The Ultimate Guide to Grounding for Midlife Women, with Jason Corder (Ep. 14)

0:00 If only there was something we could do where we could be in nature, spend a few minutes, and not only would it maybe improve our mood, but it might even have some health benefits. Guess what? There is, or maybe I should even say there are things we can do. One of them is called grounding or earthing. So imagine if it really would make a difference for your health and your mental state if you could just be outside with your feet in the grass or on the sand for 15 minutes a day. Let's talk about it. Welcome to Mind Your Midlife, your go-to resource for confidence and success, one thought at a time.

0:46 Unlike most advice out there, we believe that simply telling you to believe in yourself or change your habits isn't enough to wake up excited about life or feel truly confident in your body. Each week, you'll gain actionable strategies and oh my goodness, powerful insights to stop feeling stuck and start loving your midlife. This is the Mind Your Midlife podcast. If you're a beach person, and I must confess, I'm more of a mountain lake person, but I get it, if you're a beach person, you probably have said to someone or at least thought to yourself at some point, I feel so great walking on the beach.

1:28 It's such a calming and I feel healthy and I feel happy. There's just something about it, right? Or maybe you've walked around on the grass with your bare feet in the summer and it just feels so good, and maybe it brings back memories of being a kid, and you look up at the sky and watch the clouds. That's one of my favorite things to do. That's grounding. And there is real science behind the value of grounding. So my guest today, Jason Corter, is going to share with us what he knows about the benefits of grounding and forest bathing. And that is much simpler than you might think. Jason is the CEO of Digital Addiction Prevention.

2:12 He also has been a TEDx speaker, and I will give you the link to that in the show notes, as well as a producer, writer, and actor. So I am very excited to chat with him today. So welcome, Jason. I'm glad to have you here. Thank you so much, Cheryl. It's a huge pleasure to be here. Awesome. All right. Well, let's dive right in. And I want you to tell us kind of how you came to be interested or learn about grounding. What's the story? Absolutely. Yeah. And I came to it kind of organically in a way, out of my own life experiences for the most part.

2:54 I think, you know, I was living outside the country for over 20 years in Africa and in Europe, and I only finally came back home to live in 2019. And when I came back from that time here, I think I came back a bit of a kind of a broken man, if you will, and had a lot of repairing to do on my mental and physical health. And in fact, you know, my firstborn son, who is now 26 years old, has always been an incredible student of nutrition and things like grounding. And he's always kind of telling me the newest cutting edge things. So I was aware of a lot through him, but I also just started to do my own, had sort of go on my own journey of self-healing, if you will, over the last five years.

3:38 And it was just out of that own need for my, you know, for myself, really, that I started to learn about things like grounding and what they call forest bathing, and also, of course, many other things like diet and et cetera, all the all the tools that I've now, after five years, compiled that I now offer to people, you know, in terms of their mental and physical health. But grounding is kind of the the base one, you know, and it was kind of the first one I learned about. It's also in some ways the the easiest for people to do. So I definitely agree how easy it is. And listeners, you're going to hear that when we get into talking about what this grounding thing even is. And the thing with grounding, though, is I also often find that people, I don't know what what I'm trying, what's the right word?

4:25 That people kind of are like, well, that can't work. You know, they sort of say, ugh, shove it aside. Can't be true, can't work. So I know there's science behind grounding. So tell us, first of all, tell us what grounding is, and then tell us the that science that that shows that it works. Absolutely. Yeah. And you're totally right. And I think when I first heard about it, I think I thought that it was this sort of more, I don't want to say emotional, but something in that more spiritual realm. Like kind of like, you know, uh where people talk about vortexes, and you're supposed to feel a greater energy there. But how do you measure it? Is it true? It's different for each person. So I think I had that. But no, it turns out grounding is is just 100% science-backed in every possible way.

5:11 In fact, it's quite, it's quite mainstream. And I mean, grounding is literally just touching, it doesn't have to be actually your feet, but that's how we think of it is touching any part of our body to the bare earth or to anything that you could have a stone deck or stone stairs on the earth. Those themselves are now doing the grounding for you. So anything that's essentially touching the earth and does conduct uh electricity. And so, yeah, I mean, the science behind it is very simple. Uh, we actually are electromagnetic beings. We we have and conduct an electric charge and we have a magnetic, you know, magnetism has an effect on us, and vice versa. And within molecules, we have a negative ion and a positive ion, and that kind of keeps everything in balance.

