Getting Grounded for 2026

I’m probably stepping out on a limb here. So what else is new. I just returned from about an hour of walking barefoot around a green space near my home. It was especially nice because it just rained. That means I got to step in puddles, squish my toes in mud, and just feel the lushness of soft, green grass under my feet. Right now, I am basking in the tingling sensation of grateful feet. 

Whoever invented this substance called skin should be commended. It’s highly washable, doesn’t stain, and naturally toughens if you expose it directly to the earth. Wet grass that puddles a little when you step on it is the best foot-washing mat ever. 

As 2025 merges into 2026 I am starting to reacquaint myself with my own two feet, and to reintroduce them to their mother, the earth. Call it woo-woo, or getting new age in my old age – whatever. Lately, I have been meeting in a large open field with other dog owners for some off-leash play. I spend the whole time with my feet and hands on the ground. For one thing, I don’t want to be knocked down by running dogs. Why are we the only species on the planet who cover our feet anyway? Is this why dogs seem so happy?

My hope is by the end of 2026 is that I will no longer get strange looks with questions like aren’t you worried about fire ants? Or what if you step on a hypodermic needle, broken glass, or a live wire? To which I answer, what if I am preventing heart disease, diabetes, or cancer? Okay, I’ll update my tetanus shot. But what if this calms a colicky baby? What if this helps us lose weight? 

These claims and more are presented in an award-winning 2019 documentary called The Earthing Movie. It was about a guy named Clint Ober, now 80, who was a pioneer in the cable TV industry. In 1993, after a month in the hospital with a liver abscess, Ober, near death, was advised to get his personal life in order. This caused a major lifestyle reassessment, selling most of what he owned and reconnecting to a life he remembered from his childhood in Montana where he played with Native Americans. He actually remembers walking into a friend’s teepee one day and hearing his mother say, take off your shoes, they’ll make you sick. 

His real epiphany came decades later while sitting on a bench as a group of tourists got off a bus from a sneaker factory tour. Everyone was wearing new rubber-bottom sneakers. As someone who understood the process of needing to ground cable into the earth, he wondered if we were disconnecting ourselves from the earth with these impenetrable rubber-soled shoes. 

Lance Westendarp, N.D., a naturopathic doctor of medicine here in Houston, focuses extensively on mind/body movement. And while he says he can’t agree or disagree with claims about our electrical connection to the earth, he can agree with our need to be in nature regularly. 

“There are a lot of benefits to being connected and rooted to the earth,” says Westendarp. “It balances the nervous system. It reduces inflammation. For me, I have to do it every week. Ideally I do it daily. There is something very connecting with actually feeling the ground. There is something that makes you present.”

Admittedly, January is probably the wrong month to advise walking barefoot outside. There are “grounding shoes” that can get us through whatever form of winter is still ahead. In the meantime, going barefoot inside has its benefits, Westendarp says. “We take our wonderfully complex feet and restrict their motion inside of shoes. The foot is this amazingly intricate, complex combination of bones, ligaments, tendons, and muscle, all intersecting into a dynamic spring.” Westendarp says the proper alignment of the body starts with our feet. 

My own experience validates this. I have had a balance problem since 2009, following brain surgery. My left foot is weaker than my right, which seems to do all the grabbing and balancing for both feet. Now my left foot is starting to grab the ground more, helping the right foot keep me vertical. I feel I owe my feet an apology. I should have allowed them out of their shoe coffins years ago, let them run around and reach their yet unknown potential. 

Please don’t take this as anti-shoe or anti-Western medicine. I’m checking in with doctors more and more these days. You can be for something without being against something else. But I am also feeling the need to trust my own instincts and intuition and, yes, even notice my own feelings, to find equilibrium for the inevitable challenges and choices coming in the year ahead.

Here’s to moving into 2026 one step at a time. Happy New Year.