Whenever I see Kim McAdams, she is never wearing shoes. Every year, she checks my car emissions from her workstand at a parking lot in Roswell, Georgia. In the four years that I’ve known her, come rain or shine, she is always barefoot.I had heard of people who kick off their shoes to connect with Earth, and it always sounded so calming. But in a parking lot littered with who knows what underfoot?This year, my curiosity got the better of me. “Do you, by any chance, believe in the practice of grounding?” I asked. She replied with a smile, “Whatever makes you think that?”AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementMcAdams said that she has never liked shoes, and at some point, during her time at high school in Ohio, she just stopped wearing them. “We had big bell Levi’s,” she explained. “It didn’t matter if I had shoes on or not — you couldn’t see my feet.”Back in the 1970s, she said, nobody was talking about grounding, also known as earthing. “For a long time, I didn’t know it was a thing,” she continued. “I can feel the ground under me, I feel better, I feel healthier.”As it turns out, viral TikTok videos in recent years have been popularizing the barefoot lady’s practice of making direct contact with Earth.People are aiming to improve their health and get in touch with nature, she told me. “Everybody wants to be grounded, I think it’s because there’s so much crap going on and there’s so much stu …