5:57 And then when that's true, that's all good. But what happens is that certain couple of different major factors cause us to have molecules that lose an ion and then they become what are called free radicals, and they sort of ping around the body and can cause a lot of problems, essentially. There's I'll quickly tell you that there's two major causes of that, which is our screens, and I mean, I'm I'm gonna lump it all together, stress and screens, and I'm gonna put all that in one big lump because our screens kind of do drive us crazy and cause a lot of stress. But those, and then the toxins in our environment, chemicals and our food systems and our air and our water and all the all the toxins that we're exposed to apparently is one of the other major causes of these free radicals.

6:42 But anyway, when we touch the earth, the earth is friendly enough to just literally send, and again, it seems wild, but it's very much data-backed, science-backed, NIH, Oxford University. You can find it all there. The earth literally is able uh through magnetism to send us now ions that go, uh these are negative ions and go and attach themselves to a positive ion, thus creating a balanced molecule, if you will, and ending those free radicals. Uh, and that's just, I mean, there's a lot more to say, obviously, but that is the science behind it. You know, it's amazing because I think I know I have heard of free radicals, and it's uh it's kind of there's a lot of skincare being marketed out there to deal with free radicals and other things like that.

7:30 But I until I understood what grounding was, I definitely didn't even know what a free radical was. I knew it was bad. So we get that the earth has this magnetic charge, I suppose, and the negative ions are good for us. And you explain that really well. So, what does that do for us in terms of what we might experience in our bodies? Yeah, yeah, great question. And I'll tell you, the list of things that it does for us is actually wild. It's long and wonderful. And again, you know, don't take my word for it. It's you can easily find it on mainstream studies.

8:13 It reduces, and one of the greatest things it does is it reduces inflammation in the body. We know that inflammation is not cool. It's the cause in general, in general, it's almost all chronic diseases are have inflammation as a cause of them or as a part of that negative cycle. So reducing inflammation in any way, including in the brain, by the way, uh, wild stuff, lowers your blood pressure. People have used it to literally decrease or even end their blood pressure medicine. Of course, it improves overall your immune system and the functioning of your body, lowers anxiety and stress, uh, reduces oxidative stress. So we talk about antioxidants.

8:55 This is the number one antioxidant that there is in terms of sort of, I think, time and energy per benefit, 15 minutes a day touching the earth, and you're having a huge uh antioxidant effect on the body. It actually, and this is something I just learned as I was doing some more research today, it reduces blood viscosity, which is apparently, you know, it turns out and makes sense, isn't a really important part of you know, dealing with cardiovascular diseases and even diabetes and circulation in general. So it's interesting. First of all, let me put a caveat to say please don't stop or reduce your medications just because you're grounding, talk to your doctor. I'm not giving medical advice, nor is Jason.

9:36 But definitely maybe do talk to your doctor because this is very interesting. Yeah, yeah, 100%. 100%. So tell me, is this related to why people always kind of go on and on gushing about loving to be at the beach and walk on the sand? Right, right. Really good question. It's definitely a big part of it. And yes, as you say, you know, no one ever breaks up at a beach. Um it's so it's definitely, you're definitely getting a huge amount of that grounding. Obviously, your shoes are off and you're touching the sand, and the sand is very much charged in that in that way with those negative ions that come in and attach themselves to a positive ion.

10:19 There are, however, a lot of other things happening at the beach at the same time. And I think that's why it feels so incredible just to be there. Something I learned actually when we're running on the beach, um, you know, sand is like it's it's tiny particles of crystal and stone, right? Very much a mag uh a charge in there. When we're running, we're actually creating a tiny electric current every time our bones smash down on those tiny like crystals. And that tiny charge is it literally is like giving us a little burst of energy with every one and doing its grounding, as if you will, getting rid of the free radicals. I think there's a lot of two other elements as well.

11:00 The water itself. I know first of all, the water itself has grounding effects, right? The water, I mean, what I believe that water, I haven't researched this enough, so I'm just gonna say that this is a personal hunch that I haven't backed up yet by research, but I'm sure it's true. That feeling of water on your body just feels so incredible no matter where it is. I think water does have that same charge, but ocean water does, and of course, ocean water has all those incredible minerals. And we're getting like magnesium and I mean so many things that make our skin feel good and are getting into our body. And finally, last but not least, and this is one of the things I talk about when I'm talking about all the tools I like to give people, is sunlight. Um, we're getting that sunlight too.

