In the ground beneath your feet, there is a tremendous resource for health and wellbeing.
Perhaps you’ve heard the term “earthing,” or “grounding”: the therapeutic practice of connecting with the Earth’s electromagnetic (or “bioelectric”) field via direct skin contact with the surface of the Earth, or through conductive materials such as copper wiring, leather, or plant-based fibers. Both the existence of Earth’s bioelectric field, as well as the principles of electromagnetic physics, are no big news in scientific circles. However, with an increasing number of published studies now shedding light on specific health benefits related to these processes, there seems to be a certain buzz around the idea these days.
To summarize the theory behind the practice, researchers have found that the Earth acts as a natural reservoir of electric energy, supplying whatever is needed to each organism in order to reach optimum balance. If you have an excess of electrons when you step onto the ground, the excess will be absorbed into the Earth. If you have a positive charge, or a deficiency of electrons, then the Earth will lend you more.
This is exactly the relationship at work in “grounded” electrical outlets, which by the same principles prevent excessive and potentially dangerous charges from building up in electrical devices.
Experimental researchers have documented positive effects of this Earth-body interaction on virtually every physiological process one can imagine, ranging from the realms of the endocrine, immune and nervous systems, to cardiovascular health and wound-healing mechanisms.
What I have not heard mentioned in all the excitement about these findings are the larger implications of grounding, not only to our bodies, but also to our embodied minds and spirits; not only to our potential gains from the earth, but also to our cultural perspectives about ourselves in relationship to Earth.
These broader implications arise because, to the individual organisms living within it, the regulating effects of Earth’s bioelectrical current are not merely far-reaching, but fundamental and holistic in scope.
Pause, if you will, and consider this: In the ground beneath your feet, there is a tremendous resource for health and wellbeing. This resource costs no money, requires no expertise on your part, is constantly available and is designed specifically for you. How does it affect you in this moment to simply stand in this recognition? I invite you to take this meditation a step further and actually try out the concept.
A simple and effective method is simply to go outside, take off your shoes and feel your feet making contact with the ground, whether on dirt, grass, rock, sand or even tree. Stay here. Pay attention to the soles of your feet, and invite an exchange between yourself and the ground. Allow sensations and inner images to arise. Stay a little longer. When you do move on with the rest of your day, know that you carry this connection with you, in the form of the Earth’s electrons, which continually mediate the life processes in your tissues.
I regularly practice barefoot meditation and movement in nature, and also incorporate these methods into my work with others as a therapist and educator. Among many benefits, I find that conscious contact with Earth is both energizing and calming, and is supportive of mental focus, emotional flexibility and creativity on a daily basis. It seems clear that the psychological implications of grounding practices are no less profound than – and ultimately are inseparable from – the physical.
To consciously enter into contact with the Earth in this way is to nurture the felt sense that we belong in the world, on an existential level. The visceral experience of having our needs met by the Earth has the power to transform our images of self and self-in-relationship to the living world.
We may come to recognize the Earth as literally our larger body, regulating our internal balance from within its larger functional design – just as the complex chemical, hormonal, and electrical dynamics of our personal bodies keep our individual cells in regulation.
I think most of us are aware that we simply feel better when we are regularly getting outside, and certainly there are many reasons why this is so. The research related to “earthing” or “grounding” reveals yet one more dimension of the truth – expressed through countless examples from ecological science as well as all of the great wisdom traditions – that we are not independent from the rest of the world. Rather, individual health is in relation to a larger whole.
We can go to this greater “body” at any time to regain not just physiological balance, but also the basis of our sanity, which is our relationship to the bioelectric matrix of the living Earth: our fundamental ground.