gravity pull you along and you patch yourself and the other you're essentially lifting yourself on one hip and pushing backwards with the back leg and it's a hamstrain driven propulsion and most human walking is a combination of those two systems and right now modern humans have about 90% fall and 10% push and so my entire life goal is to help you have more backward push and less falling because the less falling you have the less injuries you have as a general role there's nothing I like more than when people agree with me and in the same way that when I first reached out to you I said I feel remiss when I just discovered you after these years and I didn't expect that you would know everything that I've ever said or written but I have a whole thing about walking where I talk about exactly that it's like you know when you walk you're supposed to be using your butt and your hands rings and if you look at people who spend a lot of time walking in bare feet typically in third one countries they got great butts and you know in the west it's we got a lot of flat asses and so I use a number of analogies for people to experience this but one is like thinking about skating where you're pushing back you don't need to lift your leg in front of you you just what's moving you is that you're you know the hip and the glute are designed for extension and we don't use those typically and it really when people start to feel that at first of course if you exaggerate it and you look like Frankenstein walking but then you as it swooves out it looks it feels normal and you're not just throwing your leg forward and trying to push yourself over and if people I think if people want to give you this is it if people just learn to walk in a way that's using their butt and their hands ring correctly that would take care of so many issues sure sure because then all of a sudden you're using the ankle pleaser using the big toe correctly and so the whole mechanical chain is improved but I think that's where you really see the role of the exercises because if you've been a chair sitter in a shoe where your whole life you probably don't have the tissues that are going to allow hip extension or dorsiflexion or big toe extension right so there's a ton of work you can do to regain that capacity and what's so great is your body is going to just now at least start using it especially some conscious practice but when you have capacity your body will tend to use it so that's I like the exhibit you remind me something else so and I made a video about this that I haven't edited yet it's been sitting on my phone for if I'm honest about two years and I'm not saying that I'm lazy you know but yeah that's why it is really it's actually what it really well my natural psychology is I start projects really well and then the editing and finishing things is where things get challenging but what's interesting to me is that I noticed that when you walk naturally as your toe as your foot is coming off the ground your toe is flexing this way and many of your doors are flexing for people who don't know what that means it's your toes coming towards your knee and you would think that when your foot comes off the ground it would end up doing opposite planar flexing and flexing down but it's actually the other way around and when your toe comes off the ground it actually kind of pulls back up there's a reflex thing that was that way and the reason this is interesting to me is that and I hadn't thought about it until you said it about just people not having the tissue the muscle strength or the coordination or the neurological thing that's allowing it to happen some people especially when they start wearing like one of our sandals which is super super lightweight super super thin so their brain thinks they have nothing on their foot and they've already adapted to be able to walk barefoot without tripping over their own feet but when they put on just a little sandal they'll sometimes catch a front edge and it's because they just don't have that natural reflex that natural is happening and what usually happens when someone calls to complain about this and they think it's the sandals that are causing a problem I say well just get a we can call me back and they're like but what do I do I just get a we can call me back and typically a week later they go wow it's just not happening as much anymore I give it another week and tell me what happened so interesting it's very interesting I've ever actually so when I when I built my office I put a treadmill desk in and and this is very early on when I started wearing sandals and I would like you know once every week I'd catch a front edge wd and then it was like once a month and I literally can't remember the last time it happened and I watch people in airports wearing regular shoes that where they catch their toe and you're like falling their face so it's not unique to wearing sandals it is unique to not having feet that function naturally because you're pardon me your ankle your hip your everything else aren't as well I mean I hear a rumor correct me if I'm wrong the hip bone's connected to the knee bone the knee I don't remember how that goes after that it totally lies yeah well I really do think that yeah it's one of those things where humans are amazing and we can make anything work and we can make everything work for a really long time and some people will never have a problem and other people are gonna have a problem and for them there's a ton of stuff you can do to improve the situation which is another reason