Grounding | Earthing
This article is written by Sky Corbett-Methot, a Holistic Nutritionist and 500-hour Hatha yoga and meditation instructor.
Photo by Muhammad Ruqiyaddin (@mruqi)
This #wellnesswednesday let’s hop aboard our time machine and land back into our childhood. Remember how carefree you were? How your only goal was to have fun, play, and enjoy the moment? Feel your way back into that giddy sensation off running barefoot out the door to play.
Not even taking a moment to stop and think of putting your shoes on because that would only take away from the fun to be had. Instead, you take off running, feeling the grass, the rocks, and the mud on your feet. You return home filthy, grass-stained, and light as a feather, smiling from ear to ear.
More recently, think back to the last time you were on a beach. One of the first things you did was take your shoes off, allowing your feet to fully immerse themselves into the sand. Enhancing your experience, you can feel the sand rubbing against your callouses, you can feel the crunch of the shells, the waves of the ocean as they lapped against your legs.
Label me a modern-day ‘hippie’ if you will, but I despise foot prisons (A.K.A footwear). They inhibit my ability to feel the ground beneath me. I prefer to embrace the soft carpet of the earth and run full tilt into the activity I am focusing on.
Odd? I know, so it got me thinking, why do I crave the sensation of the earth, and prefer these tactile experiences? You see, cravings when properly understood by the individual can act as a clue that your body is revealing that something is missing.
For example, it is quite common for a pregnant woman to crave pickles. This is because her blood volume is increasing resulting in sodium intake requirements increasing. Salty foods are a common occurrence for this reason!
So back to the bare feet. I have good news my friends, especially those similar to me that would prefer to forego the shoes. Walking barefoot connecting with the earth below is called grounding (A.K.A earthing) and is a healing practice.
Some studies have been done on this and the health benefits worth noting. Essentially walking barefoot outside enables the free-roaming electrons in the earth to spread into your body creating antioxidant effects.
So what does that really mean? We can think of antioxidants as the good guys within us, they fight for us. These antioxidants fight to stabilize free radicals. Free radicals are the “bad guys” that we constantly come into contact with. They are wild unstable electrons that form due to oxidative stress and cause a cascade of negative reactions that damage your cells.
The benefits of grounding are that it improves sleep, causes faster-wound healing, reduces stress, reduces pain, assists the immune system by altering white blood cell count and cytokines response which are inflammatory.
Additionally, this causes a shift in the central nervous system. Grounding promotes the parasympathetic nervous system to activate. This is the portion of our nervous system that controls digestion and the restoration of our cells. Our society is amped up constantly on stress and disconnected from our old ways. This practice allows for literal reconnection. Know that inflammation is a consistent culprit in chronic diseases so mitigating that improves both mental and physical health.
To recap walking outside barefoot activates the restorative portion of your nervous system (parasympathetic nervous system), recharging your body like a battery, and helps your overall health. Simply put, it calms the body down!
So I encourage you to let your inner modern-day ‘hippie’ out, ditch the foot prisons, and take a stroll barefoot!
Take a picture of you practicing grounding and tag @yogatocope on Instagram, we would love to see it!
Links to scientific resources on PubMed in case you wanted to further your knowledge:
Photo by Bianca Castillo @bianeyre