Saturday, January 27, 2018

                               Blog#71: Earthing - A Re-connection

What do chiropractic, acupuncture, yoga, tai chi and chi gong all have in common?  Lots of things, including helping facilitate physical, mental and emotional healing and facilitating strength, longevity, and balance.  Balance is unwavering stability when standing, walking, climbing, running and even standing on one leg.  In past years or today, in cultures living in natural, rural settings, earthing is part of daily life.  Earthing includes walking barefoot on the ground, sitting and sleeping on the earth, growing or hunting one’s own food, swimming in natural bodies of water, and walking long distances barefoot or wearing leather or cloth-soled shoes or moccasins. 

Western civilization’s more urban, industrial setting prevents earthing in many ways.  People wear rubber soled-shoes, live many floors up from the ground, ride in cars, planes, trains, buses and other public transportation rather than walking, sleep indoors on synthetic beds, buy food from the supermarket, and swim in human-made swimming pools, to name just a few problematic things. 

Healing exercises and arts such as tai chi, chi gong, and yoga help us reconnect to the earth by improving our balance and helping us perceive and utilize the energy arising from the ground.  They also help us connect with the energy in the air around us, as well as that within our own minds.  Skilled practitioners use acupuncture and chiropractic to help us feel and benefit from our connection to the earth’s energy and our own energy systems.  Chiropractic especially helps us improve our posture and balance. 

There are some relatively new therapeutic devices that help connect us to the earth’s energy.  These earthing devices include mats, sheets, throws, bands, and clothing that are inlaid with conductive metals, usually silver, and are plugged connected via a cord into the grounding part of an electrical outlet or else directly into the ground via a window or door. Theses devices are reputed to help alleviate pain, normalize the immune system, improve sleep, enhance detoxification, calm the mind, and improve circulation by thinning the blood.  Some caveats: they may magnify the effects of certain medications, such as prescription thyroid or blood thinners.  If used for longer than appropriate time periods, they can overwhelm the body with heavy detoxification. 

All of us can begin earthing by standing and/or walking barefoot on the ground, gardening with our bare hands, walking more often and riding less, sitting on the earth, perhaps underneath trees, camping out in the wilderness, and generally spending more time in rural or natural settings.  We are fortunate to have numerous natural settings within the city of Chicago in the form of parks, forest preserves, and nature centers.  Take advantage of them and notice their calming and strengthening influence.


This blog’s offer:  contact me with questions about earthing, including chiropractic, acupuncture, chi gong, tai chi yoga, and Earthing devices.