The origins of earthing go back thousands of years. Earth’s power and energy have been acknowledged throughout history. Initial records date back to the Chinese, who focused on ‘Earth Qi’. Native American’s have a well-documented respect for mother nature, which was and is an integral part of their culture.
Many visionaries throughout history have acknowledged the power of the earths energy. German, Adolf Just was one of these early visionaries. Considered to be one of the founders of naturopathy he first emerged in the 1800s.
In his book ‘Return to Nature!’ He discussed what he called “Earth power”, convinced “of the great curative effect” of barefoot contact with the Earth. “The feet,” he wrote, “are in a certain sense for man what the roots are for plants. Man draws vital energy and strength out of the Earth through his feet.”
A french visionary agronomist, Mattheo Tavera, talked of ‘electric nutrition’ from the ground, for plants, animals, and humans more than 50 years ago.
ORIGINS OF EARTHING – CLINT OBER
Clint Ober is the person most lauded for the modern revival of Earthing/Grounding. Ober was a retired and very successful pioneer in the cable industry, when he had a eureka moment regarding Earthing.
Ober had enjoyed financial success in the cable industry. He began as a cable TV salesman in Billings, Montana. His career took off and he rose to become a leader in the industry, forming Telecrafter Corporation, the largest provider of cable marketing and installation services in the United States. As a retired executive in the 1990’s he began to experience major health issues.
For the most part, experience within the cable industry had taught Ober that in order to receive a good TV reception the electrical signal to the TV had to be ‘grounded’.
Hence it occurred to him, that humans may, in fact, need to be ‘grounded’ too, in order to maintain good health
As a result, he rigged together a very crude system with duct tape and a grounding rod to ‘ground’ his bed. His experience resulted in a reduction in pain and a greatly improved quality of sleep.
Motivated by his need for less pain killers he experimented on friends who reported the same benefits that he had enjoyed from sleeping on a grounded bed.
OBER’S STUDY: ORIGINS OF EARTHING
In 2000, he organized a group experiment to test whether Earthing, as he called it, could really help people sleep better and reduce their pain. Assisted by a nurse, he recruited 60 male and female volunteers with chronic sleep and pain issues.
He set up a conductive Earthing pad on their beds in their homes. In half of the set-ups, he inserted a spacer to block the conduction of energy. This meant that he could then organize a comparison between the two groups. Grounded patients and “sham grounded” ones. The participants in the experiment were unaware of which group they were in.
RESULTS
The results from these studies proved to be phenomenal. The original findings, in five critical areas of health, sparked research which continues to this day. As of 2018, almost twenty studies have taken place.
Generally speaking, science continues to learn how grounding has the potential to significantly affect, a wide range of modern ailments.
