by Abby Wynne
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Centring is very important to learn, and once you have worked with all the exercises in this chapter and are comfortable doing them, you can move onto the next principle of Energy Healing: Grounding.
Don’t be afraid to come back and revisit these exercises if you need to – all these aspects of healing go hand in hand and it’s important to get them all working together.
Chapter 4
Grounding
If someone was described to you as ‘really grounded’ or ‘down-to-earth’ it might bring to mind images of someone who is realistic, calm, centred and authentic. Do you know anyone like this? What are the qualities in them that you resonate with? Is it an attitude or a way of being? What does being grounded mean to you?
I want you to think about this, because the conventional idea of ‘being grounded’ and the energetic ‘being grounded’ are two different things altogether.
When you have your feet on the ground, a clear head and don’t get carried away by intense emotions, you could be said to be a grounded person. Some people choose certain activities to help them feel grounded, such as yoga, art classes or walking barefoot. None of those actually grounds you energetically unless you bring your intention to do just that. Most people are not aware of this, so they’ll say they feel ‘really grounded’ after doing those activities, but they’re not energetically grounded. Most of them are just more present in their body.
In energy work, grounding means much more than being present in your body. In fact, energetically you could be a down-to-earth, grounded person, when you’re simply centred most of the time!
Imagine a tree. It reaches its branches up to the sky to get to the light, but if it is windy and the tree has no roots, it will fall over. The taller the tree is, the harder the fall. It needs an anchor, something to attach it to the earth, so that it can be strong, steadfast and ride the storm.
If you’re not confident with the exercises on centring in the previous chapter, you might need to take some more time with them before you start the work here. You need to be energetically centred in your body before you can go more deeply into the ground.
Why do we need to ground ourselves?
People who are ungrounded can feel unbalanced, uncentred, scattered or even confused. I find that making my best decisions happens when I am grounded in my body because this state of being helps me connect to my inner wisdom. Many of my clients experience panic or anxiety because they are not grounded in their body; it’s their body panicking because they are not connected to their source of power, their source of wisdom, it’s as if they’re out there in the world with no protection, no resources to draw on.
‘It can strike me when I least expect it. I feel hot, that’s usually the first sign, and then I know the panic is coming – my mind starts racing… Once my mind starts it’s like I can’t stop it. My thoughts push me over the edge. It doesn’t matter if I’m alone, or surrounded by people – my stomach feels like there are a thousand trapped butterflies trying to escape, I want to vomit. My breathing is so fast and my head starts to spin and I become very unsteady, I have to hold on to something. When it’s really bad I completely forget where I am, I lose focus, I can’t see, can’t hear… During those times I feel like I am watching myself having a panic attack, like I’m not really here experiencing it at all. I want someone to come and take me away, to lock me up. Sometimes I want to die just to make it stop.’
This description is from one of my clients describing a full-blown panic attack, which is a very scary thing to experience. You can also have anxiety attacks that are not as violent, or have a low-level, constant feeling of fear or anxiety from not being grounded in your body. It really does help to be grounded. I have seen so many people’s lives transform because they have a daily practice of centring and grounding themselves. Suddenly, the world feels like a safer place. They can go to the shops or meet friends and not worry about the possibility of having a panic attack. It’s remarkable how this simple piece of energetic work can result in transforming a life so dramatically.
Grounding is as if you are throwing an anchor from your Life Force Energy into the earth that holds you down strongly and keeps you secure and safe so you can go about your life. The difference between feeling held and feeling like you’re floating away is the difference between a calm and stable physical body and one that panics because it feels alone. Maybe this is a simplistic way to see it, but I believe that our bodies are an aspect of us that love us and need love from us in return. Once we are in our body, it feels loved and it does its best to love us back.
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Exercise: grounding yourself with the help of a tree
You can do this outside with an actual tree, or you can do it in your mind’s eye with a tree that you know from home, from a park, or one that you visited a long time ago. If you try this the first time with a real tree, you can then call on your tree in your mind anytime you need help when you’re out and about doing other things, and need to ground yourself quickly.
Set your intention to ground. You must be centred first, so check in and notice where you are in yourself.
Breathe, catch hold of the focus of your awareness in your mind, and bring it softly down through your body, starting at the top of your head then all the way down your spine, into your pelvis, going down each leg, strengthening each leg and opening the energy flow of your body. See your hips in balance and your legs strong. Don’t do this quickly so you become fully centred in your physical body.
Go to your tree – either in real life, or in your mind. The tree is bigger than you; walk right up to the trunk of the tree and connect in with it – touch it, say hello with your energy to its energy. Notice how tall the tree is, how the trunk rises high above you, how the branches and leaves reach right up to the sky.
