After reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, I just can’t stop thinking about the impact of culture on our bodies, minds, and spirits. I’ve been wearing my Vibram FiveFingers just about all the time since I bought them. I’ve had a number of reactions/questions from people about them, that reveal a lot about our culture.

Most people look at them as a gag, or something silly. Very few ask “why would you wear those?” Most want to know what they’re made of, and, especially, if they’re “safe.” Well, there is a sole, though a little thin. So in San Francisco, where I live, they’re safer than actually going barefoot, but maybe not as “safe” as wearing a running shoe. I mean, a nail that might stop in the half-inch sole of a running shoe will most likely go through my foot if I step on it in the FiveFingers.

While the FiveFingers aren’t as “safe” in that way, they are much safer in another, much more important way. Wearing them forces me to be aware of my environment. This is a habit I’m happy to get into.

Aside from creating postural/muscular distortions, etc., shoes dull our minds to our environment. Ever hear someone who walks like an elephant? I’ve heard the lightest 95-pound women walk in high heels and sound like they must weigh 300 pounds. They’ve lost all sensitivity to the way they walk. It isn’t important to them. What is?  Creating an illusion of height, having a big booty, and legginess, that’s what.

Okay Josh, but what does this have to do with wine, culture, and exercise?

I was speaking with one of my esteemed clients this morning about a wine bar she visited recently. The owner serves all wines in the same type of glass. He says that that’s how they do it in the Old Country, where he’s from. They drink out of small cylindrical glasses…or canning jars.

For those of you who don’t know, many wine connoisseurs believe that it is critical to drink different types of wine from differently-shaped glasses. The different shapes of the glasses are supposed to provide more or less oxygen to the wine, and allow for a more or less intense smelling experience. Some even go so far as to claim that the shape of the glass helps to determine the exact place on your tongue that the wine will hit first, and so, what your tasting experience will be like.

While all of this is undoubtedly true, the question is – so what? I have a few more questions about this concept of wine-specific glasses. What level of wine-tasting experience/ability does one need in order to be able to tell the difference? Is it important for the “novice drinker?” What about the quality of the wine? I mean, is there a perfectly-shaped glass out there for my $5 bottle of Chianti?

What does all of this mean? I think it’s a symptom of our culture. The “scientific-mindedness” of our culture says that there is a perfect way to do everything. It tells us what our perfect cholesterol and blood pressure (and any other) levels are. It tells us exactly how many calories we need to eat per day. It tells us how much sleep we need at night. And then it shows up in a fitness magazine, and tell us the perfect workout to get our “summer body.” It does the same thing that shoes, or specially-shaped wine glasses do – it cuts off our awareness of ourselves, and funnels our experience into its own narrow structure.

There is another symptom of our culture that is related to this – that is our culture’s commercial/capitalist view of material goods, success, or work. A few years ago Nike’s campaign was “It Must Be The Shoes.” Sorry, Nike, shoes did not make Michael Jordan great. Countless hours of practice, skill, and a few lucky breaks did that. The glass you use won’t change the wine inside.

Yet we’re supposed to believe that the shoes do make a difference (both for Jordan and for our 95-lb debutante); that the wine glass is critical to our experience of the wine; that a pill will make you skinny; that you need to be a size 0 to shop here; that your breasts are too small; that your cholesterol is too high; that vegetables you cook in the microwave inside the plastic bag they came in are really good for you…

I guess, if it makes you happy, it’s not that bad. As long as you’re willing to suffer the lower back pain and dowager’s hump from your years of high-heel use. And as long as you don’t mind the stress you feel when the chardonnay you ordered comes in a glass designed for a beaujolais, or the miserable side effects of that diet pill or cholesterol drug, or the suffocating of the natural world in a sea of plastic.  Strange, they don’t show you those things in the adverts…

As I hint at above, the world of exercise is no different. There are a million certifications out there for personal trainers. They all have a different “scientific” approach to fitness. Most of those approaches are based on isolating certain principles of the human anatomy and physiology – muscle mass, explosiveness, maximal strength, leanness, cardiovascular efficiency, postural alignment, mobilization, etc. They’re based on programs and techniques used by athletes, or physical therapists, or body-workers. Very few, if any of them are based on you learning more about yourself and the world around you during your movement. Very few are truly aimed at you becoming a more complete individual. Most, instead, will do what the shoes and wine glass do – tell you where you’re wrong, and how to get in line.

I’m here to tell you that you can save all of that time, worry, and effort by doing less. Learn to enjoy the wine, regardless of the glass. Feel the grass under your feet again. Exercise without a plan or a goal, but instead, just to feel your body doing what it was made to do – to move. Find the joy in life, instead of in “the rules.”