~ The Barefoot Runner...~

Living a simplistic life has its own benefits and a recent meeting with a soul lead me to accept this idiom with modesty of my thoughts. Today, I present before you a man who is slowly going towards nirvana – if not spiritually but surely ‘Un-materialistically’, a recent meeting with my friend Shubham lead me to jot his thoughts for you to concur.

He has been running for almost a decade has been catapulted into a running icon in our vicinity – with an aim in his mind to complete a certain distance everyday as a key benchmark, his focus is always on his rhythm and presence of mind.

“I thought of running barefoot after a beautiful experience I read decades ago as a newspaper article. A lady took up this peculiar sport out of an instinct and after much practice, she was able go gauge health benefits which had silently creeped in – She was not a diabetic anymore, and also had severely cut short her daily intake of insulin and BP medicine(s). All this was just because of barefoot running.

Taking that as an example, I took upon myself to try this style of running, though at initial stages of doing so, I had to pass through my own setbacks and had to tackle problems of wounds, corns etc but the resolve was strong enough which kept me going. On the lighter vein, I had much hilarious comments by people who knew me or those who were ‘regulars’ in the park – some sought my explanation of myself trying to run barefoot, some gave me suggestion of running with certain set of spongy shoes, one uncle was just as concerned for me that he was not shy of asking me if he can help buy a pair of sneakers 😊 – that was the best comment I had in my life!

Now that I have an empirics to rely on myself, I have become a vociferous proponent of barefoot running, though the start was tough and I was not able to hold on to my rhythm and pace, with practice and carefully choosing the path in the ground, I was able to create my own niche of running without any footwear.

No wonder I have been able to simply stabilize my blood sugar levels and have ‘almost’ done away with daily dosage of my medicines – also, I have been able to control my anxiety levels – the benefits are aplenty.

I feel good and elated when I am finished with my regular rounds of running and people courageously ask me all sorts of questions about the larger good that I am achieving whilst I run without my shoes – I being an example myself have turned some into ‘Men without Shoes!” , though they are at a nascent stage of their practice, the road is long and arduous but certainly seeing the benefits themselves as an aftermath of such exercise, they are on the verge of engrossing themselves as barefoot runners!

The art of running barefoot has instigated in me a strong feeling of living the way of a minimalist – we all have an inclination of hoarding objects such as clothes, books , electronic devices and much more – usually many of these inanimate objects are of not much of a repetitive usage – keeping them at bay can only be practiced with a strong mind – we all have a lineage of footwear for different occasions but to my it has been a novel experiment to have the minimal approach to live life with the bare minimum.

Consider this , everything that your brain exhumes of many objects that you have collected over a period of time – you waste you precious energy and time to think over it – just try to cut short your items for day to day usage and see for yourself the inert benefits they accompany – think over it as I did long time back and here I am presenting myself the benefits of doing it – all thanks to Barefoot Running…