Full Disclaimer: I sell organic cotton yoga blankets which is one of the reason's I wrote this post. You don't have to buy one to learn what it teaches but that was part of my motivation for writing it. The reason I sell them is because I have been using one myself for over 3 years for yoga but not for yoga practice. Just wanted to be upfront. No marketing tricks.
If you ever feel anxious, achy, tired, unfocused or depressed then you're in the right place.
I know it's a long list, and unfortunately these ailments are quite common, but these problems may share a common root cause.
I found out what was causing these issues for me even after a days of "resting"
What you are about to learn in this post could be the solution to feeling human again.
The first Yoga blanket was free and (definitely not like the plastic yoga blankets you find on Amazon now) which is probably the reason you haven't heard about it.
The Best Things in Life Are Free.
In my experience, the famous saying “The best things in life are free” is 100% true. We simply fail to hear about the free things because no one makes any money if they tell you.
When I say the best "things," I’m referring to what has been given to us from nature.
Things like the breath, sunlight and what I will talk about in this post--the healing and protective powers of the Earth.
Unfortunately, it’s becoming increasingly harder to receive what the Earth has always given us with all this synthetic stuff in the way.
When I say "stuff," I am referring to products (which are different than tools) like shoes, cars, screens and, the most damaging so far, wi-fi blankets.
Before you think that I'm anti-technology and write me off as another “Tin Hat man,” give me a chance to explain.
I fully understand that nature, while nourishing, is also one tough mother.
Last summer's backpacking trip into the Canadian Rockies made it pretty clear that without some protection, we were going to get hurt.
I attempted that trip in my finger feet shoes and almost didn’t make it out. They work beautifully for short trail runs with no pack, but to go into the backcountry for days with a heavy pack, I needed a different tool.
Next time, I used the Vevo Barefoot Primus Trail shoe (which are hands down the best shoes I've found for people who want natural feet).
We need tools that allow us to experience the benefits of nature while also ensuring we don't get injured.
When this balance occurs and there is a hormetic effect, the results are we get stronger, calmer, happier and more human.
Instead what tends to happen is we are sold products created by companies that don’t care about our health or the state of our planet. When companies design products, they are concerned with only one thing: profit.
As a result, they not only remove the natural, positive effects of nature, but they replace it with something artifical and harmful. I'll illustrate this with the example of what is happening when we use WiFi blankets instead of the first Yoga blankets.
The Hidden Dangers Of WiFi Blankets
“Life is lived out on the wire. Everything else is just waiting.” ~Papa Wallenda, Man on a Wire
On the wire.
Peak physical challenges are when the mind has no option but to stop it's chatter, and we are forced to become completely present.
I’ve always been attracted to those moments of extreme challenge, but I’ve learned the hard way that I can't experience these physical peaks unless I can also take care of the opposite, the yin: rest.
If I want the strength to experience the yang, then I need the yin to support it.
Seems pretty obvious, but...
Here's where the W. Y. S. I. A. T. I. bias tricks us.
It’s a mental bias first introduced by Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow. The bias points out that we make decisions based on only the information we have while ignoring the information we don’t.
Let me show you an example
In 2017 our version of rest looks a lot like this:
It looks like we are resting the body.
We assume that this is rest because the body is static, but there is information we don't have.
We believe that What You See Is All There Is.
The reason I had to dig into this was because this is how I "rested" after my yoga practice for the majority of my day when I first moved to Vancouver and started this website.
However, I realized that this type of “resting” did not leave me feeling refreshed, but instead left me:
Anxious
Confused
Tired and wired
Sore
Depressed
To find out what was wrong, I did the same thing I always do. I asked myself,”What does nature do?”
The Wisdom of Nature
"....nothing can be bad that is in accordance with Nature" - Marcus Aurelius
Palisades Jasper National Park Canada (Home of Ekaminhale)
It's getting more and more difficult to know what to believe these days since there is so much misinformation on how to live a healthy life.
