Grounding Skills

by Shelley Holloway

Even though grounding is the act of returning to our fundamental state of being (before the noise of toxic cultures and consumerism got to us), it is no easy, small task to master. It requires repetition, consistency, mindfulness, and getting the hell out of our own way. Good news is the skills themselves are relatively simple, and are gradually built over time - if we build these practices into our daily life they will add up to a calmer, more peaceful sense of authenticity, and well-being.

Pro-tip: align these skills with things you are doing throughout your day anyway - coffee breaks, meals, potty-breaks, driving! If you’re doing it anyway, might as well work in some grounding time - connecting these things will make it easier to remember to do the skills.

Pro-tip: Struggling to remember to ground? Sticker it! Or post-it note it! Leave a sticker/note on the coffee pot, on the bathroom mirror, on the light switches in your house, on your car dashboard…anywhere you frequent. Stickers and notes can also add a little humor and make it more fun - my favorite grounding prompt: “Breathe Bitch!”

Pro-tip: Practice when you are NOT “triggered” (reactive, dissociated, anxious, dysregulated), people most often give up on grounding skills because they are not regularly practicing and only attempting to use these skills when they are already escalated beyond the point where these skills are most effective (think of it like a roller-coaster, if we are only using the skills at the very top of the highest point we have to prepare ourself for the ride of our lives - there is no “wait, I changed my mind, I wanna get off”; think of grounding skills as tools to better understand how the roller-coaster ride feels in our body, decide if we like it or not, and whether we are more equipped for the merry-go-round at that moment). The goal of skill utilization is lowering our overall nervous system baseline - which will reduce the intensity and frequency (over time) of these “triggered” states.

• Mindfulness: it’s more than just a buzz-word, but how many of us truly understand what this word means when it’s often misused in pop-culture. Mindfulness is the art of noticing - not punishing ourself for what we notice. The fundamental principle of true mindfulness is self-compassion - it is a state of non-judgement, in which we can normalize our collective struggle and be a witness to our own lives. It’s the practice of embodied self-awareness, but first we must acknowledge the dominant discourse of disembodied living in our culture. We have been taught from the moment we are out of diapers (in fact it often starts in potty training!) that our bodies are innately “bad”, sinful, shameful, and that we should feel guilt over having bodies and the emotions that communicate our bodies needs. True mindfulness is learning to over-ride this programing, and learning to listen to the wisdom of our bodies (which speaks in the language of sensation and emotion), rather the toxic culture.

• Deep breathing: focus on the flow of air moving in and out of your body, notice the depth - is it shallow and fast? Only in your chest? We are meant to breathe deeply from our bellies, but most of us, due to prolonged stress, have forgotten how to do this. Take a moment to notice, and gradually relax into a deeper, longer breath. Try your best not to tense your body further, notice your posture - elongate but soften your spine, that in itself will help the breath move deeper. Give yourself permission to “not good at it” - meet yourself where you are at and be gentle with yourself as you are reprograming your entire body after a lifetime of shallow breathing.

• Body Scan: reconnecting with the body is vital in learning to ground - close your eyes and scan your body for any physical sensations, notice aches, pains, tension. Stress lives in our body - our body really does “keep the score”.* Practice noticing and naming - if it helps abstract it - what color is it? Does it have a shape? A texture? Visualizing what it looks like can help us understand “what” we are sensing in our body. Are there any emotions connected to these sensations? Try not to dismiss or avoid these sensations - so much of what we experience as anxiety and depression is the result of “running from” the sensations in the body and the emotions stored in them. We are innately feeling creatures - but our collective culture (often passed down through families and school systems) have taught us that acknowledging and feeling our emotions is being “oversensitive” - this dismissal and invalidation is the root of our disconnection from the body and ourselves.

• Three Minute Meditation: close your eyes, focus on your breath, that’s it! But do it for three minutes. We often falsely believe that mastering meditation means prolonged, hour long session of “Om”ness. But that’s not the case. When we think of meditation we often think the goal is ashram level monastic life - but we fail to recognizing that these so-called “masters” of meditation have taken the easy way! Yes, peeps! Living a secluded life away from all of the daily stressors, where all of your basic fundamental needs are met for you, is taking the easy way to “enlightenment”. It’s far harder to master the art of living in this world (not separate from it) and stay cool as a cucumber (which isn’t the goal either). Grounded meditation is about connection with self - not dissociating from the world.