Ask the tree if you can work with it. (It’s always polite to ask!)
Imagine your energy is now merging with the tree, stretching up high with the branches, but also moving down, down deep to the root system.
In your mind, imagine yourself travelling down through the ground, the mud, the stone, with the tree, to the deepest, longest strongest roots. How does this feel?
Now you can imagine your energy wrapping itself around the root of the tree, so it can hold you deep down below the earth. Bring your focus of awareness back up to your body, leaving your energy down there, breathing out any fear, anxiety or heaviness you may be carrying. Feel your feet on the ground, feel yourself in your body fully, feel strong and tall and long like the tree.
Say thank you to the tree! Then you can either let the image dissolve away, or you can walk away, and you are grounded.
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Deeper grounding
Set some time aside and use grounding as the intention for an Energy Healing meditation. This is very helpful if you are feeling low-level anxiety on a constant basis. It gives you and your body a break from it. Be completely real with yourself, taking a few minutes before you start to check in and ask what’s going on for you. Sometimes changes in life or conflict/confrontation with a loved one can unground you, and no matter how grounded you may feel after a meditation, something that’s important can quickly undo the good work you’ve done. If you need to take action, make a list of what you need to do. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
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Exercise: achieving deeper grounding
Sit in your space of love and set your intention for a healing, deeper grounding practice.
Connect into your focus of awareness. Draw it down your body slowly, with each breath. Take a good few minutes to do this, dropping down softly and slowly, opening up your body and relaxing more and more deeply with each breath.
Bring your awareness into each part of your body, dropping down into your pelvis, your hips, down your legs, your knees, your calves, your ankles and your feet. You may even want to travel down your arms, your elbows, your wrists and your hands too. Feel your body’s Life Force Energy
flowing through you. Visualize all your energetic blocks melting away, your body coming to a deep state of relaxation.
Feel your feet on the ground. Bring your focus of awareness completely to your feet. Imagine your foot bones lighting up, going into your toes, spreading out and connecting you to the earth.
Move your focus of awareness to beneath your feet, then to the skin on the soles of your feet. Imagine you can feel each cell in the sole of your foot touching your sock or your shoe, and breathe.
Now imagine your focus of awareness is going down even more deeply – through the floor, the ground, into whatever is next. Do this slowly, too, imagining what it is like inside each layer, what each texture breathes like, smells like, tastes like… If it’s dense or humid or heavy, or light and spacious. If you are inside a building, then imagine you are moving down through the building: the steel framework, the foundations, down down down deep until you hit the soil underneath. Then go into the soil, deep down into the nurturing, richness of the layers where the roots of trees and plants live.
Stay here for a moment and feel the shift in your energy, feel the heaviness, the comfort, the holding from the earth. Relax and be comfortable here, feel the love that Mother Earth has for you. Breathe and relax.
Imagine that there is a sweet spot in the earth that is pulsating with Mother Earth energy. Tap into that in your mind and then breathe into it, connect with it then breathe it up, breathe up the energy of earth, a soft, red mist, a loving, nurturing warm energy. Breathe it up through the energy connection you created when you were going down. Breathe it right up through the building if appropriate, and up into your feet, keep going! Breathe this energy right up into your stomach.
Now you are connected to Mother Earth energies, and you are connected to your own flowing Life Force Energy. Use the breath to do a cleansing.
Breathe out the fear, the anxiety and any heaviness you are carrying, right into the earth. Imagine it is going down to Mother Earth, she’s taking it from you, to recycle it, to feed the flowers, to purify the soil.
Breathe up the energy from the earth, up into your legs, your legs getting stronger, more open, breathe it right up into your stomach and feel its peace, its strength, its beauty.
Do this breathing four or five times. Deep breath up from the earth and hold. Deep breath out and let go. Deep breath up from the earth and hold. Then deep breath out again, and let go.
Relax. Let go of the breath and just sit, feel the energies mixing in you.
When you are ready, slowly bring your awareness into the room. Dissolve away any images that you’ve created and allow your energies to settle. How do you feel?
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What did you feel when you did that exercise? What did you notice in yourself? Were you comfortable doing it? It’s interesting when people do this exercise and bring their full attention to it because they notice things like one leg is easier to work with than the other, or that they feel more in one side of their body than the other. It’s all OK, there is no wrong or right, there just is what there is in this moment, right now.
If you’re feeling your energetic blocks strongly, it could be because it’s been a long time since you were in your body, and your body may be having trouble accepting you. Your body also carries memories and trauma from your life that your mind may think you’ve already dealt with. Parts of your body can shut down because your focus of awareness has not been there for so long, as you are unconsciously (or sometimes consciously) avoiding the memories, and the emotional pain that you experienced.
