Grounding From Within

So today's meditation we're going to play with different types of ways of grounding our bodies and our energy.

And we're going to talk a little bit about why is grounding important,

How do we get ungrounded,

And how can we be more aware of that as we go through the day.

So you can start by tuning into your breath,

Kind of discovering where you are right now.

And we'll start in an interesting way of using our hands and you can just put your hands or we're actually gonna sit on our hands.

You could sit on your hands and kind of wake up the sits bones or you can even sometimes I like to put a hand on the tailbone.

And I just really like using touch and movement to just you know we're sitting to meditate but that doesn't mean we need to be still and it doesn't mean we need to be like spaced out and ethereal.

So I like to just kind of send a message to the body of what we're gonna be working on today.

And so you could just kind of you know whatever feels comfortable for you either sitting on your hands or saying hello to your tailbone and just kind of say hi to that root chakra,

The base of the spine,

Part of the body.

Get comfortable there for a minute.

I'll talk a little bit about grounding.

So a nice analogy that I like to use is a tree.

And if you have a tree with you know little wispy roots that don't really go too deep in the ground and they're kind of shallow and thin that tree isn't one it's not gonna grow very tall or big and two the second like you know a storm comes it's gonna fall over right?

It doesn't have a really good grip on the earth it's just gonna it's gonna sway more it'll bend more and it won't be as resilient.