11:40 Um, not just directly, it's refracting off the water. It's, you know, it's um, and again, one of the things that I think a lot of people are waking up to these days is it's the sunlight, sun is our friend. It's not something to be feared, not even in the slightest. Now, can you hurt your body if you lie at if you don't have a lot of melanin and you lie out on the sun all day? Of course, but too much of anything is is bad. But in general, the sun is an incredible source of not just things like vitamin D, which we now know is how important that is to us, you know, post-COVID and everything. But the sun is also the greatest source of testosterone, which is something that I only learned in the last year. An incredible source for all of us. All of us have testosterone, just men have a lot more than than women.

12:21 So there's a lot of extra health benefits from that sunlight as well. So that's part of it too. Well, I definitely am on the vitamin D train. Vitamin D, however it is you're getting it, is super crazy, powerful, important listeners. Oh, vitamin D. But let me let me also personalize this just for a second because I do enjoy going to the beach occasionally, and I absolutely love what you're saying. And at the same time, I'm not really what you would call a beach person. I'd rather be at like the mountain lake. Does that have the same effect? Are we talking about any water that is natural like that, or is it really just ocean? Well, I think I would say yes, it is the same effect.

13:02 And yes, I think it is just as healing and and just and offers just as much uh, you know, sort of grounding and everything we've talked about. I guess the only difference you could point to is the minerals in the ocean. But you know what? In a mountain lake, there's definitely going to be minerals as well. I mean, you think about the thousand hundreds of thousands of years of interaction with that lake and the mountains around. Right. Okay, well, that gives me hope for my mountain lakes. But I I talk a lot actually about how powerful it is to go out for a walk, to to give yourself a break, to be in nature, all of that. So you mentioned to me before when we were talking forest bathing, and I think that's definitely related.

13:43 So tell us what that is. Yes, absolutely. No, that's a great question. And this is something, again, that I was I was shocked to learn this one. And this was something I only learned, again, I would say quite recently in the last year. Um, and again, there's there's studies from the most mainstream on even on this. So forest bathing is kind of a it's its own thing. And the idea here is, or not the idea that the fact is that all plants and trees uh actually put off airborne chemicals. They do this as a defense mechanism, right? They have a lot of defense mechanisms actually that we could, that's something else we could talk about in terms of diet, but let me leave that aside. But this is one of their defense mechanisms or airborne chemicals.

14:25 Well, guess what? When we inhale those chemicals, the good news is they actually go into our body and they kill tumors and they kill cancers. They literally go around, they they they call what do they call them? It's weird, the funny terminology, they call them like superkillers, but they're killing bad things, so it's good news. And I just find that to be shocking. So not only are you getting the grounding if you're in a forest, if your shoes are off, but even if your shoes are on, you're getting that essentially anti-cancer, anti-growth effect. There's one other thing I will also uh mention, Cheryl, in that forest bathing experience. Again, separate from the grounding, is there's a lot, a lot of new research into the effect of sound on healing the body and certain frequencies.

15:12 And one of the things I discovered is bird song. Just the sound of birds chirping in a forest puts our nervous system at ease and it has a whole host of effects on our mental health. I've now even just recently heard something about the fact that the frequency that you hear when birds, that bird song of the morning is a certain frequency that helps energize us a bit. It's amazing. And the forest bathing idea, when you first said it, I thought, huh, what a I'm picturing that I have to do something weird in the forest, you know, to get the benefit. Like, what is that? It's it's sort of a strange term, but you're saying we're we're uh just absorbing this by breathing by through our skin.

15:55 Those those that's just inhaling it, literally. Yeah. Amazing. I think this is what's going to be really exciting, is we're gonna see a huge amount of research around these kinds of questions. We have the tools to end chronic disease, heal ourselves, they're all available and they're almost all free. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I do find this fascinating uh along the lines of what you're saying, because we know and and we're talking about it more and more and more that our nervous system needs to be calmed in order for us to really function and in order for us to think straight, and in order for us to pretty much do anything, but yet we're spending a lot of our time nowadays in basically the opposite state where our nervous system is riled up.

