Grounding: Hype or Healing? | Wellness | US News

Grounding: Hype or Healing? | Wellness | US News




Grounding: Hype or Healing?
The practice is purported to beat inflammation, pain, stress and more.
By Anna Medaris Miller, Contributor Nov. 3, 2017



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A FEW YEARS AGO, EILEEN Day McKusick and her husband began sleeping as far apart from each other as possible on their king-sized bed. Their marriage wasn't the problem; McKusick's hot flashes were. Since her husband had always had a warmer body, the added heat became too much, remembers McKusick, 49, a researcher and author in Burlington, Vermont, who had also developed hot, itchy rashes on the bottoms of her feet.


She tried smearing her feet with topical creams and changing her diet, but nothing helped. "My feet got so bad they actually started getting welts," McKusick says. She began wearing leather moccasins since none of her other shoes fit or were comfortable anymore. "The moccasin look is not the look I want," she says. "It was a bit of a hurdle to get over that fashion statement."


But it quickly became worth it. "Within a week, my foot condition cleared up, and within two weeks my hot flashes went away," McKusick says.


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McKusick attributes the dramatic change to her new shoes' ability to "ground" her, or help her connect to the earth's energy. The alternative medicine practice, also called "earthing," involves putting your feet in direct contact with the ground, or wearing natural, leather-soled shoes whose permeability allows that connection in a way rubber-soled shoes don't. As a result, grounding, which indigenous cultures have practiced for millennia, can bring on health benefits ranging from reduced inflammation and improved circulation to better moods and sounder sleep, practitioners say.


"The Earth has a giant electromagnetic field; humans also have a bioelectromagnetic field," says Shamini Jain, a psychologist and founding director of the Consciousness and Healing Initiative, a collaborative of scientists, health care providers and others dedicated to advancing the science and understanding of consciousness and healing. "Grounding practitioners believe that by connecting our bioelectromagnetic field with that of the Earth, we can reduce pain and fatigue, and increase our energy as well as our connection with the Earth."



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While the existence of Earth's energy isn't much debated – NASA says "the flow of liquid iron in Earth's core creates electric currents, which in turn creates the magnetic field" – exactly if and how it can affect human health is less clear. Plus, much of the research in the area is on newer products like mats, shoes, mattress pads and skin patches that purport to help people "get grounded" by connecting them to the earth through conductive material and a cord that plugs into earthing rods or grounding ports.


One small study, for example, tracked people's cortisol levels before and after eight weeks of sleeping on a "conductive mattress pad." It found that their cortisol rhythms balanced out, indicating stress relief and better sleep, and the subjects also fell asleep faster, experienced less anxiety and depression and felt more energy. The women's hot flashes decreased, too.


In another 2015 study in the Journal of Sports Medicine, researchers randomly assigned 32 men to complete a grounding exercise with either actual grounding equipment (in this case, a mat and patches that attach to the skin and connect to a grounding rod or port) or "sham" equipment after they all tired out their quads with 200 squat-like exercises. The researchers found that while all the men were equally sore, those who grounded with the "real" equipment fared better in some measures linked to less inflammation, speedier recovery and even a stronger immune system.



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"Current scientific studies report reductions in pain and stress, and improvements in cortisol rhythm and sleep," Jain says. "There is some indication that grounding affects the immune system, but the mechanisms are not well-understood, and in general there has been little research in this area." Even the aforementioned study was funded by the company that supplied the equipment.


Despite the lack of strong evidence on grounding, there's plenty of research on the health benefits of connecting with the earth in a less literal sense. Research has shown that taking group nature walks, for example, is linked with lower depression, less stress and better mental health and well-being. Other research has shown that spending long stretches of time in the woods – a so-called "forest bath" – can boost the number of white blood cells that fight viruses and tumors.


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"In the world that we live in, most people are not connecting with nature – it's become this big disconnect," says Marci Baron, a Woodbury, New York-based energy healer, or an alternative medicine practitioner, who practices grounding and encourages her clients to as well. "To make a conscious connection to get out into the energy of the earth really brings a lot of health benefits." Put another way, she says, "Everybody who goes to the beach and connects with the ocean and the sand [feels] better."


Grounding can also encourage mindfulness and deep breathing – features of meditation, which are linked to all sorts of health benefits from sharpening the immune system to lowering blood pressure. "When you have that intention – I'm going to go outside, take this amount of time to connect to the Earth's energy, bring my body into sync with it – that's really powerful," Baron says. "The Earth is there to support us in that."



[See: 8 Ways Meditation Can Improve Your Life.]


But most practitioners aren't waiting for strong research to practice what they know feels good. "Everybody says the same thing: They just feel better when they're grounded," McKusick says. To reap the most benefits, Jain recommends standing barefoot on the ground with your attention directed all the way to your feet. "Allow yourself to make contact with the earth, and feel as though you can sink into it deeply," she says. "This allows the body to relax and receive more freely."


Baron suggests imagining negative energy dumping out of your feet and healing energy flowing into them. Even if you don't live near a clean patch of grass or dirt, you can release some of your body's toxins or unhelpful energy through a foot bath with Epsom salts, she says. "It's very calming; it's very cleansing; it's healing," Baron finds.


That's been the case for McKusick, who also makes a point to regularly walk barefoot, weather-permitting. The practice has reaped swifter, more dramatic benefits than most other activities even she – a trained massage therapist and yoga instructor – has tried. "I have enormous amounts of energy, I don't have any inflammatory conditions at all, I sleep great," she says.