"Georgie, have you gone crazy? Walk in the grass in my bare feet?!" (Violet Bick to George Bailey, It's a Wonderful Life)
The many health benefits of "Earthing" or walking barefoot outside - are well-documented: https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/benefits-of-walking-barefoot
Decreased heart rate, improved glucose regulation, increased antioxidants, improved circulation, improved sleep, reduced pain and inflammation, better regulation of the endocrine and nervous systems, and so many more. What's not to love?
There's a classic scene in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life when the main character, George Bailey, asks an old school friend, Violet Bick, if she wants to go Earthing:
George: "Let's go out in the fields and take off our shoes, and walk through the grass."
Violet: "Huh?"
George: "Then we can to up to the falls. It's beautiful up there in the moonlight, and there's a green pool up there, and we can, uh, s-swim in it. Then we can climb Mt. Bedford, and smell the pines and watch the sunrise against the peaks, and we'll stay up there the whole night, and everybody'll be talking and there'll be a terrific scandal..."
Violet: "Georgie, have you gone crazy? Walk in the grass in my bare feet?!"
Earthing isn't for everyone, but for an old soul like George Bailey, it's the most natural and exquisite experience in the world. It's spiritually, psychologically, and physically exhilarating to be intimately connected with creation in a way that stokes the animal senses and connects us with the ground and center of our being. It is as though we can experience the electromagnetic surge that courses through Earth's core, where the convection currents of molten iron and nickel are forged by heat escaping, a natural process called a geodynamo.
"Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return." (Ash Wednesday ritual refrain - a reminder of our mortality) What a great way to remind us how connected we are to Earth's primordial "Ha-dama" (Adam - muck of Earth), our womb and our tomb. Another way of saying it might be this: "Remember, you're a geodynamo, and coursing through you is the energy of the universe!"
In the end, all we ever do is learn how connected through this dynamic energy of love we really are - not just within the human family, but in the wider "We" of the planetary community. Earthing simply facilitates that closer bond and helps us to walk each other home - the green, green grass of home.
So, is Earthing for you? Why not take off your shoes and find out? As the poetess says, "You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves." (Mary Oliver, "Wild Geese")
"Wild Geese" - by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese,
harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
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