Grounding to Improve Insomnia and Improve Pain
Grounding to improve insomnia and improve pain? What’s that? As a kid, going barefoot was something I just did because I inherently felt as though it was a comfortable and natural thing to do. Little did I know there were some significant benefits to doing so. I recently talked to a yoga teacher, my chiropractor, and the nutritionist where I work about some health reasons for making brevetting a practice. However, you need to be barefoot on the actual earth. This practice is called “grounding” or “earthing”.
One great way to stimulate your meridians, the individual spaces of energy that run throughout your body and are part of the whole acupressure/acupuncture realm, is by practicing grounding. As explained by my chiropractor, the nerve endings and meridians that end in your foot are poked and stimulated by going barefoot. He explained that this acts much the same as doing reflexology or acupressure to your foot. The stimulation then creates good energy flow throughout the meridians involved when you step on those pressure points.
Sleep Improvement
Improved sleep seemed to be one of the most popular benefits that my chiropractor heard reports of from his clients. They felt that by spending more time barefoot they had more restful sleep experiences. When he heard this, he did some of his own research and was able to find out that in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, a researcher named James Oschman, director of Nature’s Own Research Association in Dover N.H. found the electrons that are normally blocked by shoes, and carpeting are among some of the best stress relievers we have, but we are disconnected from these when we wear shoes and walk about in buildings rather than the earth. They do this by reducing nighttime cortisol levels. They took these levels in Oschman’s study.
Improved Pain
My chiropractor also found that his own athletic clients, a significant part of his practice, claim to have some pain relief from grounding themselves at the end of a busy day involving grueling workouts.
It’s not surprising for me to hear this after spending enough time in the alternative health business and going barefoot to prove it to myself time after time. After some discussion with my nutritionist on the subject, she added that the earth gives us something that is integral to our own design and is an inherent part of our nature. It’s really not an intellectual thing, but rather a natural communing between earth and creature.
