Tag: Barefootwear

Groundies? Barefootwear? Sounds interesting! I love cool shoes from high heels to sneakers – but hardly at home there is nothing nicer than to walk barefoot, maximum in socks. Even in the garden I enjoy to feel the ground under my feet. Maybe it also has something to do with the fact that, despite all the hustle and bustle, I always get my feet firmly on the ground. And my feet love to be free-wheeling. So I decide to test shoes that promise a barefoot feeling. So I took them with me on my fall vacation on the Ritten plateau in South Tyrol. Barefootwear under test My “Groundies” were a prototype of the model that was launched last month, December 2021: Boots in loden look. Felt with vegan leather, the felt made of recycled PET with a sole made of lightweight TPU. What strikes first: the boots are super-light and wide cut. All toes have real room to move. But there’s no footbed, no heel elevation, no cushioning – it feels like you’re standing on cardboard. Zero heel and neutral footbed is what the manufacturer calls it. Very unfamiliar, at least, even for people who like to walk on bare feet like me. After the first steps, however, the interest in the new experience prevails. On thin soles over hill and dale The sole looks sturdy from the outside, but it is extremely flexible and thin – after all, it is only supposed to protect the foot from injury or cold. And indeed: You can feel everything. It already starts in the hotel: I feel the heel of the stairs, the difference between wooden floor and carpet. Outside I walk over grass… feels like grass, only through the sole filter. Then a small forest path, on which really every bump, every little branch, every little stone presses into my feet. Quite strange. And now it almost becomes a challenge, because I would not otherwise enter this type of surface barefoot. But I’m surprised how much grip the soles have with all the sensitivity downhill. Then it’s on the Ritten train to Klobenstein, through the village over paved paths and cobblestones. Then I walk back, along the “Freud Promenade”, in the footsteps of the famous psychoanalyst. What insights would the Groundies on the hiking trail have brought him to? I would now like to discuss grounding from a psychoanalytical perspective with him.… weiterlesen