Latest / Being Different Together / #40 - Why We Squeeze Ourselves to Fit In, Starting With Our Feet

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#40 - Why We Squeeze Ourselves to Fit In, Starting With Our Feet · Being Different Together

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to Being Different Together, the podcast for people who want to make the world a better place, but no, they can't do it alone.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Dr.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Kelly Brady, acupuncturist, psychotherapist, and certified dialogue therapist.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm Nissa Hanger, massage therapist, aromatherapist, coach, and real dialogue specialist.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Together we'll explore how conversations can improve relationships, make work more joyful, and spark healing for ourselves and our communities.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_03: And listen, we don't shy away from the hard conversations.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, we welcome them.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_03: This isn't about being right.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's about being different.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Together.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_03: Hello, hello.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome back to episode number 40 of Being Different.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_03: Together.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_03: Why were you looking so weirdly off in the distance?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: I was examining the pothos that is growing on the kitchen windowsill.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_03: Oh.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: The the window that's above the sink.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: It just looks really cool.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_03: It's my propagation station.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it looks kind of like a living, like it looks like a humanoid almost.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's got arms.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny because we're gonna we're talking about the body and everything.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's got a little central body and it's got these little wibbly arms.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_03: He's sort of like we so yeah, this is uh episode that's dovetailing on um episode number 39.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_03: On trauma in the body and bioenergetics and whatnot.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_03: And we we thought, I thought it might be nice to just go through the body.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_03: I've always also always kind of wanted a reference point where like maybe I have a client that's having an issue wherever, and I could say, hey, listen, we did a whole podcast episode.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, go listen to number 40 about feet.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: And it just so happens that there's is it assonance or alliteration?
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, 40 and feet?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's an alliteration, right?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_03: Interesting.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_03: Interesting.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, I figured we would start with start with the feet and the the symbols of the feet.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah, that sounds great.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_03: And I just feel like we will Do you work on people who have a lot of um foot pain?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: Is that show up in your office a lot?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_03: For sure, for sure.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_03: I mean it's a plantar fasciitis.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_03: Plantar fasciitis, pretty common.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um would you say that's your most common complaint about the feet?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I think that I I I think generalized foot pain also comes up like without a diagnosis, sort of a thing.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um achy feet.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_03: Tired feet.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_03: The classic woman over 40 with the achy feet.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_03: It's classic because you see it a lot.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_03: For me, it's classic.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_03: I've I've seen that as a repeated pattern.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_03: Women over 40 tend to have achy feet in the morning.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_03: In the morning, yes.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm particularly attuned to that because that's now how I spend my mornings.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_03: You have a little achy feet.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes it's I've started to have it and get and I'm going, oh, this is what they've been talking about.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I'm just gonna allow myself to free associate with various sayings that are about the feet through the episode because I just think it's fun.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: A.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, yes.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: And B, it says something about the topic also.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: So remember the old saying, My dogs are barking.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_03: I have no idea what you're talking about.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_03: It's about having sore feet.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_03: My dogs are barking.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: People refer to their feet as dogs.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_03: Really?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then they say my dogs are barking.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just like an old from the s south, sounding southern saying, My dogs are barking.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I just think it's so funny because.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, now we've animalized.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_03: Where else in our body do we animalise it?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh god, I can't I can't be put on the spot like that.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's too early.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I just I don't think that we do, but I mean, maybe maybe we do.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_03: I guess the the monkey on your back would be another.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um but the the idea of Lionhearted.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Ooh, like we'll have to do a whole animal episode of it.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I you know, we're just going with it now.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to get too distracted with other parts of the body.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: I want to stay focused on.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_03: No, the idea of calling them dogs, like because they are these things that touch the ground, people can think that feet are like kind of disgusting.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, some people think that feet are dirty.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: We do Thassage, and in time massage, it's we say it's a practice of two hands and two feet.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: So we use both hands and and both feet in Thai massage.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: I've had some clients that don't want you to touch them with your feet.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I mean, my feet are pretty, I mean, I often wear little socks when I'm working on people.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, me too.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: But um, yeah, I mean, yes.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: I I remember I went to the our Thai massage training place, the Shawla, one time with my my brother Timmy.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: And um Ariela, our teacher, gave Timmy a Thai massage, and I was so excited for him to have a Thai massage because he had never had one before.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: And he kind of from the guru.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: So he kind of comes stumbling out of the shala, you know, looking sort of dazed and whipped about as you do after you've had your first time massage.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh dude, you know, like what was that like?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: And he goes, She put her foot in my armpit.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_03: That was his response.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I think he didn't expect her to touch his body with her feet in the in those ways.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_03: Yep, yeah, no, uh we we can really other feet, I think.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah in a in a way that besides like I don't know, maybe poop or something, that we we don't do that with any other part of our body quite the same way.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: In terms of the dirtiness.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, totally.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_03: Totally.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_03: Don't put your feet on me, you know.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: Dirty, stinky feet.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, feet can't be pretty stinky.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean I Timmy didn't used to do this to me, but my my other half-brother Michael, when I was a little kid, I mean, you know older brothers.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, but I've heard rumors.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: He used to just take his dirty sweat socks from um from Jim.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: And like we wore those long tube socks in the 70s, you know.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: I already pictured it.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: And and so he would take his dirty sweat socks and he would like pin me down and put put his socks in my face.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: He'd be like, dirty socks, dirty socks, dirty socks.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_03: Oh it's awful.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: It was it was awful.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Man, couldn't he?
