Grounding and Centering for Body, Mind and Emotions

Grounding as its name suggests, relates to your connection with the ground and, in a broader sense, to your whole contact with reality. Being grounded suggests stability, security, independence, having a solid foundation, living in the present. It means having a mature sense of responsibility for yourself, "standing on your own two feet," and "knowing where you stand." When you are well grounded, you know who you are and where you stand. This is the basis of your inner sense of security and wellbeing.

If you are not grounded you risk being overwhelmed by strong feelings, sexual and otherwise. To prevent this from happening, you must reduce all feelings, for should you become overwhelmed, you become afraid, and unable to cope. If you are grounded, you can support excitation, which will be experienced as aliveness and pleasure.

Steps you can take to ground yourself:

If you aren't grounded you are usually running around in your head, and we call this your head bubble. It is chaotic in this place, as it is wired for your survival and it is a limited place to be, as only past beliefs, thoughts and ideas live in this part of the brain.

We want more than that, so it is always good to check in and be aware if you are grounded, or if you need to do a practice. Some ideas are:

• Any exercise or bodywork that works your lower body will help increase your groundedness. Learning to Breathe into your belly is vital to grounding, for if your breathing is shallow, contact with reality and with your feelings will be limited. So long slow deep breathes into your abdomin with a long slow exhale and sigh is helpful for you to ground yourself again. You need to repeat these breathes and you will know yourself, when you feel different.
• Walking barefoot on the sand, the grass or the earth, is a great way to ground yourself. It is you connected to mother earth, being nurtured by the earth and at one with the earth (grass and sand).
• Laying on the grass with legs and arms relaxed, with palms to the sky - From the top layer of your skin upwards, see your front side radiating to father sky, at one with the moon and the stars. You can think of the the bottom half of your body meling into the earth and the top layer of your body radiating to the sky, at the same time.
• Standing by a large tree - As you stand by this tree, notice that your bones are strong, with your head floating on your neck. From the waist down is like the trunk of the tree in front of you (or if you don't have a tree, see the waste down of you as a tree trunk) and the roots are growing out of your feet and deeply into the earth, where they spread and join the roots of all of the trees in existence. Remember that the top half of you body is like the branches and leaves of a tree, free flowing in the breeze.