that those injuries can be so great because typically someone who's getting injured in their 30s or 40s it doesn't matter unless you're willing to work on it but if you are willing to work on it then you have this opportunity to become stronger and fitter than you were in your 30s when you're 60 and I think that's really cool what's of course the big challenge is that we well we said to really in the last especially 50 years people have effectively been trained to believe that whenever there's a problem there is let's call it a prosthetic solution there's something that you add on there's something that you do there's a thing you buy there's a product that instantly solves it rather than realizing there may be some change that has to occur that may take a very short time may take a little bit of time but we are so accustomed to people selling us this problem solution idea that when you suggest that they need to do something internal if you will they need to change something about themselves that's often met with a lot of resistance and I understand it because who wouldn't want a fast solution ironically though the fast solutions almost never work and and I say to people if you broke your arm and you had it in a cast rate weeks and you took it out of a cast you have two choices you can continue to support it or you can actually spend some time doing some physical therapy and getting stronger and your arm could be better than it was before it started which makes the most sense and everyone always says the latter and I go well why are you doing the opposite and it's overcoming that that was called the inertia of marketing or the inertia of marketing propaganda is I think part of our movement movement process and hopefully encouraging people to realize that this other way is not only better but well the longer and better but ultimately less expensive or valuable in other ways as well and you know I don't have an answer yet for how let alone if it's possible to create that mind shift where people think about what we're talking about and realize oh I just need to learn to do something a little different and all this stuff will take care of itself and I don't need to spend a bunch of time researching to find out what orthotic I need or what shoe with you know seven inches of cushioning I need or whether you know the cushioning now has a flex capacitor or a gerbil enhancer on a hamster wheel and why would you put a gerbil enhancer wheel is what I'm wondering now or whatever else it is.
So which is the gerbil wheels? Yeah you have to have I think you have to have a there's a different gerbil enhancer wheel it has to be no I'm not sure not when people come to you what do they typically think they're coming for and what what do they get that's not what they expected in other words people almost always come to me so go ahead. Well I was gonna say sort of like you know back to my psychologist friend and going on Oprah I said to him once do you do you tell people what they need to hear or what they want to hear and he says oh I tell them what they want to hear and when they walk in the door they get surprised by finding out what they need to hear and I go that's kind of pulling the rug out from underneath people like that's the only way to do it you can't tell what they need to hear as they don't understand it. You have to find bridges you have to find stuff that people understand and are interested in exploring themselves you can't you just can't be like you should get rid of all your shoes and sit on the floor and that would be better for you nobody wants to hear that but people will come if they're injured people come to me because they're injured and often I'll get a shoulder injury or hip injury and I'll be like well you should probably work on your feet and that's the challenging conversation but they should also work on their shoulders and that's you know everything your whole body needs to move and I think just like we don't give our feet enough of a chance to move naturally you know we should all be squatting and we should all be climbing and hanging and I love that you have a hanging bar in your house and I'm not at all surprised and you know everybody needs that movement our bodies require it but what people tend to do is you know go to I don't want to like knock on anyone's sports thing because they're all awesome but they're not what our bodies require so you give them little bits of stuff to explore that feel good and that they like and then they're either interested or they're not ultimately but I do think that she thinks so powerful because as soon as you start experiencing a more better footway you know I don't see how you have to go back.
There's a there's a CEO of a footwear brand who's a friend of mine I won't mention him or the brand because it would be too humiliating who said and they make a product that has some elements of natural movement but not all of them and he says you know our customers can get addicted to our stuff like once they once they get used to this product in like six to nine months they never want to go back we have the same experience in six seconds but it's the only reason that we get out of bed in the morning is from the number of people who've had that experience like oh my god this is such a big deal and it's such a big deal in ways that people don't how do I want to put this it's such a big deal that people think when I talk about it that I'm just making it up and some hyperbolic marketing crazy person and I have to remind them I go you just kind of know that