Nana Nkatiah-Bosom imports shea butter and other botanicals from his hometown in Ghana. He's an herbalist, trained by his grandparents when the Savanna rain forest still sprawled. Vines, tree stumps, thorns and a homemade soccer ball have all left marks on his 55-year-old feet. A member of the Akan tribe from West Africa's Ivory Coast, Nkatiah-Bosom believes feet are more than the vehicle of the body. The feet are "what touch the Earth, what connects man or woman to this planet," he tells a group of women gathered at Ummelina International Spa on Seattle's Fourth Avenue to hear him speak about feet. "We believe all nerve endings end in your feet. Your feet are like roots for a tree."

We talk about getting feet wet or having them firmly planted on the ground. Sweep her off her feet. Stand on your own two feet. Foot the bill.

Though our language is rich in such references, most of us pay scant attention to our feet. That is, unless they hurt — in which case it's hard to think of anything else.

Small wonder, when you consider that the 26 bones, 33 joints, 107 ligaments and 19 muscles in each foot bear the rest of the body's weight. The average person takes up to 10,000 steps a day and, in an average lifetime, walks the equivalent of five times around the Earth.

It's not that these elementally important body parts are utterly unappreciated or ignored. Doctors have long seen them as mirrors of general health, since signs of diabetes, arthritis, circulatory and neurological diseases often show there first. And fashion-conscious types are ever ready to paint their toes, dangle a bangle from an ankle, slip a ring around a little piggie. Not surprisingly, the standard of foot beauty is one thing for females — dainty is the way to be — and quite the opposite for males, where bigger is thought to be better. (Maybe it's all those allusions to the size of a man's foot being related to the size of . . . ahem . . . another important body part.) In any case, most of the time most of us are oblivious to such things, largely because our feet are encased in socks or stockings and shoved into shoes where they're out of sight and quietly enduring a self-contained heat wave: Average temperature, 106 degrees. We plod along.

But go beyond function and fashion, and there's a whole metaphysical dimension to feet, one which indigenous cultures and Eastern medical practitioners seem more in step with than Westerners are. There are people who believe you can tell a life by the feet — that the size and shape of toes can indicate intellectual or physical inclinations, and that the way calluses form, arches arch and toes curl are all indicative of how you navigate through both physical and emotional realms.

Ken South was a 32-year-old Seattle City Light lineman when he lost both his arms. He was in a single-bucket aerial manlift when his rig's steel-tipped boom touched a live wire: 15,000 volts of electricity surged through his upper body, causing an explosion that nearly killed him. His burns were so severe doctors had to amputate both arms, shoulders and shoulder blades. At Harborview Medical Center, he learned to pick up objects from a sandbox with his toes. Six months to the day after the April 1977 accident, South, now 56, got his driver's license. He steers and shifts gears - and of course, brakes and accelerates - with his feet. "I didn't want to be saddled with adaptive equipment," he says.

Unlike other body parts that reach full size by early adulthood, feet continue to grow over a lifetime. Is it really, then, such a stretch to wonder what feet say about quality of life and how well one balances mind, body and spirit? For Alice Modig and Lisa Hensell, it's not a stretch at all. Modig is Haida and Tsimpsean Indian, a massage therapist with a degree in psychology. Hensell is a reflexologist who practices and teaches the Eastern science of foot manipulation out of her clinic on Seattle's lower Queen Anne Hill.

"Everything we need for healing can be drawn up through the feet from Mother Earth," says Modig. "You need to think of roots coming from the bottom of your feet into Mother Earth and drawing the energy up so it fills you with the life force you need."

Like Modig, Hensell says she learns a lot about her clients' mental, emotional and spiritual states by working on their feet. But that's not to say she'll reveal everything she finds. Recognizing that it can sound far-fetched, Hensell says, "I'll only tell them what I feel they may be open to hearing since everything I see in the foot is metaphysical as well as physical."

Reflexology works on the premise that the bottom of the feet are like mini-maps to the body; apply pressure to a specific area and the corresponding body part is stimulated, along with the entire nervous system, helping improve circulation and achieve internal balance.

"I need a good under-standing or I'd be easy to tip over," jokes Jim Whittaker who wears size 12 1/2 shoes. At 6-foot-5, Whittaker, the first American to scale Mount Everest, knows how important feet are when traversing rock faces or plodding through knee-high snow. He climbed the highest peak in the Himalayas with a newly-repaired Achilles that had snapped when he was ski jumping. He says he's lucky - unlike many of his fellow climbers, Whittaker has never lost any toes to frostbite. But even he isn't immune to black toenails; he got this one walking around in unlaced ski boots after spending a spring day in Stevens Pass powder.

"Your foot is your foundation in all ways," says Hensell. Toes represent the head and neck. If you have large toes in proportion to your foot — especially a big big toe — "you have big thoughts and are probably intellectual," while small toes point to more physical inclinations, Hensell says. A Morton's toe — a second toe that's longer than the big toe — "may indicate a deeper connection to spirit or a greater expression of emotion." Slightly curled toes are like a control mechanism, as if "you're trying to hold on." Calluses on the heel not only point to low back pain but also self-protection, "like a hardening of yourself from society."

