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Quotations about Grounding
and Being Barefooted
Welcome to my page of quotations about grounding, or touching our bare feet and bodies and hands to the earth, to the soil and dirt. It’s wonderfully healing. If you haven’t tried it, consider this an invitation.
We touch the earth with our feet, and we heal the earth, we heal ourselves... ~Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddha Mind, Buddha Body: Walking Toward Enlightenment, 2008, plumvillage.org
The grass is soft! It's cool! I feel free!! Running around in the grass in your bare feet can be very exciting... ~Charles M. Schulz, Peanuts, 1969 [Lucy & Patty
I like to walk, touch living Mother Earth — bare feet best, and thrill every step. Used to envy happy reptiles that had advantage of so much body in contact with earth, bosom to bosom. [We] live with our heels as well as head and most of our pleasure comes in that way. ~John Muir, quoted in To Yosemite and Beyond: Writings from the Years 1863–1875, edited by Robert Engberg and Donald Wesling
As for the complex ways of living, I love them not, however much I practice them. In as many places as possible, I will get my feet down to the earth. ~Henry David Thoreau, journal, 1853 October 22nd
Everything, from kings to cabbages, needs a root in the soil somewhere. ~Woods Hutchinson, A.M., M.D. (1862–1930), "The Vacation Habit," Civilization and Health, 1914
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins, "God's Grandeur," 1877
Sitting Bull loved his native soil with a love almost carnal, a love wholly mystical. Up before dawn always, he liked to bathe his bare feet, walking about in the morning dew. "Healthy feet," he used to say, "can hear the very heart of Holy Earth." ~Stanley Vestal, Sitting Bull: Champion of the Sioux, 1932 [Listen to the earth with your feet.
And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. ~Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931), The Prophet
The moment that a child can walk,
like that in which it first can talk,
is a precious start of exploration into landscapes of creation.
Walking, walking, walking, walking, walking on the earth.
By sense of touch the feet assess
the nature of the wilderness
of earth beneath;
yet human speech cannot express
what feet can teach.
Walking, walking, walking, walking, walking on the earth.
~Francis D. Hole, "Walking on the Earth," 1989
To smell a turf of fresh earth is wholesome for the body... ~Thomas Fuller (1608–1661), The Holy State
There is a Smell in our Native Earth, better than all the Perfumes in the East... ~William Coventry (c.1628–1686), The Character of a Trimmer: His Opinion, edited by George Savile, 1st marquess of Halifax (1633–1695)
Wow, look at the grass stains on my skin. I say, if your knees aren't green by the end of the day, you ought to seriously re-examine your life. ~Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes, 1992
J. whispered to me that there was soul in the very touch of that foot, as it kissed the earth... ~Fanny Forester (Emily Chubbuck Judson)
I send energy to my root chakra when my bare feet touch the earth. ~Rachel Rose Zoller, My Body Is a Rainbow: A Book about Our Chakras, 2016, www.rachaelrosezoller.com
I was born to catch dragons in their dens
And pick flowers
To tell tales and laugh away the morning
To drift and dream like a lazy stream
And walk barefoot across sunshine days.
~James J. Kavanaugh, "Sunshine Days and Foggy Nights," 1975
My own prescription for health is less paperwork and more running barefoot through the grass. ~Terri Guillemets, "Old soil, new green," 2006
We have to walk in a way that we only print peace and serenity on the Earth. Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet. ~Thich Nhat Hanh, plumvillage.org
Delve in! The year's before us;
Spring's promise fills the air.
Descendants of Antæus,
The brown earth's touch can free us,
Renew us and restore us,
From the hand o' carking care.
~Frederick Frye Rockwell, "Invitation," Around the Year in the Garden, 1913
Environmental signals reach an organism through its eyes, ears, nose, taste, hair, and the bottoms of its feet. ~R. D. Lawrence, "Do Animals Think?," A Shriek in the Forest Night: Wilderness Encounters, 1996
When you were a child, on a summer afternoon,
Did you lie in tall grass, listening to the crickets
Foreshadowing autumn, listening to the small
Infinite sounds of earth? Did you press your cheek
And your short brown body furiously down
Into the grass, so loving the narrow roots,
So loving the hard wild flanks of hills, and summer,
That when your slight strength broke at last, you cried…
Then rising in the slow wind, cried no more
But stood and gazed with grave young eyes upon
The brief, unburdened hours lived and gone,
Yourself, the child, abandoned in the grass,
Yourself, the man, earth's lover, who would follow
The strong years deathward, aching and possessed?