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: His socks smelled terrible.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm thinking about the age difference between you all and um, yeah, he probably would have been at the height of like adolescence.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man, his socks smelled awful.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_03: You know, my mom there was a period of time that my mom made me leave my shoes outside.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah, remember when it was there was a lot of odor eaters in use.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_03: The shoes went in the shoes went in the freezer.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_03: There's all the purpose powder down in there.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: Remember when it was like more prevalent to see people wearing shoes without socks?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: This was kind of an 80s thing.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: Loafers without socks, dock fighters, yeah, boat shoes.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, I'm the I kind of am a little grossed out about that.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, man, those those shoes would smell bad.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: Those shoes got stinky.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: So there is an element, there's lots of sweat glands on the bottom of the field.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: It can be a little bit gross.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing is they do like touch the earth, and the earth is full of all kinds of interesting things.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh, you know, it's the original microbiome, it's the macrobiome.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: So it's covered in bacteria and other people's poop and trash and ditris, and you know, it's like rotting the leaves.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, if we were to just walk around in our backyard right now barefooted, it probably wouldn't be quite I mean, we would have to really pay attention.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: And our backyard, there's all kind of crazy stuff now.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: Construction debris and so our our relationship, I think, as humans is is really um like the first I think about the first shoe, the first idea that we should cover the feet.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think about the Aborigines and in uh particularly in like Australia, and they still don't wear shoes, right?
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: And you look at the bottom of their feet and the way that their feet are shaped versus those of us who have been taught to squeeze our feet into shoes and and then the whole history of shoes is really fascinating to me.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: I don't I don't want to get too too I don't want to go too far afield.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: But this whole thing about uh shoes become beginning as a way to cover the feet, but then ultimately becoming like kind of status symbols.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, a symbol of class.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: A symbol of class.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_03: And maybe even civility.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: And um like what's beautiful and what's not also gets associated with the feet.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: So the feet are fetishized, they're eroticized.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_03: So we try to make them smaller.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it used to be in in culture.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: I I was just watching Antiques Roadshow the other night.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: You were?
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was actually.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it was?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, when I was cooking dinner.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: I was watching Antiques before I got on PBS.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, I got a PBS subscription.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's so good.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I've been watching PBS because we don't have cable TV, right?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I got a little subscription to PBS.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm loving it.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: I was watching Antiques Roadshow, and there was this woman who found a um like a an old Budweiser poster from the 1890s.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: Whoa.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: And you could tell it was an original because you know it had the logo very clearly, and she's holding this bottle of beer that has like the metal cap that goes over the top to keep it pressurized, remember?
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: It was from way back then.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: But she's wearing this, and it's funny to look at the standards of beauty because her face is very round, which right now a round face is not a standard of beauty.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um if you think about a standard of beauty, you think maybe Angelina Jolie, Charlize Therone.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um they have these very angular Gweneth Paltro.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: Gweneth Paltro.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Very angular, very prominent jawbones, very thin.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: So she has this round face, she's very full kind of looking like Betty Boop, but totally more like Betty Boop, soft curly hair.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: This long dress that's kind of lacy, feet completely covered, but she's just gently lifting the right side of her skirt to show her ankle.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_03: And like showing your ankle.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, totally.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_03: That ankle bone.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_04: Mm-hmm.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: And they were talking about that.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: Just that's just the difference between in that.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: But I was thinking about the erotication of the feet and the way that we keep the feet covered and shoes being a symbol of class.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's just there's a lot to unpack around feet, I think.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_03: Um so well, let's start with like maybe the most um let's go with low-hanging primary first the relation that feet are what connect us to the ground.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_03: Feet are what connect us to the earth.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_03: And I know we were talking about like even just thinking about the shapes of feet.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_03: And if you're a client of mine or you become a client of mine, there is a especially if you have foot, knee, low back pain in particular, we may or may not have a conversation about your shoes.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna have the conversation I'm telling you right now.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_03: And I may or may not.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: All of your clients listening to this podcast are cracking up because you you're passionate.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: I am about shoes and about feet and about your position and your posture and how and how that works.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_03: Well it sets up the foundation.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_03: It's the primary foundation for your body.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_03: And if we're gonna talk, you know, a little bit more, I don't know.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_03: It's also about how you orient to the world, I think, a lot of ways.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_03: The relationship of the relationship between you and your feet, and then the relationship between your feet and the crown.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_03: You know, how much space I have this one client who is on board with like making sure she has good shoes and she's got some some some foot pain and had brought some shoes in the other day.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_03: These are good, right?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, good is relative.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it really just matters what you know what what's important to you.