16:45 And so what you're describing for listeners, if if this is totally new to you, I'm kind of like pulling it all together, maybe we'll see. Uh, what you're describing is kind of going back out into nature, like maybe people a hundred or two hundred or however many years ago did without even realizing why or what the benefits were. Is that fair? No, you're you're a hundred percent right. And I think it it feels like that's happening for people around the world, is this kind of return to nature. Now, obviously, there's parts of the world where people are still living close to nature and they're trying very as hard as they can to reach some kind of modernity or more and more model.

17:30 But in generally speaking, or at least let's just say in our own country or our own sort of culture, yeah, there's I think there's an appreciation for the natural, especially as more and more as humans, we whether we like it or not, we are more and more seem to be intertwining ourselves with machines and and sort of moving in that direction, what you know, for good or for bad, whether we like it a lot or not, a lot of us don't like it. Not only is returning to nature good for us in a general way, it's literally good for our mental and physical health. And in fact, without that, we're getting sicker and sicker and sicker.

18:12 As much as we feel as though we are have greater and greater modern conveniences, we don't, we're not happy because we're addicted to our screens. We don't feel good because we're eating food that has a food system that has been poisoned and corrupted. So I think you're 100% right. And the more that people learn about the really serious benefits of spending time out in nature and knowing that it's real, it's not just woo-woo, I feel better. It's actually, if you wanted to have the science behind it, it's right there. So you're you're right, you're right on on that. I I love that kind of as a concept. And so now we're saying look at these benefits that you can have by going out for 15 minutes with your bare feet or going for a walk in the woods, and and that's something we can all do.

18:58 Although, what if it's winter? There are some things out nowadays that say that they can allow us to ground without having to go outside. So, what do you think about those types of things? A grounding mat, a grounding bed something or other. Yeah. Right, exactly. No, you can be sleeping on one. And by the way, just so people know, each of those items you're talking about, you're something you sit on or you sleep on or whatever, you have to plug them in. But you're not plugging them in to receive electricity. You're plugging them in for them literally to be grounded. So just FYI. You don't have to worry about that part of it. Oh, I don't want to sleep with a blanket on me that's plugged into the wall.

19:40 Again, it's not receiving an electric current. It's just being grounded. It's just receiving a the, I guess you could say the current directly from the earth, but it's not an electric current. So I think those autumn's items are great as a uh not quite a plan B, but a winter, a winter plan, as you say. I think that there's a lot of the elements that you don't get, of course, when you're inside and you're just using one of those. Obviously, you're not getting, you know, the forest bathing and you're not getting the bird song or, you know, but again, if it's if you're in four feet of snow, it's you you're not gonna get much of that anyway. I think they're great. And and yes, you're you're gonna get those ions, you're gonna get those free radicals being taken care of.

20:24 So you're gonna get all of the effects of the benefits of grounding. And if that's the best you can do in, you know, in in the winter, it it definitely is the best you can do. One thing I can, and this is funny and ironic. I just wanted to say that you could add to your grounding routine, your winter grounding routine, you could add some audio of bird song. You could spend some time. I love to go on YouTube and I search, like, I don't know if people know this term ASMR, but it basically means like sort of sound. It's trying to recreate normal sounds. ASMR, you know, forest with a crackling fire or things like that. Now, the irony, of course, is that, and I'm a proponent of people getting off of their screens.

21:04 Right. And you might say, oh, well, you're using your screen to do how isn't that? And I get it, but our screens are a tool. They are a tool. There's nothing wrong with using them as a tool. The problem is when we come become addicted to them and they start using us as a tool. You feel like a tool. But I think there's some things we can do in the winter to enhance, to enhance those moments, but the the actual benefits uh of those grounding devices, you know, it's great. I I very much appreciate you saying all of that. And it's it's a little mind-boggling to me the benefits of sound. And at the same time, I absolutely could see that being out in nature has benefits in all of our senses.

21:48 So it it does make sense. And listeners, I I just also want to add in something. And I learned this when I was like a teenager, maybe, maybe 20-something, but I never knew that houses were actually grounded to the earth. And I don't know if people realize that. And so that's how these are working, right? And that's what you said. You're plugging into the ground, yeah. For sure, for sure, 100%. Absolutely. Any part of a house that is has direct contact with the earth and there isn't some other material in the way blocking it, then every every part of that house is going to be grounded. So anybody who has a stone patio, you don't even have to go out in the snow.

