Reconnecting With Mother Earth – The Importance of Grounding for Your Health

Do you remember being a kid and running around barefoot all day long, and how good it felt?  The refreshing feel of cool grass, and burying your feet in the sand?  It turns out it wasn’t just being fun and carefree that felt so good—it was our physical connectedness to the earth’s surface.  Grounding, or “earthing”—physically communing with the earth through conductive surfaces (soil, grass, sand, concrete)—has been studied more extensively in the past few decades, and the positive health implications are pretty amazing.

I’ve known about grounding for a while, but I always thought it was just a way to connect with nature, to reconnect with the sacred parts of ourselves that get lost in the noise of our daily lives.  But I was fascinated to learn that grounding is an actual phenomenon of absorbing the earth’s free electrons.  The earth contains a natural electrical charge, and the term “grounding” comes from the process of grounding all electrical systems to the earth to stabilize them.

Our bodies, as bioelectrical systems, also benefit from absorbing the endless supply of free electrons floating around the earth’s surface.  Historically, people slept on natural surfaces, walked barefoot or on shoes made from animal skins, and just generally spent more time on, and connecting to, mother earth. But now we wear rubber-soled shoes, primarily walk indoors, and have busy lives that keep us away from connecting with the earth the way our ancestors did. Today’s scientists studying grounding have gone so far as to call the earth’s surface a “global treatment table,” and attribute (in part) the modern rise of chronic diseases to our disconnectedness from the earth. 

Rigorous studies have shown myriad benefits to grounding, including improved sleep, reduction of chronic pain and inflammation, and even cardiovascular benefits.  For a deep dive into these studies, take a gander at this article from the Journal of Environmental and Public Health.  But below are some of the main takeaways.

*  Grounding reduces chronic pain and inflammation

In a nutshell, when we absorb the earth’s free electrons, they act to neutralize free radicals in our bodies involved in inflammation, pain and disease.  Pretttty, pretttty cool.  Check out this article by the Chopra Center summarizing an inspiring study in which a 44-year old woman with chronic back pain was pain-free after eight weeks of grounding.  Levels of inflammation were documented through infrared imaging, and showed total abatement.

*  Grounding reduces stress

Also fascinating is that the rhythms and oscillations of the earth’s electrical intensity appear to stabilize and regulate bodily rhythms, like cortisol secretion.  Cortisol is the hormone associated with our “fight or flight” response, and it gets a bad rap as the “stress hormone.”  Though prolonged elevated cortisol levels are unhealthy, cortisol actually also helps regulate blood sugar levels, metabolism, inflammation, and other vital processes in our bodies.  It makes sense that connecting with nature reduces stress levels, but we can take it one step further and physically connect with the earth to truly regulate our stress. 

* Grounding improves sleep

As a result of the processes described above, studies (reviewed in the article linked above in the Journal of Environmental and Public Health) show significant improvements in sleep as a result of grounding–likely a result of reduced pain and stress and the body’s ability to better regulate itself.

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So, how do we ground ourselves?  It couldn’t be easier.  Spend time, barefoot (or bare-bottomed?), on natural, conductive surfaces outside (soil, grass, sand, or concrete (surprisingly, wood is not considered a conductive surface)), frequently (daily if possible) for as long as you’re able (30 minutes is the amount of time that seems to be used in the clinical studies, but if 5 or 10 minutes is more manageable, then try that!).  There are also conductive surfaces you can buy to sleep on or patches you can put on your feet, but why not go to the source and really dig your toes in?  And this is also a great validation for those of us (me!) who love to let our kiddos run around barefoot.

Even amid all of the terrible effects of the coronavirus, one silver lining is mother earth has been able to take some time to heal herself.  Now let’s let her heal us too.