Have you noticed how wonderful you feel after taking off your shoes to walk barefoot? Or while sitting under a tree? Or lying in a body of water? While it’s great to just be out in the open air, these activities go beyond simply reconnecting with nature. This is because your body is grounding itself and through this simple process recalibrating its health and mental and emotional equilibrium.
Increasingly we’re alienated from nature and all her beauty, power, wonder and wisdom. This has resulted in us abusing and corrupting her without a second thought, as we also diminish and sabotage ourselves in the process.
But what if you could completely change your wellbeing just by stepping outside? What if the pathway to healing was as simple as spending a few minutes every day being in direct physical contact with the Earth as you consciously reconnect with nature?Recently a radical new health practice has gained momentum as word of its benefits spread. Its impact can be far-reaching but it’s incredibly simple to do, costs nothing, is always available and feels great. Sound too good to be true?
The practice is known as Grounding, and its appeal lies in its simplicity.
What Is Grounding?
Grounding is a practice where your body and the earth gently exchange electrical energy simply by being in direct contact. And the benefits for your body’s health and wellbeing are immense.
We have always loved being directly in contact with nature. And recent research into the practice of grounding has found there’s a scientific explanation why it feels so good. Grounding supports the normal functioning of all body systems such as your biological clock, regulating circadian rhythms, and balancing cortisol levels. And it can significantly improve all manner of health problems, especially when it’s practiced regularly. The extent of the improvement depends on how long you spend grounding.
Grounding can help:
- improve energy levels
- reduce stress
- boost immune system function
- improve sleep
- decrease muscular inflammation and stiffness and other chronic pain
- reduce anxiety
- improve circulation
- prevent free-radical damage and associated chronic inflammation and premature ageing
- heal injuries faster
Best of all it brings you back into a state of equilibrium where your body is better able to heal itself. Those who use the practice on a regular basis report great results.
And it all has to do with electrical fields.
Positive + Negative
Electricity is the juice of life and humans are no exception. Essentially we are just bioelectrical systems. All our body processes, including our heart, brain and nervous system are regulated by electrical signals. And this extends outside our physical form into an electrical field known as the biofield or the aura.
Just as we’re an electrical system, so too is the earth, which carries a negative charge. It’s by tapping this through direct contact that we gain the health benefits of Grounding.
We interact electrically with everything in our world. To work efficiently our biorhythms, wellbeing and mental state all depend on our interaction with the electromagnetic fields of the Earth.
For millions of years, things went fine. Humans walked around barefoot and often slept directly on the earth which helped keep their bioelectrical system in balance. But things began to change after World War 2 as our modern lifestyle increasingly separated us from the primordial flow of earth’s electrons.
In just one generation the world became very different. From heavy metals in the air, toxins in food, water and homes, to the explosion of technology and the powerful electromagnetic radiation (EMR) it emits, we are constantly immersed in a toxic miasma.
Where we were once in constant contact with the surface of the earth we’re now completely out-of-touch with the nourishment beneath our feet in our high-rise buildings.
Traditionally we wore leather soled shoes which allowed beneficial electrons to pass through from the earth’s electrical field into our body. But since the 1960’s we’ve increasingly worn insulating rubber or plastic soled shoes. These create a barricade which blocks transmission of the natural earth energy to stop us receiving its rebalancing benefits. It’s similar to how a rubber glove can block a small electric shock.
At the same time chronic illness, immune disorders and inflammatory disease have dramatically increased. As evidence that the earth’s electromagnetic field can support normal healthy functioning of the human body grows, interest and research has turned to seeking a connection.
Electrical Stress
As we go about our daily life we’re constantly immersed in a field of electromagnetic waves (EMF) and exposed to the electromagnetic radiation (EMR) they create. You can’t see it, smell it or taste it, but it has become one of the most pervasive pollutants in our world. And it’s a pollutant that’s having a huge impact on our health.
So many things are wireless in our new ‘smart world’. This has many benefits as far as convenience goes, but it also has serious effects on our health. EMR affects the subtle balance between our bodies and the energy fields of nature, causing discomfort and creating and exacerbating chronic disease.
