Earthing ~ Beginnings

Earthing ~ A Journey

My personal journey to connect with the earth.

 

I became interested in finding a ‘simpler life as far back as 1996. I was really struggling, especially at work and in personal relationships. I had pursued a higher paid job in Management to pay mounting bills. I was working 12 hrs a day to cope with workload, supporting a deadbeat partner who wouldn’t work, and eating a crap diet of fast food during weekdays and convenience supermarket foods and alcohol on weekends. The treadmill was unrelenting and I felt tired and unhappy.

I was living the exact opposite of what I wanted and thought that I would never break out of the trap that I had put myself in. My last parent had died earlier in the year, and I actually felt quite alone in the world. My partner suggested that I was having mental problems, so I went to the doctor. Her prognosis was that I was physically and emotionally stressed (not mentally ill) and to change my life. I didn’t and that was the year that I got pneumonia in the middle of summer. I had also had to have pre-cancerous cells lasered from my cervix, had urinary tract problems and had been tested for anemia because I was so lethargic. My health was deteriorating and I got infections regularly. Migraines came frequently and I would have to leave work to go lie down with bags of frozen peas around my head and a hot water bottle on my stomach. I was a mess really.

Then I had a dream. In it, I went through a series of work related events, then died of a heart attack in a strange hotel and after an afterlife journey of vignettes of my whole life, woke in a morgue on a cold slab… I also woke at that moment in real life, heart pounding, fear-dripping sweat pouring out of me. I took some deep breaths and tried to shake off the dream. It wouldn’t leave. While it didn’t describe my current situation at work,  an ominous prophetic message was in there… these things would start to happen in 5 years…

I dismissed my dream as silly, but I started to look at eating more healthily and got interested in organic foods and Permaculture. It didn’t last. I kept on pursuing work like a possessed person and gradually, it was all that I lived for, even though I didn’t enjoy it that much. I usually got sick the minute I had annual vacations, so those were never the panacea for my beleaguered spirit either.

One day in 1999, feeling particularly down and under work strain, I mentioned my feelings to a work colleague at lunch time. She said, you should come over to my complex tonight. The residents are having a talk on spiritual natural healing. It might be good for you. I reluctantly agreed to go.

I was late, because I was finishing up a work task that really could have waited, so I walked into a room full of quiet people already settled, and expectantly waiting. There was no sign of my work colleague and so I slunk into the only available seat  in the middle of the room. I was fidgety and irritable and not used to just sitting calmly. I really didn’t want to stay, but felt conspicuous.

The lecture was being given by a middle-aged woman (a Speech Language Pathologist by profession) and her assistant friend. They were fiddling with a slide projector near to me, which for some reason would not turn on. I remember my cutting remark. “Perhaps you should use some spiritual healing on it! ” Yes, I was a skeptic, but I immediately regretted my nastiness when the instructor turned and looked at me kindly, ignoring my outburst. “Welcome,” she said warmly, “perhaps I will,” and the projector leapt into life, making me feel like a complete shit!

The slide show was about Kirlian photography, and then we took part in a series of exercises to experience the energy that the body projects. We had a moment to meditate and ‘ground’ ourselves. I just sat quietly. I had no idea how to do either. We partnered up with the person seated next to us. I didn’t know the woman, but we had to do a body scan of each other with our hands. This was keeping the hands about an inch away from actually touching the person and done in slow sweeping motions from head to toe going completely around the person until reaching the starting point. I felt lots of things coming off my partner… cold points, hot points, magnetic points… It was all just fanciful, I thought. But as I talked to her about where some of those points were, my partner was incredulous. When we shared what we felt with the group, my partner blurted out, “she picked out every injury I had in my body!” The instructor smiled kindly at me again.

We went through some more energy experiments, including using divining rods made from metal coat hangers. Mine went crazy in my hands… crossing all over the place as I advanced toward other people, and sometimes swinging wildly. I couldn’t control them. Meanwhile, everyone else was struggling to feel them move at all. I saw the instructor watching me thoughtfully, but she said nothing.

Our last experiment was to have a try at sending healing energy to another person. I was paired with a man of Japanese origin. It went well until he sent healing to me. My head felt like it was going to explode. A massive migraine started. I struggled through and finally it was over. I sat on a chair feeling exhausted and in pain. People were leaving or chatting in little groups and I just felt like I was going under. I felt cold, almost like a sudden flu had taken over my physique. The instructor approached me…

“Oh you poor thing!” She looked at me with concern. Taking off her shoes (and requesting that I do the same), she sat in front of me and put her hands on both of my feet. She said, “YOU are completely ungrounded, and your energy has stopped moving down below your waistline… Exploding in your upper body and head.” I had not mentioned the migraine at all.

Her hands were hot, making me realise that my feet were freezing. She said nothing, but looked at my feet intensely as she sent the most incredibly comforting feeling into them as she pinned them to the tiled floor. I felt the energy in my head move and a downward flush of warmth through my entire body. It only lasted a few minutes before someone demanded the instructor’s attention. She admonished, “YOU need to go home and rest, and drink lots of water to rehydrate and rebalance. You need to learn how to ground too.” With that, she was gone. I felt so different, and in awe of this weird experience, that I wandered over to the sign up sheet for a course that she would be giving. I put my name and details on it, took the information sheet for the location and wrote out a cheque for the course fee. I had to know more…

(to be continued…)