Walking barefoot is an excellent therapy for everyone - recharge yourself straight from nature.

Walking barefoot has many benefits for your well-being and health. This is due to the regenerating properties of the earth and the electrical activity it provides. Allowing your bare feet to connect with the planet is often referred to as grounding. Walking barefoot is considered therapeutic.

In fact, walking barefoot on the ground helps one absorb all the positive energy from the earth through our feet into the body. "Earthing" or "grounding" works when your body is in direct contact with earth, making an electrical connection with its energies. One of the most profound forms of grounding is to walk or sit on the bare ground with no shoes or socks, and to touch and connect with the soil or earth. Activities like playing with soil, building sand castles on the beach, etc, help in fighting sadness, anxiety and depression, besides having other positive effects. The easiest perhaps is just to walk on the (non-carpeted) floor at home or sit on it. Grounding helps in maintaining the health of the root chakra, the first chakra of the seven main chakras in the body, which is based on the earth element. It’s responsible for confidence, support, the musculoskeletal system and sustenance. When we lose our connection with earth, we find ourselves in a mental flurry or feeling floaty, drifty, disconnected and unsettled, adding that the mind, body and soul are interdependent on earth.

Hippocrates, who lived thousands of years ago, used to say: "The best footwear - no footwear." The benefits of barefoot walking are also often mentioned by most naturopaths.

Walking barefoot is one of the best healing therapies. The earth's magnetic field has a huge impact on our health. Scientists emphasize that contact with the earth helps attract free electrons that penetrate the skin into the collagen layer and help fight free radicals. In a word, they rejuvenate!

You can walk barefoot on the ground, morning dew, grass, wet or dry sand (e.g. sea sand), stones, snow, meadow, rain, in other words, on any natural surface. A 10-20 minute barefoot walk is enough for the loads to be exchanged. The more often and the longer we go barefoot, the more life energy we will get. The quickest exchange of loads takes place on wet, moist ground. People generally think that wearing shoes is more beneficial for them, but this is not true. Walking barefoot has many surprising benefits. Grounding can lead to increased immunity, disease prevention, and many other beneficial situations.

With the development of our civilization, barefoot walking has been replaced by various types of footwear. Bare feet came to be associated with primitive cultures cut off from the world or with the poor and slaves. Even in hot climates, having shoes in the form of sandals has become a requirement and a binding canon. Today we only walk barefoot on the beach, on vacation. At home, after crossing the threshold, we put on slippers. We are used to this type of behavior, although in fact we should sometimes deviate from it to feel the beneficial effects of barefoot walking.

Why are we wearing shoes? The human body, and with it the feet, have become more delicate over the centuries than in the times when barefoot walking was natural for us. Back then, the sole of the feet was our protection against injuries and the harmful effects of external factors. Today, walking barefoot can be a threat to our health. The delicate skin of the feet is prone to injuries and cuts. A dirty or hard surface is dangerous and increases the risk of injury.

How does walking in shoes affect our health? Covering the feet with footwear changed the foot's motor skills and affected our posture, muscle structure and function. Hardly anyone realizes that in a shoe, the foot touches the ground with the heel - when walking barefoot, the first contact is the center of the foot or the toes. We do the greatest harm to our feet by choosing a fashionable look at the expense of our own health. High heels, often with narrow toes, are a serious offense against the condition of the feet. Arranged in an uncomfortable way, immobilized in an unnatural position, they are prone to swelling, corns, abrasions, and even more serious diseases such as hallux, varicose veins and joint degeneration. Choosing tight shoes without ventilation, we doom our feet to the risk of mycosis and various types of infections.

Is it worth going barefoot? The foot freed from shoes gives maximum possibilities. When bouncing off the ground, bend your fingers, distributing your body weight evenly over its entire surface. In addition, we stimulate the muscles to work intensively, we also strengthen ligaments and joints. We have a positive effect on the posture of the whole body and positively on the condition of the spine. Walking barefoot is of great importance for improving our circulation and correcting foot defects, especially when we start to do simple exercises taking advantage of the opportunity to walk.

The place where we decide to walk barefoot is not without significance. Specialists recommend the use of uneven areas that stimulate the nerve endings, blood vessels and muscles of our feet. Sand, gravel or thick grass will work best. It is inadvisable to walk barefoot on hard surfaces such as concrete, stone floors or wooden parquet.

Even if at first the contact of the foot with the ground seems unpleasant to us, with time we will get used to it and we will start to get real pleasure from it. We will feel relaxed, unwind, charged with positive energy.

When is barefoot not advisable? Walking barefoot all year round is not recommended due to the risk of rheumatism. Strongly hardened people can afford it. Specialists also advise against walking barefooted by children in the first years of their lives. The smallest of them, when shaping the feet, need stiffening and support from footwear.

Scientists have differing views on the return to nature by walking barefoot. There is a lack of reliable research that would ultimately determine the harmfulness or rightness of the pros and cons. Some say that shoes are a hard work for the feet - others that only specialized footwear, properly profiled, will allow us to move properly and affect the condition of the musculoskeletal system. As in any matter, common sense and moderation will be useful here. Compromisingly, let's decide to walk in shoes when necessary, and in moments of rest let your feet relax in the form of barefoot walking.

We should especially appreciate walking barefoot on the ground, sand or grass. "The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine" published the results of the study proving that walking on the ground improves the functioning of red blood cells - cells less often stick together, which makes the blood less sticky, which has a positive effect on the circulatory system. Some scientists also suggest that walking barefoot on grass or sand regulates the work of hormones and the nervous system. It also improves sleep, reduces inflammation and increases the level of antioxidants in the body. As you can see, the spectrum of barefoot walking is very broad.

The health impact of barefoot walking on the body is largely due to the impact on the body of electrons flowing from the ground. As Dr. Richard Brown (of the Department of Human Physiology at the University of Oregon, USA) wrote in one of his works, electrons that travel from the earth to the body have the purest antioxidant properties - so we gain what we now seek in food and more.

Our habits of walking in shoes, living in multi-storey buildings or sleeping on beds break the direct contact of the body with the natural surface. "The earth is an excellent electric conductor and has a huge amount of electrons, so contact with it is a simple, natural and effective way to recharge itself with antioxidants directly from nature" - researchers led by Brown believe in their reports. In people who walked barefoot on the ground for therapeutic purposes, scientists noticed better wound healing and a reduction in inflammation, which is due to antioxidants. This, let's call it, Earth energy works literally from head to toe. A large analysis in "The Journal of Environmental and Public Health" indicates that walking barefoot on the ground affects the brain (as measured by an electroencephalogram). Nay. We will also learn that the direct contact of the feet with natural surfaces improves blood glucose regulation, reduces stress and supports the immune system.

The main benefits of walking barefoot; • Significant improvement in inflammation related disorders; • Significant improvement over chronic pain; • improvement of sleep disorders; • Increased energy; • Stress reduction; • Reduced muscle tension; • headache relief; • Reduced hormonal and menstrual symptoms, among other benefits. • and many more.

I personally encourage everyone to ground yourselves whenever possible. From my long experience of walking barefoot using the earth's natural resources is a huge benefit in energy work and self-healing on many vibrational levels. It allows me to recharge my batteries, even in the most challenging moments. That's why I take my shoes off at every opportunity I have... during a break at work, while walking the dog, in the garden, especially I love walking barefoot on the beach or on freshly cut wet grass. Those who already practice barefoot walking have a lot of positive things to say about it. See for yourself.

Stay in peace, Barbara Jarmul