GROUNDING in 30 Seconds: How to Be a Spot of Calm in the Midst of a Storm

What is Grounding? 
This technique is incredibly important for your health, strength, and clarity. Some call it Rooting or Earthing. It just means anchoring yourself energetically into your true home. You can be a pillar of sanity when everyone around you is going crazy.

We see huge CHANGES in the world.
We know that nature has cycles – like day and night. We get Expansion and Contraction. However, some cycles are MUCH LONGER. Like once in a lifetime, or once in thousands of years. Grounding helps prepare the body for change. Every new cycle represents enormous opportunities for learning and renewal, although it can bring great upheaval and discomfort. At the same time we want to protect our families and our communities from harm or distress.

Grounding is an important inner tool to prepare for transformation.
When a major cycle shift happens once in many thousands of years, like humanity is facing now, people might completely freak out. It’s huge. It’s not as easy as seasons. We enjoy winter and we even look for reasons to love cold weather. We get to wear our scarves, even though freezing cold is an extreme contraction in the cycle of death and rebirth. Yet we can always be reassured, because we know with total certainty that Spring will come. But when the cycle is long, we have no idea how long it will last on the contraction, or what it will bring in the expansion. Who can predict?

How can we ride these changes to success in our lives? 
Grounding is an essential tool to prepare internally for change. You can be a pillar of sanity when everyone around you is freaking out. The body’s vertical column of energy is your connection to the earth below and sky above. When your column is vital, you’re connected to the entire cosmos.

Today we will learn a way breathe to bring your awareness back home inside the body in the present moment right now. Then we will create an energetic column to root your body down into the earth and up into the sky. This is a skill indigenous cultures show their young children; they teach all tribe members personal sovereignty. Kindergartens should teach it too.

When things collapse around you, and you arrive at the bottom, what do you do?
You have to pause a bit. When you gather yourself and are ready to start again, you’re a different person. You’re wiser, you have a pure mind, a beginner’s mind, and a clear heart. From there you can recreate new. Chances are the collapse may turn out to be a huge gift.

My Breakdown and Recovery
A few months ago after I finished stressful project and moved to a new home, I experienced a total breakdown both physical and mental. I had no idea how to BE in my body anymore. I was in shock, confused, and disoriented. My back went out, my emotions uncontrollable, everything out of balance. Doctors were not helpful. I couldn’t walk, couldn’t sit,  couldn’t sleep, and couldn’t breathe deeply to balance it.

Somehow, I understood this was telling me to connect into my new home and my life in a completely new way. It took me several weeks of patient breathing, walking on the earth, adjusting my posture, letting go of the old, using this slow, gentle technique. And now I’m showing it to you.

When you’re of a certain age, like me you have a few habits.
Habits are just physical patterns, neural pathways, thought and synapse connections that we’re accustomed to.  Some of our habits are positive, and some are totally unconscious. We feel crystallized by so many accumulated thought forms, information, and patterns which hold us back and they need to be cleared out. Heh Heh! When things fall apart it’s just nature flushing our old habits and illusions down the drain. Maybe that’s a wonderful thing. But it’s very uncomfortable.

There’s only one thing to do when everything falls apart and that is to relax and go with it. When you’re ready to pick up the pieces, you are wiser and spiritually stronger. You just got a huge gift, of a clearing which forces you to change old habits into new. Have compassion for yourself. Take your time to reflect on it. Gather your courage, and just start over. Try to be grateful for something. You might have to re-learn the simplest things. And that is fine.

What is the grounding cord?
You can think it as an electrical connection that links your tailbone and spine to the center of the Earth. It goes down through the pelvic floor and out both feet. It goes through each chakra. And your column also goes up to the center of the Milky Way galaxy. This is your HOME. Some cultures see it as a totem pole from earth to heaven.

Chinese medicine sees it as a long column of Qi, your meridians like an electrical system connecting down through the bones, joints, and chakras, into the center of the Earth and up to the heavens. Your column is connected and enlivened through your breath. It gives you strength and freedom. Everyone has this or we wouldn’t be alive. This technique is to enliven it and USE it mindfully.

Life is unpredictable.
Fear is not our true state. We have to consciously move beyond fear. Instead focus on the breath. Think about being grateful for something you love. Big Changes are a chance to shed what we don’t need and take back our true personal power.

The human body is a lot like a tree.
What does a tree do? A tree DRINKS water, nourishment, and minerals from the soil in the dirt below. And it reaches up to RECEIVE light from the sun above. It drinks from earth and sky. A tree grows strong, offering fruit, shade, and oxygen for us to breathe.

Three Steps to Grounding:

1. Inhale Rose, Smile, Gather Awareness in Present Moment
2. Grounding Column to Earth and Sky
3. How to Maintain the Column Every Day

Step 1: Inhale the Present Moment with Inner Smile

Sit comfortably on the ground, on the floor, or in a chair with your feet firmly on the floor. Place your Tongue behind upper teeth to connect the meridians. Remember the Inner smile. Your secret smile lifts the internal face muscles to allow joy and light into the brain centers with each breath.

Inhale a relaxed breath. Pretend you are smelling a freshly picked rose someone just gave you. Draw in this wonderful perfume from nature. Allow it to bring joy into your brain, and swallow down, to let thoughts descend down to your heart and belly core. Smell the rose again as you gather your awareness from wherever you let it wander. Bring it 100% back home into that core of your body Back from the many issues that occupy your outer mind, so that you feel at home right now in the present moment. Swallow it down again into the heart and navel. Good.

Step 2: Grounding Column to Earth and Sky

It helps to sit up straight, lift the sternum a bit, gently engage the core, let the tail bone point downward and tuck the pelvis a bit.

Inhale again. As you EXHALE, imagine a deep root going down from your spine down through the pelvic floor of your body descending deep into the earth. The earth is your mother, which is your home. Let the bottoms of your feet grow roots to be at home on the earth. Take another breath and send your column straight up your spine through the top of your head to the sky, all the way up to the central Sun of the Milky Way Galaxy. Be aware of your whole cord. Feel the strength and support of this column anywhere you go. When your vertical line of your spine is tall and open from top to bottom, you’re like a sacred totem pole.

Let’s practice it
In 30-seconds you become a Spot of Calm in the Midst of a Storm.

Step 1:
Inhale the beautiful rose, gather your awareness back home into your body, and swallow thoughts. Good.

Step 2:
Inhale again and exhale your deep grounding cord down from your spine through the pelvic floor of your body into mother earth and through your feet. Inhale again and exhale your column up through the top of your head to the center of the Milky Way. Feel the support of this powerful column everywhere you go.

Was that 30 seconds? Good. How do you feel? I feel really strong. Practice this. If you can do it in 30-seconds, you can make it a habit that you’ll remember in that moment when it’s really important.

Step 3:
Once you activate your column, how do you maintain it so you are ready anytime? Well, if you can make time to walk in nature under the sunlight every day, it will really help you. If you can take off your shoes or lean against a tree, this will help to feel your power in your home. Practice living life simply. Eat clean food, unprocessed nutrition directly from nature, exercise, breathe, avoid toxins, be grateful for something, appreciate little things. Feel joy in your body right now. Being present in this moment and grounded just means you can be ALL of yourself. Strong, sovereign, aware, growing, happy.

I hope you enjoyed this simple basic reminder. Thanks for watching!