Imagine walking barefoot on a beach as salt water laps around your ankles. Think about how relaxed the cold, damp sand makes you feel as it breaks apart underneath your feet while you stride along in the sun.
Now try and remember when you were just a kid rolling down a grass hill, feeling the cool, fresh grass on your shoulders.
Does the thought of that touch with nature make you feel even a little bit more relaxed or calm?
It sounds perhaps a little too good to be true, but this direct skin contact with the earth’s surface actually carries incredible, health-boosting properties, and even more surprisingly – it has a name.
Chris Hemsworth and wife Elsa Pataky, who live on the beach in Byron Bay, spend plenty of family time barefoot on the beach.
Earthing or grounding is the latest health craze taking over, but unlike previous trends such as Bikram yoga and kale, earthing is free.
The concept is simple; earthing is a fast growing movement based upon real findings that skin-to-earth contact can naturally improve many aspects of your daily life through a natural, negatively-charged energy that passes through your body from the ground up.
Discover how earthing works in the video player below! Post continues…
Throughout history, humans spent significantly more time in the great outdoors.
Whether we were gardening, or simply exploring barefoot, the skin-to-soil contact would keep the bodily energies balanced.
Now, in the era of technology, humans tend to spend a greater amount of time indoors, online, scrolling or watching.
We so rarely spend adequate lengths of time outside and when we do, we wear rubber-soled shoes which only further the disconnect with nature.
There’s no denying it – we probably all spend a bit too much time behind a screen when we could be enjoying the great outdoors.
What a lot of us don’t know, is that by making proper contact with the earth’s surface we have the ability to take in the earth’s negative electrons which in turn can help to balance out and neutralise the positive charge that courses through us, passed on by everything from trans fats, to the technology that surrounds us.
Just 20 minutes of grounding can reduce bodily aches, pains and inflammation, but that’s not all…
Those who spend time connecting with the ground also tend to sleep better, have increased vitality and generally look and feel better in themselves.
But perhaps the biggest benefit of grounding can be found in its de-stressing abilities, which can improve cardiovascular health, regulate blood pressure and relieve tension headaches.
“Grounding appears to be one of the simplest and yet most profound interventions for helping reduce cardiovascular risk and cardiovascular events,” noted a 2013 study.
So, why not try it out?
Earthing is free, easy and really, you have nothing to lose.
Just try not to step on dog droppings on your next barefoot walk in the park!
