What is earthing or grounding? How going barefoot could give you health benefits, from less inflammation to a healthier heart
- On TikTok, the hashtag #earthing has more than 66 million views and #grounding has 199 million; here’s why going barefoot is grabbing attention
- Rooted in Native American lore, earthing is said to reduce inflammation, improve sleep, relieve stress, prevent heart disease and improve mental health boost
Jeannie Sindicic remembers being just four or five years old when she would feel a sense of calm and belonging by simply planting her bare feet on the earth.
“I loved being barefoot. Anytime I was barefoot – walking on soil, walking on grass – it made me personally feel at a very young age very connected to Mother Earth,” she says.
She recalls how her grandmother would tell her anytime you’re barefoot on the ground you’re “vibrating with the natural frequency of the earth and the benefits of what that was”.
It wasn’t until much later that Sindicic, now an intuitive life coach based in the Midwest, learned the name for this practice: earthing. “We would call it grounding,” she says, another term people use for it today. And she is far from alone.
Earthing, or grounding, has likely existed in certain communities for generations even if there wasn’t an exact label for it. Now, thanks to an interest in natural healing and further discoveries in this area, the practice is gaining more attention.
On social media platforms like TikTok, the hashtag #earthing has more than 66 million views and #grounding has 199 million. The 2019 documentary The Earthing Movie: The Remarkable Science of Grounding has 4.6 million views on YouTube.