By Diplomacy Journal Kayla Lee 

 

Regardless of time and place, it has been the desire of all people to live a long and healthy life without illness. However, while health issues are a concern for everyone, no one knows the perfect way to manage them, making it a black box of sorts.

 

Over the 100,000 years of human evolution, efforts to maintain and preserve physical health have repeatedly been thwarted by various diseases and aging.

 

 

In the West, through thousands of years of medical development centered on anatomy and physiology, recent efforts have been made to analyze the human body's “black box” using scientific methods such as DNA separation.

 

In contrast, in the East, people have sought to understand the human body through holistic methods, relying on intuition gained by directly sensing the body's mysteries through the five senses. They have also sought to understand the body through concepts such as the movement of “gi ((氣 energy).”

 

The former has achieved great success under the name of science within the institutional framework, while the latter has been passed down through non-institutional methods.

 

In January 2015, President Obama declared in his State of the Union address that children born today will live to be 120 years old and will be free from diseases such as cancer and diabetes.

 

This means that once we understand genomic information and the mutations within it, humanity's long-cherished dream of living a long and healthy life will soon become a reality.

 

This marks the beginning of precision medicine, which compares human genetic information obtained through 300 years of scientific development with individual disease records to challenge the goal of living a long and healthy life. This is the advanced result of the institutional pursuit of scientific information about the body.

 

On the other hand, there are numerous non-institutional approaches that have attempted a completely different approach to the preservation and maintenance of the body.

 

These include various teachings and exercises that govern the cosmic life force known as “gi,” which permeates the entire ecosystem, as well as numerous traditional therapies related to natural healing.

 

Such diverse traditional therapies are currently attempting to be incorporated into the institutional framework under names such as “alternative medicine” and “complementary medicine.”

 

A notable example is the establishment of the Office of Alternative Medicine within the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1992, which was expanded and reorganized into the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) in 1998.

 

The problem is that there has been rapid progress within the medical establishment in areas such as genetic analysis technology and improving cancer survival rates, while at the same time, numerous traditional natural healing methods have been passed down outside the medical establishment and are developing into alternative medicine.

 

However, despite these developments, it still seems that significant time is needed to arrive at a fundamental solution that can transcend the limitations of life, aging, diseases and death that accompany human existence.

 

The number of patients suffering from deadly non-infectious chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's is not decreasing but increasing, and the number of related deaths is also rapidly increasing.

 

Over the past few years, the world has come to a standstill due to the infectious disease COVID-19, with over 690 million confirmed cases as of September 4, 2023, and over 6.9 million deaths, accounting for 1% of the total.

 

The solution proposed by the author in this column, “Park Dong-chang's Barefoot Walking Theory,” which involves walking barefoot on forest paths and grounding oneself with the earth, is a groundbreaking new attempt and the emergence of a new field of study aimed at overcoming the limitations of the current reality marked by inevitable chronic diseases that modern humans face.

 

It is also a new approach to pursuing health that is extremely simple, easy to practice, harmless, and cost-free, as it involves simply taking off one's shoes, walking barefoot on forest paths, and grounding oneself with the earth.

 

Additionally, it involves interpreting the human body's “black box” as “God's blueprint” and seeking the meaning of walking barefoot on forest paths and grounding as a way of life that aligns with the fundamental principles and operational mechanisms of human life as outlined in that blueprint.

 

In particular, walking barefoot on forest paths is a universal health-seeking method that anyone interested in health can try, as it has been shown to enhance concentration and expand social skills in preschool and elementary school students who are encouraged to walk and run barefoot, alleviate psychosomatic illnesses caused by stress in social life among young adults, and enable elderly people to live healthy and beautiful lives free from the pain of disease and aging.

 

Ultimately, we aim to present the theory and actual healing cases from over nine years of barefoot walking to suggest that barefoot walking could be the elixir of good health and longevity, the ancient human dream of eternal youth and longevity.
 

Until the dazzling advances in genetic information analysis technology and precision medicine within the mainstream medical system, as well as alternative and complementary medicine outside the mainstream, can fulfill humanity's dream of eternal youth and longevity, the author proposes in this column a new, “simple, easy, harmless, and cost-free” new approach to health—unprecedented in the world. We hope that this column proposed by the author will serve as a fundamental alternative for improving the health and quality of life not only in our society but also for people worldwide.

 

Additionally, this column aims to present a healthy alternative for those suffering from illness through barefoot walking, while also organizing the theoretical framework of barefoot walking and grounding, and presenting and describing the effects of grounding proven through overseas clinical papers and the author's own experiments.

 

This column seeks to serve as the foundation for “Barefoot Walking Science,” the first new field of study in human history, and to be utilized as educational material for lectures and education on “Barefoot Walking Science” in schools worldwide, and serve as a guide to a healthy life and the path to life, freeing people from the shackles of modern civilization-related diseases.