The air in our houses, workplaces, schools and outdoors is filled with electro-pollution, creating a contamination of harmful positive ions produced by this multitude of electrical devices we can’t live without. This comes in addition to the vast quantities of positive ions from everything from skin care to herbicides. It’s this excess of positive ions around us that cause electrical stress for our bodies and DNA and contributes to growing illness and compromised health.
Ions are atoms that have a missing electron or an extra electron. This makes them either positively or negatively electrically charged.
Charged positive and negative ions float around in the air where they interact with other ions with the opposite charge. Electricity is created as electrons flow back and forth between ions, positive and negative, in order to create harmonious balance.
Ions are present in our body and we also take them in from the air. When the air is rich with positive ions levels in our body can become too high. This is when we begin to experience chronic disease and poorer health.
An increase of negative ions can help reduce this effect.
Positive ions are generally concentrated indoors. They’re released by electrical equipment and technology devices as well as fluorescent lighting, carpet, metal, plastics, toxic chemicals such as insecticides and air pollution. They’re also produced outdoors by weather fluctuations, UV rays from the sun and air pollution.
Concentrations of negative ions are found out in nature around moving water like waterfalls and the ocean, in forests or places with growing plants, or very close to the surface of the Earth.
We now spend far more time indoors than in the past and so build up an unhealthy
amount of positively charged ions within our bodies.
The effect on our health of positive ion buildup often gets worse over winter when we spend more time indoors. Spending months surrounded by the electromagnetic fields of cell phones, computers and other technological devices creates an influx of positive ions into your body.
Health issues due to an excess of positive ions in your body range from mild to severe. They include headaches, irritability, fatigue, nausea, low energy, poor concentration, vertigo, brain fog, allergies, lethargy, infections, depression, anxiety, suicidal feelings, CFS, cancers and neurodegenerative disease.
Bring Back Balance
To keep stress and chronic disease in check your body needs more negative than positive ions.
Negative ions purify the air as well as improving your health and wellbeing. Breathing in the air in places high in negative ions helps bring your body back into balance.
However, while getting out in nature boosts your negative ions it isn’t always possible to go off hiking to a waterfall or visit the ocean.
But you can still easily gain the benefits of negative ions including boosting your immune system and mental state, in your own backyard or the local park.
And your body will love it because you can do this every single day!
The earth’s surface carries a negative charge and everything in close proximity also carries that charge.
This means concentrated negatively charged free electrons (the one’s you need) always accumulate in the 10cm, or 4 inches, directly above the earth’s surface.
Simply being in this place creates an automatic exchange of positively and negatively charged ions between the air, the earth and your body. You breathe them in and they can also pass into your body through your bare skin. As you walk on the ground barefoot you receive a flood of beneficial electrons from the earth through your soles.
The flood of electrons immediately ‘re-balances’ you, which is why you feel so good when you walk outside barefoot.
When you connect with the earth for longer periods the health benefits and your feelings of wellbeing also increase.
How To Ground Yourself
This wonderful exchange of ions with the earth happens on bare ground, in water, grass, through stone, concrete and bricks. But it’s blocked by asphalt, tar, sealants on wood stone or tiles, and non-leather soles on shoes. Which is why bare feet work best.
- Take your shoes off and go barefoot on grass, beach, bare earth, even concrete laid directly on the earth (but not if it’s painted or sealed). Moist soil is better.
- Sit or lie on the earth or in water
- Swim in lakes, rivers or the sea
- Spend time close to rapidly moving water, like waterfalls
- Wear leather-soled shoes
- If you can’t get outside at all hop under the moving water of the shower. You’ll gain some of the benefits you’d get out in nature.
- Buy an indoor grounding mat or an earthing bed sheet
No time spent grounding is too short, and no time is too long.
Grounding begins to act on your body and well being immediately. You get the first benefits within seconds, although you need to be in contact with earth for about thirty minutes to feel less stress and less pain.
Grounding helps prevent a build-up of harmful positive ions in your body and promotes their discharge into the earth. It rebalances your electromagnetic field, helps strengthen your immune system, and boosts your health and wellbeing.
Grounding brings instantaneous changes, immediate benefits and an immediate effect.
Over time the range of these grows. So walk barefoot to the mailbox, touch one leaf, step outside to see the moon – even those few seconds make a difference.
