free the sole to free the soul
When was the last time you went for a walk without shoes?
We all know that the sun gives us warmth, light and vitamin D and the Earth provides us with fresh air, water, food, and a surface to live on. However, it has recently been learned that when your bare feet make contact with the Earth’s surface your body uptakes a natural and subtle energy which could be referred to as vitamin G – G for ground.
Benefits of earthing:
Defuse the cause of inflammation, and improve or eliminate the symptoms of many inflammation related disorders
Reduce or eliminate chronic pain
Improve sleep and promote a deeper sleep
Increase energy and vitality
Lower stress and promote calmness in the body by cooling down the nervous system and stress hormones
Normalise the body's biological rhythms
Thin the blood and improve blood pressure and flow
Relieve muscle tension and headaches
Lessen hormonal and menstrual symptoms
Dramatically speeds healing time and can help prevent bedsores
Reduce or eliminate jet lag
Protect the body against potentially health disturbing environmental electromagnetic fields (EMFs)
Accelerate recovery from intense athletic activity
Much of the literature and practices of diverse cultures around the world claim that walking barefoot on the Earth enhances health and provides feelings of well-being and connection. We all have some experience in being barefoot — from the moment we are introduced to the world as little babies, we first learn to crawl and then to walk without shoes so that the muscles and natural mechanics of our feet develop naturally so that we can avoid becoming reliant on artificial support. During early childhood, it is widely accepted that it is best to keep a child’s feet unconstrained to help improve sensation in their feet, encourage grasping action of their toes, and promote normal foot growth. As a child gets older and enters the school years, we shove their quickly growing feet into shoes which may interrupt and restrict their natural development. The feet muscles become under-stimulated and lose their initial strength that had been gained during early development.
In fact, a study published in the podiatry journal The Foot in 2007 compared modern humans' feet with those of 2000-year-old skeletons and concluded that before the invention of shoes, people had healthier feet.
Foot mechanics
The feet, in their natural form, play a huge role in proprioception — the ability to sense the position and movement of your body (without the assistance of sight). A good check to assess your own proprioception is to stand (without shoes) on one foot — first with your eyes open, and then closed. Standing on one foot with your eyes closed means that your balance is fully reliant on your feet muscles; if you find this very difficult, it might be a sign that shoes have had a big impact to your natural foot mechanics.
“The most straightforward benefit to barefoot walking is that in theory, walking barefoot more closely restores our ‘natural’ walking pattern, also known as our gait.”
As humans, our bodies are really good at responding to our environment and quickly adjusting in ways that suit. We can gain strength and increase our cardiovascular fitness when we exercise and put stress on our muscles. The body responds by repairing or replacing damaged muscle fibers through a cellular process where it fuses muscle fibers together to form new muscle protein strands or myofibrils. Through endurance training, the oxygen uptake in the lungs and heart is improved to enable a person to sustain physical activity for longer.
The opposite happens when the body is deprived of exercise and movement — muscles will atrophy, weaken and shrink over time. The feet are especially susceptible to this decline, and their importance is often overlooked. The hyper-cautiousness surrounding feet — the insistence of wearing highly-structured shoes in order to ‘prevent injury’ is hugely counter-productive. The foot is very skilled in adapting to whatever condition it is placed in. Naturally, the foot is capable of walking and running without any support. However, overly-supportive shoes encourage a reliance disguised by a promise of protection, when in fact are fostering a deterioration in foot strength, ultimately increasing susceptibility to injury.
When we are barefoot, we receive a massive amount of sensory feedback from our feet—far more than when we are in overly-supportive and overly-cushioned shoes. We receive increased information from the foot about its position in space, the texture of the ground and muscle tension. Being barefoot sharpens the homunculus of the foot in the brain — it increases the density of sensory and motor neurons that correspond to the foot. This lays the foundation for better balance and improved motor control through the increased information intake and subsequent brain growth. When someone wears overly supportive and cushioned shoes, the sensory homunculus becomes underdeveloped, and the information the brain receives from the foot is distorted, resulting in a lack of control. When someone is barefoot regularly, the sensory feedback from the foot becomes more detailed and refined, allowing the foot and brain to delineate small changes of sensory stimuli. The result is better control of motor function and balance. This is especially important as we age because the loss of balance is the top reason for falls in the elderly.
The increase in sensory detail while barefoot plays out practically in several ways. First, it allows for increasingly refined motor control based on sensory feedback. For example, when running barefoot or in naturally shaped shoes you can accurately adjust how your foot strikes by a matter of millimeters. In contrast, running in a conventional shoe there is little feedback, and making micro-adjustments in gait is not only difficult but discouraged by the design of the shoe. Second, by using and stimulating the nerves in the foot more, their physical growth is encouraged (both in the peripheral nerves of the foot and the central neurons in the brain). This growth can have beneficial impacts on circulation and sensitivity. Finally, there is pure enjoyment in being able to feel and connect with various textures and surfaces. Being barefoot on the beach, in the grass or on the rocks of a riverbed is immensely pleasurable and provides additional physiological benefits too.
3 exercises to rebuild foot strength:
1. Walking or running on sand
2. Foot scrunches
Step 1: Pull all your toes down and in (without having them leave the ground).
Step 2: Contract the arch muscles for 3 seconds and then release.
Step 3: Repeat this 3 times per day (3 days a week).
3. Toe spreading
Step 1: Place your big toe on the ground.