Everyone I know is fed up. One study after another comes out, and each one contradicting the previous one.
For example: Don't eat fat! Wait! Eat fat!
To solve this problem, I have a filter that drastically narrows down what information I even consider listening to.
I ask myself: What does nature do? Since nature has been around so long I trust she is smarter than the "experts".
One of the ways I learn from nature is through simple observation. The home of Ekaminhale and shala are in Jasper National Park Canada.
If I watch the wildlife outside my front door, it’s obvious that animals don’t wear shoes, they don’t have a cell phones, they don’t wear clothes, they don’t seem distracted, and they move effortlessly.
If you have ever stumbled upon a bear in the forest (and I have), they never complain about being tired, achy or anxious.
The other place I look to for answers is the lifestyles and traditions of natural people. I define natural people as those who who live in nature...as a part of it.
When I look at indigenous cultures, I can see that, just because there was no other option, the majority of their time was spent outside on the earth.
This way of living wasn't even that long ago for some parts of the world. My friend Pavithra from Mysore, India told me that while growing up, his house had a dirt floor.
He spent most of his day barefoot, not only working in the fields, but also sleeping on the earth. If you look at the historical span of humans, it wasn’t until yesterday that people stopped living in contact with the earth.
My conclusion: this new way of living is a departure from nature, which means I need to ask another question:
If choose this new way of living - What is the worst that can happen?
Dangers Of Using WiFi Blankets
"It's basically accelerated aging on steroids." Dr. Joseph Mercola
Just from where I now sit, all of these WiFi signals cover my location. I can still remember when you couldn't even find a signal!
Now you can't escape them (I've been trying)
When it comes to new, unnatural products like WiFi blankets, we have no historical background to analyze long-term effects. I have no choice but to look to the opinions of the experts on what might be the consequence of this new environment.
There are some smart, compassionate truth seekers, like Dr. Mercola, who genuinely want to help people live healthy lives. I looked into what they are saying about using the WiFi blanket.
Before I tell you what I found out you might be asking:
Why the worst?
Because if it isn't true, then I'm good, but if they are right, then I took the necessary measures to avoid the harm. Safest bet.
Dr. Mercola has been thoroughly researching what happens when we are blanketed by EMF. He has interviewed numerous experts in the field and is writing his next book on this topic. I’ll put the interviews at the end of this post, but for now, watch this short video that highlights what happens.
Here is another clip from Dr. Mercola's Interview with Dr. Martin Pall listing more reason to be concerned.
"I reviewed a [large number] of studies on various kinds of EMF exposures, each of them showing neuropsychiatric effects. What you find is that these effects have been repeated many times in these epidemiological studies. It's the same thing that everybody's complaining about, 'I'm tired all the time,' 'I can't sleep,' 'I can't concentrate,' 'I'm depressed,' 'I'm anxious all the time,' 'My memory doesn't work well anymore.' All the things everybody's complaining about." Dr. Pall
Pretty scary right? So what to do?
The Health Benefits of The First Yoga Blanket
Richard Feynman, often referred to as the Einstein of the 21st century, stated:
“when the body potential is the same as the Earth's electric potential (and thus grounded), it becomes an extension of the Earth's gigantic electric system. The Earth's potential thus becomes the “working agent that cancels, reduces, or pushes away electric fields from the body.” [1]
This is why I call it “the first yoga blanket:” the electric field of the earth surrounds you. [1]
The benefits of the first yoga blanket doesn’t stop there .
Along with reducing the impact of unnatural or non-native fields, the benefits of touching the Earth or “Earthing” from this study include:
Better sleep
Reduction in overall stress
A shift from sympathetic (fight or flight) to parasympathetic (rest and digest)
Increased Heart Rate Variability
Reduction in inflammation
The one that I find most interesting is the reduction in inflammation.
