Leah Williams is the founder of the Barefoot Trail.
She says it’s the first so-called “grounding” trail in the United States — and it’s located just outside of Flagstaff in Bellemont, Arizona.
If you’ve never heard of "grounding" — or “earthing” as it’s sometimes called — you’re not alone. But Williams says it’s popular in Europe and has major health benefits, in her point of view. And, if nothing else, it gets you outdoors.
Full conversation
LEAH WILLIAMS: Basically grounding or earthing is when you make direct contact with the earth. So when you're walking barefoot on grass or sand or in the water, we absorb the earth's natural electrical energy. So it's the process of that energy exchange with the earth.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, so describe what's happening here. I mean, literally, this is just walking barefoot outside on kind of different textured surfaces, right?
WILLIAMS: It is, yes, yes, outside of, on dirt, grass, sand, even sometimes concrete if it's directly on the earth. So no shoes, no socks, just your skin touching the natural ground or natural elements. You know, at the park, for example, we have wood or sand or dirt, we have water, we have mud. Any of these natural elements create that exchange for our bodies with the earth's electrical field.
GILGER: Is this about creating balance? That's kind of what this reminds me of, the ideas you hear about in new age practices like reflexology or something you might hear at a vortex in Sedona.
WILLIAMS: Yes, exactly. And it is, it is a way of balancing out the things that we absorb and we accrue as we go on, you know, throughout our day and grounding every day for about 20 to 30 minutes does help us restore that natural electrical balance in our bodies.
GILGER: Tell us about your experience with this, Leah. Like, where did you come across this? Where did you try it? What did it feel like?
WILLIAMS: That's a great question. So my first experience with an actual designated created park or space for this particular kind of activity was when I was living in the Netherlands. My children were attending an international school and they went on a field trip to Belgium, and they came back just raving about it. They absolutely loved it.
And of course then we had to go as a family, so we went to the park and visited and I absolutely loved everything about it. It just struck something in me. It was really an a-ha moment for me and I thought, wow, why don't we have these in the United States?
They have more than 70 different parks like this throughout Europe. Many of them are located in Germany, but they're spread throughout. South Korea has a whole bunch of parks now, thousands in fact, the government supports nature parks and walking barefoot and grounding, and Japan is picking up speed in that area, too. So this is not just area-specific.
GILGER: OK, so describe the trail that you've created there near Flagstaff. This is, you say, the first in the country.
WILLIAMS: It is the first designated park that I'm aware of, and I do a lot of my own research, so. But, we have 13 acres of Ponderosa pine forest. It's a 1-mile manicured trail. In fact, we manicure it every morning for about 2 hours. We keep all the pine cones and rocks and the things that you wouldn't want to step on, and we've made this beautiful sanded space for you as well as, you know, natural dirt, of course, and then we've got 35 different integrated at what we call adventure stations and activity segments based off of reflexology. So all kinds of things for your foot to experience and explore.
GILGER: So tell me about when you first did this with your kids, like they come home, they say this was fun, you go and you do it with them in Europe. What did you think? Like, how did you feel the first time you did it?
WILLIAMS: Oh, I loved it. I grew up in Seattle, so the environment that I experienced the trail for the first time in Belgium was very similar to what I experienced in the Seattle area growing up, and we were often barefoot. So, my family immigrated to the United States from Germany in the 1950s and I remember my grandfather and also my mother saying many, many times, go out, be barefoot as children. We would just run around.
So we were always barefoot as kids. So it was a very, very easy pivot, you know, being at the park in Belgium, you know, really was nostalgic for me. I felt like a child again, or, you know, just experiencing that, that childhood freedom of being able to explore and, you know, experience the world through my feet, right?
We've got 200,000 nerve endings in our feet. And so when we are barefoot, that communicates a lot to our brains and our bodies about what we're doing, you know, with our bodies when we're stepping on the natural ground. So there's a good strong communication, we have our shoes on, you don't necessarily get that communication because it insulates us.
GILGER: It's really interesting. I have a baby and they say this about babies and development that you should put their feet barefoot on, you know, grass or the ground and it helps with their development. Sounds like what you're saying here.
WILLIAMS: Yes, it's the same, doesn't matter how old you are. It's just so helpful in that development, especially for babies' feet as their feet are forming. All of our foot problems come from shoes, or I should say many of them do.
GILGER: I mean, Leah, do you ever get folks who come to do this and just say, this all sounds crazy to me?
WILLIAMS: Yes, yes, and I let them keep their shoes on if they really want to. It's not just grounding, it's not just reflexology and those health benefits, but it is, it's time outside, it's unplugging from technology, it's integrating with the forest, you know, and the therapies that naturally come in, they say once you even just see trees or smell trees, your cortisol drops, you know, your stress is reduced.
People are happy being in the forest and outside in nature. So there's a lot of different elements that are incorporated into the park experience. Grounding is just simply one of them.
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