prior to 1970 this is what everybody did prior to the industrial revolution this is what everybody did and we're not doing something new we're doing something old the new things are the intervention for which there's no evidence and they got to the point so it but again that's because we're so used to somewhat like new and improved better than ever here's this new discovery and the new discovery is better stronger yeah cleaner whatever it's really really fascinating and I think also you know one of the barriers is that people tell personally if you suggest that their footwork choice might be problematic and I don't know if that's universal but it's been so interesting as you know we were long-term traveling until the pandemic hit and my mother has very kindly sheltered us and looked after us we flew from Mexico and we're now in her basement but she knows everybody together this book course since she keeps hearing we talk about how terrible things like heels on your shoes are and traditional hiking boots and she keeps getting angry at me because she thinks I'm criticizing her shoe wardrobe which I suppose you know it is true that she's wearing shoes that I don't think are good for her but it's not about her it's just the shoes well let me I'm gonna tell you about that so first of all I'm so glad you said you're living your mother's basement because this whole time I've been thinking what I see behind you just seems so unlike you it's especially the it's especially the thing with the plates in it there's like that's just not what human beings in our age range do anymore it's like okay so I love that so here's here's here's I think that I discovered a friend of mine I've been having this Sunday morning brunch with friends and friends of friends and whoever decides to come for like 25 years and we call it brunch church because we do it religiously on Sundays and so one of my friends used to bring people just to argue with me about things like did we land on the moon is is behind an emergent function of the brain you know it was 9-11 and inside job I mean it's like all these things and my favorite was somebody who came like with a master's thesis to present to me and then after he did this presentation he said all right tell me if you can pick apart my argument so I started picking apart his argument and then he started yelling at me and started saying you're so argumentative I went you asked me to do that but what was fascinating is that he was acting like I was trying to kill him his children and his children's children it was not only taking it personally it was life and death and I have this theory that beliefs that we adopt certain kinds of beliefs that we adopt we somehow store them in our brain in a similar way or very tightly related to our sense of self our sense of self itself and so when we point out that some ones that some belief that someone has or some decision that they made may not be accurate it goes right to your sense of self which is partly why there's a lot of cognitive psychology research that shows if someone has a belief and you show them evidence that the belief is factually inaccurate instead of going oh they hold on to it even more tightly and it makes no sense that we would do that kind of rationally but it makes total sense that we would do that because when humans learn to make decisions it wasn't valuable to have to redo that every time you were in a similar situation it's evolutionary advantageous to just come up with one if it works stick to it like white on rice no matter what happens because that's just gonna be the fastest way to process now if you think about it and extrapolate that a little bit it means that most of us evolved from idiots because it's someone who made a decision for the wrong reason or came to the wrong conclusion but lived and so we are the spawn of moron yeah yeah we are the the prospering of surviving idiots and then if you extrapolate from there you just have to watch the movie on the idiocracy and see where that's going which is not good so it's uh but you're right i mean this is a magic question how do you and maybe i'm asking this not quite rhetorically but kind of rhetorically and maybe people listening are watching how to answer how do you present this information that doesn't come into conflict with this phenomenon of how our brains work and i don't i don't know i have some ideas i have some things i'm playing with but you know that's the 64 000 question and that reference dates me how do you get the broccoli in the dessert like that? hold on hold on there's a link and i have been buying these things at Costco they're these tiny little chocolate muffins that are that say they're made with you know broccoli and zucchini and all this stuff and so this is what we do for dessert if you want some vegetables for dessert and there's probably a molecule of broccoli in these things but it makes us feel so healthy totally and you know like it's all joking aside like it's about finding those common interests and so you know maybe maybe you should totally wear whatever shoes you want to wear but then just once spend some time there but and you like whatever they are for somebody individually we have a big joke if you do any kind of anthropological reading or if you read cedians which is such a great book um you know you'll find that you know 90 percent of of the names that human tribes have ever chosen for themselves they always seem to be something like we are the one people or we are the first people or we are the best people and you'll see it is