Originally published on 20th June 2014
Grounding is a common topic in esoteric teachings. Many people have different descriptions of what grounding means to them but essentially it means being in the present, in your physical body and being aware of yourself and your surroundings.
By being aware of all the parts of your body, you are sending more energy (whether you like to call this energy, Chi, Ki, prana, orgone, cosmic energy, scalar energy, spiritual energy etc etc is up to you) to those areas and thus are healing or at least maintaining their state of health. All you need to understand here is that all matter is made from energy and being aware of something literally sends energy there.
By being in the present you will benefit from not creating negative energies relating to the future and past and so are neutralising energetic causes and effects, what many call karma, at their source. Also being grounded, you are more connected with the energies of our planet and so are able to exchange energy with Earth.
Basic Grounding Meditation Technique:
Please practice the steps below until you feel that they become easy to do. For some that may mean a week, for others longer. Once you are proficient, then you can move onto further lessons.
1. Sit or stand in a position that is comfortable for you and in a place that will cause little distraction for you. Ideally you should be in a position where your back is upright. Closing your eyes will help you to focus better
2. Bring your awareness into the centre of your head. By awareness, I mean your consciousness should be here and so you should be able to feel your head. Being able to see also may help but often people will mistakenly see their body as if viewing from the outside and so they are not fully inside their body.
3. Gently expand your awareness in your head so you start to be able to feel your skull bones, all the features of your face, inside your mouth and outwards towards your skin. By using your breath to expand your awareness, you can greatly aid the movement of energy in your body and enable you to feel each body part more easily. As you do this you will notice that each part of your body you bring feeling to, will eventually start to relax.
4. Next expand your awareness down towards your throat so that you are able to feel the oesophagus, your voice box, thyroid and all the muscles and tissues of the neck.
5. Keep expanding further down like this such that your awareness encompasses the entire physical body. As you practice more and more, you will be able to sense deeper into and with more detail the physical structures of the body. Of course it will also become much quicker for you to do.
6. As you reach the bottom of your feet, feel the connectedness your feet have with the ground as they relax flat on the floor. Some people like to imagine roots like trees growing from their feet into the ground to help with this feeling. You may be able to feel an energy exchange going on through your feet depending on the needs of your body at the time.
Further Grounding Meditation Exercises:
Most people to start with are happy to finish with step 6 above but the next steps are highly useful for grounding more fully and allowing greater exchanges of energy needed for further endeavors. Update: as people are raising their vibrations, many people’s chakras are being dissolved. Many also are purposefully removing their chakras and as such some of this information will be out-of-date 😉
7. MEN ONLY: Bring awareness to your base chakra – an energy centre at the bottom of your tail-bone.
WOMEN ONLY: Bring your awareness to your second (sacral) chakra half way between your navel and base of your lumbar spine.
MEN & WOMEN: Imagine a rope, tube or similar of light extending downwards from these chakras towards the ground. Push this cord as far into the Earth as you can imagine. Ideally you should be able to see and feel it anchor into the centre of the Earth but if you cannot do this at least try to feel it anchor to the ground beneath your feet.
8. Spend some time being fully aware of your body and your grounding cord. You may well notice pain in certain areas or negative emotions coming to the surface. Often these are the reasons we become ungrounded in the first place – humanity has made a habit out of avoiding unpleasantness rather than solving the reasons behind it. By spending time listening to these physical symptoms and emotions, you are accepting and thus are healing them with energy and love. So just pay attention and breathe into them without judgement or fear and eventually you will feel them being released. If you feel no release, then it may be a more chronic or serious problem with which you may need to seek assistance for.
9. Spend some time also changing the colour of your grounding cord and feeling how your body responds to each colour. Try cycling through different reds, oranges, yellows, greens, blues, purples, whites, browns, and lastly metallic colours. You will notice that each colour will have a different effect on your body such as calming/soothing, increasing strength/confidence or even making you feel ungrounded or unpleasant. Noting down these colours may help you choose which is most beneficial depending on the needs you may have in each situation of life.
10. Remove your grounding cord by imagining cutting it from your body and seeing it fall into the ground/centre of the earth. Then replace the cord by imagining a new one coming from your 1st/2nd chakra towards the ground again. As time goes on, you will become aware of when you need to replace your cord with a new one due to a feeling of being ungrounded.
11. Once you become comfortable with the above steps I suggest practicing first with your eyes open then whilst walking and later doing other activities. Eventually you should be able to ground yourself very quickly and even in the middle of talking to someone. Practice also doing it multiple times a day until you reach a state where you only need to re-ground yourself once or twice a day because you are able to maintain the grounded state for longer.
Other Grounding Techniques
Many of you on reading this may have notice similarities between grounding and other meditative activities hence the importance of grounding in various spiritual practices. You may like to incorporate the information above into these practices or even select which activity suits you better. These include:
Yoga – where you are encouraged to be present inside your body and breathe (and thus bring energy called prana) into the particular body part that you feel strain in during a particular posture. The meditative practices of yoga incorporate similar ideas including yoganidra for example.
Tai Chi, Ba Gua, Chi Gung, Nei Gung and other such Eastern practices – these all involve being present in the body, feeling the body and feeling the connectedness with the ground. In contrast to yoga this is mostly done during movements. All techniques involve moving energy (called Chi) with hand movements and/or the mind both within the body but also within the aura surrounding the body.
Mindfulness (from Eastern religions/theologies such as Buddhism) – involves being in the present and in the body at all times no matter what you are doing, to negate the causes of suffering in physical existence.