5 Ways to Get Grounded

Grounding is something I have to take seriously.

Between parenting, navigating my children's other households, work, partnership and the daily details of life as we know it, I can float away on a balloon of tasks done and undone, run through my days in a flurry of exhaustion never setting foot on the earth, never releasing anxieties or frustrations, never feeling nourished, relaxed, alive.

A big part of my work in the past year has been grounding, deepening, whatever the situation, wherever I'm at.  When I am rooted, the disturbances of each day become but wind in my branches.  When centered, the core of me rests even as I navigate the storm.

It is the hows of grounding, centering, rooting that I want to share with you today.  These are all techniques I've learned or developed over time.  They have saved me from psychological spinout, and kept me strong even in the most dire situations.  

The exercise of conscious of grounding will help you ROOT and THRIVE. Grounding 1:  Be a Tree I learned the following meditation many years ago, and have since seen its incarnation modified in hundreds of formats by many individuals.  I've used it in all of my university classes, with adults and children both in community settings, and it is visibly effective at calming and connecting participants.  When I start to get jumpy energetically, through stress, anxiety or conflict, a few minutes with this exercise realigns me.  I call it the Golden Tree.

(Note:  Sitting or standing near a tree can be super helpful the first few times you practice this exercise, for visualization and energetic purposes.  Trees know how to be rooted!)

1.  Stand or sit comfortably with your spine straight, hands loose and open at your sides.

Breathe deeply two or three times, letting all of the air out at the exhale, opening to the big new air on the inhale.

2.  Then, allow yourself to imagine you have roots extending from your body into the earth.  Maybe you see them, maybe you feel them, maybe you can hear them grow.  Maybe, for now, you just tell yourself you have roots.  All of the above are fine.

3.  As you exhale, imagine your roots growing wide and far, networking deep into the soil, through substrate and bedrock, lengthening and strong.

4.  Now visualize the center of the earth, a round of molten energy.  Maybe it has heat, maybe you see it as a color.  I usually see the color as a luminous gold, but whatever you sense is correct for you.  Breathe your roots into the center.  Let them touch the core.  And as you inhale, begin to draw that energy, light, heat, up your roots.

5.  See the energy of the earth moving up your roots.  With each inhale, you draw up more, until it begins to flow into your body.  Maybe you feel a little shock as it reaches you.  Maybe you experience a warmth or tingling as it pours up your body.   Breathe it through all of your body, until at last it reaches the crown of your head.  Then breathe the earth's energy out the top of your head in a fountain of branches.

6.  Allow your branches to become heavy, dropping until they reach the earth and connect with your roots.  Now you can inhale energy up through your roots and exhale it back out your branches into the ground.  Visualize the energy clearing out any gunk in the process.  You are a circuit for the deep energetics of the earth.  Breathe until you feel vital and connected.

This may be practiced with your eyes open and just breath--useful in traffic--or in mini mode:  A brief inhale and exhale, sending energy from the earth through your body and down again.


Photo from Eyes as Big as Plates Grounding 2:  Get Out The one thing that grounds me faster than the Golden Tree is to go outside.

When I worked as the Public Relations Coordinator of Southern Oregon University thirteen years ago, I was pregnant with my first child.  Universities are like most institutions, plagued by the petty kingdoms and squabbles of factions misaligned, and I was in the middle--swollen, sensitive and still very inexperienced at the age of twenty-five.  The furies and concerns of others I tended to take to heart, and not to my advantage.

But I made a practice of spending my lunch hour out of doors, in a little creek gully behind the physical plant.  I found that I could release my worries into the stream, be healed by the scent of fallen leaves, sun or rain, listen to the trees, and know that I was part of this world--this living breathing natural world--as well as the worlds of human creation that awaited me inside.

One of my favorite poets is Wendell Berry.  And here, by him, is one of my all-time favorite poems.  Maybe read it outside?

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things 
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Grounding 3:  Be in the Big BIG Picture While you are outside, look up.  Beyond the clouds, beyond the curve of the earth's atmosphere, beyond the circle of our rotation, beyond the sun.  In the stars we see infinity, and hopefully, maybe, the miracle of our own existence.  Each star a sun, but thus far no planet like ours has been found.  No life like ours, either.

I find the big picture sobering, enlivening.  Holy.  My small life is given meaning by its insignificance, by the apparent mystery of all that surrounds me.  My troubles are less than a cell in the scope of the universe, and at the same time I am part of a pattern greater than I can ever know.  To me, this is reverence.  I bow to the not knowing.

Geology is another way to view our place in time.  Canyons show the strata of millions of years, of grains of sand washed away by water carve a layering through millinea.  When I stand at the base of a canyon, or in the depths of the Columbia Gorge, I feel the presence of time beyond, above, below and through me.  This perspective gives me strength, a desire for equilibrium and the steadfastness of stone. Grounding 4:  (Sister) Circle Your Wagons There was a time where I had to pay for a circle of women to support me.  

I had just moved to Portland and was severely depressed, overwhelmed to the point where the thought of even trying to make friends felt beyond possible.  Besides, just telling my story brought me to tears, and there is no way to cultivate friendship without telling your story.

So I found a therapist--someone who wouldn't mind the burden of my tale--, a physician, a women's health practitioner, a chiropractor, and an acupuncturist.  And I paid them to do their jobs, helping me to heal and grow stronger, creating a supportive community in which I could transform, root and grow.

The connections that came out of that circle are still with me, and through them I have moved on to new circles of women, friends, mentors and students in my community.  When I'm flying free of any logical tether, I can call on my sisters and they will listen, respond, divine, and invariably I'll climb down from my monkey mind tree and get back in my body.  My sisters teach me not to worry, because there is nothing we need face alone.  

Several friends have helped me start The Moon Divas Portland Web Weaving and Gathering, as a way to get women together for this community, conversation and support.  Gathering makes us strong, and practice in community is powerful.  My yoga teacher once said, "practice makes you ready," and I know that through collective practice I feel more capable of navigating whatever comes my way.  You are welcome to join us!  Or come in virtually through the Moon Divas Certification courses, a place for your wisdom to shine, root and grow.

(Note:  The Moon Divas Guidebook has lots of tips and techniques for building and facilitating sister circles in your own community.  Download it for free by entering your email in the footer form below!) Grounding 5:  The Root Inside You Deep within every woman is a lifeline to all women who have come before, as well as every human born throughout history.  That's true power.  Connecting with your womb, its cycles and wisdom, can help to regulate your responses to the challenges facing you each day.  You are part of a lineage of strong and capable women.  Your womb can teach you how to access their strength.

The journey of womb knowledge has been a long one for me, and I am still so new to the lessons of this path.  But the Guidebook contains much of what I've learned, along with seasonal practices that can be incorporated into your personal rhythms.

There is a freedom that comes from tapping in to this source of knowledge, and a joy of kinship and discovery as old wounds of secrecy and shame are healed.  I begin and end each day with my hand on my womb, thanking my body for its profound, invisible work, and blessing my feminine source.  This is a beginning, as good as any, and grounding through the womb will bring a pattern of wholeness to your living that you may not yet feel possible.

I welcome you to that place.