I get asked every single day about the best ways to sleep grounded, and what to do and what not to do when sleeping grounded, so today I’m sharing all my thoughts in a free blog post so in the future I can direct inquires to this article!
Here is everything you ever needed to know about sleeping grounded.
Benefits From Sleeping Grounded:
What do we know from the medical literature on the health benefits of sleeping grounded?
Getting into the relaxed but alert alpha brain wave pattern, which is seen in deep meditative states and healing sleep states, is one of the hallmarks of grounding. Deeper, more restorative sleep at night puts us in a zone of healing, while lack of sleep affects everything from increasing your risk of dementia to accelerating weight gain (did you know that medical studies show you have a 9 times more rapid weight gain when you carry a sleep deficit?!?!)
We’ve actually known for many decades (over 50 years) that the earth’s energy helps support healthy sleep patterns. Experiments in the 1960s and 70s have helped elucidate how the energy output from the earth helps human beings maintain a healthy circadian rhythm.
Test subjects who lived for a month in an underground bunker, completely removed from exposure to natural daylight, were able to maintain an internal synchronization to a day/night rhythm, even with the complete absence of sunlight. But test subjects who lived for a month in an underground bunker that was additionally shielded from the low frequency DC energy of the earth (effectively shielding over 99% of the earth’s natural EMFs) became internally desynchronized, unable to maintain a consistent day/night rhythm.
In repeated experiments of over 100 test subjects, the only test subjects that became internally desynchronized were the ones that were shielded from the earth’s DC energy pulse, but never the ones that were shielded only from the sun. When a low frequency electromagnetic field was re-introduced to the earth shielded test subject’s living quarters, they began to re-synchronize to a healthy day/night rhythm once again.
Because of these experiments, we understand that it is not simply exposure to light, but additionally it is exposure to the earth’s low frequency electromagnetic fields that contributes to a healthy day/night pattern. This helps to make sense of why grounding helps to normalize sleep and boost daytime wakefulness, improving our circadian rhythm.
Researchers have also found a significant coherence between the electrical activity of our planet and the electrical activity of the human brain in real time EEG/EFL studies, which you can read here, published in 2015.
This electrical activity between the planet and our brain is actually synchronized to such a magnitude, amplitude and frequency that it may even allow for information exchange to occur — a real time “ping” from the planet to our human brains, as described in this journal article from 2003 here.
For a more in-depth look at how the electrical activity of the earth impacts our daily circadian rhythm and orients us to time/day and season, hop over to this article I wrote for you:
Want more medical studies on sleeping grounded?
I’ve got you:
- A study on sleeping grounded from 2004 found that sleeping grounded reduces cortisol levels and improves sleep quality.
- Published in 2011, this overview of the effect of grounding our our central nervous system suggests grounding plays a significant role in helping to regulate our body’s nervous system.
- A study from 2018 that used an EEG to record brain activity during grounding backs this up, by showing that grounding instantaneously shifts our brain wave patterns into a more relaxed state and reduces ambient stress levels.
- Even more interesting was an even more recent study — published in Healthcare on May 26, 2022 — looking at grounding and sleep quality. This study showed that just grounding for 30 minutes a day significantly improved sleep quality at night. This was a double blinded placebo based medical study (the gold standard) and really was helpful in defining that you do not necessarily need to sleep grounded to have improvement in your sleep from grounding — a 30 minute session every day was enough in this study to make a statistically significant improvement in nightly sleep quality.
- I go over the neurological benefits of grounding in an article I published in March of 2023 in the Open Journal of Neurology and Neuroscience here. In it I give seven easy ways to use the support from grounding to improve mental health.
- Another benefit of grounding on the health of our brain may come from the fact that our cerebrospinal fluid is an electrolytic, fully conductive liquid that provides instantaneous grounding to our entire central nervous system. I go into more detail on this in an article I published May 2023 in the American Journal Of Neurology Research, which you can read in full here as well as watch a video where I go over the medical literature on CSF and brain health.
