Welcome to the fifteenth episode of Season Two of Wisdom for Wellbeing Podcast. On this episode I interview Dr. Laura Koniver, MD, author of The Earth Prescription. No doubt you, like many enjoyed Episode thirteen where you had the chance to learn about ‘Nature Therapy’ with Leah Hague. This episode is your chance to go even deeper into one element that nature or Earth connection offers you – the chance to ground. Dr. Koniver describes how we never question plugging in our phones when their batter is running low, and yet, so many of us run ourselves into the ground before we stop for a recharge. So take this time to learn to recharge regularly, to ground – and of course, enjoy the chance to nerd out a little bit on the amazing science behind this practice.

Want to keep in touch? Head to @drkaitlin on Instagram or @wisdomforwellbeingpod on Facebook to connect.

What is covered in this episode:

>>How being outside and connecting to the Earth can be beneficial and comforting to us psychologically and physically

>>How we can incorporate grounding into our daily lives by taking things we’re already doing inside and bringing them outside

>>What is conductive: trees, plants, grass, flowers, weeds – anything that is living and growing out of the Earth can be grounding but even brick, patio, concrete and cement can be grounding

>>How even just a pinky finger off the edge of a mat, touching a blade of grass, while we’re doing yoga outside can be grounding

Links Discussed

• www.Intuition-Physician.com

Transcript

Laura Koniver: [00:00:02.40] I think it’s kind of like touching the Earth is sort of like a reboot to your body. And so even just a second is enough to make you feel immediately better and it’s not in your head if your mood feels brighter or you feel less stressed, but over time if you can make it part of a lifestyle, I think you’re preventing a lot of chronic and inflammatory changes to the body.

Introduction: [00:00:21.60] You’re listening to the Wisdom for Wellbeing Podcast, the show that blends science and heart to bring you evidence-based tips and tricks for cultivating a healthy, wealthy [00:00:30.00] and meaningful life. Now, here’s your host, therapist, Yogi, and fellow full life balancer, Dr. Kaitlin Harkess.

Kaitlin Harkess: [00:00:42.30] Hi there, welcome to Wisdom for Wellbeing. I am delighted to be joined by Dr. Laura Koniver today. Dr. Koniver is the author of The Earth Prescription and she received her Medical Doctorate degree from Jefferson Medical College in 2000 and has been passionately [00:01:00.00] supporting her patients’ natural healing ever since. She is an artist, author, holistic physician, and internationally recognized grounding advocate which is precisely what we’ll be talking about today. Dr. Koniver’s work has been featured in many news and media outlets. She writes a regular health column in the National Organic Lifestyle Magazine, Mary Jane’s Farm and is a featured as an expert protagonist in several Motion Pictures, including [00:01:30.00] The Grounded, Heal for Free, The Earthing Movie and Down to Earth. She also runs the popular healthcare blog intuition-physician.com where she reviews medical literature in a holistic and intuitive way. The Earth Prescription is Dr. Koniver’s fourth book and in The Earth Prescription is exactly where Dr. Koniver really dives deep into the science behind grounding. [00:02:00.00] I really really loved reading this book and really love talking with her here because it’s not just about going out onto the Earth, connecting and feeling good which for sure, we’ve probably all had different experiences with to a greater or lesser extent but she gets into the nitty-gritty literature and science and understanding the mechanisms behind why connecting with the Earth has such an effect for us as human beings. So without further [00:02:30.00] ado, let me introduce you to Dr. Laura Koniver now.

Kaitlin Harkess: [00:02:40.40] Dr. Laura welcome to the Wisdom for Wellbeing Podcast. I am delighted to be with you here today. So thank you so much for making the space to join me.

Laura Koniver: [00:02:48.60] Of course, thank you so much for letting me be here.

Kaitlin Harkess: [00:02:51.20] Yeah. Well, I’m excited to get into this conversation. And this episode is actually following on from a podcast episode I did recently [00:03:00.00] where we were learning all about the psychological benefits of being outdoors. And today we’re actually going to be talking more specifically about grounding and the wisdom that you shared in your book The Earth Prescription. So before we get into all of that, would you mind just sharing a little bit about who you are and the amazing work that you do?

