Barefoot HealingAuthor: Matt Sutherland  The old people came literally to
love the soil, and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of
being close to a mothering power. It was good for the skin to touch the
earth, and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with
bare feet on the sacred earth. Their tipis were built upon the earth and
their altars were made of earth. The soil was soothing, strengthening,
cleansing, and healing. That is why the old Indian still sits upon the
earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life-giving
forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think
more deeply and to feel more keenly; he can see more clearly into the
mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him.
— Lakota Chief Luther Standing Bea
In the late 1990s, a former cable guy named Clint Ober was sitting on a
park bench in Sedona, Arizona, when he had a revelation. Early in life
Ober had to quit school to help on the family farm in Montana, and then
he got a job at the beginnings of the cable industry. He had installed
poles and wires and home boxes on his way to becoming a successful cable
executive. He knew, among other things, that one secret of a
static-free cable TV picture is to make sure that all the electrical
equipment in the cable system is protected from electromagnetic
interference, and the simple solution is to connect the home cable
system by a wire to an iron pole stuck into a single, six-sextillion-ton
battery that is constantly charged by solar radiation, lightning, and
heat from her molten core. That giant battery, of course, is Mother
Earth. The connection is known as grounding. Cable systems have to be
grounded with the same electrical potential as the surface of the earth,
or customers call up and complain about fuzzy pictures. Ober
happened to be sitting on the bench that day in Sedona because he had
recently almost died of a liver disease. Once healed, he decided to
start a new life: He sold his cable company and his mountaintop house in
Colorado, gave his possessions to his kids, and took to the road. He
had time and resources and was wondering what to do next as he watched
the tourists amble by in their expensive footwear. As he writes, “It
occurred to me rather innocently that all these people — me included —
were insulated from the ground, the electrical surface charge of the
earth beneath our feet.” Intrigued, Ober went home and created a
simple grounding mechanism by attaching a wire to a grounded metal rod
out his living room window. With a voltmeter and the wire in hand, he
walked around his house measuring the voltage on his body. He writes,
“When I walked toward a lamp, the voltage would go up. When I stepped
back, the voltage went down. I tested this with all the electrical
appliances in the living room and kitchen. The only appliances that did
not create EMF (electromagnetic fields) voltage on my body were the
refrigerator and my computer tower. They were grounded. From my
background in the communications industry, this immediately made sense
to me, as we had to ground all of our electronic equipment to prevent
electrical interference from EMFs. … Next I went to the bedroom, lay
down on my bed, and registered the highest level of EMF voltage on my
body. The bedroom was the most ‘electrically active’ area of the
apartment. The bed was up against a wall full of hidden electrical
wires.”
The next day, Ober built himself a crude sleeping pad out
of metalized duct tape, which he then grounded out his bedroom window.
He speculated that his chronic sleeping problems might be caused by the
electric fields in the room. When he lay down on the pad, the voltmeter
showed that his bed was now the equivalent to the ground outside. “I was
lying there fooling around with the voltmeter, and the next thing I
knew it was morning. I had fallen asleep with the voltmeter on my chest.
I hadn’t needed a pill to fall asleep. I had slept soundly for the
first time in years, and I had hardly moved at all during the night.”
After
a few days of sleeping restfully on the pad, Ober also noticed that his
severe back pain had vastly improved. In fact, he was feeling better
than he had in years. “I came to the conclusion that I may have made a
great discovery.” Over the following weeks and months Ober created
more makeshift grids for the beds of half a dozen or so people, who
reported that they too experienced benefits. Meanwhile, he scoured the
Internet and visited Arizona’s top medical libraries, searching for
anything he could find on grounding and health, but all he found were a
few Native American stories. Electronic specialists confirmed that there
was no risk from the grounding pads — or from standing barefoot on the
earth, for that matter — but no one had seriously investigated whether
or not our bodies depend on grounding energy to maintain health. When
Ober brought the question to prominent sleep researchers in California,
they laughed him out the door.
Are Circadian Rhythms All in Your Head?
Nobody
doubts that our bodies are governed by biological clocks. Since the
beginning of the space program and fueled by the demands of jet travel
and 24-hour shift work, many millions of dollars have been spent on the
field of chronobiology, mapping daily, monthly, and annual cycles in
humans and animals and all the way down to single-celled organisms. The
working of these clocks are enormously complex, orchestrating a wide
variety of systems, including the stress hormone cortisol and the sleep
inducer melatonin, but the ultimate goal of the clocks is
straightforward: to keep the complex workings of living creatures in
sync with our ultimate source of energy, the sun. And so the field of
chronobiology has focused primarily on prevailing light conditions for
keeping our systems entrained. For example, astronauts are given
artificial light and dark periods to keep them healthy, and we fight the
sadness of winter with bright, artificial sunlight (sunlamps). And we
now worry the artificial light entering our bedrooms at night raises our
risk of breast cancer.
Ober’s revelation raised another set of
questions. What if light isn’t the only form of energy that affects our
circadian rhythms and our health? What if the energy of the earth is
part of our natural circadian system? As it turns out, these questions
are not new. Chinese medicine refers to a spot near the ball of the foot
that comes in contact with the earth when we walk barefoot. It is the
primary entry point for soaking up the earth Qi, or energy. The spot
also serves as an important acupuncture point – connecting with the
urinary bladder meridian and most of the body’s major organs.