Additional Benefits From Sleeping Grounded:
Boosted Recovery:
A study from 2019, suggests that sleeping grounded allows our body to recover more quickly from exertion, reducing muscle soreness after an intentional stress test (running on a treadmill.) This study was triple blinded and therefore the results are highly reliable, because the test subject themselves, the clinician administering the stress test and follow up evaluation, as well as the data analyst evaluating the results did not know which test subjects were grounded or sham grounded. Laboratory evaluation documented decreased markers of inflammation and muscle damage on the participants who slept grounded after completing the stress test.
Boosted Immunity:
Grounding can decrease your whole body inflammation, improve circulation, decrease clotting risk, support healthy respiration, and strengthen your immune system, all of which helps to fight the different viruses that cycle through the fall and winter months when we are in close proximity to each other in indoor environments, like colds, the flu, and covid. Read this article to learn more on that:
Boosted Libido:
Improved blood flow, relaxed muscles, decreased stress, boosted sex hormones, improved mood, less pain — these all can equal a massively improved sexual experience for you and your partner. If you want to hear me go over this in less than three minutes for you, hop over here to watch my TikTok on Grounding and Sexual Health
Or if you prefer to read an article I wrote with this information, hop over here:
If you want to feel exactly what I’m talking about, you can experiment with going outside and enjoy a long sweet kiss with your partner. Feel your lips, feel the sensation and the blood flow through them as you lean into your lover. It’s a heightened experience for sure.
So how do you get grounded when you are ready to go further than a kiss, but want more privacy? Oh it’s so easy. You can use an indoor grounding tool to ground your bed — that’s the easiest solution — plus sleeping grounded all night long will not only help your sex life but will boost your body’s health in all the ways I mention earlier in this article.
I have invested a great deal of time and research creating the highest quality, most reliable, eco-ethically hand crafted (right here in the USA) grounding tools that use all natural materials — safer for you, safer for the environment. Tools that can be used while you are sexually intimate in bed, grounding products you can lay directly on with your partner… items like grounding mattress toppers, grounding bed rolls, and grounding pillowcases that you can use on top of any of these grounding products… more on all of these options below.
How To Sleep Grounded:
When I first started introducing the concept of grounding to my patients, I advised them to go outside and touch the earth directly. Free, accessible, direct healing. To this day, I still advise you to do this, daily, whenever you possibly can! If you can go outside and touch the earth outside to improve your sleep, for 30 or more minutes a day, absolutely please do.
As winter approaches, even 30 minutes outside might get tougher to come by, so I wrote an article for you here on how to ground directly to the earth outside even when it’s cold. I highly recommend running through all the different ideas I have waiting for you about how to touch to the earth outside long before it’s freezing cold out there:
Now I do additionally recommend adding an indoor grounding tool at night too, and that’s because the medical literature is so very clear that grounding indoors with indoor grounding tools is extremely healing.
Because I did not want my patient’s healing to be limited to times when they had the energy, good weather, mobility and spare time to head outside . Plus there are so many patients with mobility issues, those who stay indoors because they are convalescing or recovering, or those who feel particularly ill or isolated, or who have safety concerns heading outside.
In general, the folks who need grounding the most are the ones who are least feeling up to being active outside.
So I scoured the medical community for grounding tools that my patients could use indoors. Tools made by hand, lovingly crafted out of eco-friendly materials, and tools that would last and last and last, made from strong, resilient stainless steel fibers that would not degrade after a single use or a single wash.
I couldn’t find any. So I started making my own. I offer these to you right here and review them in detail for you below.
Ready To Sleep Grounded? 8 Essential Tips:
1. Minimize Electrical Fields
Ideally, you have your bed in an area that is free of electrical fields, so that you can have beautiful restorative sleep without EMFs irritating your brain. I go over the effects of EMFs on the brain in this article.
Although many folks can ground in an electrical field and reap all the health benefits from grounding without feeling any negative symptoms, millions of us are electrosensitive and can really feel it if we are grounding in an electrical field.
