“I can’t believe how much my back hurts,” said Mr. M., an active young man in his mid-30s. “If I bend over—even a little—it really grabs. At its worst, it can take my breath away. My doctor said it is a muscle spasm, but man, this feels like a lot more than that.”

“I understand why you think that, but actually a spasm can be one of the worst pains you can experience,” I assured him.

“But this hurts so much,” Mr. M. asserted. “I’m afraid something is seriously wrong.”

Most bodywork clients appreciate the serenity of a darkened room, with soothing music playing quietly in the background and a touch of scented oil in the air. Then, there are Kathi Soukup’s clients.

Like a growing number of massage therapists and bodyworkers, Soukup has become a family practitioner in the broadest sense of the term. An avid endurance rider, she began her career working on horses and later learned to work on humans. Now, she’s just as comfortable providing massage and acupressure to four-legged family members as two-legged ones.

Do you think about the connection between you and the earth when you wake up, roll out of bed, and put your feet on the ground?

You are an electromagnetic being, grounding energy just like an appliance that is plugged into an electrical outlet, and this connection can be incredibly important in weathering daily challenges.

Grounding involves living inside your body and having a connection with the earth, which allows for an inflow of energy to feed your bodily systems and an outflow of energy to release any excessive charge in your body.

In your neighborhood, leaves have probably turned gold and red, the weather has cooled down, and homeowners’ thoughts have turned to outdoor cleanup. But hauling out leaf blowers, ladders, mowers, and rakes—not to mention using them—opens us up to the possibility of pain and injury.