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I was like you and I both have pretty strong experiential opinions about what we think is a good shoe.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and the big thing that I said, I was like, listen, I don't think the toe box is as wide as your feet need.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_03: So the toe box is what it sounds like.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_03: It's the the tip of the shoe.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_03: Most shoes that are manufactured now, now this is slowly starting to change.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_03: You can find more and more shoes with wider toe boxes, but the sort of overarching style for I don't even know how long.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_03: I think it would probably go back a couple hundred years, is these pointy-toed shoes.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_03: And when you think about the Europeans versus the natives in whatever place they were going and colonizing, um, the Europeans would have more pointy-toed shoes.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_03: The the natives would either have, I don't know, some sort of makeshift sandals, which can be very wide.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like horizontally, or nothing or moccasins, a moccasin type shoe.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_03: And so there's sort of as we've become more civilized, we've tr tried to put our feet into smaller and smaller things.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_03: If you think about footbinding in the Chinese culture and all those years of and then the high heels of our culture today.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_03: You know, there were years that I said, Man, high heels, they just keep me in business.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_03: That's some job security right there.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well well, the idea of manipulating something about yourself that is primary, like that you were born in this way, and then in order for you to fit into the culture, you have to manipulate yourself in order to fit in.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think literally fit in.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: And in order in the Yes, to fit in.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: That wasn't intentional?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly right.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: No, I love it that you picked that up.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's right.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: You're fitting in to fit in.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, I thought for the longest time that I was a size seven and a half shoe.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, I'm almost 5'10.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I have small feet for my height, period.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I really wear around an eight or a half or a nine at this point.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: But when I was younger, I was really I really thought I I wore a size seven and a half, and I honestly think that that's because there was a part of me that didn't want to it go up to a size eight.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like acknowledging that you're like, you a bodied morphia or something like that.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's like in my generation, acknowledging that you had larger feet was shameful.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: There was a whole thing about women having tiny little pretty feet.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_03: Or I could see wide feet being not as large.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: And if like if you had to get the D size, the wide size, was like an implication that you were overweight, or that again that you weren't fitting in.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: You weren't feminine.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_03: But then you're like literally restricting the amount of blood flow you get to the rest of your surface area.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, the blood flow, the surface area through which you can connect to the actual earth that you're living on.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what does that do to you psychologically?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_03: And that is what I find really interesting.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_03: What do you when you think about what does it do for you psychologically?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: What happens when you take somebody's grounding away from them?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: They're very easy to control.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that footbinding in China is a classic example of of you know toxic.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: What I would think of is, well, I don't want to use the word toxic, it's toxic.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's like people just use it all the time.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: I know it's a bit overuse.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm kind of over it, but it's it's it's like this, it's it's I don't even know how to say it.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's like it just makes me i it gives me the ick.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's not I want maybe abusive.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, could be another word for it.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_03: No, I I that I think is a pretty gross generalization because Well, dictatorial is another word that comes up like like Yeah, or compensatory or Yeah, or you know, I mean, just kind of like we have to control you.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: As as women.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: Women and their desires and their eroticism and their bodies need to be controlled.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: And um the foot fashion industry has a lot of interweaving with that part of I think of our human history, you know.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_03: Um and I mean listen, y'all, I totally got a fancy ass pair of of heels to wear to our wedding.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_03: Which it it went and and and there is a thing about being in a nice pair of shoes that have a heel that does feel a bit sexy to me.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_03: Right, because the heel lifts you up and it puts your butt out.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: And you kind of sway more.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it makes you look available for mating in a very primary um in a in a sort of like a um, you know, in a chimpanzee kind of bonobo sort of way.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, totally.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, hey, ever seen one of these before?
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I just get the call that boobs forward and it pushes your boot, your butt out, and that's kind of part of 100%, you know, um the appeal, I think.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_03: So I I guess I just wanna, you know, I'm not like Judgy McJudgerton over here.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_03: A hundred I mean, I am a little bit, but I also get it that well how but you're conscious about it and you're making a choice not to do it.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so that was a very conscious choice.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, as opposed to when I was 17 trying to stuff my feet into shoes that were too small.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then I realized it's somewhere along the way, maybe in my twenties.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm actually maybe closer to an eight, eight and a half.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: But then I want to put myself in these cowboy boots that are pointy.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, or I wore fry boots for a really long time.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, um, because I love the whole look of that.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: So it in traditional Chinese medicine, the beginning of the meridian system is kidney one, the point.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: The Chinese name for it I'm not gonna try and pronounce because I'll butcher it.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: And if anyone Chinese is listening to the podcast, they'll just roll their eyes and grab their hair and pull it very hard if I try and do it.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: But it means bubbling spring, that point.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it's and it's located right at the at the top third of the foot, right?