Step 2: While pressing your big toe into the ground, rotate your heel inward and press your pinky toe into the ground to fan out the rest of the toes (before bringing your heel to the ground).
Step 3: Repeat this 3 times per day (3 days a week).
(As advised by Correct Toes Podiatry)
Along with the increased muscular strength, the enhanced circulatory flow and improved anatomical alignment, going barefoot has very tangible benefits on the brain and the nervous system. A study performed in 2015 found that barefoot contact with the Earth produced almost instant changes in several physiological measures including; inflammation, immune responses, wound healing, and prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.
Earth-foot wellbeing
Modern lifestyle has increasingly separated humans from the primordial flow of Earth's electrons,
“We wear artificial fibres and shoes all the time and indoor spaces are carpeted with synthetic materials. We are very isolated from the earth’s environment and this means we slowly but surely build up an electrical charge.”
One reason direct physical contact with the ground might have beneficial physiological effects is the earth’s surface has a negative charge and is constantly generating electrons that could neutralise free radicals, acting as antioxidants.
“It is an established fact that the Earth’s surface possesses a limitless and continuously renewed supply of free or mobile electrons. The Earth’s negative charge can create a stable internal bioelectrical environment for the normal functioning of all body systems which may be important for setting the biological clock, regulating circadian rhythms, and balancing cortisol levels.”
All your body’s normal processes – breathing, pumping blood around your body, digesting – create free radicals. That’s why free radicals have been linked to ageing. Negative energy from the earth (in the form of free electrons) may counter the accumulation of free radicals in our body according to a report in the Journal of Environmental and Public Health.
We know that free radicals are produced by ageing, toxins in our environment and disease.
Ageing – we get more free radicals as we get older. That’s because free radicals are produced via our metabolism and we accumulate more over the years.
Toxins in our environment. Pollution, stress, cigarette smoke etc all create free radicals in our body.
Disease. Free radicals are produced by our body as part of an immune response. Their job is to fight off viruses, bacteria and get rid of damaged cells. For good health we need the right amount of free radicals where and when they are needed. Sometimes our immune system goes overboard and produces too many free radicals. This is linked to chronic inflammation, which is now thought to be behind most modern diseases.
Free radicals lack an electron and are on a constant lookout for free electrons to nullify their positive charge.
Eating antioxidant foods like blueberries or by taking supplements like Vitamin E can counter some of the effects of free radicals. Recently however, we are discovering that the electrons produced by the Earth could be considered some of nature’s most powerful antioxidants. Connecting the body to the Earth could enable these free electrons to spread over and into the body, where they can have an antioxidant effect, neutralising damaging excess free radicals that can lead to inflammation and disease in the body.
When your body is in conductive contact with earth, excess positive free radicals are neutralised by negatively charged free electrons. Positive + negative = neutral.
This process creates a stable internal bioelectrical environment for the normal functioning of all body systems’, and oscillations in this bioelectrical environment may influence or regulate diurnal body rhythms.
How to
The easiest way to experience earthing outdoors is to simply kick off your shoes and walk barefoot on green grass or moist sand at the beach – moist ground is more conductive than dry sand or dry dirt. In fact, the beach is one of the best places for earthing as the combination of sand and salt water is highly conductive.
Ceramic tiles, unpainted concrete and brick (when laid directly on the earth) are also conductive surfaces that allow the human body to ground effectively.
Research on earthing suggests that your body experiences changes within four seconds of grounding. Tense muscles relax and the nervous system calms down. After thirty minutes to two hours, you can feel less stress and pain, and experience more warmth in your hands and feet caused by better blood circulation.
Consider ditching constrictive shoes and allow your feet (and brain) to feel more.
References:
Ackerley, R., Chancel, M., Aimonetti, J., Ribot-Ciscar, E., & Kavounoudias, A. (2019). Seeing Your Foot Move Changes Muscle Proprioceptive Feedback. Eneuro, 6(2), ENEURO.0341-18.2019. doi: 10.1523/eneuro.0341-18.2019
Chevalier, G., Sinatra, S., Oschman, J., Sokal, K., & Sokal, P. (2012). Earthing: Health Implications of Reconnecting the Human Body to the Earth's Surface Electrons. Journal Of Environmental And Public Health, 2012, 1-8. doi: 10.1155/2012/291541
Just A. Return to Nature: The True Natural Method of Healing and Living and The True Salvation of the Soul. New York, NY, USA: B. Lust; 1903.
Nyland J., Franklin T., Short A., Calik M., Kaya D. (2018) Posture, Kinesthesia, Foot Sensation, Balance, and Proprioception. In: Kaya D., Yosmaoglu B., Doral M. (eds) Proprioception in Orthopaedics, Sports Medicine and Rehabilitation. Springer, Cham
Ober C, Sinatra ST, Zucker M. Earthing: The Most Important Health Discovery Ever? Laguna Beach, Calif, USA: Basic Health Publications; 2010
Oschman, J., Chevalier, G., & Brown, R. (2015). The effects of grounding (earthing) on inflammation, the immune response, wound healing, and prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. Journal Of Inflammation Research, 83. doi: 10.2147/jir.s69656
Stein R. Is Modern Life Ravaging Our Immune Systems? Washington Post; 2008.
Van Deursen, R., & Simoneau, G. (1999). Foot and Ankle Sensory Neuropathy, Proprioception, and Postural Stability. Journal Of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy, 29(12), 718-726. doi: 10.2519/jospt.1999.29.12.718
