Learn Calming Practices & Get Grounded
Why Ground Yourself?
Grounding is an effective way of getting back into your body and bringing yourself into presence. The importance of presence cannot be overemphasized. Presence is where your life happens and your moment-to-moment experience exists. Grounding helps move your energy down, allowing you to “get out of your head” and back into your body and heart. From there you can move freely through your life with ease and peace. Grounding is a great intervention to interrupt rumination, anxiety and reconnect with your innate wisdom and vitality. Learning practices like these is something I teach my transformational life coaching clients.
Introduction video to 3 methods of grounding
These three grounding exercises will help you get centered. Whether you are feeling scattered, shaky, flighty, or just distracted, a conscious grounding exercise can help you reconnect with your body, the moment and your life.
Each exercise can have an impact in under 5 minutes, so they are great for our busy, modern lifestyles. Try them before you start your day, during your lunch break or after a stressful meeting.
Each moment of our lives provides an opportunity to Be Here Now. There's really no other place or time to be, but it's so easy to get disconnected and lost in thought about the past or future. A grounding exercise helps us get present.
I trust you will enjoy these three simple exercises and I would love to get your feed back on your experience. Please feel free to email me and report how they worked for you or drop me a DM in Instagram.
Counting breaths while self-soothing.
This simple exercise combines counting breaths with touch to create a sense of safety, focus and solidity.
Instructions
Stand with your feet shoulder width apart, bending your knees slightly.
Put your right hand over your heart and your left hand across your belly button.
Inhale and count to 4. Exhale and count to 4. If you have plenty of breath, (not starving to inhale) pause for a count of 2 at the end of the exhale. So you'll inhale for a 4-count, exhale for a 4-count, pause for a 2-count.
Repeat for 6-20 breaths.
Helpful hint... Focus on your belly and your hand over your belly. This will bring your attention, focus and energy down to the center of gravity.
Coordinating movement and breath.
This is a wonderfully simple method of grounding.
Stand with feet shoulder-width apart with your hands resting at your side.
As you inhale raise your arms in a wide circle to your sides and bring your hands over your head.
As your hands come together over your head, begin your exhale while bringing your hands down in front of your body. Palms are facing downward.
As your exhale completes return your hands back to their starting position and begin the next breath.
This grounding works by embodying a downward motion while synching the motion with your breath. The hands support lowering your energy and centering.
1st Chakra Grounding.
This grounding can be done anywhere at anytime. There's no movement and you could be on the train, driving, or even during a conversation.
The trick is getting used to the tightening and relaxing of your pelvic floor as you coordinate with your inhale and exhale. It's best to close your eyes and visualize the breath and energy moving, but is not mandatory. In the beginning as you learn it, do close your eyes so you can focus and "see" the energy moving from the base of your spine up to the heart, through the top of the head and then back the other way.
Sit comfortable with your spine erect. You want to be alert but relaxed.
Tighten your pelvic floor and anus. You want to tighten around the root, or 1st chakra as you inhale. Visualize your breath and energy going into your heart area as you clamp down on the root.
Exhale and relax the pelvic floor. Visualize the breath and energy escaping through the top of your head (the 7th chakra)
Now tighten, and inhale, again breathing into the heart.
Exhale and relax, picturing the breath and energy going down to the base of the spine and root.
That is one round:
Inhale from root to heart (tighten)
Exhale from heart to head top (relax)
Inhale from head top to heart (tighten)
Exhale from heart to root (relax)
Just remember to tighten on inhale and relax on the exhale.
Do this for 4 rounds.
Bonus: visualize the color red while doing this.
While this is a root chakra activation exercise, you are opening all the chakras since you are moving energy from the 1st to the 7th back down to the 1st. Also, notice that heart chakra is involved in every breath as the mid-point. The root chakra is associated security, family bonds, the earth and of course, grounding!