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Where kind of like you feel the plantar fascia connect into the you know, it's like right below those second toes.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: You you know exactly where it's like.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like around the ball of the foot.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's this it's a similar point to the middle of your hand.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, if you you just know where I mean, it's not in the arch, it's in the top foot, it's not in the arch, it's in the top third, and it's right underneath where the ball of the foot kind of meets the arch of the foot directly in the middle.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that's you feel it, and that's the point at which in in traditional Chinese medicine and Taoism and then Qigong and Tai Chi and Kung Fu, the belief is that the energy of the body connects to the energy of the earth.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: And um and so yeah, it's directly related to your life force.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_03: So when I'm thinking again about these toes.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_03: So with this client that had these shoes that is like, sure these are okay, blah, blah, blah.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_03: I go, okay, let's do something here.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_03: And we grab a piece of paper, and I had her stand up on a piece of paper and just kind of straight.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_03: We just did one foot because that's all that would fit.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_03: Then I took a pen and I outlined her foot, her bare foot, like with where where the the actual shape that her foot takes up on a piece of paper, and then I took her shoe and I put it over the foot, and I could still see the outline outside around the shoe.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, this will clearly show you that your foot needs more space.
• 19:56
  unknown: Yeah.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: And so I'm thinking now, you know, it's it's not that uncommon to have unless you're finding shoes with whiter toe boxes, you know, you're probably wearing shoes that are a little bit too small for your feet.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_03: And then you're squishing that spot that you're talking about that is where the life force enters the body.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then all these people walk around with plantar fasciitis, and then they go to podiatrists that tell them they need arch supports.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: And really what they need to do is let their feet out of these tiny little what does Katie Bowman call them?
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like, foot coffins.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_03: Foot coffins.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_03: She says, okay, Katie Bowman, we'll link her in the show notes.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_03: She's been a huge teacher for me about the body.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um, she's a biomechanist, so she studies movement and is a really, really great science writer um and science communicator.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and just makes it really easy to understand.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_03: But um she talks about how uh just imagine okay, listen, 25%, a quarter of all the muscles and bones in the body are below the ankles.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, like our feet have the ability to be almost as as dexterous dexterous as our hands.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I know.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen like pictures of people who uh like videos of people who have no arms and they can like eat spaghetti with their feet.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_03: No, 100%.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: Paint, play the shoes.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_03: And you know what they're not doing?
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_03: They're not stuffing them in little shoe coffins.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_03: I'll tell you that right now.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um she says, imagine if if by the time you were, I don't know, one and a half, two years old, when do we have kids start wearing shoes?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_03: Two years old.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: And now they like to stuff them in cute little fashionista shoes, too.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_03: Just imagine that we also put your hands in mittens from the time you were one and a half and two.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_03: And every day you wore mittens.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_03: They kept your fingers together.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_03: What would you be able to do with your hands?
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_03: You just have these little flappers.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_03: Flippers.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_03: And so that is what we do that is what we do with our feet.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_03: So then it's like all right well.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: There are things that you can do now in your 30s, 40s, 50s, wherever you're at, to it's never too late to start working with your feet.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: And you know that.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's never too late to start working with your feet.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I see a I get a lot of complaints on my table, my acupuncture table.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, first of all, I want to I want to say a little more about that, and then I want to shift on my end into the more Jungian ones because people dream about feet all the time.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: And the psyche is obsessed with feet.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: And there are all kinds of fairy tales about feet.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I have a favorite one that's pretty dark that I thought that I would that I would tell if you want to hear it.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: Of course.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I get, you know, like plantar fasciitis and neuropathy are the common things that I hear about that people get.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: People have neuropathic pain in their feet, or they have ridiculopathy, right?
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: They have a nerve that's compressed in their back that causes some numb toes or numb toe or sort of like a feeling of like a zing down into the foot is very common when people have nerve pain from the back because all the nerves are connected.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you had made this really interesting point that people like to separate their feet.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like your feet are your feet, they're not the rest of your body.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you know, we other our feet.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: Your foot bones connect it to the you can't separate the body, it's all connected.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: I find acupuncture works great for all those conditions, by the way.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_03: Totally.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: And we say all all of the channels of the body have their termini, their end and beginning.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: In the hands, head, feet, and chest.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: And the yin channels connect between the feet.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and so it's it's like it's a very it's highly enervated, like your feet are super sensitive.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: There's all kinds of nerve endings there.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like, think about how bad it is to stub your toe.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, stubbing your toe.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: No, totally.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: Getting a splinter.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_03: I'll kill her.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, if your foot falls asleep.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, it's just pens and needles.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, one time when when my daughter was really young, so just a moving on to the whatever.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: This is just a just as a foot story.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: I was trying to get her dressed in the morning.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and and I would give her options because she Vieira always loved, you know, options about her clothes.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: She's still like that.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I would be like, okay, here's She wanna make her off.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: Here's all the shots.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: Here's all your shirts, here's all your, you know, shorts or pants or skirts or whatever, and here's shoes.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you can put it all together in the whip.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: However, you want to do it, you get to do it.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: So she gets herself dressed and she's standing there.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe she's six, you know.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, all right, we'll get your shoes.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: And she's just like fussing about it, like, meh meh meh.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, she's just kind of like stalling.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, V, come on, we gotta go.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: And and she's like, I don't these, I don't want to put these on, these shoes.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: These, these, these shoes hurt.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, what do you mean these shoes hurt?