But if you take a nice big tree like a nice big redwood tree you know a tree that has really strong thick knobby roots that reach really deep into the earth and make lots of connections under the earth and go nice and deep and wide then that tree can grow nice and tall really broad you could hold a lot of weight on the top of its branches and it can withstand more wind and more elements that come at it because the parts of it beneath the surface are strong and so this is what it's like for us and our energy when we have a nice strong connection to the earth we can grow further faster better so you can just kind of with your awareness send a hello to the planet to the earth let's kind of acknowledge we are on the earth right now this is where we chose to be born and we have gravity that holds us here on the planet and so you can just imagine that you're let's imagine that we're in the middle of one of those huge redwood forests that I haven't been to yet but I've seen pictures of they're pretty cool and you can imagine you come across a nice it's actually the stump of a tree tree that used to be there and now it's just the tree stump but it's nice and wide and it's still got it's nice strong roots and you can just imagine sitting on that big tree stump and allowing a connection to form between you and those roots you can almost see it and you can use your hands still on that base of the spine to feel that connection you can even kind of make like you're screwing it on or plugging it in you know and you can just envision those roots growing even deeper into the earth and they can kind of take their time twisting and turning through the different layers of the earth really easily really gently traveling down and we'll explore some of the ways that we become ungrounded one of the ways we can lose our sense of grounding is if we are in physical pain you've ever been sick I remember when I would be home sick from school I would just like lay on the couch all day and watch TV right it's so miserable so I would just like tune out and just go into the TV and leave my body because it didn't feel good to be in it and if you've experienced any type of like chronic pain or chronic illness it's also really easy to just want to leave that another way that we can become ungrounded is emotional pain or emotional discomfort especially if we're having a conflict with someone or something isn't quite going our way or we're working on a project and we run into some roadblocks and we just don't want to deal with it right out of the body let me go someplace where I don't have to deal with this and just leave my physical body behind and then another way that we can become ungrounded is when other people's energy gets in our space and so this is kind of like it's like if somebody comes to your house unannounced and they're like being really loud making a scene destroying your stuff and you're just like oh I don't like this I'm gonna I'm gonna just leave sometimes other people's energy can get in our space and it can feel uncomfortable because it's not ours or because they're throwing an intense energy or emotion at us like anger or even grief or urgency been sensing a lot of urgency energy lately and we can feel that and just kind of try to escape it so all these things and and other things too can kind of lead us to get ungrounded and so being aware of those things you can just kind of let that nice tree trunk root connection continue to form with the center of the planet and you can see it in your mind's eye you can just kind of sense it or you might feel it that your body is just getting a better connection to the earth and just let it really click into the core of the planet and when you sense that that connection is there you can just kind of like flipping a switch like flipping on a vacuum cleaner it just kind of starts to release from your body the great thing about grounding cord releases is that you don't need to know what you're letting go of you can just trust that your body knows what energy you're ready to release what doesn't belong to you that you can give back and you can just kind of watch it watch that flow of energy leaving your body in your space and recycling back to the earth so when we have a good grounding practice this really helps us listen to our physical body and this is why sometimes when we start a practice like this like grounding every morning when we wake up or every day after work when you start to to get grounded you might notice pain or spots in the body that feel uncomfortable as you bring your awareness back in and that's normal so I gave the analogy about being sick and just kind of zoning out in front of in front of movies and TV and I still love to do that there's nothing wrong with that it's totally fine but I do notice that when I'm able to really practice grounding when I'm you know if I have a sinus infection or bad allergies or something like that if I can really practice staying grounded and with my body as I even you know as I feel kind of gross it actually helps me move through it a bit faster you know to just kind of be with it might also notice as you are grounding that you know some of that emotional discomfort might get to might get lit up some of the some of the things we might have been putting off dealing with might come to the surface maybe some feelings of loss or grief that we were afraid to face or feelings of anger or frustration that we felt like we couldn't feel or express and so those are also good things to notice to not ignore them or dismiss them but to just notice like oh I'm grounding and how suddenly really freaking pissed just kind of notice like oh I guess I've been holding on to this I wonder if I'm I'm ready to feel it now or even maybe release it as your grounding cord is getting even wider and stronger you can even augment it you can kind of intend for each of your sits bones to have its own like separate connection so it's like you've got your main grounding cord from your root and you also have two more connections traveling down to the center of the planet from each sits bone really where the very very base of our body kind of going straight straight down and have those connections also release and this is a nice way for us to ground the nervous system and release some anxiety and stress and you know that cortisol reaction we've grounded our root we've grounded our sits bones let's take our spring our awareness to our aura and this is a space around our body might just notice where your aura is today or has come in all shapes and sizes a nice comfortable size is you know about arms length in all directions around our body wherever your aura is today you can kind of see it like this nice big oval around you and that shape can actually you can like tuck it into your grounding cord or extends you know a foot or two below our feet so you can just kind of it's like a t-shirt that you tuck into your jeans you know like a blanket that you hook your feet into to keep your feet warm you can just kind of do this little tuck tuck and allow that grounding cord to release not just from your physical body but from your whole energetic body your entire aura and this is also a special connection because whatever is floating around in our aura if we don't look at it deal with the face it it eventually comes into our body bodies like a sponge for whatever energy is in our aura so releasing and grounding our aura helps move some of that energy that might get stuck there you can kind of notice does it feel like when I ground my aura the image I get a lot when I am grounding my aura is like a wash for some reason it's like a washing machine that's like it's washing the clothes it's washing you know and then all you know or even a dishwasher it's washing and then all that kind of soapy but kind of dirty water it just drains from the bottom of the machine and you just kind of watch that the other thing that happens when when we ground is we have we can have more of our own energy in our body and in our aura and then when we are here we notice more quickly when somebody else is here and this is like if you're in your house if somebody's having a house party in your house and you're not there then you don't know that it's happening but if you're there then you could be like what's happening in my house and you could kick those people out right and it's the same with our space if we're here holding court in our space then we see and notice what doesn't belong here and we can intentionally move it out and so this practice is really teaching us to own our space so if you were if you're in a place where you know you can't take your shoes off then we're gonna do some some grounding from our feet so if you have shoes on and you can't take your shoes off you just kind of tap and rub your feet against the floor if you can take your shoes off and and kind of you know use your hands to give yourself a little foot massage and kind of wake up we're just waking up that center of this of the foot the sole of the foot um where we have our feet chakras and also like the heels your heels the bottom of your heel and also that tendon like the um the achilles tendon on the back of the heel just kind of like give yourself some massage in that area oh we didn't know there would be massage today this feels great pick up those feet and then you can place your feet on flat on the floor and just invite some nice grounding cords to form from your heels connecting your heels and your legs all the way to the center of the planet and these are just two more points that we can get a nice connection from and this is like supercharging our grounding if i do a regular grounding cord and like that's not enough man i go to my feet and i ground from here yeah and you can release from these grounding cords too the truth is that we can put a grounding cord anywhere on our body and in our space and a great way to use this tool is and we'll do it now if you'll just kind of bring your awareness to any part of your physical body that's calling out for your attention and it might be calling out with you know a pain that you've had in that spot it might be tension like you know oh i have these points on my neck that are just like or it might be you know part of the body where you're feeling like emotional pain like your heart space just feels heavy and so just say hello to that part that's calling you right now you can even put a hand on it like the palm of your hand and give to it its own grounding cord and grounding cords you know you can use a nice tree trunk analogy or you can use a flower but it could be any it could be a beam of light it can be i love waterfall grounding cords it could be anything that feels good to you and so you can give this part of your body a nice grounding cord and connect it to the center of the planet and allow the earth to just draw draw from that spot whatever is ready to move and to be released and it's not a forceful release it's not coming from a place of resistance to what's there it's more of like the earth welcoming it back it's more of a i'm ready to let go of this it's like a a backpack that you're just like i'm gonna take this off now i don't need it anymore you could just watch and sense that release happening if there are any other parts that you want to do this for you can take the time to do that really good everyone so a really important thing to do when we're releasing uh through our grounding cords like we are today um is to fill back in with our own energy and so you can just bring your awareness to above your crown and allow like a magnet to just collect up any energy of yours that you would like to fill in with any energy of yours that got away from you over the course of the day and you can just pull down your own essential energy it's like your signature energy you can pull that down into a nice big bright cold sun and however big you're envisioning it just make it like four times bigger than that whoa whoa look at those gold suns are so big great job and when you're ready you can pop those pop that sun and kind of watch or sense all of that gold filling in watch it fill in from the top of your head all the way down your shoulders into your chest down your arms it's filling in all of the spaces that you're released from we want to leave here today feeling full of ourselves let's just be full of ourselves why not and it fills in your whole physical body down to your feet and it fills in even more than that it fills in your entire aura the space around your body with all of that gold and you can have as much of it as you give yourself permission to have so be extra extra greedy today because you've moved a lot of energy and the great thing about a grounding cord or in this case the various grounding cords that we've set is that it's a little bit like set it and forget it you can set it you don't have to always be thinking about it for it to be there you can just intend this is my grounding cord for today and you can check in periodically if you get to a meeting or you get to you get off the phone with someone you could just be like how's my grounding i feel a little bit i feel like i got a little bit sideways and then you can reground you can give it a spruce you can replace it entirely you can do whatever you want to do so you can just kind of bring your awareness back to your body give yourself some nice deep cleansing breaths and when you're ready you can open your eyes