Before
Ober came along, it had also been established that the earth is, in a
sense, a giant battery with a charge that fluctuates according to
circadian rhythms created by the sun and the moon, as well as by some
5,000 lightning strikes a minute, the continuing motion of wind and
water, the dynamizing effect of spinning at 28,000 miles per hour, and
the biodynamic forces of plants and fungal life. Much of this energy is
stored in soil, itself composed mostly of energy-absorbent quartz
crystals. And of course our feet are packed with as many as 1,300 nerve
endings per square inch. While we tend to think of these nerve endings
as simply a means to protect our feet on rough ground, could they also
help to keep us electrically in tune with the natural rhythms of the
earth?
 Earthing Research Begins
Ignored
by mainstream researchers, Ober went on to conduct the first study of
what he now called “Earthing,” with the help of some sympathetic
students at one university sleep clinic. He first contracted to have
some conductive fiber material bonded with wool-lined sleeping pads
attached to grounding wire. Then he rounded up 60 volunteers by dropping
flyers at ten beauty salons. The 38 women and 22 men all complained of
sleep problems and various forms of joint and muscle pain. He split the
volunteers into two groups: 30 slept on pads that were properly
grounded, and the other 30 on pads with a hidden disconnect. Only Ober
knew who was actually grounded for the month-long study. The
results were astonishing: 85 percent of the grounded sleepers fell
asleep sooner; 93 percent slept better; 100 percent were more rested
upon waking; 82 percent “experienced significant reduction in muscle
stiffness; 74 percent “experienced elimination or reduction of chronic
back and joint pain;” and 78 percent reported “improved general health.”
Furthermore, many participants reported “unexpected but significant
relief from asthmatic and respiratory conditions, rheumatoid arthritis,
hypertension (high blood pressure), sleep apnea, and premenstrual
syndrome (PMS). There were also reports of fewer hot flashes.” With
the help of an assisting nurse, Ober had the informal study published
in ESD, an online journal covering electrostatics. That exposure
generated a call from a retired anesthesiologist interested in whether
grounding “affected the circadian secretion of cortisol.” Ober was
excited because this study would move beyond simply gathering feedback
from participants. Instead, it would measure a specific physiological
change in the body. Published in the Journal of Alternative and
Complementary Medicine, the study showed that grounding “during sleep
resynchronizes cortisol secretions more in alignment with its natural,
normal rhythm — highest at 8:00 a.m. and lowest at midnight.”
In
2006, a study published in European Biology and Bioelectromagnetics by
electrical engineer Roger Applewhite found that electrons travel from
the earth to the body and back again when the body is grounded.
Effectively, the body is grounded at the same negative-charged
electrical potential as the earth. The same study also showed that
grounding strongly reduced electromagnetic fields on the body. In other
words, Applewhite suggests that connecting with the earth provides a
source of healthy electrons and also acts as a shield from dangerous
environmental electric fields. Earthing Goes Public
Last
spring Ober, Stephen Sinatra, MD, and Martin Zucker published a
fascinating account of Ober’s adventures and research on Earthing in the
book, Earthing: The most important health discovery ever? The three are
part of a group called the Earthing Institute that is doing more
research and selling Earthing-related products. So far the Institute has
only small studies published in obscure journals (though one of their
research papers was recently referenced in a Harvard Health Letter).
Nevertheless, the “most important health discovery ever” should warrant a
piece in a journal like The Lancet or the New England Journal of
Medicine, either confirming or refuting the results. But so far that
hasn’t happened. In fact, perhaps the most remarkable thing about
Earthing is the silence. If you Google “Earthing Hoax” you’ll reach a
forum from the Museum of Hoaxes that chortles about the health claims —
insinuating that they cannot be real — but offering nothing but
incredulity. Maybe the problem with Earthing is its simplicity. But
the stakes may be high. Over the last ten years as Ober has been doing
his work, a variety of mainstream medical scientists have reached the
conclusion that many diseases — from heart disease to diabetes to
arthritis — are ultimately signs of chronic inflammation, in which the
body’s natural defenses have been turned against itself. The problem
seems to be an overabundance of positively-charged “free radicals.” Ironically,
free radicals are a beneficial tool used by white blood cells to fend
off invasive microorganisms and repair damaged tissue. Chronic
inflammation develops when the inflammatory response does not shut down
properly, and these normally helpful free radicals continue seeking out
electrons in healthy cells. Confused, our body sends in more white blood
cells, more free radicals are released, and more healthy tissue is
damaged. A variety of expensive supplements and dietary regimens are
designed to provide electrons to neutralize the free radicals. Practitioners
of Earthing believe those electrons are freely available right outside
your door. They believe that “normal inflammation veers out of control
because of lost contact with the earth … The land and seas of planet
Earth are alive with an endless supply of electrons. By making direct
contact with the surface of the planet — the skin of our bodies touching
the skin of the earth — our conductive bodies naturally equalize with
the earth. Figuratively speaking, we refill the electron level in our
tank that has become low … Just like standard electronic equipment that
needs a stable ground to function well, so, too, the body needs stable
grounding to also function well.” One irony of all this is the
billions of people worldwide who dream of the day when they will have
good shoes to protect their feet and when they won’t have to sleep on
the ground. For them, the energy of the earth can be all too close.
Another irony is that folks like us are so well insulated that we need a
series of scientific reports to go outside, kick off our shoes, and let
our tens of thousand of nerves plug back in to Mother Earth. Maybe for
us, Earthing is like the practice of gratitude: always accessible,
always healing, and so easy to forget.
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