If there is someone who can benefit from getting rid of their cushioned sneakers and moving to a barefoot lifestyle, it’s kids.
Long story short, the sneakers or trainers that kids wear these days on a daily basis are not good for their feet, their bodies, or their brain.
Kids don’t need technology on their feet.
They need a chance to absorb all they can from their environment without any contamination.
Padding in shoes prevents thousands of nerve endings in the feet from gathering feedback from the ground your kids walk on. This leads to a lack of information for the brain, leading to long term challenges with balance, spatial awareness and muscle imbalances.
Most sneakers today don’t just have padding but also a narrow toe box that makes them look more appealing. This however changes a growing kid’s physiology, especially the big toe. If the big toe does not grow straight and strong, you are looking at the beginning of bunions, flat arches and weak feet.
The shoe industry has only done good for the orthotics industry. There are more and more kids now who are requiring orthotics to “fix” their posture, and their ever-aching feet.
Most kids, almost 95% are born with the potential to grow with natural, healthy movement. Our bodies, over millions of years of evolution have found this particular design of the foot to be good for our movement. A wide splay of movable toes, a flat stance, joints and tendons that can help us traverse almost any surface, but we choose to take all that away with “technology”.
At Zen Barefoot, we believe that nature knows best. Our shoes are designed to work in tandem with nature, and not against it.
We do realize that with the world changing, being barefoot everywhere is not possible.
But that does not mean we have to compromise on the ability of our own feet.
Shoes should only and exclusively serve the purpose of protection, and nothing else.
Other than that, our bodies know best, and if they don’t, it learns from the environment, so long as we let data flow through our body and adapt.
Being barefoot, or wearing barefoot shoes not only helps kids physically, but it helps them grow smarter and more aware as well.
A decade-long study by the University of Bournemouth concluded keeping shoes out of the classroom helped kids concentrate more, behave better and perform better academically.
There is no doubt in our minds that all kids should grow in barefoot shoes exclusively to be healthy, physically, mentally, emotionally.
Keep moving. Live Unbound.