The Science of Grounding

Many Reiki practitioners and other therapists such as masseurs note that during a session they feel depleted. The patient receives the benefits of the session, but the Reiki practitioner gets burned out. When this happens, the most experimented practitioners recommend grounding. I was taught to perform sessions barefoot to avoid this burnout. Besides this experience of burnout that therapists suffer, modern lifestyles have created a barrier between humans and the natural conduction of Earth’s electrons into the body. Hence, most of humanity faces an ungrounded status (Sinatra et al. 2017).

Grounding or connecting to hearth involves connecting with the energy field of the earth. In addition to being barefoot, some methods of grounding in Reiki practice require you to send your energy down through your body out your feet and into the Earth’s. Other methods use a centering exercise, being fully present in your body and claiming your energy to your body instead of scattered elsewhere. And even some technology has been developed as a method of grounding. The last method is the one that has been studied in several research works, perhaps because the company producing them is sponsoring the research. But it has the advantage that it might be more reproducible than walking barefoot.

The concept of grounding in Science

The Earth’s surface is electrically conductive and is maintained at a negative potential by the solar wind, the ionospheric wind, and thunderstorms. The Earth’s surface is therefore an abundant source of free electrons. When the human body has a different electric potential than the earth, and contacts with the earth there is an instantaneous transfer of charge so that both equilibrate to the same potential (Chevalier et al. 2013).

One of the first authors studying grounding (Ober 2000) was a retired cable television executive, who found a similarity between the human body (a bioelectrical, signal-transmitting organism) and the cable used to transmit cable television signals. When cables are “grounded” to the Earth, interference is virtually eliminated from the signal. Other authors (Sokal and Sokal 2011) interpreted grounding as a “universal regulating factor in nature” that influences bioelectrical, bioenergetic, and biochemical processes.

How does this happen?

In our feet, we have a highly electrically conductive point, that happens to be known in acupuncture as Kidney 1 (Chevalier 2008). Through this and other conductive points, we experience a healthy influx of electrons from the earth. This is a kind of electric nutrition, that has the potential to restore, normalize, and stabilize the internal environment of the human body’s bioelectrical systems (Sinatra et al. 2017).

Once in the body, this electric potential extends through the connective tissue, myofascia, tendons, cell membranes, bones, and muscles. Constituted mainly by collagen, the connective tissue is a fibrous matrix composed of many proteins with a negative charge, organized in parallel, and with a hydration shell around. These arrays are interpreted for some authors (2015 The effects of grounding (earthing) on inflammation, the immune response, wound healing, and prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases) as a liquid–crystalline semiconductor network, where some electrons will cease to belong to particular molecules and will be free to move from place to place within the organism. This matrix is therefore a vast whole-body redox system, capable of absorbing and donating electrons wherever they are needed. It is the largest system in the body, as it touches all of the other systems; thereby routinely protect all cells, tissues, and organs from oxidative stress or in the event of injury (Oschman et al. 2015; Sinatra et al. 2017).

The benefits of grounding according to research studies

Humans are bioelectrical beings, with hearts, brains, and immune and endocrine systems being regulated by internal bioelectrical signals (Sinatra et al. 2017). As soil’s electrons are conducted to the human body, the grounded body assumes favorable physiologic and electrophysiologic changes.” (Oschman et al. 2015). I like to think of grounding as receiving Reiki from Earth.

Grounding effects have been studied in several studies in which a group of subjects was grounded for different periods of time with various grounding systems such as conductive patches on the soles of their feet and palms of their hands. Wires connected the patches to a stainless-steel rod inserted in the earth outdoors. Besides the subjects of study, there is also a control group, that undergoes a similar process without being grounded. Alternatively, grounding and sham grounding was performed in the same subjects.

Different parameters were measured before and after sessions, such as voltage induced on a human body (Chevalier et al. 2012), electrophoretic mobility of the red blood cells, red blood cells aggregation, medical imaging tomography, electrophysiological and physiological parameters in overall stress, skin conductance, complete blood counts, blood chemistry, enzyme chemistry, serum and saliva cortisol level, magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy, and pain levels. Throughout all these assessments it has been reported that the benefits of grounding include improved quality of sleep (Ghaly and Teplitz 2004), lower cortisol levels, reduction of pain, reduction of inflammation and pain, lower stress levels, improved autonomic balance, and a blood-thinning effect (Oschman et al. 2015).

