Are you grounded?
Do you ever wonder what exactly that means? There’s the context of being grounded as a kid, of having your wings clipped as a form of punishment. As an adult, however, grounded takes on a different meaning because it’s something I strive to be—I want to be grounded in my exchanges with family, friends, co-workers, and strangers.
Being grounded or staying grounded is exactly what it sounds like. Imagine a tree, rooted in the soil. Heavy winds will cause the tree to sway but it’s going to keep standing because its roots are a lifeline that run deep, providing the tree with nutrition and strength for continued growth. If it weren’t rooted, it wouldn’t grow, it wouldn’t thrive, and it certainly wouldn’t stay standing in heavy wind.
When we are truly grounded, we are actively present in our daily lives, in the here and now. No matter what is happening around us, we remain firmly rooted, balanced, and centered. This means that we are better able to control our reactions to what is happening to us or around us. We are able to navigate life’s storms with grace and not get swept up by our emotional responses.
Let me clear—emotions are important. They shouldn’t be ignored. But experiencing a strong emotion should not send us into a tailspin. When you’re grounded, you can observe emotions as part of a passing experience. Emotions come and go, it is up to us to not be carried away by every emotion that surfaces.
Instead, by practicing staying firmly rooted, we can sit with the emotion, identify it, feel it, but not be overwhelmed by it or react to it. For example, if someone cuts me off in traffic, I can yell and curse and gesture and then stew over it for a while which will most likely mess up my mood for a while. Or I can I choose to be grateful that it didn’t cause an accident and choose not to be upset by the other person’s actions.
It’s so easy to fly off the handle or have a knee jerk reaction to someone or something but in the big picture, staying grounded is an act of mindfulness that has an impact on my health and my stress levels.
A few benefits of staying grounded as opposed to reacting:
Staying in your Parasympathetic Nervous System
Slower heart rate
Lower blood pressure
Improved digestion
Reduction of stress hormones
Reduced muscle tension
Better, more restful sleep
If you are like the majority of my clients, you have a busy, demanding life and you probably live in a state of fight-or-flight without realizing it. In my practice, every client protocol involves mindset work for this reason. This might be as simple as starting a gratitude practice, keeping a journal, beginning a breathwork practice, using an app like neurocycle to develop awareness of thought patterns, or using the Calm or Headspace apps for guided meditation.
You will find that over time, you will learn to let things go and stay present. It takes practice but if you are gentle with yourself, you will discover that grounding yourself will become second nature and your emotional, mental, and physical health will benefit.