Are You Grounded? 5 Benefits of Earthing You Need To Experience
- By Alex Malinsky
- Jun 27, 2018
Happy summer solstice! The sweetness of summer is here, which for many of us means more time outdoors. We're talking about hiking, swimming, beaching, vacationing, picnicking, and living that park life. Can we get a hip hip hooray!?
Summer is a great time to focus on the benefits of grounding because, well, going barefoot any other time of year isn't only pretty unpractical, it can also be downright unpleasant or even dangerous for obvious reasons.
Why ground?
Grounding can have a positive impact on many aspects of our health and touch on the physical, emotional, mental and even spiritual levels. As a society, we're dealing with a kind of "electrical toxicity" from constant exposure to power lines, WI-FI signals, microwave energy from cell phones and towers, and even normal electrical household appliances. These Electromagnetic Fields (or EMF's) can disturb the human body, contributing to common ailments such as headaches, brain fog, and chronic fatigue, or even more serious issues like chronic anxiety, depression, suppressed immunity, and degenerative disease.
Grounding becomes imperative to help combat the effects of EMF's and restore energetic harmony in the body, and it's actually easier to do than you might think! It's a matter of kicking off those shoes and getting some skin to earth contact.
5 Benefits of Grounding
1. Boosts Healing and Immunity
While we might not think about it on a regular basis, the earth is actually a massive electrical object, and your body is a conductor of electricity. When we are connected directly to the earth's electric field through direct contact with our skin, the earth's negatively-charged electrons flow through us, and our electric charge goes from positive to negative. Negative electrons (those flowing from the earth) are known as healing electrons, while positively-charged electrons are those that contribute to disharmony and disease. Negatively charged electrons, or "ions", can boost the body's resiliency and vitality, and can help increase our immunity and rate of cellular repair.
2. Anti-Aging and Anti-Inflammation
What is one thing that literally all chronic diseases have in common? Inflammation. it's imperative that we know the causes of inflammation in order to properly treat these conditions. When you break things down to a scientific level, considering the fact that everything is vibrating with energy, one of the biggest contributors to chronic inflammation may actually be a lack of electrons - meaning too many positively charged ions and not enough negatively charged ions. Connecting directly to the earth is one of the best things that we can do to slow down the aging process because it can lessen inflammation and associated free radical damage.
3. Stress Reducing
Have you ever spent a few hours at the computer and felt literally drained of all energy, with an increase in irritability? For many of us, it is a common - maybe even daily - occurrence, especially for those of us working with computers for 8+ hours per day. Positively charged EMF's have been shown to elevate cortisol levels, one of the most powerful stress hormones in the body. The good news is grounding tends to lower it. It may be pretty much impossible to avoid electronics in this day and age, but getting outside and taking those shoes off even if for a few minutes can help you feel more calm and balanced, and far less stressed.
4. Improves Sleep
People who ground themselves on a regular basis report an improvement in their quality of sleep, resulting in feeling more rested and energized in the morning. You can even find grounding technology used in bed sheets and blankets so that you can get the benefits of grounding while you sleep. This largely has to do with the lessening of cortisol in the body, as mentioned above.
5. Improves Body Awareness
The bottoms of the feet are loaded with nerve endings, yet because we insulate our feet through thick rubber shoe soles, we miss out on a lot of sensation. Walking outside and experiencing the various textures of the earth such as grass, dirt, or small pebbles can help stimulate the nerves, bringing our awareness out of our thoughts and more into our bodies. It can even help relieve energy blockages by putting pressure on reflexology points found throughout our feet.
You can instantly ground yourself by standing barefoot on the earth and can get even more negative ions by standing next to a flowing body of natural water, such as a waterfall, river, or the ocean. However you manage to fit grounding into your lifestyle is up to you, just make sure you don't miss out on all of the incredible benefits this simple action can have on your overall health.
