I spent all my summers as a child running around barefoot. At the beginning of warmer weather, my winter-softened feet always needed toughening up, but by the end of the summer, I could tolerate just about any kind of surface – with the exception of burning hot asphalt.
I’m trying to remember when I stopped going barefoot outside in the summer, but I’m sure it was well into adulthood when I started feeling like I needed sandals on every time I went outside. My feet are in a permanent state of wimpy tenderness and I suppose I don’t have the patience to toughen them up anymore.
Recently a friend told me about something called “grounding,” which I’d never heard of. Within a week, I ran across a couple more references to it and then last week when I went for a walk barefoot with my husband, some young neighbors of ours called out “Oh, I see you’re grounding!”
Clearly there’s some sort of trend going on. I looked it up and here’s some information:
“Grounding, also known as earthing, is when humans make an electrical connection to the earth’s energies. The simplest form involves walking barefoot in the grass, dirt or sand.” The benefits of grounding are that it may:
Reduce inflammation
Reduce cortisol
Increase energy
Increase healing speed
Decrease pain
Restore balance to the body
I’m not sure if there are any rigorous studies to back up those claims, but I kind of like the idea of having some barefoot time outside every day again. Except on burning hot asphalt.
I’ll be stomping on this post with my bare feet in the morning.
Lynniebeemuseoday 
Hippies in Faribault? I’ll bet you still have your copy of the Whole Earth Catalog and Our Bodies, Ourselves!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ha ha! Not likely. 😃
LikeLike
We used to have a cook book called Diet for a Small Planet; I think the title came from the predicted result of trying to live only on the recipes from that book. Adding bacon to all the recipes would have improved it immensely.
LikeLiked by 2 people
😂😂
LikeLike
About the same time I had that book and another called Recipes for a Small Planet (sadly, no bacon in that one either). That was the year the YMCA camp I worked for had a 50-pound bag of bulgur wheat left over from Jimmy Carter’s federal commodities program. So I snapped it up and ate the whole thing during the next year. I was heartily tired of bulgur, let me tell you. I should have tried it with bacon. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Bacon covers a multitude of sins! 😂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Without knowing it, Dave has been grounding his whole life! Perhaps that is my answer to the arthritis making it difficult for me to walk or move at times. I would try grounding, but I can’t because of my arthritis (and I am a wimp)!……… 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
We’ll see how far I get before I wimp out! 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person