Remember, Energy Healing is clearing the emotional energy, but sometimes you do need to work with the memories that are still stored in the body, too. Bringing your brain in helps you to change your perspective, to forgive and to let go of emotional pain. Don’t be afraid to get help, to find a witness, to heal. It’s the best thing you can do for yourself and the best thing you can do for the world.
Why do we go down when we ground?
One of my clients refused to go down when we did grounding in a session. She was Catholic and deeply religious, and became scared in case she was going down to hell. I want to be clear – grounding is nothing to do with religion. In fact, energy work is nothing to do with religion. Energy Healing is empowering, active spiritual work. Because it is empowering, because you connect directly to the ground, (and in the next chapter you will be connecting directly to the sky), there is no interpreter of what is happening for you. There is no priest or church needed for you to have direct connection to the Divine Source, Energy of Grace, to Universal Life Force, Healing Energy, or Mother Earth. You don’t have to turn Pagan, run rituals under the full moon or join a religious group. Neither should you feel you should leave a group to which you already belong. This is spiritual, not religious. Spiritual is about your connection to yourself, to the universe. Spirituality is where there are no rules, only experiences, and they all come from a place of love.
I believe that we can live in heaven or hell right here, right now, in our physical bodies, on this planet. We don’t have to wait until we die. We can be outside ourselves, ungrounded, disconnected from our intuition, navigating life completely from the mind, suspicious of everyone, afraid of competition, jealous, angry and holding on to grudges and emotional pain that make us sick. Or we can be connected to our hearts and our intuition, let go of our pain, be responsible for our behaviour and our choices, and use our minds as a tool for kindness and healing. We can be living in the worst life of our imaginings, but we can turn it around and start to create our best life. Most of us are living in between the worst and the best, but we can make choices to move into the best without feeling guilty for doing so. We are here to shine our light, so the first step is to allow ourselves to do just that.
Shall we continue?
Quick ways to ground yourself
Sometimes you need a quick grounding fix when you’re out and about, and the simple technique with the tree is a great one to call on if you’ve already put the time in and are familiar with the process. If you’re feeling really ungrounded and wobbly and need something even quicker, you can imagine you’re pulling energetic roots up out of the ground (a bit like jack in the beanstalk tendrils). See yourself wrapping these energetic roots around your feet to hold you to the ground.
You can also imagine putting on shoes that are made of lead, or that your feet are sinking through the floor, or that you are connected to the energy system of Earth and you just need to plug yourself in. You could see yourself throwing out a rope from your body with a big anchor on it, the anchor going through the ground and into the earth. Or you could imagine spikes or corkscrews growing down out of your feet and into the ground. All of these images are instructions from you. You are telling your Life Force Energy what to do, and it does just that.
As time passes and we get absorbed with other things, we may slip out of our grounded state. Notice when you feel ungrounded, and ground yourself again.
Grounding when you’re in the air!
You can actually ground yourself wherever you are, even if you’re in a plane or on the top of a Ferris wheel! Of course, if you suffer from vertigo, this might not be enough. Don’t feel as if you’re invincible once you can ground yourself, as there may still be other things that you need to attend to.
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Exercise: grounding with the Earth
Imagine yourself standing in a field – your whole body and with your feet on the grass.
Imagine yourself growing very big; if it was a cartoon, it would be like your body growing bigger and bigger, as if you were becoming as big as the city you are in, the street you are in, the country you are in, with Earth staying the same size.
Zoom out of planet Earth, see yourself growing bigger and bigger still, so that it looks like you are standing on top of the whole planet now, and the planet looks small beneath your feet.
Now imagine you are dropping an anchor from your pelvis, or from your stomach if you really feel ungrounde
d, right into the centre of the Earth.
Feel the tug, the pull, when the anchor connects to the Earth’s core. Feel your feet flat on planet Earth and know that you’re grounded.
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Grounding in the crystal cave in the centre of the Earth
These exercises use a lot of imagination, and remember what you are doing is using these images to tell your energy what you want it to do. And it’s doing it! Even though your physical body is still in the room where you left it, your energies really are travelling around the place and reorganizing.
When we go deep into the ground in our imagination, we leave a part of our Life Force Energy down there with the roots of the trees. But that’s good, as it holds us, connects us to this planet that we are living on, and then we won’t feel a need to connect to someone or something else to feel secure.
In this exercise, we will go more deeply into the Earth – right into the Earth’s core where we will find a crystal cave. All of this is magical and imagination play, yes, but it allows for deeper grounding energetically, and you will feel the difference in you, rather than trying to analyse the logic of it.
So, let go of what is real in the physical world and come on a journey with me into the metaphysical, where we will ground deep down into the Earth’s core.