Grounding Yourself to Get Centered and Oriented to the Present

By grounding yourself, you become more aware of where you are so you can set boundaries on the continual inflow of material you have to sift through to process. When you become overwhelmed and confused, grounding helps you center and feel more fully present and aware. It is a simple yet powerful tool for mindfulness and well-being.

The research is in about the importance of grounding for physical and emotional health.
Physically, grounding reduces inflammation, pain and stress. Emotionally, grounding has a beneficial impact on  decreasing the impact of addictive behavior, anxiety, grief and depression. In both cases, grounding helps to build a sense of greater safety and trust because you are more aware of your choices and possibilities.

The following 12  grounding activities and modalities will give you a simple, yet powerful menu to use in your life for how to ground yourself to center yourself and orient yourself to be more present.

1. Go outside: In a  book entitled, Earthing by Dr. Sinatra, the need for spending time on the Earth with bare feet to energize the body-mind system is explored. The book speaks of the electromagnetic connection and relationship between your body and the planet itself. The earth’s surface is negatively charged and has an unlimited supply of “free” electrons.
If your body has lots of positively charged free radicals (creating inflammation), the Earth’s free electrons can help to neutralize them.

How To:  a) Get out into a grassy section of the earth and take your shoes off. b) Walk barefoot on the beach. c) Lie down on the Earth and look up at the sky. d) Sit on rocks, e) or better yet, sit in a chair for 30 minutes with your bare feet resting on the ground. Read more about earthing here: Earthing: The Most Important Health Discovery Ever?

2. Diet: After a long day or week of  many appointments, you might feel disoriented. Sit down
while you eat. Choose more whole and natural foods to energize and ground your energy.  Eat root vegetables like potatoes, beets, carrots, onions, garlic, radishes, turnips, horseradish,  Daikon radish, rutabaga, parsnips and kolrabi. Decrease sugar and caffeine.

3. Feed Your Earth Element: Earth Element on the Chinese Five Element and Meridian Wheel is about nurture, digestion and support. Eat the following foods to enrich this connection.a) Grains: Millet b) Vegetables: Sweet corn, all squash: (acorn, butternut, Hokkaido, Hubbard, spaghetti, pumpkin), shitake mushrooms, beets, carrots, onions, parsnips, rutabaga, collards, chard, artichoke, sweetpeas, and string beans c) Fruits: sweet apples, figs, cantaloupe, sweet orange, honeydew, tangelo, raisins, sweet grapes, papaya, dates, and tangerine d) Fish: salmon, tuna, swordfish, sturgeon e) Nuts: Almonds, pecans, walnuts, sesame seeds, and sunflower seeds.

4. Feed Your Earth Chakra: Eat red foods like root vegetables such as beets, rutabagas, garlic, ginger, turnips, potatoes, and parsnips.  Eat red food like apples or pomegranates with the color of this chakra to feel connected to the energy of Earth Chakra. which in Ayurvedic Medicine is related to survival, stability and safety.

5. Aromatherapy: Earth Element focuses on smell and scents. Use the scents of Cedar, clove and Balsam Fir or your favorite scents to help you feel grounded and connected to the Earth.

6. Polarity Points: Work into the joints of the little toes and fingers with your opposite hand and pull from the base.

7. Get your hands, face or body into mud or clay. This will help you feel directly connected to
the  Earth itself.

8. Dance, Drum or Sing: Dancing barefoot or drumming with your hands helps you to feed the energy circuits of your body-mind system. When you sing, you are treating yourself to a bath of personal sound frequency. Drumming energizes your Earth Element through joy, motion, rhythm, connection to your heart and the Earth.

9. Take a vacation from distractions:  Make a space or time daily for centering  and
nurturing yourself. This can be done through meditation, journaling,
walking in nature or gardening.

10. Express Gratitude: Keep a Gratitude Journal or make it a point to take inventory of that for
which you are grateful. Gratitude orients you to the present and to life-energizing support.

11. Breathe: The Buddhist Soft Belly Meditation helps to make space for you and your feelings.
Most of us breathe with only the upper third of our body.  Breathing all the way down into the belly helps you to feel more embodied, and allows space for awareness, openness, compassion, and mercy for yourself in the
moment.

12. Take inventory of what needs nurture and support in your life: Get in touch through the Soft Belly Meditation with places in your life where you have felt continual fear, anxiety or felt like a victim.
Make time to listen to yourself and find someone safe with whom you can share where you will be listened to with respect and support.

Here is an opportunity to continue on the path to create greater integrity in your wellness and well-being with monthly healing modalities and repatterning events from Windows to the Heart Repatterning.

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