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: You were just wearing them yesterday.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: And she's like, Mama, these shoes hurt.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I suddenly realized that her feet had grown.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like it's that one of those things about like at attributions, you know what I mean?
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I assumed she was being difficult just to be difficult.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_04: Mm-hmm.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_04: Because kids do that.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_03: It literally her feet had grown.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_03: Overnight.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_03: Literally overnight.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_03: Seemingly.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_03: Which is how it goes with kids.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have a favorite um foot or shoe story that you can think of that you really love?
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I mean, you know, we've when we first started dating, I was like, Oh girl, you gotta get rid of these shoes.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_03: They're fucking up your feet.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you were talking to me, yeah.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: I had started big talking to.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: I had started with the toe shoes like back in in the maybe 2010.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: I started wearing vibrams and trying that whole thing.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: You like a little fashion also.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: I do like a little fashion.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_03: And there are still quite a few shoes left, as I've re recently noticed as we've moved all the things in this house around.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: I still have to get rid of.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, look at all these shoes.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_03: They can like barely pass some sort of minimal footwear test.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_03: Barely.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_03: Like on one point or something, you know.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_03: Alright, that soul's a little bit flexible, I guess.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, so we got together.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_03: I was like, oh no, you gotta get rid of that.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_03: You gotta rainbow organize your books, and you gotta get rid of your shoes and get some minimal footwear.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: So here's the thing about my feet.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: I have um medically high arches.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: There's like a term for it.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: They call it uh Pez cavitus, which means that like my arch is the arch in my foot is you can see through it.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's like a it's like an arch like you could drive your bus under.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_03: Like I've taken size.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: I have taken one ballet class in my life and I took it kind of recently.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: And truth, it's like maybe six, seven months ago, maybe it was a year ago or something that I went and took that ballet class.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I was never into dance because my parents didn't dance and they didn't encourage me into that area.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, my mom had an amputation, so she wasn't big into dance, and so I was a musician, you know.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, but people have always looked at my feet and said, You you should have been a ballerina because I have a I have a point in my foot when my foot's just relaxed.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
• 27:08
  unknown: Yeah.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: My foot's ridiculous.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: You get a banana foot.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: I have a hoof.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's because maybe I'm a double sag or whatever.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so I have struggled with my feet for that reason because I I think there's this part where like it to the grounding.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's always been a part of me that doesn't want to touch the ground.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I tend to be very in my head.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's part of your psychological profile.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: It is, yeah.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: And look, we see it mirrored in your body.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: It is 100% mirrored in my body.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's what I find so fascinating.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: I would much rather spend time in my Zen tree for it in the sky than down with the dirty stuff that doesn't is that is mysterious and somewhat scary to me.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_03: But it's like you got you got to.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_03: I know.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_03: If you want to take all that wisdom that you're getting in the Zen tree forest, you know, you gotta you gotta bring it back down to earth.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_03: You gotta share it with the people, and the people are on the ground.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_03: You're right.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_03: And I you know Jesus went to be with the lepers.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_03: And they washed his feet.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_03: And they washed his feet.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_03: There's that part about somebody.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: Somebody washed his feet, right?
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: Was it Mary Magdalene washed his feet?
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_03: But then I think he washed people's feet.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_03: I saw this really great Jesus commercial.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_03: Never turned with the Bible.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_03: It's fine.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_03: I just don't know what I'm talking about.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_03: But we don't know what we're talking about, but we know that there's feet washing in the Bible, and we know that it was a big deal.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_03: It was a big deal.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_03: No, I saw this really beautiful Jesus commercial somewhere watching streaming something, and I don't know, I don't know exactly what it was for.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: It must be for some sort of nonprofit or church or something.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_03: But it was like Jesus washing all these different people's feet.
• 28:38
  unknown: Yeah.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_03: And literally, I think it made me cry.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, like you go to the guru and you always touch the guru's feet with your head.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it it's there's like a humblingness or humility.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so back to your feet and my favorite foot story.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um Yeah, by the way, I started working on my feet in my 50s listener, so it's never too late, and my feet have gotten significantly better.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: And we got shoes.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_03: My feet have really improved zero shoes, which is my favorite brand brand of minimal footwear.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I'll link them in the show notes, but there are many.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_03: And that you found some that worked for you, and then are also cute.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_03: Uh yeah, totally.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_03: And then most importantly, um, and then we went on a trip to um we had a like a one-day trip in DC, Washington, DC.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, right.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_03: And we walked forever.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_03: Didn't we take 22,000 steps that day or something?
