I cannot remember where I first heard about the power of putting your feet in the grass (on the dirt), but I have timestamped it as sometime in the early days of the pandemic.
Incidentally, it is Spring Break for my kids’ school this week; marking two years since pandemic shutdowns came to my part of the world.
And nothing has been “normal” since. Not only from a pandemic perspective but also across every human dimension we can imagine.
One can argue that normalcy was already on its way out and that the pandemic was just an accelerant.
One can argue that normalcy wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Normal perhaps soothed certain segments of the population by making them feel safe and secure.
But normal wasn’t working for large segments of humanity or our sustainability on this planet or the sustainability of the planet itself.
And yet, “stress” is the body’s reaction to change, whether that change is perceived as good or bad.
And if we weren’t living with chronic stress before–even though burnout was officially recognized as a medical condition in 2019–the overwhelming majority of us are now.
Because the things we took for granted are no longer certain.
It seems we are facing seismic shifts at every turn. And it doesn’t look like things are going back to normal anytime soon.
And yet, in spite of everything, the overwhelming majority of us have to show up and function at some capacity on most days. We cannot just disappear or bury our heads in the sand no matter how much we might want to.
And so, I have been thinking a lot about resilience in this new context.
About the fact that our only hope for facing and solving some of our largest problems is rooted in our capacity to show up as our higher and better selves– the ones who care about our collective humanity and well-being–in the face of stimulus that makes us want to put on all of our armor and go into a bunker; focused only on our own survival.
Our capacity to organize and prioritize work, focus, access memory, sustain alertness, maintain perspective, engage in creative problem solving, and regulate our emotions and impulses is only available to us if we keep our pre- frontal cortex online (which isn’t possible if we are caught in the reptilian response to chronic stress, anxiety, burnout or a trauma).
So what does this have to do with putting your feet in the grass?
Well, as extraordinary as we are as human beings, sometimes we overcomplicate things.
Our cultural conditioning often takes us away from simple behaviors that have incredible benefits for our well-being.
It turns out that “grounding” (i.e., connecting your body to the earth) has profound physiological benefits such as:
- improving sleep
- normalizing the day-night cortisol rhythm
- reducing pain (and inflammation)
- reducing stress
- shifting the autonomic nervous system from sympathetic toward parasympathetic activation (away from fight/flight/freeze to rest/digest/restore)
- increasing heart rate variability (indicator of balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system activity)
- speeding up wound healing
- lowering blood viscosity (good for cardiovascular health)
If you are feeling anxious, untethered, achy, overwhelmed, or stressed, go outside and put your feet in the grass (or lay down and stare at the clouds). Even a handful of minutes per day can make a difference.
And then remember, that while we cannot fix all of the things, we can do something. And feeling some sense of efficacy in a world that feels completely out of control matters a lot.
We can heal ourselves so that we can show up for others, we can volunteer, we can donate, we can show an extra dose of kindness, we can teach our children the importance of rest, the possibilities are endless.
Here’s to feet in the grass and dirt on your toes,
Booth