Grounding: A Barefoot Ritual
For those who live far from beaches, walking barefoot along sun-kissed sand in the tropics are likely the day dreams that pull people through cold winters and long work days. Be it part of people’s daily routines or vacation non-negociables, walking barefoot along the sand is scientifically pleasurable. The mere act of shoeless walking stimulates the thousands of nerve endings found in the feet, and in turn, these benefits work their way back up the body to the brain. This communication between foot and cerebrum helps to improve neural plasticity while maintaining a healthy mind-body connection. The mere meditation of sand squeezing between toes and ocean waves washing anxious thoughts away is enough to lower the heart rate.
Is there be something more profound to long walks on the beach?
What lies underneath the footprints left in the sand?
“Grounding” or “earthing” is the understanding that having direct contact with the earth’s surface has major health benefits to our well being. The science is simple. Life as we know it operates on electricity. Our atmosphere metabolizes electrical currents received from the sun, turning it into usable energy. Our very heartbeat is the rhythmic exchange of electric impulses, and the cells making up our organism use ionic signaling to communicate and to function. All of this excess energy that circulates through our body on a daily basis exits our system through our feet where it is absorbed back into the ground.
But what if our bare feet are not in direct contact with the ground?
The Earthing Movie is a free documentary on YouTube that uncovers the scientific phenomenon of how connecting bare feet to Earth’s plane can heal and regulate our bodies. Clint Ober, one of the leaders in this remembering of the grounding movement makes a bold statement in the film, “Take your shoes off they will make you sick.”
Contrary to the modern day human attire, barefeet used to be the norm. Now we are rediscovering that it is not only a return to our most natural state, but having direct contact to the ground also helps to maintain a balance in our bodies. As a society, we have circled back to this knowing of grounding due to a rise in inflammation-related diseases. Grounding has proven itself as a powerful and noninvasive treatment in the reduction of inflammation within our body.
But the question begs to be asked, why are we so inflamed?
The answer could be traced back to the 1960s when the shoe manufacturing industry stumbled upon a synthetic leather substitute that allowed shoes to be rapidly and massively produced. While this was good news for footwear businesses, the cost to the consumer was unforeseen. These new fabricated materials act as insulators, blocking the capacity for electrically charged particles to leave the body.
To add fuel to fire, the current era of the Information Age has heightened the use and production of computers and cell phones, which depend on and release electromagnetic fields as a byproduct of their usage. These EMFs can be absorbed into our make-up, leading to symptoms like fatigue, headache, decreased learning ability, and, you guessed it, inflammation. So not only have we blocked off the natural process of our system to release excess ions, but we have amplified the electricity we encounter on a daily basis. We have constructed the perfect electrical storm inside our very own bodies.
The earthing phenomenon opens up a larger conversation for the global collective. If progress also increases our exposure to more illnesses and dis-ease, is that really progress? Perhaps the question we should be asking ourselves is what is our meter for success and evolution? If development is dependent on extracting resources from our natural environment which have negative effects on our habitat and our physical bodies, is that really considered evolution of our species?
While having a singular thing to blame for all of our problems may feel better, we wouldn’t be the intelligent beings we claim ourselves to be if we credited our illnesses to a pair of fake rubber soles. Rather, this current predicament of walking along Earth’s surface while remaining completely disconnected to Earth itself can be a wake-up call. A reminder of our humanity. A reckoning that no matter how much we revolutionize and digitalize the human experience, we are still flesh and bone. A remembering of the natural, and a returning to the simple. And it can all start by taking off our shoes, and placing toes into tierra.