by Tauri Kerr
“Get yourself grounded and you can navigate even the stormiest roads in peace.” – Steve Goodier.
During these tumultuous times, this quote has resonated with me. It seems that many people who I hold dear to my heart are facing some sort of difficulty and the world around us has turned on its head. The avalanche of bad news that seems to be hitting me (and the rest of the world) at the moment has made me realise that it is imperative to find something that will keep you sane amidst the madness.
I happened across a practice called ‘grounding’ which I feel could be the answer to the question of how to remain focused and aligned during such unsettling times.
Grounding, also referred to as earthing, is a therapeutic technique that involves doing activities that ‘ground’ or electrically reconnect you to the earth. According to a study that was done recently, grounding has shown to reduce muscle damage as well as lower levels of anxiety, fatigue, and emotional distress.
So how do we gain all these fantastic benefits?
It's simpler than you would think!
There are many types of grounding and it can be done through either direct or indirect contact with the earth.
Walking barefoot is something that I did not realise had such a positive effect on one’s body. Allowing your feet to come into contact with grass, sand or even mud will provide you with grounding energy that can make you feel holistically aligned. You can increase your skin-to-earth contact by lying on the ground for a few moments in your day. If you think about it, forcing ourselves to slow our fast-paced lives down is not a bad idea – even if it is just to take a barefooted stroll in your garden.
Submersing oneself in water has also been proven to be an effective way to ground yourself. It needs to be a natural body of water such as a lake or the sea (a pity about the beaches being closed).
Upon further reading, I discovered that grounding can also assist with sleep disorders as well as cardiovascular disease. I don’t know about you, but my feet are itching for a bit of ground time right about now!
Unfortunately, extensive research on the topic of grounding is still underway but studies are indicating that the benefits of grounding could simply stem from feeling connected to nature.
An easier analogy is the earthing of a fuel tanker. These enormous trucks are filled to the brim with a highly flammable liquid. When transferring the fuel into the truck, electrostatic charges build up inside the tank. An earthing wire provides sufficient contact with the ground in order for static discharge to occur. In layman's terms, this basically just means that the truck will not blow up. Now I am not saying that we will spontaneously combust if we don’t walk around barefoot but there is something to be said about releasing negative charges into the earth. We will not physically burst into flames but emotionally, we could just.
Arguably, our mental state is even more important than our physical being. It has been proven that stress and trauma can not only take its toll on you mentally, but it can trigger autoimmune disorders as well as other physical side effects. Holistic health starts in your head. With this being said, it is important to maintain perspective in times when negativity may seem overwhelming. As Glennon Doyle says, “these things will be hard to do but we can do hard things”. My hope for the new year is that we will all be able to stay in touch with our own inner joy and perhaps a barefoot walk is a good way to start.