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_03: Definitely.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_03: You took a track of it.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, because my watch track.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, it was like definitely record-breaking step day.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_03: When I woke up the next morning, I was like, oh, I feel it in my ankles.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_03: But you were like, oh my god, I cannot believe that I was able to walk and I am not in more pain.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: No, I had no foot pain the following day, not at all.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: So, so so working with my feet in this way, with you know, like working on spreading my toes, just sticking my fingers in between my toes at night and spreading them.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: They have toast spreaders all over the place that you can get.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, personally, I just really like using my fingers.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: I have some of those toast spreaders.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_03: It's your personal stove toast spreaders that are with you everywhere, right?
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: But just like kind of working with my feet, working with the flexibility of my feet.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: We went to a great workshop at Gaze Yoga with Wes, and he did a whole workshop on the on the feet.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: It was hands and feet.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: With hands and feet, it was so good.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was awesome.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god, that was so good.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, just working with your own feet.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: My feet are so much better.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: My feet are better at 57 than they were at fifth at 47.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: So even if you've been wearing foot coffins for most of your life, you know, and so is my gait.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_01: I will say part of what happened because I worked with my feet, I was able to work with my walking gait.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: And my walking gait was affected.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like I had some external rotation, I had a tendency to be pretty locked up when I was walking.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I have really learned to ground down into my body.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, the more that your feet are actually on the ground, the more your body.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I want to say is it there you're embodying your body.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_03: It's like you're actually it's like pulling you down into your body.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, there's there's a the arrow points in both directions.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna tell you if you work on your feet, your back pain will go away.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: Or vice versa.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: But the arrow or you'll be more psychologically here.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: Or more psychologically grounded.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: But the arrow kind of points in those directions.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_03: It's yeah.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's a it's a system.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_03: It's a system where everything is um affecting everything else.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_03: So if you want to change the system, you need to start by changing one thing.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_03: One thing will change the system.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_03: Shall we talk about this um this story?
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so have you ever heard the story of the red shoes?
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's a Hans Christian Andersen story.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_03: You know, I don't know.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_03: It kind of reminds me of the Green Ribbon, but I don't think that's where it's going.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know the story of the Green Ribbon, but you know, we can tell that after.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that would be for a good spooky.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I love stories, and I love I love stories, I love fairy tales, I love myths.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um they point to archetypes, and this is the Jungian Let's Yeah, the Red Shoes.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: And they help us understand our psyche, right?
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: And they do.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: And Hans Christian Andersen was pointing at a lot of things with his with his stories.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: What's his story?
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, well, we can talk we have a whole episode.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: So the red red, this is this story is published in 1844.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm gonna give you the a modern retelling of it.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but I want to tell you there are a lot of there are a lot of retellings because it's a it's a popular story.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but this is the dark version, okay, because I just want to give you kind of the original.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: And interestingly enough, the protagonist's name is Karen.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, weird.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_03: I know.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: So Karen.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: So Karen is this in the modern retelling?
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it no, is this actually Hans Christian Anderson named her Karen?
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: There were people named Karen back now.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, maybe, I don't know.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe this is just the modern retelling.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: So she's it's a poor little girl, right?
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so she's barefoot, or she's wearing like these little crude wooden shoes.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: And sadly, her mother dies.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: Saw that coming.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: Viera used to say, Why at all Disney movies do the mother die?
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um course because it's an archetype about having you have to grow up.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: At some point you have to grow up, and so they magnify that point.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: Alright, so her mother dies and she has nothing to wear to the funeral.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so an old shoemaker's wife makes her this pair of red uh cloth shoes from some scraps that she has.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: And they're clumsy, but like the little girl loves them.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: Karen loves them.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: And at her mother's funeral, there's a wealthy old woman who sees her.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: She takes pity on her and she adopts her.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: And the old woman burns the ugly red shoes and raises Karen properly.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, okay.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_03: So Karen grows up.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_03: So here we go with that civility savage.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_03: And this is how you're gonna fit in.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_03: This is how you're gonna fit in.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_03: This is how you're gonna fit in.
• 33:58
  unknown: Yeah.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: Karen grows up beautiful, and she knows she's beautiful.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: And when it's time for her confirmation, she sees a princess wearing these magnificent red shoes and she becomes transfixed by them.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: And later, while shopping with the adopted mom, she finds these beautiful red shoes that resemble the princesses.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: And the adoptive mother has this poorer eyesight and doesn't realize that they're these bright red shoes.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: So she buys them.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: So you know, red shoes, it's like in the thing, it's princess, but in our culture, red shoes are pretty sexual, right?
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_03: I mean Oh yeah.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_03: I'm thinking red shoes, red lipstick, like pretty woman.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:42
  unknown: Yeah.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the the little red bits of the body that are mimicked by that.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: I know I'm getting into the explicit rating on the show here.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: So we're in the box, it's fine.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: So she wears the red shoes to church.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: Ooh.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think that that is a right thing to do.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: This is where the story goes a little dark.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: So she wears the red shoes to church.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: Oh boy.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: And instead of thinking about God, she's thinking about her shoes.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: And everybody's looking at them.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_03: Oh.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody else.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: She notices that everybody's looking at them.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: And she loves that.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: And outside the church, there's this old disabled sol soldier.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: He admires the shoes.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: And says something like, What beautiful dancing shoes.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: This is where the kind of the trickster comes in, right?
