I speak, teach, and write a lot about the importance of grounding, but I haven’t yet written an article exclusively on this VERY IMPORTANT topic.
So, what is grounding, why is it important, and how do you ground yourself?
WHAT IS GROUNDING?
Grounding means connecting our energy with the energy of the planet we live on. It involves feeling our physical body and being fully present within it.
In this context, it’s not just about the energy of our physical body but also about our entirety, our consciousness, which we aim to connect with the body in which we live and breathe.
Grounding relates to the material component of existence. While it is discussed in the context of energy work, it is essential to bring ourselves into an awareness of our physical body, its sensations, and its connection with the ground. This includes feeling the weight of the body, particularly the lower part our legs and feet and their contact with the ground.
Certain yoga poses are particularly helpful in enhancing the sense of grounding, such as Mountain Pose (Tadasana), Tree Pose (Vrikshasana), Yoga Squat (Malasana), Staff Pose (Dandasana), and Chair Pose (Utkatasana). Additionally, activities like jumping, stomping, dancing, walking, or simply feeling the ground beneath your feet and the rhythm of your breath can have a similar effect. Beyond connecting the feet to the ground, it’s also important to focus on the pelvic region, especially the perineum area and the entire pelvis.
From the perspective of our energetic anatomy, grounding happens when we consciously connect with our energetic roots that tie our energy to the consciousness of the planet. As beings whose matter originated, or better said, is borrowed, from the matrix of this planet, as long as we are alive, there exists an unbreakable bond with our planet of birth.
THE BENEFITS OF GROUNDING
Grounding offers numerous benefits. When grounded, we feel more present, calm, centered, and clear-headed. It can help us regain focus on what we are doing at the moment and make decisions that are right for us more easily. Stress, anxiety, feelings of alienation, and not belonging diminish, while an inner sense of support, rooted in the energy and awareness of our planet Earth, grows stronger.
The planet nourishes and provides for all its beings. Every living creature has the right, or perhaps a privilege is a better word, to use its material resources for sustenance. The relationship between the planet and its living beings mirrors that of a mother caring for her child. The energy received through grounding is nurturing and supportive.
In spiritual practice, most techniques focus on working with the upper energy centers, the so-called spiritual centers. However, being solely in the upper centers creates an imbalance in our dual nature as both matter and spirit. Grounding helps integrate spiritual energy (awareness) with the physical body. It also allows higher levels of our consciousness to root themselves into our current existence.
If we wonder where the central point of our awareness is, from all our existences across time, space, and dimensions, it is always in the present moment. It is this current body that offers the experience of awakened consciousness. From here, as the central point of our being, we can connect to all other experiences of our existence.
Without grounding, this vital integration of consciousness with the body and mind is not possible.
THE ROOT OF GROUNDING ISSUES
The physical body is designed to embody higher consciousness. However, for this to happen, it is necessary to clear out vibrations that obstruct this process. The body cannot sustain higher vibrations if it cannot adapt to them through grounding.
Ungrounded individuals live like objects adrift on the surface of water, aimlessly carried by tides and currents, disconnected from their roots, and not living out their purpose. While they may seem spiritually inclined, without grounding, their connection to higher spirituality remains unstable in this existence. If the life of the soul in the body on this planet has a purpose, there was a reason for the soul’s birth into the body, which will not be fully realized unless the soul becomes fully embodied in the body. The systematic steering of humanity toward the belief that it is the master of the planet’s living world, that the body is something sinful, has left its mark, along with the perception of the female body in its cycle as “unclean” and the body of a sexually active woman as “tainted.” To be concise, these are all programs that continue to affect us even today.
Modern lifestyles pose significant challenges to embodiment. The issue is not only the long hours spent indoors but also the unnatural rhythms of life that disregard the body’s natural cycles, as well as a loss of connection to the sacredness of the body and the planet.
The rejection of the form and appearance of one’s own body, reinforced by trends promoting an ideal body image, and programs that distort the acceptance of one’s birth gender, alienate us from embracing our bodies—and, consequently, from grounding ourselves in them.
The trauma caused by wars, all the events throughout the history of this planet involving mass deaths, starvation, scarcity, and instances where children were prematurely left without adequate parental care or community support, remain imprinted in our collective DNA—and, unfortunately, these events continue to occur even today. I also include there religious teachings that focus solely on the spiritual aspect and its valuation.
