Why walking on the Earth with bare feet is so good for us

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet

and the winds long to play with your hair.

Khalil Gibran



I was interested to learn about Clint Ober, pioneer of the Grounding and Earthing Movement, who has dedicated 20 years of his life to helping people achieve optimum health through grounding or earthing. In 2014, he published a book Earthing: The Most Important Health Discovery Ever? which is now on my reading list.

The importance of grounding was realised when installing cable TV systems in the early 1960’s and following a health challenge in 1995, noticed that people wearing plastic and rubber soled shoes were insulating their bodies from earth and wondered how this might be affecting us. A simple grounding experiment confirmed that grounding reduces pain and improves sleep.

Over the following years, this work instigated research studies that proved the beneficial impact of grounding or earthing on inflammation inside the body and how it promotes the normal functioning of all body systems. This is because the body utilises the Earth’s electrical energy to maintain internal electrical stability which is crucial for the normal functioning of all self-regulating and self-healing systems.

If you are new to grounding or earthing, I highly recommend watching the film documentary The Earthing Movie: The Remarkable Science of Grounding which gave me a real insight about the benefits and different approaches to treatment.

My favourite part of the film relates back to Clint's upbringing on a farm in Montana, growing up with friends from the Native American reservation and remembering a friend’s mother telling him to remove his shoes or they would 'make him sick.' He tells the story about when a sister of his friend became very ill with scarlet fever, her grandfather dug a pit in the ground, lined it with straw and placed her in it. He built a fire near the pit and sat near her for a few days until she arose, feeling much better.

Making this connection, Clint realised that everything his friend's parents did was based on a much deeper understanding of the natural world, much more than anything he had ever been taught.
 

As the founder of a grounding research and development company, Clint has helped to develop and patent the only official indoor Earthing products branded as both Earthing® and Ground Therapy® (not an affiliate link).

In Clint Ober's words: Earthing can be life changing, it is one of the simplest and most important things you can do for your health, and probably the easiest lifestyle change you can make in your lifetime.