so it's just remarkable yeah it's amazing and it's amazing and you like watch where you'll see it for sure it's that same problem but i got to pause i mean i know that we are i mean you know it's just obvious clearly we're doing the right thing right i think that's the silly way the question yourself they're good as we have the answer Stephen oh my god i don't know what i would do if we didn't yeah that's what i like your idea it's like rather than trying to go head head first into this it's like finding a way to introduce people that isn't threatening that just gives them a little bit of a taste a little something that will then open up the door a little bit a little bit a little bit i can tell you the way that i've been doing it now and this is not an example of that i've been pointing people back to experiences that contradict their beliefs in a very not trying to do it in a non-confrontational way so like when people ask me what i do for a living i go well let me ask you a weird question do you feel better the day than they did at the beginning of the day and i've never met anyone who says yes and i go you know that's probably because of your shoes because like look at your shoes which are pointy i go and tell me is that the shape of your foot and they go no and so those two things kind of open up a conversation that and i don't then say you know take a few shoes go barefoot by my shoes whatever but that's a way of kind of making an end run around it that has been really effective and i know that when people become barefoot natural movement minimalist converts our natural inclination is to try to just go head on and convert the unwashed masses yeah yeah and it's something i'm looking to do is just basically create a curriculum for how people who get hit to what we're doing can talk about what we're doing without pissing off their friends and family it's like and it's a tough one i think you know what one of the real challenges is the over enthusiasm because i like you know like you said i think once you discover how much healing and how much better feeling is available for you once you start doing this it starts to be astounding that anyone could do anything different and then you really do turn into that horrible person that you don't want to have dinner next to so it's sort of about tempering your enthusiasm and i think you know i think what you're doing and creating you know your your zero community and being out there and normalizing this is part of it too so it shouldn't be as exciting to discover it as much as like oh now i'm doing that too because all these people are doing it so making it a little bit more normal and making it a little bit less of a revelation is really really helpful because otherwise yeah like the over enthusiasm does not at all i think another thing that works well for me in my life although i haven't tried it so much with people as clients is that whenever my partner and i have a disagreement about what we should do like should we do x this way or that way we always have barely just say well we're gonna do an experiment and we're gonna choose either way it doesn't matter which one and then we're going to decide if that was the right way or not and i find that experimental mindset is incredibly helpful because it takes away any sense that he's right or i'm right and we just get to explore something with kind of no stakes experiment so i wonder whether that might not be a way into to like you know be like just try it try it and i'm in a little shape or day i like that idea i love that let's just give it a world and see what happens i used to do something a thing i don't get to get out very much i don't interact with human beings as much as i used to when i didn't have a job but i used to do things like this i walk into a bookstore and i would say uh what book should i get and like i want to you know some employee and they go well what do you like it's not my question what book should i get and i did this in in pals uh bookstore in portland and the first person i said to said i don't know go to that section and ask that person so i went up to that section and i said so what should i get and they said what do you like i'm like again i don't know i mean the question is what book should i get and this person went huh come with me and they took me to a section it was actually interesting you mentioned anthropology it was the anthropology section and said i think one of these three books would be super cool for you and they were right and i had never read anything about anthropology at that time and so i used to do that at going to restaurants and say um you know we do this often like you know what should i get well what do you like no just bring me something and it was a really really fun way to interact with the world of just let's see i mean who knows it's a variation of just saying yes to you know say yes everything you're not push over but you're just like looking for opportunities to not make the normal decision that you would typically make and you know the point you made like just try it oh boy this is the this is the holy grail for me as a business person with zero shoes is people say me what are your goals i say get more shoes on more people's feet so they can have the experience and we're trying to find ways of doing that while still being able to remain in business that we can't just send out a letter to choose for free or maybe we can and i just haven't figured out how yeah so it's it's just a fascinating set of challenges and i think as humans we become more