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: And he taps them.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: And when he taps them, the shoes begin to dance.
• 35:34
  unknown: Right.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_03: Does that mean Karen begins to dance?
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: At first, she can stop them.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: But something shifted.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: Her relationship to the shoes is becoming weird.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, the shoes are controlling her.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: At first she can still stop them, but then so the adoptive mother says, You can never wear these shoes to church again.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like in other words, Karen, what the hell is the matter with you wearing red shoes to church?
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: So naturally, she wears the red shoes to church again.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: She comes out again, the mysterious old soldier is there, and he again is like, Oh, those are beautiful dancing shoes.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: And now they take over and she starts dancing uncontrollably.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: She can't make her feet stop.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: She dances out of the churchyard.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: So this is when Karen goes nuts.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: Karen gets possessed.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: Really.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: So she dances out of the churchyard, she dances down the road, she's dancing through the field, she's dancing in the forest.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: And in in in another version of this, an angel appears to her and condemns her to dance as a punishment for her vanity and pride.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: So now it's really going dark, right?
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: I know, I'm loving your eyes here.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: And she keeps dancing.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: Day and night she's dancing.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: Meanwhile, the adoptive mother becomes gravely ill and Karen wants to get back to her, but the shoes are keeping her away.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: Eventually the woman dies.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: Karen can't attend the funeral because she's still dancing.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: Now she's horrified.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: What she desired has completely possessed her.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: She finally dances to the house of the executioner and she begs him, cut off my feet.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_02: And he does.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now this is where Anderson goes like full nightmare in the story, okay?
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: The severed feet, still wearing the red shoes, continue dancing.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: Karen's given these wooden feet and crutches, and she tries to repent and return to church.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: But whenever she approaches the church, the red shoes appear before her, dancing.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my god.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: She cannot get past them.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: She tries again elsewhere, same thing.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: Eventually, she gives up trying and goes to work in a parsonage, living quietly and penitently.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: She prays for forgiveness.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: Finally, the angel returns, and this time he's no longer threatening.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: She experiences like this overwhelming joy and grace of the church itself seems to have come to her, her heart fills with peace, and she dies.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_03: The end?
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_02: Dang that's Christian Anderson.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, beneath kind of like the lesson about vanity, it's not a good idea.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's like vanity, desire, um beauty, social elevation.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_03: Also, like like she's mm-hmm, what's the word for it?
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's like she's she's making her own decision.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_03: It's like she's not uh she uh she's actually not fitting into the culture with these shoes.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_03: These shoes take her out of the culture.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's a statement about classes.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: Originality and yeah.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean that that it that it is um that your shoes, that your feet could possess you.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the modern Karen stereotype makes it accidentally hilarious, right?
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's like, Karen, I'm wearing these red shoes to church.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone else, Karen, perhaps don't.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: And Karen's like, I will be wearing the red shoes.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: And the shoes are like, excellent.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: Run things.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then Karen's like listen to it.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: I would like to speak to the manager of my feet.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my goodness.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and also, like, I mean, it's like really it came, it came to you cutting your own feet off.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_03: You really couldn't be self-possessed enough.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_03: You're possessed, but you can't be self-possessed to be like, let's take the shoes off.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it seems like like like real that like such an extreme response to your inability to control your own desires.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, like, there's like a self-containment lesson in the world.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the last well, there's so many things.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we could I it's it's so there's it's such a rich story.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think listener, one of the things that I like to do with a story is just listen to it at first and then just let it cook.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: Let it cook you a bit.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: You'll probably think about this for a couple of years ago.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: You'll probably think about it.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: But remember in the last episode we were talking about how the body just kind of like refuses to tell the ego story.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like the body's kind of like, you're gonna make me do things, and the body's like, and I'm really the one that's in charge.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like our ego is the Karen, and we're trying to tell the body.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm telling the manager.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: And the body's like, oh yeah?
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah?
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna show you.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna keep dancing.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_04: Mm-hmm.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_04: Mm-hmm.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Karen consciously says, like, I want this, and her eventually her body says, This is going to kill me.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like, if you keep these shoes on, right, it's gonna kill me.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I think w what I wondered about, what I wonder about when I read the story is why can't she get the shoes off?
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: I know, me too.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: Why didn't she just take them off?
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like, where's the kill switch?
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know?
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, why doesn't she take them off?
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: And it the other thing it reminds me, there's so many other stories about shoes and bodily mutilation, right?
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like the original Cinderella and the slipper.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the the stepsisters in the Grimms version cut their toes off.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_03: Uh-huh.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_03: To fit their feet.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_03: To fit in.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_03: To fit in.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so it's like, what do we deny of our own selves to fit into society and culture?