"Reduction in inflammation as a result of earthing has been documented with infrared medical imaging and with measurements of blood chemistry and white blood cell counts. The logical explanation for the anti-inflammatory effects is that grounding the body allows negatively charged antioxidant electrons from the Earth to enter the body and neutralize positively charged free radicals at sites of inflammation. Flow of electrons from the Earth to the body has been documented." - [1]
It has been suggested that inflammation could be the root cause of many diseases. [2]
In summary, a WiFi blanket increases inflammation by creating excessive free radicals, and the first yoga blanket, earthing, reduces inflammation by neutralizing free radicals.
Of course, all this is science talk, which could be wrong tomorrow, so I'm giving it about 10% weight in my decision making.
I’ll give what happens in nature 70%, then the remaining 20% to how I feel.
If I spend the majority of the day inside and on the computer, I don’t sleep well at night and I feel anxious and lethargic. As Dr Pall said, I feel all of the issues people complain about.
If I spend the day outside, grounding myself in nature, I feel calm, happy, strong and sleep soundly.
The solution seems simple--get outside and connect to nature but...
Like most people, I can't spend my days lying on the grass, looking at the birds. There's work to do, and like many people, that work is indoors on a computer.
To reduce my daily exposure to WiFi and to increase my daily exposure to nature, I'll share a practice that helps me find some middle ground.
Outdoor Play: My Second Yoga Practice
"For the world is but outdoors - and we duck behind a panel" - Henry David Thoreau
For so much of my life, I spent my evenings outside playing. Growing up, my Mom would push me and my brother outside with the simple instructions, “Go play.”
We had nothing but forest surrounding us, which became the playground in which our bodies and imaginations ran wild. Next it was snowboarding, then mountain biking, and later rock climbing.
In 2014 I decided to get that part of my life back that had been pushed out by staring into a screen.
I started to implement a daily digital sunset.
A digital sunset is a set time of the day when I finish work, turn off my devices, look up from the screen, then leave the house so I can get to "the real business of living"
Real Business of Living = Playing outside with my friends & family.
Now before you write “play” off as something for children, read this quote from Ido Portal
"Dressed up in suits, we take ourselves way too seriously, indulging in all kinds of unnecessary things, just sitting with our Iphones at the end of the day in some room, really truly - we are empty, I've seen it - we must play. There is no choice here. We must play. It's our way of being. It's our way of developing. It's our way of surviving. Everything. Animals play and they precede mankind. So play is bigger than humanity. It's the way of nature making sure you do your stuff and that's not respected. The adults look at it like "ah he's just playing he's just being a kid" - yeah! he's being human. More human than you. It's not like you became old and stop playing. You grew old because you stopped playing." - Ido Portal on London Real
There is the emerging science that backs what Ido says listed in the references below from the work of Dr. Jaak Panksepp. He shows that play is part of our basic wiring as humans.
So each day I made it a priority to get grounded outside & play - except I ran into one challenge.
I discovered that living in a high-rise apartment building in a city, there was not an easily accessible place to get my skin on the earth. The city is littered with too many sidewalks, people, and shops.
There is very little earth (unless you count the small stretch of grass alongside the sidewalk used by pets to do their business). Plus, it would look kind of odd to be standing there in my bare feet, right?
Since I had no yard of my own, public parks were the best option.
Thankfully Vancouver has some of the most beautiful parks and beaches in the world, but due to the amount of people using them, there is pollution from pets, careless humans and any sprays the city might be using.
To solve that problem, at first I used my yoga rug to lie down on. Since yoga rugs are made of cotton, which is a natural fiber, it protected me from anything nasty while still allowing the earth’s electrical field to come through.
That point is important. Natural fibers work for earthing while synthetic materials like plastic do not.
Using the yoga rug was working beautifully until an unexpected event changed my life forever.
As a result of what I’m about to share, I don’t think I’ve ever felt happier and stronger than I did that summer.
What is a Yoga Blanket?
For me, there is only one activity that I enjoy more than being in nature with the sun on my skin and the earth beneath my feet (or body).
It's doing all of the above BUT...with the ones I love.
