Transcript
New research shows that lying on the floor can help you feel less overwhelmed in what many are referring to as floor time. What the science. This new research is a pretty hilarious mix of poor journalism and a bad understanding of scientific language. And it's a great example of how mainstream sources can spread misinformation. His source is Business Insider, which defines floor time as lying or sitting on the floor to soothe yourself. These two viral TikTok videos. So their new research is doom scrolling on TikTok, investigative journalism at its finest. They say that the logic behind the online version of Floor Time is a technique known as grounding, which helps to connect with the present moment and tune out distressing thoughts. They even consulted experts who mentioned that lying on the floor is like doing a yoga pose called Savasana or corpse pose. They cite a 2020 study on the benefits of Yoga Nidra, which does involve lying on the floor. specifically like this, not this. And it also includes multi-step breathing and mental processes, which probably give most of the benefit. The article claims that floor time can make you feel grounded. Similar to how meditation, cold water, or humming song lyrics to yourself could help you feel grounded in the present moment. The goal of grounding is to shift your attention to the here and now. This makes sense in English where feeling grounded needs feeling anchored and stable. But that's not what grounding means. a wellness consultant and two research studies with him saying that floor time is the ultimate grounding technique and research shows that grounding can reduce inflammation. But the paper they cite says that grounding or earthing the body is having direct contact with a natural charge of the earth, electrons. The actual benefits of this are debatable and comment if you want me to do a video on it. But for it to be grounding, you need direct electrical contact, like walking barefoot on grass, or yes, lying down on the dirt. terrible electrical conductors. So lying on the floor of your living room may be relaxing, but it is not grounding. Lying like this is not Yoga Nidra, and Stephen Colbert should not be trusted to talk about scientific research.
Additional notes
Watching this really had me floored #science #stephencolbert #grounding
References
- Original source notes.
- Script rewrite page.
- Grounding - The universal anti-inflammatory remedy - PMID: 36528336; PMCID: PMC10105021; DOI: 10.1016/j.bj.2022.12.002.