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, in the original Snow White, the evil queen has a pair of iron shoes b welded onto her that literally dance her to death.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, again, shoes dancing to death.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_03: It's I think they were really scared of dancing at this time.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_03: I think this is a warning, a warning against uh against dancing.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_03: You know, that's when when when I when I studied the New Testament in gradu in um undergrad, one of the things that we would do is we would look at the stories of the New Testament and be like, okay, well, what would this tell us?
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_03: What do these stories tell us about what was important to that culture at that time?
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_03: And so I can't help but doing that with the with these stories.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, and it's like, what are you willing to do to your actual body in order to inhabit some kind of imagined beauty?
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and so this is where we get into you know, cosmetic surgery, ozembic culture, bodybuilding, high heels, um, expressions of gender, looks maxing, looks maxing, fashion, aging, wellness culture, athletics, body modification.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like why do I have the tattoos that I do?
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um completely benign forms of um it's not it's not that I'm saying body modification is bad, but it's like how conscious are you?
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: How conscious is it?
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_03: How conscious is it?
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, how conscious are you of why you want of your desire and why you want the things that you do?
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, who is choosing?
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: What does it cost?
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_03: And so going back to the feet, I mean I mean if the shoe fits, there's another step.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, that's a good one.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, right.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_03: If the shoe fits.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: If the shoe fits.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: So does the shoe fit the foot, or are you changing the foot to fit the shoe?
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: And what I realized is that in my life I was a stepsister until I was fifty.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: I was changing my foot to fit the shoe.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, like as in Cinderella, you were the you were one of the stepsisters.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: To change changing my foot to fit the shoes that I wanted to wear.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: Literally changing a part of my body.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_03: I know.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_03: To fit instead of finding the shoes that fit your foot.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_03: As the way it is.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I mean what I love about our culture now is that now we're making money off of that, which is great.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very happy to support that.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: What do you mean?
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean all these companies that are hawking their minimal footwear all.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: Right, yeah, yeah.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: No, totally, totally.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's you know, that's capitalism.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure like if you're listening, listener, and this is not this is this might not be a conversation that's unfamiliar to you, but there's so many podcasts and you know, infomercials out there about the earthing shoe, the grounding shoe, the grounding harachi, the magical shoe with the copper in it that's gonna cure your neuropathy, the this, the that, you know, whatever.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_03: When the answer sometimes I just feel like the answer is m is simple of like, can you just go outside?
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_03: You know?
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: Say more.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_03: I just I feel like yes, I'm glad that all of these minimal footwear is available.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_03: There are things about the culture that I really like, but I think that we complicate things a lot.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, Katie Bowman will say if you don't have a lot of money and you want to get some minimal shoes, some of the best minimal shoes are swim shoes.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_03: Oh.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_03: They have a flexible show sole, they're usually pretty wide, like um, they attach to the back of your heel.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um so it's like, mmm, I don't know.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_03: Or it might just be like giving your feet some time to like spread out.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, really, I guess I would I would leave the listener with this like, sure, get the shoes, get the toe spreaders, but also just putting your fingers between your toes.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, can you spend some time?
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_03: Can you just can you just either sitting, put your feet on the ground, and just let your toes spread out?
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_03: Just see how how wide can you get your feet?
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_03: Like, how countercultural to try to get your feet wider.
• 46:04
  unknown: Yeah.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_03: Right?
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um I remember when we first met, you have a you have a glorious space between your big toe and your second toe.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_03: I know, I don't know what's up with that.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's really nice.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember thinking, she's grounded.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: I really needed that because I'm not a very grounded person, and it's something I have to work on.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because it's not where I live naturally.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: Some of us live in that grounded space naturally temperamentally.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm I'm not so much there.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I think you and I that's one of the ways we're different together.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think you're more grounded than I am.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm working my way there.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_03: And I think I've worked on it.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_03: I think I think I've definitely worked on it.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_03: For sure.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_03: Well So it's a good fit.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_03: It's a good fit.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna get a high file for that one.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I hope this has given you listeners some things to think about with your own feet and your relationship with your feet.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I also encourage you to pay attention to the ways you use feet in your language.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_03: So when you say things like, Oh, I can't stand so and so, you know, well, it how is so-and-so not supporting you?
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_03: Like, let's let's draw that metaphor out a little bit more, or um, I just want to put my best foot forward.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_03: Like, what does it actually feel like to move forward feeling like it's with your best foot?
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_03: Like, start to draw that connection between the the use of language that references feet or standing or all of that sort of thing, and what what is actually being said underneath that and how that inhabits your body.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_03: Because also, I think the plan is we're gonna continue to go through the body in this way.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_01: This is this has been fun.
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_01: This has been great today.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_03: Well, um, if you are on Apple Podcasts, we are accepting reviews on there.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_03: I did see that on Spotify you can, I don't think you can leave an actual review review, but you can leave a rating.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, five stars goes a long way.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um, it's a really easy way that you can help us continue to do this work and bring you these podcasts, which I hope are like and subscribe.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_02: Like, share, and subscribe.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_02: And uh we will see you here next week on Being Different Together.