Laura Koniver: [00:03:20.60] Okay. Well, I’m a conventionally trained physician. I just you know, really square, rigid, went right straight through medical school started practising conventional [00:03:30.00] medicine had never heard of grounding wasn’t particularly holistic either and then I became a mom and all of a sudden the world was like oh this is toxic and I don’t want to kid touching that and you know, just it makes you over. How do we live in modern society? Like how natural is that? Do I want that for my child? So it just really like opened my eyes to alternative medicine. She was very colicky. She cried a lot and I took her to the pediatrician and they wanted to put her on like at two weeks old prescription antacids [00:04:00.00] and tell, you know, cry yourself to sleep and just all this stuff that made me feel really stressed out. It didn’t feel right to me now that I was a mom and like I had my own innate knowing woken up. So I just started doing things differently and partly because of her colic and her crying, I noticed being outside with her a lot with soothing and comforting. So this goes right back into your previous interview about being outside, being comforting psychologically and physically and just to make a long story short over the course of the past 20 years putting piece after [00:04:30.00] piece after piece together realizing, you know, holistic medicine has a lot to offer establishing and maintaining Wellness, you know. Conventional Medicine had may have a lot to offer in trauma or in disease and so I’m not against Conventional Medicine for sure, but I can tell you after having gone through medical school, I didn’t really learn much about staying well and staying healthy. All I learned about was troubleshooting. So that’s not what I really wanted as far as how to raise my own child. I didn’t want to just troubleshoot their whole life and then not still know what was going on. I wanted to raise healthy kids. So that’s [00:05:00.00] kind of where I got into holistic medicine and how I really got into grounding.

Kaitlin Harkess: [00:05:04.10] And will you explain to listeners what grounding is?

Laura Koniver: [00:05:07.70] Sure, when I’m talking about grounding a lot of people think first, you know, grounding your awareness of your energy on a more like spiritual basis, but when and that’s true and that’s great. But when I’m talking about grounding, I really need the science behind touching the Earth. There is an electromagnetic frequency that the Earth pulses the Schumann resonance. It literally has its own field of energy and when we directly [00:05:30.00] touch the Earth outside, our body is superconductive and we resonate and welcome that energy into our bodies and our bodies are grounded and we can measure that with a ground test meter and there’s been two decades now of medical studies putting the body in a Grounded State and seeing, you know, testing heart rate, blood pressure, cortisol, hormones, you know, electrolytes, your brain frequencies, your heartbeat. I mean we really studied, is the body is it naturally meant to be grounded touching the Earth directly outside and what is the healing response when it’s grounded? [00:06:00.00] So yeah when I talk about grounding, I don’t mean like on a spiritual level as much as I mean directly touching the Earth in some way, physically.

Kaitlin Harkess: [00:06:07.70] That physical touching has this physiological response that you were describing that that’s measured. (Yeah). It’s been researched and yet we don’t hear a lot about it.

Laura Koniver: [00:06:17.50] Yeah not one, not one word in medical school residency. Nothing not one word. Never. Yeah, and it’s weird too because if you think about it, we do know that the body’s electrical. I mean obviously, almost every diagnosed, most diagnostic [00:06:30.00] procedures we do in medicine, conventional medicine uses the property of the fact that we are conductive to help monitor health like you know, an EKG everyone knows, you know, we want to monitor the health of the heart. We put the little electrodes on your chest and monitor your EKG. That’s monitoring the electrical activity of your heart in a sleep lab. We’ll put, you know, electrodes on the brain and monitor brain wave patterns to monitor how the brain you know, first to roll out seizure disorder, stroke, that kind of thing. That’s an electrical monitoring of the brain. If we want to test muscle function [00:07:00.00] we can put electrodes on muscles so we know that and we can even measure them like the electrical potential of blood as it flows through our cardiovascular system. So somehow in conventional medicine, we grasp that the whole body is electrically conductive but then but that’s it. So we use it for like diagnosing things, but we never used it for oh, well why the heck is the whole body primed to be electrically conductive then like, is there a missing component? Is that an avenue to healing? That’s not recognized yet conventionally. But I hope one day it will be because we monitor the body and its and its Health [00:07:30.00] through making sure it’s electrically conductive. Why would we not think that then boosting the bodies, you know, electrical conductivity is an avenue of healing that is missing for some reason so far.

Kaitlin Harkess: [00:07:39.40] And that’s really interesting because I think what you mentioned before to that as you were going through your medical journey, you didn’t actually learn that much about staying well and healthy. So I suppose that isn’t the focus. And more and more we are hearing about more functional and integrative medicine and different branches that are focused on you know, supporting people to maintain wellness. So perhaps this is an avenue [00:08:00.00] that will gain more awareness.

