Believe it or not, I struggled for days over a hyphen. Whole-Body Barefoot or Whole Body Barefoot? I couldn’t decide. When you have a compound adjective immediately preceding the thing being described, you hyphenate (according to my husband and my editor who know about such things). But, because the title wasn’t ambiguous, they gave me permission to leave off the “-” as it didn’t change the meaning of the words, and besides, they agreed it looked kind of funny.
But hyphen aside (sorry grammar zealots), I hope that, at this point, the title was clear—what you wear on your feet is a whole-body issue and not limited to the feet at all. Because you are not one single body, but a body fashioned out of trillions of smaller cellular bodies, the shoe you put on is never going on just your foot. You’re putting that shoe onto a body of a trillion cells. And likewise, when you change your shoes, every cell in your body feels it.
I’ve taught thousands of people about their bodies and I always start with the feet. This is not because I have a foot fetish, but because, like you, I’m pressed for time. I’d love it if everyone carved time in their life to study how their body works, as well as time to implement what they know they need to do for optimal, whole-body function, but I’m a realist. We have busy lives and we have to prioritize many of life’s essentials. Which is why I start with the foot. Most of you will be putting something onto your feet almost every day of your life. Shouldn’t it be something that makes all trillion of you feel good?