“Soil is earth’s barefoot and when we walk barefoot, two barefoot touches each other with love!”
– Mehmet Murat Ildan –

Two things would happen when I came home from work after long and intense hours: one would be to have a maximum of one minute elapse between walking in the front door and getting into my flannel pyjamas. The second would be to throw off my shoes and walk barefoot for the rest of the night. There is something sensuously delicious about feeling the earth under our feet … and now we have science to prove it!

For years, studies have been conducted on the negative charge carried by the Earth and how this affects those who live on it. This charge, they discovered, is electron-rich and in theory, has the potential to supply humans with rich antioxidants and free radical destroying electrons.

One of the first brainiacs behind these theories was the 1952 German physicist Professor Schuman, who, in a very simplistic summary, discovered that the earth had a pulse. In fact, it was measured and confirmed at 7.83 Hz and became known as “The Schuman Resonance”.

Fast forward a few decades and the studies have increased dramatically with fascinating findings. For example, an article published in the Journal of Environmental and Public Health discusses the importance of barefoot contact with the earth, also known as ‘grounding’ or ‘earthing’, as proving to “create a stable internal bio-electrical environment for the normal functions of all body systems.” The study bemoans how our modern lifestyle has “separated humans from the primordial flow of Earth’s electrons” and points to the possibilities that the recent decades of increased chronic pain and illness, immune disorders, and inflammatory diseases, have a direct link to our disconnection with the Earth’s surface.

The interest in what happens when we are ‘grounded’ or ‘earthed’ has resulted in numerous amount of significant research. One study found that blood urea concentrations are lower in people who are earthed during exercise as it “inhibits hepatic protein catabolism or increases renal urea excretion.” Another study conducted by Gaetan Chevalier, PhD, and James Oschman, PhD, concluded that grounding reduces blood viscosity and clumping and therefore seems to be one of the “simplest and most profound interventions for helping reduce cardiovascular risk and cardiovascular events.” For a summary of some of the recent findings, please see this article by Arjun Walia.

So it turns out that shoes, although beneficial for many events, are not always your best friend or fashion accessory. Your glorious bare feet are! It has to do with our body’s functions that are based on bio-electric processes, and they work best with a well-established baseline … and you cannot get any better than Earth. So being disconnected from Earth causes stress because our bodies lose their reference points for operating and we deny our bodies the bridge it needs to allow free electrons from the ground to travel through our body and rejuvenate our cells.

So the big lesson that all this holds?

Get dirty in 2018!

Get those shoes off. Walk in the garden, forest and beach. Lie on the grass. Let your bum make contact with the Earth as you watch a sunset (Disclaimer: I recommend that bum of yours remains clothed in public spaces to avoid arrest!)

It also confronts us again with the fact that humans have raped and pillaged the Earth for centuries, propelled by insatiable greed and consumerism. We need to STOP. Getting our feet dirty reminds us to walk humbly and carefully. When we walk barefoot and look back, it shows us the ideal ‘footprint’ we should one day leave behind as we are but ‘dust’ (soil) and in a mysterious way we are connected to this Earth we walk on …

“Walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh –