Earthing
person
Don't believe everything you thinkThe liminal space Veteran
My sister has started exploring the idea of Grounding, or Earthing and I'm wondering if anyone has some experience with it.
“Earthing is about having direct skin contact with the surface of the Earth, whether it’s your bare feet, your hands or other parts of your body,” Dr. Albers explains. The theory is that when we physically connect with the ground, its electrical energy rebalances our own. Proponents believe that the rise in chronic illnesses can be attributed, in part, to our footwear.
“They point out that we've just recently started wearing shoes with rubber soles, which don’t conduct electricity,” she continues. “So, part of the argument is that we've removed that contact from the Earth, which is making us unwell.”
Modern earthing is a new(ish) twist on a widespread belief in the healing potential of the Earth. Practitioners of the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) therapy of reflexology sometimes walk barefoot to stimulate the flow of energy (qi) throughout the body. Being barefoot is also a feature of many indigenous cultures around the world — and several religions require devotees to remove their shoes to pray or enter a place of worship.
So, these ideas have been “in the air,” in one form or another, for a long time. But the specific practice of earthing has been having a moment since 2022, when it became a hot topic on social media.
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/earthing
She has a couple of the products they sell for indoor grounding. A set of sheets with fine metal wires that you connect with an electrical outlet's grounding plug as well as a mat that you can sit or stand on. We had a voltage meter that picked up my natural voltage which was only like .3, but then when I stepped on the mat it reduced to 0. So something happens, but does it really do anything more than placebo or being outside in general?
Comments
I’ve come into contact with earthing a while ago. When I used to live on the North Sea coast I used to go often for barefoot walks on the beach, and that did me a lot of good over the years after my voice hearing episode. It was contact with the water and the sand that was particularly fine.
I’ve never tried earthing in a forest environment, but I can imagine the underground networks of fungi between trees also carry some kind of charge. It’s said that a forest is like a giant brain all wired together beneath the ground.
I wouldn’t trust man-made products for indoor grounding, the whole point of it is to wiggle your toes in the sand and feel the Earth beneath your feet.
I feel the earth move under my feet AKA Earthing... For a while I was earthing, (barefoot beach walking) on a regular basis...There is something special about that connection of bare skin to earth...
40 years ago we used to rent a church for our Buddhist retreats. I think they might of been Quakers. The were quite open to allowing Buddhists to use their building and told me that they had regular congregation meetings once a month where they'd all sit quietly, facing each other in a circle of chairs, barefoot. They called it a grounding.
I hike barefoot with my dog almost every day until too much of the trail is ice and snow. I live in Minnesota, so there are around 4 months of the year when I wear boots. Trail is mixed grassland and forest with creeks and some marshland. When the spring comes after I have been wearing boots for months my feet start to scream at me: "let me out!"
Only 4 months of boots in MN is pretty impressive. I remember what it was like having really calloused feet as a kid from going barefoot all summer.
Barefoot in the park......
Sunday, even though there was ice on the ground, went walking in my summer crocs, no socks. Never occurred to me to go barefoot. What am I some sort of super ascetic hippy bodhi?
Actually, that does sound like a plan...
With an added bonus you don't have to wash socks!
I would take up running again...
Nah!
Gonna potter around the garden in a pair of olde boots (no socks or laces)... Got worms to instruct. Insects to attract. Flowers to talk to... etc...
https://www.chrismcdougall.com/born-to-run/the-barefoot-running-debate/
The Apollo astronauts left a Chuck Berry record on the moon (part of the “We came in peace for all mankind” message offering) which pretty much caused Carl Sagan’s head to explode. This dichotomy sums up my reaction to earthing to prevent/cure disease.
Humans (actually all animals) are indeed capacitors, capable of storing a charge; that is, a DC voltage potential. This can of course be discharged by grounding. Interesting, I suppose. And with modern technology, quite measurable whether interesting or not.
Prior to the 1800s, there were many explanations/superstitions about the cause of disease, and also a few actual hypotheses. But thanks to Koch, Pasteur, and others, we now understand the “Germ Theory of Disease “ which postulates that microorganisms (bacteria, viruses, fungi) are the pathological agents responsible for infectious illness. Since then the corroboration has been massive, to say the least. So, if someone wants to persuade me that a lifted ground, besides curing 60 Hz hum in the PA, also somehow causes disease, I would like to hear an explanation of the pathophysiology involved.
On the other hand, there are things, a great great many things, which we experience to be true but that do not yet have a plausible/verifiable physical/chemical explanation. A barefoot connection to the earth is good for me. I can feel it. I can’t explain it but I’m not sure I need to. Breathing outdoor air, on the trail by the river with the dogs, is blissfully restorative. The dogs swim in the river, even in the bitter cold (northern Colorado). They know, at their level, what it is doing for them. I know too, but not in a way, in a realm, that coexists with words, or Internet forums.
I’d love to walk barefoot in the damp sand. But I’ll skip the grounding mat. Yes, if the panel is wired correctly it will ground the static charge; I know that at the physics level. But it’s not the same as being truly connected to the natural environment; I know that at the much higher natural level.