Laura Koniver: [00:08:02.40] Yeah. I hope I always say and I hope in my lifetime that there’s a whole another field of Medicine called Conductive Medicine because if every cell in our body include and even non-cellular plasma and cytoplasm of every cell. If it’s all an electrically conductive gel waiting to get some kind of new treat of electrical energy. That should be a whole field of medicine I think you know, so yeah, hopefully in my lifetime and that’s what I talk about in the book, The Earth Prescription because I feel like [00:08:30.00] you know what I can’t just do it alone. But I feel like there’s a lot of people who have a lot of information about how our body functions on a you know on an Electromagnetic level and yet, we just haven’t collectively called it a field of Medicine yet, but I think we need to soon because as you know, as we all know we’re increasingly being bombarded with electrical fields, and we still don’t really know what it does to our health. So, you know one avenue of it is making sure we stay healthy and strong by supporting our health through grounding and then the other avenue of it is [00:09:00.00] in this increasingly like electrical magnetic radiation type world, this e-smog world. We need to know what that does when we’re constantly having our electrical fields invaded by exposures that we’re not really it’s just not even disclosed like cigarette smoke, you know, it’s not like it hasn’t been disclosed what the effect is on our body. But if we know every cell in our bodies conductive than what does it do to me to have a cell phone on me all the time or to be standing under a power line. What does it to me? [00:09:30.00]

Kaitlin Harkess: [00:09:30.40] So there’s some gaps in research but yet, you know, what you describe in The Earth Prescription is like the really rich research body behind grounding. And what you were listing off earlier when you were, you know, basically introducing us to this this realm of grounding was the different areas that it impacts. Would you be able to maybe just touch upon a few areas and describe for instance, you know, you mentioned sort of inflammation and how it affects different cells just for listeners who are going, woah this sounds really interesting. Yeah quite [00:10:00.00] get the science.

Laura Koniver: [00:10:00.80] Yeah and there is like when I say, there’s not a lot of research, there isn’t a lot of research on what those exposed, the toxic exposures. There’s not a lot of research on that but there is a lot of research just paring it down to the ground in the human body. There’s 20 years of it. So I’ll do a little overview. But also if you go to my website, there’s a tab that’s grounding medical studies and I have you can your listeners can literally read these studies all for themselves. They’re all published in the medical literature. Most of them are double-blind placebo studies. So yeah, they’re not just something like I’m hoping [00:10:30.00] or I kind of noticed anecdotally. They’re really good medical published medical studies.

Kaitlin Harkess: [00:10:34.20] And for listen is double-blind placebo studies are like the gold standard of research trials. So the fact that that we’re hearing about gold standard study shows that this this research is incredible and something we can really hold in our hearts that as something we can base our hopeful decisions on.

Laura Koniver: [00:10:53.20] Yeah. So the body responds very immediately to going out and touching the Earth and being in that electromagnetic frequency [00:11:00.00] of the Schumann resonance. Immediately like a light switch turning on. The muscle tension in our muscles are no is noticeably dropped. So if you step on the earth barefoot, you can instantly, it’s not in your head, it’s measurable on an electromyogram like if I measured the stress in your shoulders, where everyone gets their tension headaches, your neck, it immediately drops muscle tension and immediately your brain waves start going into a healing Alpha pattern of which is like deep healing sleep or prolonged meditation, other restorative [00:11:30.00] healthy brain patterns. That is also possible through grounding and that’s pretty immediate because those are you know your muscles in your brain and your heart are strongly electrically active and then it’s cumulative benefits over time. So like if I just only have 5 seconds, I still think it’s worth it. I still am probably going to decrease the chance I’m going to get a tension headache if I just go touch the Earth outside. But over minutes you can notice pain going away, you can boost your digestion, your vagal tone gets boosted, your heart rate variability gets boosted, your oxygenation [00:12:00.00] of your blood gets boosted. As minutes turn to hours, your circulation starts to improve, your blood flows more freely, every little red blood cell has a Zeta potential, it’s an electrical potential. Every cell that’s flowing through in your bloodstream and so that allows the blood to flow like three times more fluid, so less, you know risk of clotting and the circulation is enhanced. So, you know, people notice their cheeks get flush. They, we’ve done medical studies to show that even the capillaries just in your skin when you’re grounding through your feet flush. [00:12:30.00] There’s better-enhanced circulation, which means every cell in your body is getting better nutrition and oxygenation. So it’s not just just you know, just your blood is affected by your blood working more optimally, it’s going to everything from your kidney, you know to your spleen to your liver to everything is optimized. And then overtime, hours turn into days, turned to weeks and it becomes a lifetime pattern. Sleep is a lot deeper, your stress, your cortisol, and other stress markers of inflammation in your body decrease [00:13:00.00] and we believe because of the electrolyte pattern after being grounded for hours and hours that your bones will actually be protected. The bone density will be protected because your bones aren’t leaching as many minerals. And so long term there’s a lot a huge amount of protective benefits as the inflammation in your entire body decreases and there’s less wear and tear so it’s kind of like, I think it’s kind of like touching the Earth is sort of like a reboot to your body. And so even just a second is enough to make you feel immediately better and it’s not in your [00:13:30.00] head if your mood feels brighter or you feel less stressed. But over time if you can make it part of a lifestyle, I think you’re preventing a lot of chronic and inflammatory changes to the body.

