Have you ever been for a walk in nature and felt ten times better afterwards? This isn’t luck or just about taking time out from your day (although this does help). It’s about our need as human beings to be connected to the planet, to reconnect with the healing powers of nature. When we spend days on end surrounded by electrical appliances, stress, non-natural lighting, recycled air and other 21st century norms, we disrupt our bodies’ natural cycles.
This can cause a whole host of health issues:
• Stress, anxiety and jitters
• Depression and mood swings
• Hormonal issues, including PMT and pregnancy problems
• ADD, learning difficulties and slow growth/developmental rates
• Fatigue, lack of concentration and brain fog
• Obesity and eating disorders
• Problems with eye development
• Problems with feeling grounded and centred (feeling like your head is in the clouds)
• Reduced creativity
• Insomnia and restless sleep
There is now a growing body of research to show that nature is good for us and contact with it affects our overall mental and physical health. There have been many studies showing the positive improvements in people with mental health conditions when they spend time each day in nature. There has also been research to suggest that patients that were given access to nature in some way recovered from surgery more quickly than those that weren’t. Our bodies function more effectively when we spend time in nature, we sleep better, we feel more grounded (less like our head is in the clouds) you explained this before, we feel less stressed and anxious, our muscles relax and studies show that hormonal issues have improved and blood pressure to dropped. Nature soothes and restores, we feel better overall and our body detoxes itself better. because of all this. We are born onto this planet, historically, we slept on the land, we worked it and it provided our food and drink. We no longer do this today; we actually spend very little time in contact with nature and we wonder why we feel so out of sync and poorly much of the time.
Earthing/Grounding yourself helps put us back in sync. By this I mean go outside barefoot, with as much skin as possible touching the earth and spend some time connected with nature. Contact with the earth re-balances the body and brings us back to our natural rhythm and function. I recommend at least 20 minutes a day of contact with the Earth to prevent many of the issues associated with electromagnetic stress (when the electrical fields of all the appliances around us interfere with our own electrical field). Paddling in the sea, hugging a tree (yes, tree-hugging) or gardening without gloves are just as effective as wandering around barefoot for a bit.
Why not give it a go and see how you feel?
Here’s some relevant resources for you:
http://www.earthinginstitute.net/
http://www.kroschelfilms.com/grounded (this documentary is brilliant)
The Last Child in the Woods – Richard Louv
Earthing – The Most Important Health Discovery Ever? – Clinton Ober, Stephen Sinatra and Martin Zucker
Toxic Childhood: How The Modern World Is Damaging Our Children And What We Can Do About It – Sue Palmer