• Get in Your Belly! and out of your thoughts. Understanding the difference between our thoughts (cognitions) and our embodied emotions is vital to grounding. We often confuse the perseverative, intrusive thoughts that occupy our day, with our true emotions - it can, and often does feel the same in it’s impact on our life. But our thoughts are often our “distraction” from the core emotions we are taught to invalidate growing up, we “run from” our emotions (aka: anxiety), stamp them down (aka: depression), or “space out” (aka: dissociation) in order to ignore them - but they cannot be ignored for long. Shifting our conscious awareness into our belly (often through deep breathing and body scanning) gets us back into our center of gravity (often in the belly, hips, thighs, and base of spin - our “root” and “sacral” chakras) where our emotional and grounded sense of self lives).

• Movement - now we are not talking about vigorous exercise here - just stand up and walk into the other room, wiggle your feet or hands, stretch your body, release the damn tension in the neck and shoulders by rolling your head, go for a brief walk around your block, put on your favorite song and dance around the room for a minute - the key is understanding that ANY movement counts! It doesn’t have to be mastering Yoga, hitting the treadmill, or establishing a strict fitness regime (often times putting this extra pressure on movement is the very thing that keeps us from grounding in movement!).

• Gardening: get your hands dirty - literally, touching dirt is therapeutic as fuck! Watching seedings sprout and grow is a mindful exercise and teaches us patience, caring for the delicate balance of life, gives a sense of accomplishment as that garden grows, and gives us YUMMIES! Bonus! Plant a pollinator garden and use native plants and we all benefit!

• Connecting with Community: the need for connection and belonging is the most basic of basic needs - even introverts need people! Isolation is dangerous to our mental health, apathy to the suffering of others is a sickness, empathy is healing. Find your tribe (hello, ummm, attend Cornucopia events), and stop believing that you’re unlikeable! Connection is found in vulnerability, not perfection - awkward is the new cool, embrace your weirdness and find your people. Nerd-maste, the awkward in me honors the awkward in you!

• Being in Nature: Connect with the natural landscape, live in accordance with the natural cycles of the Earth (rest in the winter, revel in the promise of spring, play in the summer, honor the harvest of bounty). Hug a tree, walk barefoot on the grass, smell the spring rain or the fall leaves,

• Being with Animals/Pets: So many of us struggle with human connection but feel most at home with our pets. As a mom of four fur babies (feel free to ask to see pictures of them anytime!) who has always bonded deeper with animals than people, I can attest. Much like gardening the animals in our life are therapeutic - all animals are emotional support animals, get your snuggle time on.

• Cleaning: some people love it, some people hate it. Either way treating our space like it is sacred puts the sacred in our space. As a Virgo sun, organizing is like oxygen for me - even if it still looks like a mad scientist after, I know where my thing are (mostly!)! Cleaning is cleansing space -break old energy cords by moving things around, burn some incense, Hail Hestia Goddess of hearth and home and get to scrub-a-dubbing.

• Taking a Shower/Bath: soooo many benefits! Cleaning up our act is never just de-stank-ifying our body, it grounds us and shifts our energy. Add herbal sachets, or essential oils to add even more benefits.

• Eat: food is amazing! No really it is! Just recognize how deeply connected your Pagan practice is to the cycles of agriculture (ummm, yup - that’s what the Eight Sabbats are all about!). Learning to really savor our food, nourish our bodies, and give ourself permission to enjoy food is healing, grounding, and an act of gratitude when done mindfully and joyfully.

• Drink Water You Beautiful Dehydrated Flower! We all know the benefits of drinking enough water, but how often do we accomplish it? Are you aware of all of the ways we dry ourselves out even if you are getting in enough fluid? Do you automatically reach for the next caffeine source when tired without realizing dehydration actually is what is making us feel tired and sluggish? Cold water can revive us, hot water can relax us - beyond hydration, just the act of drinking water can alter our mood. It’s one of my favorite distress tolerance tools, and yet, so simple.

• Getting Enough Sleep - sleep hygiene is as important as our daily hygiene practice of bathing and brushing our teeth. Going to bed at the same time every night, listening to our bodies sleepiness and not pushing ourself to stay up later, turning off all technology before bed, writing down our dreams in the morning, and waking up at the same time everyday can play a huge roll in how connected we feel to our body - don’t believe me? Notice the next time you have a poor nights sleep how hard it is to stay present, and not drift off into negative thoughts - “I’m so tired” becomes a misery mantra .

• Practice Self-Compassion: Step away from the concept of “discipline”, away from the grind, away from the dissociation - and into compassion. In my experience this is the hardest part of mindful, grounded living for most people. We are all imbedded in a culture that thrives off of the belief that we are “broken” and needing to be fixed - we falsely belief that self-compassion and “fixing” ourself is the same thing. We strive to “maximize our potential”, or get so stuck in the “fuck-it-bucket” that we fail to thrive - regardless of which, we are experiencing a lack of self-compassion. Self-compassion is meeting ourself where we are at - without judgement. Self-compassion is sitting with our emotions and felt sense in the body. Self-compassion is taking a deep breath before we do something stressful. Mindfulness is self-compassion - self-compassion is mindfulness.