Kaitlin Harkess: [00:13:39.00] Well, that’s incredible. And you know, we all have access to the Earth in different ways because what you described in your book as well is that you know, the touching like the grass or you know dirt, like the the Earth Earth is one thing but you can also touch concrete. Would you mind describing that for listeners?

Laura Koniver: [00:13:52.30] Yeah sure because one of my pet peeves is actually when people are talking about grounding and they’re like just go barefoot because I’ve dealt with a lot of patients where that’s, that’s almost [00:14:00.00] offensive to just flippantly say go barefoot because people have mobility issues, People who need grounding the most are often bedridden or stuck inside rehab centers and live in urban environments like they don’t have a safe backyard, you know, and so it’s not so easy to just you know, just be an affluent person who’s like go outside barefoot, you know, if they have their own yard. Not everybody has that and so there has to be solutions for everyone to get grounded. And so I have personally tested what’s conductive outside with ground test meters and I have found [00:14:30.00] so many different surfaces will ground you and you can be in living in a city environment and like you said concrete and cement are semiconductors, they let the grounding go straight through. So if you find a little patch of sidewalk that you trust that you can sit on the curb, you know and have your lunch and just touch it with your hand. And that’s the other point too is it’s not just your feet. I don’t really particularly like going barefoot. I get cold really easily so most of the year, I don’t want bare feet it gets too cold. I like to keep my hands in my pockets and just slip one hand out at a time and touch things with my hands so much [00:15:00.00] more often I’m sitting on sidewalk or cement or holding a metal railing because metal is conductive or holding, if I’m at a crosswalk and there’s a street sign and it’s metal and I notice it’s bolted into the concrete, that is grounded. So, I might just rest my hand on that while I’m waiting to cross the street and be grounded. I always think, look up at trees, their leaves are grounded. A tree can be stories and stories tall and the top leaf is just as grounded as you know the grass at the base of the tree, so anything that’s living and growing out of the earth [00:15:30.00] think of that as being grounded too. So, I’m much more apt to touch a leaf then to like, you know, go barefoot or be laying in the grass and getting ant bites or ticks, you know what I mean? So think that every part of your body is conductive so hands to me are more accessible than feet although feet work well. And then anything and let me just list off some things that are conductive: so rocks are conductive, tile is conductive, cement, concrete, trees, plants, grass, flowers, weeds, brick, patio. So [00:16:00.00] as long as it’s a conductive surface and not a dead surface, so the ones that are not conductive that you don’t want to like have a false sense that you’re grounding through is lumber is not living tree anymore, it needs moisture. So once it’s turned into Lumber, you’re not going to be grounded if you’re standing like on a wood deck. And the other thing that even though cement and and slabs like in my garage I’m grounded when I’m standing in the garage because it’s just a cement slab on the Earth. But if I go on the road where [00:16:30.00] there’s asphalt and it’s black it’s got that tar, that’s layer of like plastic basically over it. So then you’re not grounded there. So those are the things to avoid is just like dead lumber and roads that are black with tar, those will break the contact.

