I love digging in the dirt and feeling my connection to the Earth. I find walking barefoot in the grass to be a great stress reducer. As a young girl, I used to run around barefoot with my siblings during the warm summer days, and recall how free and wonderful it felt. My father, a rural doctor, would always yell at us about the danger of cutting our feet or stepping on a nail. We would just laugh it off and continue romping barefoot.
In my integrative psychiatric practice, I often recommend ‘Earthing’ to patients as part of an integrative approach to healing. In my mind, it is in alignment with the ancient medical doctrine of “Primum non nocere” – which means “First, do no harm”.
Earthing refers to the practice of making contact with the surface of the Earth either directly, with the skin contacting the surface of the Earth- or by having the skin make indirect contact with the Earth through the use of conductive materials. The Earth constantly sheds an endless supply of electrons (negatively charged particles) from its surface. You can’t see the Earth’s energy but some people can feel it as a warm, tingling, and pleasant sensation when they out walking barefoot along the water’s edge at the beach or on a stretch of dew-moistened grass.
Throughout history humans walked barefoot and slept directly on the ground or separated from the ground by only a mat. But modern lifestyle, including the widespread use of insulative rubber- or [Read more…] about Shifting Lives Through Earthing – A Psychiatrist’s Perspective