~Frances Frost, "Year of Earth," These Acres, 1932
I get up on a glorious summer morning and gaze out at the new day. With all the strongest and deepest instincts of my nature I long to go out into the green beauty of the world, to fling myself down in some sloping meadow and feel the sunshine envelop me and the warm winds pass over me, to see them tossing the grasses and tugging at the trees and driving the white clouds across the blue, and to feel the great earth revolving under me — for if you lie long enough you can really get the sense of sailing through space. ~Elisabeth Woodbridge, "On Taking One's Dessert First," The Jonathan Papers, 1912
I fancy this is true with any of the elements — earth, air, water. The tale of Antæus was no mere legend; there is real strength for us in close contact with the earth. ~Elisabeth Woodbridge, "In the Rain," 1911
With windlets clear and still;
The feel of a forest rill
That wimples fresh and fleet
About one's naked feet...
~William Ernest Henley (1849–1903), "Ballade Made in the Hot Weather"
Live close to the soil and its energy. ~Terri Guillemets, "Source," 2019, blackout poetry created from D. C. Jarvis, M.D., Folk Medicine, 1958, page 113
Orchard's where I'd rather be—
Needn't fence it in fer me!
Jes' the whole sky overhead,
And the whole airth underneath—
Sorto' so's a man kin breathe
Like he ort, and kind o' has
Elbow-room to keerlessly
Sprawl out len'thways on the grass
Where the shadders thick and soft...
~James Whitcomb Riley, "Knee-Deep in June"
Maw says I can't go barefoot! What does a woman know
About how good it feels to let your shoes an' stockings go?
W'y, how's a feller goin' to wade, an' play, an' run,
Or climb a tree? When he's dressed up he can't have any fun.
There's Freckles busted his big toe, an' Squib's got a stone bruise
A'ready — but I got to waste th' summer wearin' shoes!
~Wilbur D. Nesbit, "Springtime Cruelty," in Clare A. Briggs, When a Feller Needs a Friend, 1914
My stiff-spread arms
Break into sudden gesture;
My feet seize upon the rhythm;
My hands drag it upwards:
Thus I create the dance.
I drink of the red bowl of the sunlight:
I swim through seas of rain:
I dig my toes into earth:
I taste the smack of the wind:
I am myself:
I live.
The temples of the gods are forgotten or in ruins:
Professors are still arguing about the past and the future:
I am sick of reading marginal notes on life,
I am weary of following false banners:
I desire nothing more intensely or completely than this present;
There is nothing about me you are more likely to notice than my being:
Let me therefore rejoice silently,
A golden butterfly glancing against an unflecked wall.
~John Gould Fletcher
The boy in the forest
Throws off his best Sunday suit
And plays naked.
~Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961), diary, 1959, translated from the Swedish by Leif Sjöberg and W. H. Auden, Markings, 1964
A summer river
being crossed, how pleasing!
Sandals in my hands.
~Buson (1716–1784), translated by Yuki Sawa & Edith M. Shiffert, 1978
I walked barefoot — the only way to walk on a muddy road. ~Laurie Gough, "Light on a Moonless Night" (Fiji), in A Woman’s Passion for Travel: More True Stories from a Woman’s World, 1999
There on the hills of summer let me lie
On the cool grass in friendship with the sky.
Let me lie there in love with earth and sun,
And wonder up at the light-foot winds that run,
Stirring the delicate edges of the trees,
And shaking down a music of the seas.
~Edwin Markham, "At Friends with Life," The Shoes of Happiness and Other Poems, 1913
Spend time barefoot with adventure and joy. ~Terri Guillemets, "Heart & sole," 2019, blackout poetry created from Mary Carter, Return to Hampton Beach, 2014, chapter 8
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published 2007 Jan 27
revised 2017 Apr 22
last saved 2024 Sep 4
www.quotegarden.com/grounding.html