Kaitlin Harkess: [00:16:43.40] And I think that’s pretty incredible because what you say, you know, people don’t have to throw off their shoes and go frolicking, you know out in a field that’s not necessarily the way to go. Yeah It’s super fun, but not everyone necessarily will vibe with that or be able to do it in their day to day. So when you kind of like you can be in the city and [00:17:00.00] you know, see like a stop sign or something or you know a post and be able to touch that, it makes it really accessible not just practically but you know depending on people’s social norms. So anyone listening can be thinking, okay, like where in my life can I just take a moment to rest my hand or to take a moment to ground and connect in with the Earth and you know offer myself the opportunity of like decreased muscle tension and increasing, you know, my vagus nerve tone? Like these are incredible things.

Laura Koniver: [00:17:28.30] Yeah, because if we make it that it [00:17:30.00] has to be this bonfire and we have flowers in our hair, you know people only ground once a month if that, you know what I mean? But if it’s every morning, here’s simple things I do in my daily, I estimate that I’m grounded for about 3 hours a day. And here’s how I fit it all in. I literally take my coffee and just stand on my front, you know porch which is a cement step going up to my front door and I literally just drink my coffee and that’s a few minutes there, you know, taking deep breaths and and having breakfast outside and then I you know, since my garage [00:18:00.00] is is grounded with it being a cement slab I go out there a lot and I just take my laptop out there and I do a lot of work actually in my garage with my bare feet on the cement floor and I get a couple hours in that way. And then I try and this would be great if your listeners have no extra time to fit something else in their day. Just try and move any indoor activity you can think of outside. So if you do yoga stretches, if you do meditation, if you have a physical therapy stretches you have to do or if it’s just as simple as a meal, one meal a day, I’m going to take my lunch outside [00:18:30.00]. Doing anything indoors that you can move outside. Even if you’re scrolling through your phone if you can take it outside, that’s awesome. And then if I get to the end of my day and I have not ever touched the Earth. So I’ve never just charged any inflammation or muscle tension or anything. I will not let myself go up and go to bed without going outside and at least looking up the moon, you know for a taking three deep breaths, even that three deep breaths just to reset yourself and look up at the stars every night. Simple things that won’t add a lot of time to your day, but will totally [00:19:00.00] transform your electrical health.

Kaitlin Harkess: [00:19:02.80] That’s incredible. And that’s a really I think interesting point that it doesn’t have to be adding in something new. It’s taking the things we’re already doing, you know, we spend time on our phones if we could be doing that outside and you mentioned in your book too that if you’re doing yoga doesn’t mean you have to get rid of the mat like you could have your pinky finger off the edge of the mat. It doesn’t have to be your whole body.

Laura Koniver: [00:19:21.10] That’s what’s cool because our whole body is conductive. So one cell that’s all it takes. One part of my body, like you said, my pinky is touching one blade of grass. I could be, [00:19:30.00] you know covered head to toe. I could be wrapped in a sleeping bag and totally plastic and if I just put one cell of one part of my body on the earth then my whole body is just like put that light switch on, I’m grounded from head to toe as if I was laying out at the beach, you know, it’s awesome.

Kaitlin Harkess: [00:19:45.00] It’s really awesome. And you know, it doesn’t have to be the perfect weather either because in The Earth Prescription, you also describe different grounding activities you can do for each season. It’s winter here in Australia. We don’t have snow, fortunately, but but it is chilly. Would you mind to sharing [00:20:00.00] one winter activity with us? So that I think actually when this episode goes to air it will be it will be sort of maybe a little bit warmer here in Australia, but getting colder in North America. So maybe just one cold weather activity so we can all be creative about it.

Laura Koniver: [00:20:16.00] Yeah. Well just off the top of my head my favorite cold-weather activity and it goes off the principle of what we were just talking about how if one cell in your body is grounded your whole body’s grounded. So my favorite thing is to go out with my husband who loves cold weather. Well, I hate it and [00:20:30.00] I am bundled head to toe with you know gloves everything just head to toe covered – jacket, boots, three pairs of you know socks and then he’ll touch the Earth in some way. Maybe we’ll be sitting on a metal park bench or we’re walking by a tree or we intentionally sit on a rock and he’ll touch it and then he’ll hold my hand in my pocket with me so I’m warm and I’m totally grounded through him. And so that’s my first favorite obviously way to get grounded in the winter and you can do the same thing with animals. So [00:21:00.00] if I’m outside with my dog, and I just pet her muzzle, you know rub her ears, pet her belly, she’s grounded because she’s on the earth and then I’m grounded by touching her. So I guess my favorite wintertime activity since I hate cold is not actually even touching the Earth, it’s using someone else or a pet or an animal or a signpost or you know a tree that’s still alive, you know, you don’t want a dead tree that goes dormant in the winter. But if I can find a leaf or a pine needle or anything anywhere, I’ll touch that much [00:21:30.00] more easily than I’ll touch the Earth directly.

