What if I die tomorrow? What if I leave this world before I get the chance to share my life's lessons with my children? By passing my little observations on to them, I give my children meaningful insights from my life, and they give meaning to my having lived it.
Recent events forced me to consider the possibility of my own untimely death, and this consideration prompted me to compile these ideas so they're available even if I do leave ahead of schedule. I will be posting here on Hive to get the chapters drafted and pieced together. These posts will be living documents until the work is completed, at which time I would like to put them together in book form, with the title Big Dipper Little Dipper North Star. ...cool name, right?
Anyway, I'll still be doing my whippies and avatars, but this popped into my consciousness, and I don't ignore it when that happens. In the same vein, I don't plan on writing the chapters in order. They will be updated in the linked document as I go and modified as I see fit. Once they are as good as I can get them, I would like to compile and publish the book so they can always find it one way or another.
My interest in kissing the earth with my bare feet originated in my desire to toughen up my feet and grow to my fullest human potential. I saw others doing it in various corners of the world and thought, people can do that??
I wondered how these kids playing soccer on rocky grounds with no shoes could sustain it, let alone enjoy it. The native term for European visitors came to mind and filled me with shame for my weakness: tenderfoot.
I considered the biomechanics of the full running mechanism; from the toes, to the balls of the feet, through the heels and ankles, on up through the knees. I became overly conscious of the impact my knees were bearing every time my heel struck the ground mid-stride, and began the exceedingly difficult task of adapting to a mode of walking/running that kept my heels from impacting. Most modern shoes force us to strike our heels. The soles are thicker towards the back end, which makes walking or running on the balls of the feet unnecessarily difficult. The tendons around my heels and the calf muscles took a long time to build up and retrain after decades of misuse. I cycled through periods of concentrated effort and breaks for healing. By my early 40's, I was finally able to stay mostly off of my heels. Running barefoot was originally just a solid way to enforce this practice, as heel striking hurts a lot more without shoes and shoes tend to drive us away from the proper biomechanics...
...but then the concept of earthing found its way to me, and I saw an entirely new advantage to allowing my bare feet to kiss the earth. Before writing this chapter, I looked online to find a good description.
Earthing is the practice of connecting with the Earth’s energy by either making direct physical contact with the ground (or water) or using specialized electric conduction products.
I don't like the inclusion of specialized electric conduction products in that definition. Although not explicitly false, it implies that there is some need to buy or build something to reap the benefits of connecting with our home - which is an absolute load of shit. This is a great way to extract money from an unlearned populous, and to inhibit people of lesser means from collecting their birthright. Our physical bodies are made entirely of earth, and we needn't purchase anything to connect with her.
Another search led me to a report (published by the National Institute of Health) in which the effects of grounding were studied in various people with chronic wounds, illnesses and ailments - with each and every one showing improvement where previously there had been only hopelessness. The online version of this chapter will have a link to the study, but I trust nothing to stay available long term. The conclusion of the report reads:
Accumulating experiences and research on earthing, or grounding, point to the emergence of a simple, natural, and accessible health strategy against chronic inflammation, warranting the serious attention of clinicians and researchers. The living matrix (or ground regulation or tissue tensegrity-matrix system), the very fabric of the body, appears to serve as one of our primary antioxidant defense systems. As this report explains, it is a system requiring occasional recharging by conductive contact with the Earth’s surface – the “battery” for all planetary life – to be optimally effective.
If the report can't be reached, it doesn't matter. Try this for yourself and you will find all the evidence you need. ...You'll have to listen to your teachers along the way and study the things they tell you in order to succeed financially and stay below radar - but don't ever believe them blindly...I promise, whether or not they have your best interests at heart, they are operating within a system that holds only ill-will and contempt for life and liberty. We'll talk more about that later. For now, just know that the earth is given to you, just as you were given from it.
Take your shoes off as regularly and often as possible. You don't have to go to the extremes that I have sought out - although they do come with myriad additional bonuses if you're willing to take on the sustained effort. Simply taking time each day to thread the grass and clovers through your toes, smash the mud or sand between them and allow your body to make a grounding connection, that is enough to do a great deal of good for your body.
Take your shoes off kids, feel the sacred connection you share with your home.
Love,
Dad.