The same summer I implemented the digital sunset & outdoor play I met the love of my life. Not accidentally, we actually met at the beach one evening while I was getting “earthed” and hanging out with my friends
After we met, almost every night was spent together in nature, and a yoga rug for one was not going to be sufficient. (Plus the grass left on the rug was starting to draw attention in the shala.)
Luckily this problem was solved with the age-old solution of a blanket.
Not a yoga blanket…...but a Nature Blanket.
Before we go any further I want to give you one of my favourite definitions of what Yoga is.
“Yoga is direct intimacy with life itself.”
I heard this quote from Mark Whitwell around that same time.
I’m not sure if he heard it from Krishnamacharya, since he was his student, but either way it deeply resonated with me.
I don't want to be another person who slaps the term “yoga” on whatever they want it to mean, so bear with me here as I explain.
The Ashtanga practice is a solitary, inward practice where the intimacy with life is your experience of the breath aka God.
This connection to breath is what makes it a spiritual practice and the yoga rug works seamlessly with that purpose.
After our yoga practice, we have our jobs and the demands of life, which for many of us now involve screens and computers.
But what do we do after our work is done?
Often it looks like this
For me, looking into a screen is not the real business of living. It's man made "stuff" in between me and the real world. There’s no life there, and as a result, no intimacy with life.
As Henry David Thoreau said, “Life is outside,” but today’s version should read “and yet we look into a screen.”
Making it a priority to sumberse myself in nature with my friends and family fits the definition of yoga. A relationship with life itself. The first yoga blanket.
It’s vastly needed in this new world we find ourselves in. Our brains require it, our bodies crave it, and our families need it. As Ido said - It’s part of what makes us human.
In the last 10 years our phones have allowed the synthetic barrier between our minds and reality known as the internet to come with us outdoors.
The tools of plastic, Wi-Fi, internet are no doubt useful but they have started to fill our lives so full that Nature is getting pushed out.
Implementing a digital sunset and getting my skin to touch the earth while spending time with friends and family is one way I've been able to put some boundaries up to the advance of technology.
The result has been happiness, strength, peace of mind and Yoga - intimacy with life itself.
To cover the costs of my initial investment the first 100 Yoga Blankets are 50% off till supplies last - Click Here To Learn More
Nature Blanket VS Plastic Yoga Blankets
When I received my first “yoga blanket” from my supplier years ago when we were visiting the rug weavers I thought “what do you use a blanket for in yoga?”
We used them sometimes for covering up during rest at the end of practice but that was it.
Still we used that first blanket we were given everyday but for hanging out in nature. Whether covering up by a fire or laying on the ground in the park that blanket got a ton of use and it’s still going strong.
Because the durability, quality & way our blankets are made I decided to order a test batch of 300 in blue.
When I did some research on Yoga Blankets on Amazon I could see that what the majority of companies were calling yoga blankets were made of plastic.
Just under the code names - acrylic, polyester.
Plastic is not biodegradable and I’m sure you are aware because of this is causing massive damage to Nature.
To stay as far away as possible from that model of cheap plastic products known as Fast Fashion I decided to call the blankets - Nature blankets.
Ekaminhale Nature Blankets are designed to be used outside of your yoga practice, unfolded, for lying in nature
Whether that’s a park, beach, forest floor, or your own front lawn, you can use the nature blanket to protect you from EMF exposure or anything unsanitary in public places while still connecting you with the Earth’s electrical field.
Implementing the practice of a digital dunset and spending that time outdoors playing with friends and family has been as beneficial to my life as my morning Ashtanga practice.
Yoga, the relationship with life itself cannot be found in a screen. It can only be experienced by immersing ourselves in the natural world, and as Carl Jung said, “Let it have an effect on you.”
Clint "Grounded" Griffiths
[1] Earthing: Health Implications of Reconnecting the Human Body to the Earth's Surface Electrons
[2] Inflammation: A unifying theory of disease? Harvard Health
EMF Library on Dr. Mercola can be found here . The interviews I found especially insightful was this one with Dr. Pall