Kaitlin Harkess: [00:21:32.30] That makes sense and that’s being really creative and good for listeners to know. You can you can enlist a partner who’s maybe more cold weather resilient to do the grounding and then connect in because hand-holding is nice and cozy and warm. And then of course, it’s a natural coupling if you do if you are lucky enough to have a place where you can have a little fire. Oh, I just love having fires outside in the winter and being bundled up and near the fire and then just one little thing. It doesn’t have to be a toe but it could be a hand or you know, any [00:22:00.00] part of your body or holding someone else’s hand but being around that fire and staying warm and getting grounded in some way right next to a fire is really nice in the winter too.

Kaitlin Harkess: [00:22:07.80] That’s so beautiful. And that’s something I think we can all think. Oh, yeah, like that’s relaxing too and something that we can do as a bit of a ceremony in these colder days.

Laura Koniver: [00:22:17.20] And then there you can be creative too because there’s a lot of indoor places that can be grounded when it’s cold out to so like I mentioned my garage, a lot of people have basements. Even just a few if you drive to work and you’re in a parking, you [00:22:30.00] know, multi-layer parking deck a lot of times, they’re out of cement and you can touch some part of your office buil- go to the lowest part of whatever building your in and see what is the surface, if it’s cement or a slab or metal? It’s often grounded. And then a lot of there’s I have a video on my website but it shows a lot of plumbing is grounded because it’s a requirement for houses to be safe for the appliances like the hot water heater and plumbing and electrical components of the home to be grounded. So a lot of times you can actually just [00:23:00.00] touched your faucet a metal faucet and you’re grounded. So it’s a lot of times when people say I feel so much better after a bath or a shower and you test it. It’s because that’s when the only time that day that they’ve been grounded their drain is grounded. And so when you plug up your bathtub and you have your sitting in the water and the water sitting on a metal drain, you know the whole bath time you’re grounded. So there is a lot of creative ways to be grounded even inside your home because a lot of your appliances are grounded.

Kaitlin Harkess: [00:23:24.00] That’s incredible. I know the saying like just add water. Yeah, that’s very therapeutic. So to think that there’s extra [00:23:30.00] benefit, you know, particularly now.

Laura Koniver: [00:23:32.90] Yeah, when you’re watching dishes if you have a stream of water coming down and you’re washing the dishes you probably are grounded.

[00:23:38.20] Yeah, well, I’ll sign up for that chore. Dr. Laura, do you have one last thought for our listeners before we before we wrap things up today?

Laura Koniver: [00:23:47.90] Yeah. Well, we talked a lot about the science behind grounding and I just want to impart the idea that it’s just this it’s this beautiful full-circle kind of thing. It’s not just the nitty-gritty science. Although that proves [00:24:00.00] why it feels so good. But it’s this beautiful to me question that the human body is begging is that if it is designed however it’s designed, divinely designed, to be conductive every cell in it. Every single part of it. Every part of it is designed to receive some kind of electrical energy then doesn’t that beg the other you know, half of the question, why was it designed that way? And obviously, we think of our cell phones that are designed to be recharged every night. We think of our computer to [00:24:30.00] design designed to be plugged in and recharged every night so that it can work. We think of grounding our home appliances because we know if we don’t ground them they don’t work over time. This the static builds up and they will stop working which is why we ground everything for its health we ground everything electrical for its health even non-living electrical things like this computer I’m talking to you on. So just start thinking doesn’t it not beg the question if our living tissues which are much more precious than an electrical appliance I can replace is waiting to absorb electrical energy [00:25:00.00] and to be – and it is scientifically documented to be enhanced when it is plugged into this electrical resonance from the Earth. Why would we not think to ground us? If we we should absolutely prioritize our human body and the function of our human body. If I charge my cell phone every single night and I would never expect it to work. If I let that battery go to nothing. I wouldn’t chuck it in the garbage. I would know it’s my fault because I didn’t plug it in but we don’t doc our bodies to the Earth and then we get really frustrated. Why overtime is it not working as well? Why don’t I feel as good, you know, why is my body [00:25:30.00] starting to get worse and worse and worse and but we’ll plug the cell phone in but we won’t go out and plug our bodies in so just to make that connection that the proof is in the design. If my body is electrically designed to be plugged into some healing battery or source of power. Why am I not doing so like it’s just it’s a beautiful. I’m trying to say it’s a beautiful but it’s also a necessary thing both together.