The reasons behind the disruption and damage to the natural energetic connection with this planet have eradicated within us the sense of safety in existing on this planet, as well as the sense of support and material abundance, which truly exists in plenty on this planet. When this sense of security is absent, there is no peace or calm within us, nor trust that we will be provided for in the future.
The polarity opposite to grounding is a connection solely with the spiritual aspect, and when this extreme opposite polarity is expressed energetically, something unusual occurs. There might be a belief that people who are more connected to the spiritual aspect of existence have no need for material things, but here arises a paradox. In the unfulfilled and concealed longing for a natural sense of connection with the energy of the earth and abundance, external behavior can manifest as an excessive and insatiable desire for material goods. This desire is not fulfilled naturally (through grounding) but rather externally, through the accumulation of expensive material possessions, as a consequence of acting from a mentality of scarcity and lack. Additionally, it can lead to unbalanced and promiscuous sexuality, which violates the natural impulses of the body, feelings of intimacy, and deep connections in relationships with healthy boundaries.
Our energy carries deep and hard-to-erase imprints of scarcity experienced in lives on this planet.
For this reason, working on healing our connection with the sense of safety in inhabiting a body on this planet becomes a crucial part of the healing process needed for grounding.
All of the above-mentioned causes create lower vibrational energies that must first be cleared to achieve the goal of embodying higher consciousness.
GROUNDING PROBLEMS
The disruption of the natural connection with the planet is manifested energetically on our light roots, which connect us to the center, the consciousness of the planet, and on the lower energy centers (root center and sacrum).
On the physical level, in the case of ungroundedness, we are talking about all kinds of problems with the legs, skeletal system, joint problems, lower back pain, hip problems, problems with the circulatory system, problems with infertility, sexuality, problems with the urinary system and the prostate.
At the level of the psyche and emotions, the problems of not being grounded are strong feelings of not belonging, physical insecurity, fear of material existence, irrational fears, blocked creativity, problems with concentration, anxiety, lethargy, mood swings, sleep disorders, a feeling of alienation from other people, other beings of this planets and nature, feeling stuck in one place, even insane irrational fearlessness, body shame or excessive sexual behavior, weak boundaries in relationships with others.
As soon as you see that a person has problems with his origin, parents and a sense of (non)belonging, or there were problems during the mother’s pregnancy and childbirth, there is certainly a damaged energy connection with the planet.
ENERGETIC GROUNDING PRACTICE
This is one of my favorite practices and I really recommend everyone to learn it because it is one of the techniques that creates a significant change in the energy level of a grounded person. In my energy healing practice, this is the technique I always start and end treatments with. If that’s not enough for me to praise this practice, it’s best to try it yourself.
The technique can vary in its complexity, so if you do not have much experience in working with energy, always choose the simplest technique. When performing grounding, intention, focus and relaxation of the body are important. Without relaxation, we will not be able to feel the change in the physical body that the act of connecting to the energy of the planet brings.
Keep in mind that the success of the merger also depends on your relationship to the planet and its living world, i.e. whether you have respect for it as a special kind of consciousness and respect and love for existence.
You can really find a lot of information and suggestions on how to do it on the internet, so go for what is most natural for you.
What works for me is this exercise:
Grounding Exercise:
1. Sit or stand upright on the ground.
2. Feel the area of your pelvis.
3. Imagine extending an energetic thread from your pelvis deep into the Earth, connecting to the planet’s center.
4. Once you feel the connection, stay in this state for some time, allowing the Earth’s energy to nourish your entire body.
You can enhance this exercise by placing your hands below your navel, breathing into your pelvic center, or visualizing light awakening within your pelvis. The energetic thread can also branch into multiple luminous roots. We can use bandhas, ie. in the case of grounding, gentle tightening of the perineum and the same combined with placing the tongue on the upper palate.
As you can see, the exercise can be quite simple to more complex. The advantage of more complex techniques is that we achieve the grounding effect much faster and feel it more strongly in the body. In any case, choose the method that is most suitable for you.
For the sake of grounding itself, it is advisable to work on cleaning the vibrations that prevent us from feeling our physical presence and ourselves as a light being that inhabits the physical body, many of which vibrations we are not even aware exist.