Barefoot Healing

The old people came literally to love the soil, and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. It was good for the skin to touch the earth, and the old people liked to remove their moccasins and walk with bare feet on the sacred earth. Their tipis were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth. The soil was soothing, strengthening, cleansing, and healing. That is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life-giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly; he can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him.

— Lakota Chief Luther Standing Bear

In the late 1990s, a former cable guy named Clint Ober was sitting on a park bench in Sedona, Arizona, when he had a revelation. Early in life Ober had installed poles, wires, and cable boxes on his way to becoming a successful executive. He knew that one secret of a static-free TV is to make sure all the electrical equipment is protected from electromagnetic interference, and the simple solution is to connect the system by a wire to an iron pole stuck into a single, six-sextillion-ton battery that is constantly charged by solar radiation, lightning, and heat from its molten core. That giant battery, of course, is Mother Earth. The connection is known as grounding.

Ober was on that bench in Sedona because he had recently almost died of a liver disease. Once he had healed, he decided to start a new life: He sold his cable company, gave away his possessions, and took to the road. He had time and resources and was wondering what to do next as he watched the tourists amble by in their expensive footwear. As he writes, “It occurred to me rather innocently that all these people—me included—were insulated from the ground, the electrical surface charge of the earth beneath our feet.”

Intrigued, Ober went home and created a simple grounding mechanism by attaching a wire to a grounded metal rod out his living room window. With a voltmeter and the wire in hand, he walked around his apartment measuring the voltage on his body. He writes, “When I walked toward a lamp, the voltage would go up. When I stepped back, the voltage went down. The only appliances that did not create electromagnetic field (EMF) voltage on my body were the refrigerator and my computer tower. They were grounded. Next I went to the bedroom, lay down on my bed, and registered the highest level of EMF voltage. The bedroom was the most ‘electrically active’ area of the apartment. The bed was up against a wall full of hidden electrical wires.”

The next day, Ober built himself a crude sleeping pad out of metalized duct tape, which he then grounded out his bedroom window. He speculated that his chronic sleeping problems might be caused by the electric fields in the room. When he lay down on the pad, the voltmeter showed that his bed was now equivalent to the ground outside. “I was lying there fooling around with the voltmeter,” Ober says, “and the next thing I knew it was morning. I had fallen asleep with the voltmeter on my chest. I had slept soundly for the first time in years, and I had hardly moved at all during the night.”

After a few days of sleeping restfully on the pad, Ober also noticed that his severe back pain had vastly improved. In fact, he was feeling better than he had in years. “I came to the conclusion that I may have made a great discovery,” he says.

Over the following months Ober created more makeshift grids for the beds of half a dozen or so people, who reported that they too experienced benefits. Meanwhile, he scoured the Internet and visited Arizona’s top medical libraries, searching for anything he could find on grounding and health, but all he found were a few Native American stories. Electronic specialists confirmed that there was no risk from the grounding pads—or from standing barefoot on the earth, for that matter—but no one had seriously investigated whether or not our bodies depend on grounding energy to maintain health. When Ober took the question to prominent sleep researchers in California, they laughed him out the door.

Ignored by mainstream researchers, Ober went on to conduct the first study of what he now called “Earthing.” He procured some conductive fiber material bonded with wool-lined sleeping pads attached to grounding wire, then rounded up 60 volunteers. The 38 women and 22 men all complained of sleep problems and various forms of joint and muscle pain. He split the volunteers into two groups: 30 slept on pads that were properly grounded, and the other 30 on pads with a hidden disconnect. Only Ober knew who was actually grounded for the month-long study.

The results were astonishing: 85 percent of the grounded sleepers fell asleep sooner; 93 percent slept better; 100 percent were more rested upon waking; 82 percent “experienced significant reduction in muscle stiffness”; 74 percent “experienced elimination or reduction of chronic back and joint pain”; and 78 percent reported “improved general health,” Ober says. Furthermore, many participants reported “unexpected but significant relief from asthmatic and respiratory conditions, rheumatoid arthritis, hypertension (high blood pressure), sleep apnea, and premenstrual syndrome (PMS). There were also reports of fewer hot flashes.”

Excerpted from Spirituality & Health (March/April 2011), a bimonthly that offers resources for wellness and the spiritual journey; author Matt Sutherland is managing editor. www.spiritualityhealth.com

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Library of Congress “The Library of Congress. The Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution, and it serves as the research arm of Congress. It is also the largest library in the world, with more than 120 million items. The collections include books, sound recordings, motion pictures, photographs, maps, and manuscripts.”

Several of his descendants and a few historians claim that John Hanson (1721-1783) is actually the forgotten first president of the United States because he was the first president under the Articles of Confederation. – Provided by RandomHistory.com

Above, a U.S. soldier w/the 10th Special Forces Group & his dog leap off the ramp of a CH-47 Chinook helicopter during water training over the Gulf of Mexico as part of exercise Emerald Warrior on 3/1/2011. Photo by Tech. Sgt. Manuel J. Martinez, USAF

Photo: Dogs of War: Water Leap.

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Lucid Dreaming Frequently Asked Questions Answered by The Lucidity Institute

This FAQ is a brief introduction to lucid dreaming–what it is, how to do it, and what can be done with it. There are several excellent sources of information on lucid dreaming, the most reliable and extensive of which is the Lucidity Institute website (http://www.lucidity.com). Other sources are listed below. Suggestions for additions to or modifications of this FAQ should be directed to suggestions.

CLICK HERE.