22:28 You don't. No, you're exactly right. Exactly right. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, let's also not forget that it doesn't have to be our feet, right? It's literally any, we could just take our hand as we sit in a chair with our shoes on and touch a stone wall for five minutes. That's that is five minutes of grounding. I think, I think they find that I I I mean, there could be more research about this, but I think there is something about the feet. It makes sense, you know, they're they the feet are the way they are because the way they are and they touch the ground. So I feel like you maybe get more, but you know, it is literally just touching your skin to the earth. Okay, good. Okay, well, tell us, because this has been a fascinating discussion, and I know you're involved in so many different aspects of mental and physical health.

23:12 So, how can people connect with you or learn more? Yeah, absolutely. Uh, I I just started a new company and website of the same name. So that's I'd love for people to reach out to me there. It's called Digital Addiction Prevention and the or and or DAP DAP. And I've created what I call the DAP method, which is now using all the tools we talked about, plus a lot of others we haven't talked about yet. Um, so going to digitaladdictionprevention.com uh would be great. The website is is uh it's right now it's like a sh a small shack in a field, but I'm it'll be a it'll be it'll be a three-bedroom uh suburban house soon, and one day it'll be a uh a mansion.

23:54 Um, but it's it's at least it's got some information there and it's that's a way to get a hold of me. Otherwise, uh people can absolutely find me on LinkedIn. Uh and they can I'm I'm happy to hear from anyone anytime so they can reach out to me there as well. Excellent. And I'll make sure all of that is in the show notes as well as your TED talk so everyone can have a listen to that too. Yeah. So so let's wrap this up. Tell me, what do you think is the one thing that that listeners really need to remember and take away from this conversation? I think we did a good job, obviously, of it, you know, of explaining um grounding itself. So I think I know that people will take away that. What I think I'd like to say in answer to that is a little bit bigger, bigger picture here as an answer.

24:39 And it's something I think about a lot. I feel like it's underlying everything we're talking about, and that is I want people to at least consider the idea that the natural world is not something to be afraid of. I feel like a message that we get a lot in our lives, and most of it is coming from something that's being advertised, to be honest. But we get the message a lot that the natural world is fear, is dangerous. Germs, you know, the word germs is something we learned from early on. Oh, that's germs are bad. Well, now we know that they're not. In fact, if we don't have germs, we die. There's, you know, there's good germs, but so I guess I want people to, and I feel like especially like post-COVID, there's now this feeling that other people are dangerous.

25:21 So I'm I'm a big proponent of the fact that we need each other to survive and we need the natural world to survive. And those things are our friends, just like the sun. The sun is our friend. And I think when we go forth in life with that attitude, life is definitely easier than seeing fear in everything natural. I think it makes sense. We we came from this earth, it makes sense that this earth is beneficial for us. I love that. The earth is beneficial for us. I love it. Love it, love it, love it. Yes. Okay, well, that was a perfect way to wrap up. Thank you. And all my hiking listener friends are gonna be saying, Yep, I knew it, I knew it.

26:03 That's why I go hiking. So, Jason, thank you so much for joining me. I've really enjoyed this. Thank you so much, Cheryl. I just really feel like if I can improve anything about my body or my mindset by walking around barefoot in the grass or on the sand, count me in. Why not? It doesn't have to take a lot of time and it can just feel amazing. Try it. I recognize it's February right now, and that's why we talked about some of the other grounding options that are out there on the market. So find me on social media and let me know if you've tried any of them. I would love to chat with you about that.

26:44 I'm at Cheryl P. Fisher on most social media. And if you don't yet have the story cycle free resource about how our thoughts affect our emotions and how to start recognizing and shifting that, go to Cherylpfisher.com slash story cycle and grab that for yourself. Thank you for these latest reviews. Tiffany Wicks says, so many people are walking around blind to their emotional quotient. This podcast will help tremendously in setting a new story that works for you. Love that, and absolutely why I'm here. Jesse Reeves says, I appreciate how well thought out Cheryl's episodes are.

27:25 It feels like having a friend who is there to tell you everything is gonna be alright. The guests are always so knowledgeable. Thanks for your hard work putting together these episodes for us. Absolutely, you are welcome. And if you are listening on Apple Podcasts, go leave a rating and a review. Now make sure you've hit the follow button as well, because next week we're gonna be talking about listening styles. And the reason I want you to hear this is that the way people respond to you when you're telling them something or trying to talk with them about something, because in midlife, you know we're doing that, it might not really be what it looks like. Let's keep focusing on confidence and success, one thought at a time.