Kaitlin Harkess: [00:25:51.80] And yeah how powerful you know, like I even think if something’s not working that’s electrical. I always turn it off and start again and in a way that we take [00:26:00.00] ourselves outside, touch a slab of concrete, whatever it might be just give ourselves a moment to to connect and start again, and yeah how powerful if we were doing that regularly the same way we might charge our cell phone. And as you said nothing is more precious than our bodies and our minds and we know they’re so interconnected. So if we can give ourselves that time that’s a really beautiful gift.

Laura Koniver: [00:26:22.40] Yes, exactly.

Kaitlin Harkess: [00:26:23.30] Thank you so much for your wisdom. I truly appreciate it. And I know the listeners are going to be probably after this episode or maybe while [00:26:30.00] they’re listening, heading outside and and touching and connecting. Dr. Laura, how how can how can people work with you, you know, we’ve talked a little bit about The Earth Prescription so listeners can get their hands on that book which describes grounding. It describes the science behind it, you know, all the research studies that have been referenced here today as well as seasonal activities. Where else can people connect and yeah reach out?

Laura Koniver: [00:26:56.60] Well, I would love people to stop by my website. Especially if they want to look at those [00:27:00.00] grounding medical studies. There’s a tab across the top that they can click to look at all those and I have a ton of free videos and a ton of healing articles that are all free on my website. So that’s intuition-physician.com and they can order the book there if they want a signed copy and I do online health classes and a bunch of other different resources there waiting as well.

Kaitlin Harkess: [00:27:20.30] Beautiful and I’ll put the link to intuition-physician.com in the show notes as well as yeah, we can if you’ve got any upcoming classes we can put those in the show notes otherwise listeners check [00:27:30.00] out the website and then yeah keep an eye on what Dr. Laura’s up to so that you can work with her and learn more about yeah the healing power of grounding because it’s something with incredible benefit that we can all be incorporating into our days and like you said without adding anything in, just having our minds opened a bit of creativity, and I actually did sign up for your mailing list and listeners, honestly, what a what you get sent is incredible like it’s it’s pages and pages of resources and videos. It’s a really generous gift. So definitely definitely [00:28:00.00] connect with Dr. Laura.

Laura Koniver: [00:28:02.00] Thank you. Thank you so much.

Kaitlin Harkess: [00:28:03.90] Well thank you so much for your time and wishing you a wonderful grounded evening there.

Laura Koniver: [00:28:09.80] Thank you very much. You too.

Kaitlin Harkess: [00:28:16.00] Well, I hope that you found this interview with Dr. Laura Koniver as interesting and as practical as I did. I picked up some personally really great tips around how I might be able to incorporate grounding into my daily life [00:28:30.00] on those days when you know, kicking my shoes off and frolicking in a field isn’t necessarily an option that that’s so available. I hope that you’ve had a think about some ways that you might bring this practice of grounding into your life and that you’ve enjoyed learning about the science behind it because when we understand the reason why and understand the effect that it is having on our body, I think that really motivates us to change our behaviors and also not to discount something as [00:29:00.00] just feeling good because it’s a little bit fun. I think Dr. Koniver did a fantastic job of giving us in a very brief period of time and overview. And of course grab a copy of The Earth Prescription and head on over to our website intuition-physician.com because she does provide a fantastic download of all of the research evidence behind grounding there. I’ve totally nerded out to it and I highly recommend. If you are [00:29:30.00] enjoying these podcasts, generally it would mean the world to me if you take a few moments to leave a review on iTunes. It really helps me in supporting others to find this podcast, to engage with this podcast, and ultimately that will help make our world a more healthy and well community so that we and the generations to come will thrive. All right. See you next week. Bye for now.

Outro: [00:30:02.70] Thanks [00:30:00.00] for joining us this week on the Wisdom for Wellbeing Podcast. Please visit drkaitlin.com to connect, find show notes, other episodes and to subscribe. While you’re at it, if you find value in the show, we’d appreciate a rating or perhaps simply tell a friend about the show. Wisdom for Wellbeing is not a substitute for professional, individualized mental health treatment. If you are in crisis, please contact 000, your local emergency number if you are outside [00:30:30.00] of Australia, or attend your local hospital, ED.