• Just Do It!: Energy follows action - turn that potential energy into kinetic energy and stop burning your energy debating ever step before you get up and just do the thing. This is about the mental energy we waste as we are deliberating the “perfect choice”, getting inspired to do the thing and then talking ourself out of it, knowing we have a tasks to accomplish but dragging our feet for hours - torturing ourself over the task instead of taking the five minutes it would actually take to complete the task.

• Body Work: message is great for the body, releasing stored trauma, and helping us learn to relax and ground - but it’s far from the only kind of body work and can be financially out of reach for a lot of people. Saunas, acupuncture, Pilates, Yoga, breath work, assisted stretch - the wellness industry is boundless with potential to be more body-centric - and don’t get me wrong, I love all of them! However beneficial these techniques are Western medicine and it’s obsession with medicating us, devalues these ancient practices and therefore most insurance companies do not cover the cost. Groundedness should not be performative elitism, but alas. Good news however is you can still find free online access to most of these options, or find alternatives - can’t get to the sauna…give yourself a good stretch while taking a hot shower, break out the heating pad for those tight muscles, work on that posture. Just use your body and listen to any tightness as a sign of needing to stretch, soreness often does need us to “walk it off”, but pain - pain is different from soreness - pain says “slow down” and don’t over do it.

• Prayer: now I know that the word “prayer” can be a triggering word for many Pagans who are recovering from the guilt and shame of other faith traditions, but hear me out for a moment. In this context I’m referring to prayer as an act of connection not supplication, call it whatever you want - keeping vigil, setting up an altar, spending a moment with your Ancestors, lighting a candle while you cook dinner, playing your favorite song - the word itself isn’t the point, the point is taking a moment out of your day, no matter how brief to shift your awareness back to the sacred and that sense of awe that we get from connecting to it.

• Practice Living in the Here & Now: this is a fundamental part of building any grounding practice, life exists in the now - nothing else is real! As many are aware now thanks to the popularization of books like the Body Keeps the Score*, memory and trauma are intimately linked in the body. Now this is not the same as pretending the past didn’t exist, or the dismissive “you can’t change it, so why dwell on it” - go to therapy (preferably with a therapist who is trauma informed, better yet a trauma informed therapist who does Somatic work), get into the stored emotions of the trauma and process it. Living in the present moment is about learning to embrace life as it is happening - not being enslaved to our past, or future trippin’. To clarify further, this also isn’t about not having goals and aspirations - it’s about cleaning the lens through which we view these goals and aspiration, and how we perceive life in the here and now. If we are stuck in the past or only living to achieve our five year plan we are living in the wrong place in our brain - and both mindsets are born from trauma.

• Connect with Your Senses - remember when you learned that the Pentacle represented the 5 senses? Here is why that fact is important. We take in the physical world through these senses - and these senses are what make up the basis of our perceptual comprehension of reality! So often our anxiety, depression, dissociation, dysregulation, or just the WTF moments of life take us out of our senses - instead we play the Rumination Game of “what if"?”, “should” all over ourself, perseverate over our “fundamental brokenness”, and live in cycles of over-functioning/burnout/apathy. Grounding in our sense breaks these cycles - even if for a moment. Try this….

  • Take a moment to look around the room/space you are in - really notice it like you’ve never seen it before (this also helps with boredom, and is a great way to alleviate the “staleness” of the winter - much like spring cleaning does). Now name 5 things you SEE (I like to add color - name 5 things I see that are green - which in my house, is A LOT). If it feels silly - good, silly is an achievement to unlock - silly, brings whimsy and awe back into the ordinary - a powerful tool of grounding in-and-of itself). Try not to rush through it, just be with yourself as you notice. Now name 4 things you can TOUCH (our sense of touch is soothing, just think of the last time you pet your dog or cat, or snuggled up with your favorite blanket), notice the sensation in your skin as you feel the textures, the coldness or warmth of the object, the solidness of the object - is if firm or soft? Now name 3 things you can HEAR (a cat purring, a car driving by, a bird in the distant tree), 2 things you can SMELL (the smell of the coffee in your cup, the smell of incense burning, the scent upon the air), and 1 thing you can TASTE (mmmmm, coffee).

Have you noticed a trend in these Grounding skills? I hope so. Cause mindfulness and grounding in it’s simplicity is just learning to not treat ourselves as an afterthought in our own lives. Practice that like it’s going out of style - or rather as a style that has to be brought back to life - cause it is!

*The Body Keeps the Score - Bessel Van Der Kolk - Classic introduction to the holistic understanding of the body