Alternative Healing
Grounding / Earthing
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“Grounding" (a.k.a. “Earthing”) is an amazingly simple, yet powerful, therapy by which we reconnect to the earth’s gentle, negatively-charged surface to restore and maintain the body’s most natural electrical balance. We can ground ourselves by simply walking barefoot, or sitting / laying down, on the earth, as well as through connective devices that deliver the natural healing energy of the earth into our bodies. “Earthing,” or “grounding,” may very well be the solution for the cause of most common modern diseases: chronic inflammation.
What is Grounding?
Since the dawn of time, humans have walked barefoot and slept on the ground, oblivious to the subtle electrical signal helping regulate their bodies’ intricate mechanisms. Somewhere in human evolution, it became too uncivilized, unfashionable, or unsanitary to connect with the earth’s primordial healing force. Modern life, with heavily insulated multistory buildings, airplanes, and even rubber or plastic soled shoes has distanced us from the earth’s healing power, and may have resulted in the inflammatory aches and pains, fatigue, stress, and poor sleep we generally attribute to aging. It has become clear that we need to get back to the basics.
Our Bioelectric Nature
We are bioelectric beings in constant interaction with our environments. Collectively, cells form a living matrix through which the body conducts electrical impulses. Our cells resonate to particular frequencies and are in continual transmission and receipt of energy. We owe our hearts’ rhythmic beating, in part, to electrical impulses sent by the sinoatrial node, or pacemaker. Nervous and immune system, as well as muscular, activity also involves electrical currents. Additionally, electric fields regulate the movement of nutrients and water into our cells.
For years, doctors have utilized instruments which measure electrical currents through biological pathways in our bodies as diagnostic tools. Some of the more common ones include electrocardiograms (EKG), electroencepthalograms (EEG), and electromyograms (EMG). We’ve understood for years how electricity regulates our internal mechanisms, that the earth is negatively charged with electrons, and that gravity keeps us "down to earth," but are just starting to understand the whole “Earthing” connection and what it means to be "grounded."
Why is the Earth’s Energy Healing?
The amount and type of electricity in our environment influences our bodies’ natural internal electrical stability and internal rhythms, and can affect our health for better or worse. The earth’s electromagnetic layer protects our bioelectrical circuitry against static electrical charges and interference, as well as excess free-radical activity in the body. Free radicals, generated through normal metabolic processes involving oxygen as well as exposure to environmental toxins, damage cells by stealing their electrons.
As the earth’s surface is abundant with negatively charged free electrons, grounding quenches free radicals. This supply of electrons is constantly replenished by solar radiation and lightning strikes. Through direct contact with the earth, we absorb these electrons through the skin, and neutralize free radical activity within our bodies. Grounding, like ingesting antioxidants through food, is another one of Nature’s protective mechanisms against chronic inflammation and degenerative disease caused by excess free-radical activity.
How Do I Get Grounded?
It’s as simple as the ground beneath your feet… If you live in or near a warm, rural area, such as the beach, open fields, the woods, or mountains, grounding is an incredibly convenient and easy practice. All you have to do is take off your shoes and walk barefoot on the grass, sand, or dirt. While the rich nerve endings in your feet make them ideal conductors of electrons, you can also get grounded by sitting or lying down on the earth. Camping, hiking, gardening, and "beaching" (especially if you swim in the ocean - moisture enhances conductivity) are great activities for getting back to your earthy roots.
If you live in a city or otherwise don’t have regular access to the great and natural outdoors, you can use conductive bed or floor pads that are either linked by a wire to a ground rod outside your house or plugged into a wall outlet with a modern Earth ground system. Grounding on your time and in your space are the benefits of plugging in, especially for helping regenerate and repair your body while you sleep at night.
Specific Health Benefits of Grounding
By restoring the body’s natural internal electrical stability and rhythms, grounding helps improve cardiovascular, respiratory, digestive, nervous, and immune system function and restore the body’s natural healing potential. According to research and observation, daily grounding activity can, for many:
Additional Resources
For more information on grounding, be sure to check out Grounding for a Healthy Heart, as well as Earthing: The Most Important Health Discovery Ever?by Dr. Sinatra and co-authors Clinton Ober and Martin Zucker.
 To order a copy of Earthing and grounding products, contact Optimum Health International, LLC. at (800) 228-1507 or visit Grounded.com.
© 2010 Heart MD Institute, PA
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Watch excerpts of Dr. Sinatra's recent presentation, "The Most Important Healing Modality in the World," given at the 2010 Longevity Now Conference in Costa Mesa.
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The Father of Modern Grounding
Clint Ober, who once headed a nationally acclaimed cable installation company, rediscovered grounding’s healing power following an embarkation on a quest to overcome a near fatal disease. By connecting wires from a homemade conductive grid on his bed to the ground outside, Clint constructed the first artificial grounding device with which he began experimenting on himself and friends before implementing sleep studies. Soon after, a California doctor setting out to disprove Clint’s findings, conducted an independent study through which he learned that sleeping grounded helped normalize the stress hormone, cortisol.
Pulsation... Is the key element in health. When a cell is in a well-nourished, oxygenated, environmentally balanced state, an effortless pulsation occurs. When a cell becomes contracted due to metabolic, environmental, or emotional factors, pulsation is disrupted and healthy functioning is disturbed. The heart is the ultimate organ of pulsating muscle, engaging the energies and interactions of mind, body, and spirit. -Heartbreak and Heart Disease
Comments
I did not know anything about grounding.
I did know that walking along the beach and in the water has always been energyzing to me. Now I know why !
Thank you for sharing this knowledge.
I would be interested in reading the Earthing book.
Liesbeth.