and more pattern over time and less and less open to new ideas and so i think as a you know guiding principle of our lives is we're trying to stay open but i love your idea just walking in and be like tell me what to do just letting yourself be open that's a super awesome beginner's mind and that's such a great way to push yourself outside of those patterns i was i was in a situation where um let's just say i was homeless for a little while is the easiest way of putting it it's that's a that's an exaggeration and it's a little hyperbolic but it's a fun way to say it but suffice it to say for a couple of days i didn't have any money i was you know the place that i didn't live didn't really know anyone and i when especially when i was hungry i would walk up to strangers and ask for help i would say i'm hungry can you feed me and some people would hand me money some people would just like you know give me a dirty look some people would do whatever and finally one person said what are you asking me for there's a restaurant right over there that's where they make the food i said oh my that was brilliant so i walk up to the restaurant as a fast food place now i had been a vegetarian for 20 years up to that point i still mostly am and i don't eat meat i occasionally have some eggs occasionally have some sushi so anyway i walk up this restaurant i said i'm hungry will you feed me and the guy behind the counter just gives me a totally dirty look and i realized he hadn't said yes or no so i kept looking back and i was weighted and then he kept looking at me and i kept looking at him and then he just kind of shrugs and shakes his head and says wait right here now better go sit over there i went okay so i went sat over there and five minutes later he comes out with this bacon double cheeseburger and a large order fries and a large Coke and people said well you know did it ruin your digestion because you've been a vegetarian i said no what ruined it is i couldn't eat without crying because i was so grateful and i mean i didn't like it or not like it but it was it was just such a um i mean i'm crying i'm just thinking about it you know it's it's super fun to put yourself in those kind of situations anyway one of the coolest things that has happened to us on our travels has been living in in a surf camp type environment i don't know if you've ever been to a surf camp but i sure they're all different there are you know there's organized ones but there's also places where there's a wave and there's some camping near the wave and a bunch of people go camping there and a bunch of surfers will live there for three or four months at a time and people will come in on weekends and there's this really interesting kind of camp community environment that happens and because surfers are broke you get a lot of random strangers coming across your campsite and asking for help and it's you know if you have surfwax do you have mustard if you have a knife and it's awesome i think that we all as North Americans need to start getting better at asking for help because people love to help and that's what creates community it is such an awesome awesome thing to be vulnerable enough to ask for help and to the other experience being a gee i think it is awesome and that was one of my most it's just start me you know we all have a little bit too much and so we don't need to ask for help anymore but we all do need help still and i think we need to get better at that so that's nothing to do with movement although i'm happy to help you move better well you know that's not that's unique that's another interesting question it's like so i wonder how we can try to combine these things or if there's a way i'm obviously just thinking it loud is there there has to be a way so people are coming to you because they're injured they've gotten somehow the idea that you can be helpful but there's this much much much larger group of people who either aren't injured aren't looking for your kind of help or whatever it is you know i and i think about this for myself too obviously what how can we create opportunities for people to get help before they know to ask and or to offer what it is and not do it in a way that has the you know we are the one people who or or it's this the whole conversation of it is what's interesting to me and real challenge as an internet based marketer it's like how do we have these conversations with as many people as we can in the easiest way that we can without feeling like automatons and that we're just just spewing out things that are not related one thing i do there's a couple of emails that we send out where i have my personal phone number and i go look you know here's my info just give me call if you need me and i only get about three calls a week but they all have the exact same pattern it's like hello this is Steven oh my god it's really interesting but i mean i just like to i think it's important even no matter how big the company gets i think it's important to have that kind of availability because that's how this how this all thing evolved and i'm still learning everyday from people so anyway that's all a tangent from natural movement so um we've only got a couple of minutes left you know i mean it's our go ahead no you know i was just going to say that you know as much as you know as a person with an online business you know one of the things that we all do is give away some free content some free information but one of my pieces is a is a foot exercise course i call it a fixer feet bootcamp and it's five five foot