Hensell says arches are harder to interpret without context from the entire foot, but generally they denote levels of sensitivity and creativity. Foot width can also be telling: A wide foot means you're planted solidly on the ground, she says. "A narrow foot indicates a delicate balance. You might have had a difficult childhood where you had to balance between Mom and Dad or self and others."

With all these kinds of theories floating about, we wandered around town and asked people — some famous, some not — to take off their shoes, put up their feet and think about them for a minute. We did. They did. And it turns out, as we discovered, you can get a whole new perspective on people when you start from the ground up.

Banana slugs mating in Carkeek Park were the inspiration for the yellow-and-purple bug Anji Marth has tattooed on her left foot. Marth, an artist at Integritas Tattoo Shop on Phinney Ridge, is working on a "body suit" of tattoos but says she never really considered her feet until the banana slug. "I never had a pedicure before," she says. "Now, I go; I moisturize my feet and put sunblock on them." Marth, 35, won't give clients their first tattoo on the foot since it's a hard-to-heal body part prone to infection. It's worth it, though: "I like attention drawn to out-of-the-way areas, and it certainly draws your attention to a place you wouldn't normally look," she says.

In keeping with Islamic tradition that is as much lifestyle as it is religion, Sahar Romani prays five times a day. "Of course one prays in the heart, but the spiritual world and the physical world are not divorced," says Romani, 20, whose toes (and head and fingertips) point toward Mecca, during prayer. The sayings and actions of the Muslim prophet Mohammed are written in the Hadith. There it explains he took his shoes off before prayer and his followers emulated his actions. Asked why he removed his shoes to pray, Mohammed said an angel had come to him and told him his shoes were not clean.

Even before Brienne Cortez was born, her mother knew she'd be a dancer. She moved in her mother's belly whenever music played. Raised in Hawaii and steeped in its traditions, the 19-year-old Kent woman now dances hula all over the United States. The feet, body and hands all move together to tell stories handed down through song, says Cortez, whose Hawaiian name, Kapuaokalani, means flower. When performing, she adorns her head, neck, wrists and ankles with greenery - tea leaves, ferns or leaves. "It's tradition to dance barefoot, and it would be inappropriate to wear shoes," she says, adding that the only time feet would be covered would be "if you were dancing for a king or queen."

Two miscarriages in two years had Camelle LeBlanc of Duvall frustrated and teary. Her husband Jeff treated her to a massage, and it was her masseuse who suggested she try reflexology. "I got pregnant right off the bat," says LeBlanc, 33, of her sessions with Lisa Hensell at the Seattle Reflexology & Massage Center on Queen Anne Avenue. Baby Brennan, who'll turn 1 in October, was born with a web toe, something his Mom is sure he inherited from her side of the family. "I have really bad, flat feet, bad knees and bad hips," says LeBlanc. Is she a believer in the ancient practice of foot manipulation? "I really think there's something to it," she says. "I'm no expert, but I've seen studies that do seem to show increased fertility with reflexology."

University of Washington record-holder David Bazzi is among the top five collegiate distance runners in the country. He has the feet to prove it, says his coach, Greg Metcalf. "Yeah, David's are pretty nasty," he says, noting that when Bazzi made a bet with one of the women on the team that whoever won a certain race would give the other a foot massage, "she said, ŒNo way!' " Metcalf, who immigrated from Africa, encourages his runners to practice barefoot. "The way the foot hits the ground when you're barefoot is the most natural way for it to hit the ground," he says. "It's a good way to build strength in your feet."

In 1968, Artis the Spoonman hitchhiked across the country without a pair of shoes. He didn't own any. Now, the 52-year-old, self-described "eccentric performance artist" who legally uses only one name, doesn't do "urban barefoot" anymore. He does, however, wear sandals year-round. But catch him doing his act at the Fremont Street Fair or Bumbershoot and he's sure to be doing it sans shoes. Artis, who's lived off his art since 1974 and calls West Seattle home, says he often performed spoons naked in his more-fit youth. These days, though, his feet are the only body parts that go unclad. "Being barefoot is like breathing. My feet are breathing," he says. "There's a lightness and freedom I get from bare feet."

The big toe, little toe and heel form something of a tripod, evenly distributing weight through the feet, says yoga instructor Jennifer Walker. Before learning yoga nine years ago, Walker, who teaches at The Yoga Tree in Fremont, noticed she was wearing down the outside edges of her shoes - the result of poor weight distribution. Now, at age 33, "I'm always conscious of the way I'm standing," she says. Yoga helps realign the muscular-skeletal system and lengthens the spaces in between joints, she says. "If you can root the foot down into the floor, you simultaneously get a rebound effect - it's a lot like bouncing a ball. It has to be pushed down first before it can go up. Your body lifts, you get a little taller, and it feels awesome."

Sara Jean Green is a Seattle Times staff reporter. Betty Udesen is a Times staff photographer