Are you someone who feels like they can’t get off the ground? Your energy is scattered and you can’t contain an idea long enough to bring it into fruition. You might live in your head too much. You might give more importance to spirituality than you do to day-to-day practical matters. Or you might be addicted to the limitlessness of ideas and fantasy, and not be able to sort through them, pare them down.
Your essential connection to your body might be missing. You might feel a certain sense of rootlessness, a pervading sense of having lost your home. Or you might feel as if you live in a constant state of emergency, and are not able to consolidate your life.
All these are states associated with becoming ungrounded – losing your dynamic contact with the earth and not having roots that go deep enough to help sustain the life above.
As a person who has struggled with grounding in one form or another throughout life, I have recently been exploring what grounding means in a deeper way. On one level, I have been working with the physical aspect.
It is said that eating helps us ground. But overeating, looking at food to make ourselves solid and visible, ultimately ungrounds and disconnects us from our bodies. I know this in theory, but recently I had an experience that showed me that grounding combined with self-nourishment actually helps curb hunger.
I have been exploring scents, and lighting a diffuser before I start writing in the morning. After writing, I do a gentle yoga routine with some breathing exercises, and end this routine with stamping the ground, alternating between the two feet. This is, specifically, an exercise for grounding.
In fact, any exercise like dancing or walking that works on the feet and legs helps us drop deep down into our bodies.
I’ve been feeling like the yoga puts me in contact with my body, makes me aware that I am not just a cerebral person, but someone with a body who feels good stretching and coming into contact with its aliveness.
The scents, one of which is myrrh and the other a blend, have an almost physical effect. They are calming, soothing, and no wonder, because when I read about them, I find that the olfactory bulb is part of the brain’s limbic system, an area that is closely associated with emotions. In fact, it’s called the emotional brain.
So, inhaling a scent not only wakes us up to our senses, it also nourishes and fulfills a very basic part of us.
All of these rituals are about falling deeper into the body. They give an almost immediate sense of well-being. They are right at hand, and they are tools to pick up and nourish ourselves.
Affirming the physical brings people like us – HSPs, creatives – into the here and now. It also increases our feelings of rightness, of being able to give ourselves what we need. That’s extremely valuable for us.
What do you think? What grounds you?
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