And to be fair, we can feel it if we are in an electrical field period, even without being grounded. For more on grounding in EMFs, read this article I wrote for you here:
The bottom line is that the medical literature is very clear that your body is in a healing state when it’s grounded, even in the presence of EMFs. The medical literature is also very clear that EMFs are damaging to your health whether you feel it or not. So if you do feel some negative symptoms from EMFs when you are grounding, the ideal solution is not to stop grounding and ignore the EMFs but instead to decrease the EMFs where you are grounding — because even if you stop grounding, those electrical fields will be impacting your health and even worse, you will not have the health boost from grounding, so to stop grounding is lose-lose. Figuring out how to decrease your electrical field exposures and continue grounding is win-win.
Not sure if electrical fields are impacting your sleep? It’s pretty easy to figure out. Try turning the breaker off in your bedroom just for one or two nights and see if your sleep improves. That is a free, easy way to tell if electrical fields are impacting your sleep.
If you don’t want to turn your breaker off, you may want to simply snag an electrical field meter and really find out what areas of your bedroom have measurable fields. I have an e-field detection meters waiting for you here. Push your bed to the area with the lowest reading and immediately feel the relief that very night.As long as you have your bed 2 feet or more away from any outlets, cords or appliances, then likely you are free of electrical fields.
Continue reading for some other tips to help…
2. No Metal Components To Your Bed:
To further reduce your bed’s resonance with an electrical field, I don’t recommend any metal in your bedframe or bed — so avoid spring or coil mattresses (I sleep on an organic latex mattress from Sleep On Latex because it is more affordable, but if costs is not an issue the ones from Savvy Rest are exceptional) and avoid metal frames (I recommend all wooden frames or platform beds.)
Also important is to avoid fire retardants (more on that in this article I wrote for you here: A Secret Cause Of Infertility That You Are Exposed To Every Day and Every Night) so again, an organic latex mattress and pillow is a great option and although they are pricey, they outlast all other mattresses, offering up to 30 years of organic, chemical free support.
3. No Electric Blankets or Adjustable Frames:
Because we don’t want electrical fields impacting our body while we sleep, we don’t want to bring any heating blankets or electric adjustable frames either. If you want warmth during the winter months, I recommend extra blankets and an old fashioned hot water bottle at your feet!
4. CPAP Machine:
There are a few things you can do to make sure the CPAP is not bringing unwanted EMFs into your sleeping space. One is to get get a longer tube, a 4 foot or 6 foot long tube instead of the shorter 2 foot one. That way you can put your CPAP machine three feet away from your bed and the electrical fields from the machine will not reach you, as electrical fields don’t extend very far away from appliances and die out after about 2 feet or so.
On top of that, do not use a tube that has a heating element in the tube (the newer CPAP machines heat and humidify the air in the machine, to help you avoid using a heated tube) as the heated tube elements produce large amounts of EMFs.
Switch your tube, push your CPAP machine as far away from the bed as you can, and you may instantly notice deeper sleep just from that alone.
5. Add a Grounding Tool:
There are several great ways to ground your bed so you can sleep grounded all night long.
The first thing I recommend is to sleep on eco-friendly materials. Those vinyl, polyester, synthetic plastic “leatherette” grounding mats and grounding sheets that are mass produced out of the cheapest materials come with several huge downsides.
One is that they are not biodegradable, so although you are asking for health support from our earth, you are then consuming plastic that will sit in a landfill for 500+ years after you are no longer alive, which to me isn’t a great way to thank our planet for the healing support it offers us.
Two, these surfaces are hot, non-breathable, sticky, and that alone can make sleep worse. If you have a nice supportive mattress under you, why would you cover it with hot sticky toxic plastic and then sleep on that? It’s like sweating all night long on a plastic shower curtain. No thank you.
Lastly, because these items are made from plastic, they are not great for long term exposure, especially when warmed by our body heat. I don’t want plastic wrapping around my body all night long, I only want soft, eco-friendly, ethically hand crafted grounding tools touching me. Healthy for me and health for the planet, win-win!
I have invested a great deal of time and research creating the highest quality, most reliable, eco-friendly and ethically created grounding tools in the world, crafted by hand right here in the USA. Tools like my eco-friendly Grounding Mattress Topper for full bed surface area grounding (ideal if you have multiple sleepers in one bed), or my eco-friendly Grounding Bed Roll, perfect for those who travel and want a plug-and-play set up that can travel with them.