Based on their results, J. Oschman (2010) proposes that grounding allows antioxidant electrons from the surface of the earth to enter the body and neutralize positively charged free radicals in sites of inflammation. He also explain that “erythrocytes have a strong net negative charge called the zeta potential, grounding increase zeta potentials thus increasing the negative charge on red blood cells and thereby reducing blood viscosity and clumping. This is because blood viscosity is strongly influenced by the red blood cells’ surface charge that governs the spacing between erythrocytes. A higher repulsive surface charge increases the space between erythrocytes, reduces clumping, lowers viscosity, and lowers peripheral resistance to flow.” (Chevalier et al. 2013). Finally, they claim that “Grounding is the most desirable and suitable intervention for both reducing blood viscosity and reducing inflammation simultaneously.” (Chevalier et al. 2013).

In another area of study, it is proposed that grounding reduces electric fields induced on the body. This study demonstrates that grounding eliminates the ambient voltage induced on the body from common electricity power sources (Chevalier et al. 2012). As Nobel laureate Richard Feynman said, when the body potential is the same as the Earth’s electric potential (and thus grounded), it becomes an extension of the Earth’s gigantic electric system. The Earth’s potential thus becomes the “working agent that cancels, reduces, or pushes away electric fields from the body.”

30 minutes of grounding

It has been proved that skin conductance is altered within 2 seconds of grounding (Chevalier et al. 2013); therefore, the effects of grounding begin at a short time. But from the results on medical infrared imaging, we know that inflammation begins to subside within 30 minutes of connecting with the earth via a conductive patch placed on the skin (Oschman et al. 2015). So this is a suitable time to be recommended for grounding every day, thus our body is ready to quickly deliver antioxidant electrons to any site.

Final considerations

Reiki is wonderful for me. I feel it on many levels, I feel it physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Grounding is a fundamental part of Reiki, it is opening up to receive Reiki from mother earth. Some of the hypotheses about grounding presented here might be applied to Reiki. I need to express that my confidence in Reiki stems from the experiences I have while doing Reiki and not from scientific evidence. And analyzing it from a scientific aspect, in my view, does not take away its spiritual side, but adds a mystical touch, a little more marvel to enjoy.

Infinite love

Note: Some of these researches were published in non-indexed journals, and some of them with a Disclosure Statement: “G. Chevalier, S.T. Sinatra, and J.L. Oschman are independent contractors for Earth FX, Inc., the company sponsoring earthing research, and own a small percentage of shares in the company.” These authors have published numerous articles on this subject and have tested the beneficial effects of grounding with a good experimental design. Although they have elaborate hypotheses about the mechanism by which grounding occurs, these hypotheses have not been fully proven and the objective of their studies is not to verify the mechanism but to verify the positive effects of grounding.

References

Chevalier G, Mori K, Oschman J. The effect of Earthing (grounding) on human physiology, Pt. II: Electrodermal measurements. Subtle Energ Energ Med. 2007;18(3):11-34.

Chevalier G, Sinatra S, Oschman J, Delany R (2013) Earthing (Grounding) the Human Body Reduces Blood Viscosity—a Major Factor in Cardiovascular Disease. J Altern Complementary Medicine 19:102–110. doi: 10.1089/acm.2011.0820

Chevalier G, Sinatra S, Oschman J, et al (2012) Earthing: Health Implications of Reconnecting the Human Body to the Earth’s Surface Electrons. J Environ Public Heal 2012:291541. doi: 10.1155/2012/291541

Ghaly M, Teplitz D (2004) The Biologic Effects of Grounding the Human Body During Sleep as Measured by Cortisol Levels and Subjective Reporting of Sleep, Pain, and Stress. J Altern Complementary Medicine 10:767–776. doi: 10.1089/acm.2004.10.767

Ober C. (2000) Grounding the human body to neutralize bioelectrical stress from static electricity and EMFs. ESD Journal Web site. http://www.esdjournal.com/articles/cober/ground.htm. Published January 2000. Accessed August 23, 2017.

Oschman J, Brown R, Chevalier G (2015) The effects of grounding (earthing) on inflammation, the immune response, wound healing, and prevention and treatment of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. J Inflamm Res Volume 8:83–96. doi: 10.2147/jir.s69656

Sinatra S, Oschman J, Chevalier G, Sinatra D (2017) Electric Nutrition: The Surprising Health and Healing Benefits of Biological Grounding (Earthing). Altern Ther Health M 23:8–16.

Sokal K, Sokal P. (2011) Earthing the human body influences physiologic processes. J Altern Complement Med. 2011;17(4):301-308.

Article by Magalí Giménez

Free eBook download: We’ve created an eBook with our best articles on this topic, and offer it for free to all our newsletter subscribers.

I am Magalí, I am a Molecular Biologist, I have a PhD in Biological Sciences, I specialize in plant genetics and epigenetics.
I am a Master in Usui Reiki and level two Karuna Reiki®. I am a reader and healer of Akashic Registers.
You can visit my meditation channel in Spanish @ElMayorBien, and you can contact me at magalienergy@gmail.com