exercises and foot advice and i have to say i really like giving that away because it's a really solid giveaway you know people can do that and do nothing else and really have a lot of success with it and i get emails all the time from people who have said that it's really changed how their feet are and i just think you know it's one of the nice things about it helps me increase my reach it helps other people heal if they need more there's more to be had maybe they don't need more and that's awesome too so you know i love hearing for people and it's it's like you said it's just so great to hear that people are doing these things and making changes then well i i interrupted to say we all have a few minutes left but you just gave me the perfect segue to get to hell out of here but first things first i think you need to change the name i think you have to call it an unbootcamp that's such a good idea okay i'm gonna do that fixer feet i'm gonna do that all right i have my work cut out for me now yeah yeah non-bootcamp well to that point um petro do me a favor tell human beings or whoever else might be engaging with this who may have some different designation um how they can find out more about that program and about what you're up to and how they can interact with what you're doing and get that help that they may not have known to ask for for sure well the best place is probably my website so that's petrofishermovement.com and it's for sure f-i-s-h-e-r i don't have a c and i'm also on instagram as petrofishment or facebook as petrofishermovement so i'm very consistent so in any of those places you can find me you can find the unbootcamp and you can find tons of information about national movement and how to get some more in your life awesome well um people don't know that we had a brief one chat before this before we did this like last week and just we're talking about random things and i've been way too much fun and i'm not surprisingly that's my experience here as well so a thank you b i'll say now in public you know whatever we need to be helpful please let me know and we will no doubt offline figure out ways of doing that because again as part of the movement movement it's very exciting for me to see other people doing other things like some of my footwear competitors uh i say to them look i'm thrilled that you're here because the more of us that are doing this the more awareness it brings to the whole idea and that's the most important thing um oh yes i want to sell more shoes than you but nonetheless you know the most important part is that we're all creating this level of awareness and giving people experience and uh for the people like you and for katie and for emily splickel and um oh my gosh i'm thinking of uh stacey kraus and um sorry i'm going to leave out i feel like i'm doing it academy work speech and i'm forgetting the name of my parents there's so many people doing separate work many of them who've been on the podcast and many more who are scheduled to that i can't wait to see where this goes i'm seeing it all accelerating really quickly are you seeing something similar yeah that's it's awesome i think so i feel like especially feet have gotten some real momentum over the last six months so yeah i'm really excited about it and i think there's you know there's a put collective there's direct-class foot and ankle and in portland they're doing great work uh there's gate happens on instagram you know more people are talking about feet and i just think it's super super exciting so here's one that we started hearing this super funny um not hah funny per se really but so many people during covid are spending so much time indoors they're spending so much time without their shoes on we've had a number of people call us and say i went put on my regular shoes and i didn't fit in them anymore and we're like sweet so um because it's like that's normal and you didn't know it till now so maybe that's actually that's our answer we just need to have everyone stop wearing shoes for a month or two and then try to put them back on and i think uh if we just let that's gonna that's gonna be our new kind of big brother esque biodom whatever biosphere experiment is just you know have no no shoes no vlog because then people would have to find out in december and that would be a problem so no shoes not november yeah not november that would interfere with we'll have to think about that one yeah we gotta find a version that anyway petra total letter thank you so so much um and uh let me do the outro for everybody for those of you who joined us thank you for being here whether you're listening or watching or someone sent you this via carrier pigeon or however you're interacting with content um if you don't know how to do that just go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com you can find us on instagram on facebook on youtube and all those other places uh on iTunes and google play and everywhere that you get podcasts um where we can leave a review and send us something and give us a thumbs up and a like and a share and a hate and bell on youtube and you know how to do all that i don't need to tell you how but we want you part of our movement movement if you want to be part of the tribe please do subscribe if you have any questions or feedback or anybody you want to be on the show just drop me an email move at jointhemovementmovement.com and just like the phones and where i answer them i will answer your email and most importantly go out have fun be safe during this time and live life feet first