6. Have fur babies?
Grounding is very supportive to your pet’s health as well. You can read more about that in an article I wrote for you here:
If you bed share with your pet, I recommend the grounding topper because it grounds your entire bed surface so no matter where your pet (or kids, are partner) sleep they will be grounded. If you want to ground the pet’s bed, you can put this washable organic grounding mat on it but be certain to supervise them around the cord so they do not chew on it or get tangled in it.
Speaking of ground cords…
7. Don’t sleep with exposed cords
I do not recommend sleeping with a cord attached to your body, or attached to a grounding tool that leaves the cord within reach of you while you are unconscious. It seems super obvious to not allow a sleeping person to have a cord that could wrap around their neck while they sleep, but clearly there are lots of grounding companies who don’t care about that because they sell a pillowcase with a ground cord that attaches to it, right where your neck is. What?!?! The first rule in medicine is do no harm, so for that reason alone I refuse to carry a products that is an choke and entanglement risk while you are asleep, and a trip and fall risk when you get up in the middle of the night to pee.
That’s why I always encourage folks to ground their bed surface (with the cord tucked safely away under their mattress) and NOT to sleep with an exposed cord and/or a cord attached to their body, like with a grounding wristband.
Instead I recommend:
- a grounding topper, as shown above, for full bed grounding, or…
- a grounding bed roll, for a portable grounding mat that rolls all they way across the length of the bed and allows you to tuck the cord under the mattress, or…
- run the grounding bed roll or a grounding ribbon across the bed at the top, where your pillows rest, and place a grounding pillow case on top of it to ground through your pillow without any cords near your head or neck.
8. Upgrade to a PureGround Cord
In addition to moving your bed out of an electrical field, if you are electrosensitive I strongly encourage you to upgrade your ground cord from a standard ground cord to an EMF filtering PureGround grounding cord.
The PureGround cord only allows DC energy from the earth goes up the cord and enter your grounding tool. This enables healing electrons from the earth to flow to body but does not allow EMF or other currents on the ground wires to reach you.
You can find out more about that on my PureGround FAQ page here, or simply order the PureGround cord right here.
I’m so glad we live in a time where we are beginning to wake up and really figure out all of the invaluable ways that connecting to the earth supports our healing.
There just is no substitute.
Luckily we have lots and lots of indoor options so that we can remain connected while we work indoors or recover and heal indoors or sleep indoors at night. So pick a way to ground inside and don’t forget to add on some outdoor time touching the earth directly when you can as well… and watch your health skyrocket!
During the day, ground outside, shooting for 15 minutes or more, and during the night, consider sleeping grounded. You can find all of my eco-ethically hand crafted grounding tools in my Grounding Boutique right here.
xoxoxo,
Laura Koniver MD
PS — Want to test your sleep quality?
In the office, clinicians use an assessment tool called the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI for short) This test will give you a score for your sleep quality — on a scale from 0 to 21. The higher the number, the worse your sleep quality.
600 middle aged patients (from 38 – 50 years old) were given this same exact test, and the average score result was 5.8, so clinicians now typically consider any score at 6 or above to be worse sleep quality than desired.
If you want to take this assessment quiz, simply click here to print it out, for free.
Be sure to record the date you took it, and try taking this quiz again after a month of grounding to see if your numbers have changed! Hopefully you will be able to see very concretely how sleeping grounded at night makes a measurable, significant change.
Free printable: PSQI sleep quality rating
While we sleep, we cycle through alpha sleep states and REM sleep states and each time we do we are held in beautiful resonance with the Earth’s healing energy. This is why dreams often increase in intensity when we sleep grounded.
What are some other things you can do to optimize sleep besides grounding?
That’s the topic of next week’s blog post, so stay tuned for my next healing article to come out on repairing your sleep in your inbox next Monday. If someone forwarded you this article and you’d like to get my weekly articles emailed to you, sign up for my weekly holistic health newsletter right here:
Dr. Koniver’s Healing Newsletter
