This post is best read in conjunction with this article on illness and incubation. The healing nature of incubation is a sister to the connecting nature of earthing. They complement each other.

When I started looking into cellphones and their effect on our tissues and DNA, I came across Earthing. I have mentioned it on various occasions, as it is a remarkably simple, practical and affordable healing technique. Now it cracks me up to see the simple act of going barefoot made into the next health fad with jargon, but it’s true. Give it a try. Earthing (also called grounding or an electroceutical) is the simple idea that our rubber shoes prevent the transfer of negative ions from our mother Earth to our bodies. Or think of the Earth as an extra-mega anti-oxidant. Disease and inflammation are often caused by free-radicals grabbing the nearest electron from the next guy, causing a cascade of destructive elements tearing up tissues. The Earth provides the negative ions these greedy buggers are after, immediately stopping the chain reaction they create. A simple 20 minutes two times a day of walking barefoot, or getting your skin in contact with the Earth is recommended.

The Earthing Institute About Page States:

Earthing refers to the process of connecting by walking barefoot outside, as humans have done throughout history, or sitting, working, or sleeping grounded indoors. For more than a decade, thousands of people around the world—men, women, children, and athletes—have incorporated Earthing into their daily routines and report that they sleep better, have less pain and stress, and faster recovery from trauma. Earthing immediately equalizes your body to the same energy level, or potential, as the Earth. This results in synchronizing your internal biological clocks, hormonal cycles, and physiological rhythms, and suffusing your body with healing, negatively charged free electrons abundantly present on the surface of the Earth.

Alix from MedNauseum does a great review of some of the grounding mats and other tools and explains how grounding helped her sleep better and reduce her headaches. You can read her full review and watch it here.

There are now several studies on the benefits of earthing, but honestly it’s no big surprise to me–one of my favorite things to do as a kid was run around barefoot–everyone else was doing it, but my parents were worried we’d get ring worm or other parasites since we lived in a village full of pigs. I remember getting spanked when I was probably 4 years old for playing barefoot. I knew I wasn’t allowed to go barefoot, but I would always kick my shoes off at kindergarden when we went out to play. On one occasion my father came to pick me up early and he spotted me barefoot. I asked my best friend what I should do, she advised me to hide somewhere as soon as I got home. So that’s what I did. Papa found me before too long and I got the spanking of my life. I think by the time I got spanked I was so relieved to have the waiting over that I involuntarily laughed which made the spanking even harder than usual. As soon as I left home for boarding school I was barefoot again as much as possible, my siblings are the same way. Maybe that’s why I used to be so healthy.

Going barefoot finally did get beaten out of me when I started working in the culinary industry. You had to have shoes on all the time in a kitchen, for sanitation reasons. It is interesting to look at the way food is prepared commercially these days as a metaphor for our own disconnection. Chefs no longer touch food with their bare hands, plastic or rubber gloves are always present, disconnecting any energetic flow. Even putting a finger into the sauce or mix to taste is discouraged and optimally several sanitized spoons are on hand for touch-free tasting. Of course there is a large school of culinary artists who still believe that simply being aware of what you are doing and conscious of when and how to wash your hands is the best hygiene. In Burma they have a saying that the taste of the food depends solely on the unique hands of the chef. The Burmese have a beautiful tradition of hand-tossed fresh salads, prepared a la minute. You can really get connected by doing your gardening and cooking with bare feet and with your fingers instead of utensils

I also discovered a whole barefoot community! The Society for Barefoot Living, some of what they do is dispel myths like “It is against the law to drive barefoot.” I used to believe that one. I’m pretty excited about all this–the unfortunate thing is that in winter it is often too cold to be out barefoot much. The sun was finally out today so I took the opportunity to walk home from picking up my weekly share of raw milk barefoot, my feet are tender, but it sure felt good. I was also out this morning doing some barefoot tai chi. When you can’t go outdoors, there are also some grounding pads available for sleeping etc. Following excerpt from the Society For Barefoot Living’s website:

“Going barefoot is the gentlest way of walking and can symbolise a way of living — being authentic, vulnerable, sensitive to our surroundings. It’s the feeling of enjoying warm sand beneath our toes, or carefully making our way over sharp rocks in the darkness. It’s a way of living that has the lightest impact, removing the barrier between us and nature. -Adele Coombs, “Barefoot Dreaming””

The barrier of plastic or rubber between us and the earth, our food and our love lives (think of condoms right there between the most intimate moment) may be affecting us in ways that we aren’t aware of. We recently watched a BBC series about mind control which showed various horrific experiments they did to discovered the most damaging experience for baby monkeys was to have absolutely no contact with anything. Cutting off our various connections with plant, earth, each other turns out to be much more detrimental than expected.

At the bottom of the page on Research on the Earthing Institute site there is a link titled: Matteo Tavera, Sacred Mission. The link will take you to a pdf containing a series of letters translated from French written in the late 60s regarding Matteo Tavera’s discovery of what he called the Sacred Mission of all beings. I highly recommend reading the full series of letters, it doesn’t take long and is written in such a sincere and charming manner, explaining very simply what he understands to be the law of all beings, which is basically to conduct electricity from the clouds to the earth. When we are disconnected and cut of, not fulfilling our sacred purpose we get sick and disintegrate. This is caused by the electrical nature of our bodies and the earth. He describes how all the plants and animals fulfil this sacred purpose with their points.

Anyway it is best if I don’t try to explain it all and you just read it yourselves. Please follow this link to read the Sacred Mission. At least it is simple and doesn’t cost anything! Go barefoot, as a matter of fact it should save you money in more ways than just the price of a pair of shoes :). The writing style reminds me of Masanobu Fukuoka’s for anyone who has read his book One Straw Revolution. A sample:

LA MISSION SACREE, (Sacred Mission) is the hypothesis on which I found my law. I present it to you, my dear Friend of Nature, today, for your pleasure, for your health, for the Earth and all of its fruits.

I am pleased to say here that the certitude of the progression of evil, physical and moral decrepitude, towards which we tend, does not come strictly from the causes mentioned. It comes from the non-observance of the law, of which I speak, at the beginning of this introduction. Awareness of this law is already a step able to help turn events.

The work that I have decided to write, in the form of these letters, essentially holds the “expose” of my hypothesis. I have made it my law. I suddenly discovered it one day in my apple gardens as I was conversing with my trees and the little birds that please themselves in my company.

This Sacred Mission is the supreme duty of all living things that exist on earth. These living things must respond to the demands of nature. They must serve accordingly and in exchange obtain the “right to life” through health obtained.

This all depends on certain phenomena engendered by the natural electricity’s, which govern us all.

We have to get an understanding of natural electricity versus that which man uses for his pleasure or for industrial use. Natural electrictiy of Nature is immensely powerful but often not recognized as such. This subject is the key to understanding all that you will read in my hypothesis.

He goes on to talk of terrestrial magnetic fields and the telluric currents….Read the letters here.

Let’s get connected!