When the state of our nervous system is a bit elevated, we act with less flexibility. The scope of available options narrows. This exercise helps to fully return into the body with a short guided meditation. Somatic component, particular hands placement during the process, will release excessive tensions and bring back bodily sensations that often fade during stress.

Gradual return to calm, relaxed state will help to feel the body. It will also increase awareness and widen up the capacity to act from a more grounded, realistic inner disposition.

Please refrain from practicing if you feel weakened or unwell. Choose rest instead.

More practices: Full Body Tapping

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Proprioceptive signals that our nervous system sends from our skin, muscles and internal organs to our brain allow us to notice what happens to the body. When we are highly agitated or anxious, we literally stop feeling it. The exercise will help to return to a state of presence, calm the mind and somewhat pacify excessive emotionality. It will allow to physically feel the boundaries of the body and facilitate return to a normal sense of self.

Many people have certain issues with maintaining healthy boundaries nowadays. If done regularly this practice can help restore a more balanced present state, reduce the intensity of bodily impulses and reactions.

Recommendation: exercise everyday in the morning before entering into the daily routine. The effects will gradually increase after approximately 10-14 days of regular practice. Add more practice during the periods of acute stress or other situations when the feeling of center is lost or when feeling less grounded than usually.

Please refrain from practicing if you feel weakened or unwell. Choose rest instead.

More practices: Working With Head and Face

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We use face to maintain or avoid contact with others. When we are in a fight/flight or freeze state, our capacity to engage in meaningful communication, to comfortably accept the presence of others reduces significantly. By working with head and face we improve the sense of presence and feel more grounded, we facilitate the connection with ourselves and the outside world, as well as other people.

Recommendation: Practice once or twice a day for 10-15 days to make the body remember the process. After this period of learning the practice can be especially effective if used to cope with excessive activation or moments of distress. Practicing when you feel relatively well will help develop the positive feedback loop that facilitates the much needed change in the moments when you feel out of balance.

Please refrain from practicing if you feel unwell. Choose rest instead.

Read more: What’s Grounding?

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Grounding is developed by those who are engaged in physical work, and therefore are well aware of their motor and physical features. On the contrary, it may be almost absent for those who mainly operate mental structures, or objects and projects that do not require “here and now” presence. In the second case, natural communication with the body including the sensation of grounding, is often distorted or broken. Meanwhile, one can restore these ties. Visible increase of joy of life feeling as well as the contact with reality in its beauty will confirm such a change. Grounding always refers to the context of here and now.

Leaders are often well-grounded: in order to be able to influence other people with your will, you might need to feel your base.

“What can grounding offer us? It gives balance, ground under your feet, a possibility to stand, to contain life, a possibility to be able to discern, to stay in reality, on earth, even when things get hard or are very powerful.“

Merete Holm Brantbjerg, co-founder of bodynamic analysys

In our everyday speech we label the people who are not well-grounded as dreamers. On the contrary, “both feet on the ground”, would characterize someone we rely on. When we are “all in the air” in the difficult situation, we subconsciously turn away from presence and therefore make the situation even more difficult or dangerous. If this happens to you sometimes, that is something to work on.

Daily exercises focused on the body and bodily sensations (most accessible and ubiquitous are yoga and qigong) helps regain the sense of grounding. Working with a helping practitioner, craniosacral therapy or dance-movement practice will be extremely useful as well. A massage session may increase your grounding capacity, though not in all cases. It would be better to check the relevance of the particular service in advance.

In my resource programs, as well as in the individual online sessions, Grounding is among the first qualities we learn to restore and manage. 

I used several theses of Merete Holm Brantbjerg to create this text. Here is the link to one of her articles

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