Getting grounded
The therapeutic power of the earth beneath our feet
What is your relationship with the earth beneath your feet? And how often do you truly connect with it?
Earth is literally the foundation that carries us and holds us up as we walk through the world. We call her ‘Mother Earth’ for a reason – she is our most fundamental support structure. She provides our food, our nourishment, our home. She is also a resource that can support our healing. Yet many of us pay little attention to her in our day-to-day lives. In fact, in many parts of the world, humans have become so disconnected from the earth that we’ve forgotten, neglected and abused the source of our sustenance. Indigenous cultures tend to have a different relationship, a deeper reverence and connection to the earth and the natural world around us.
It’s no coincidence that, in the West, we are also very disconnected from our bodies. To connect to the earth is to connect to our physicality, since we are made of the same organic elements (‘earth to earth, ashes to ashes’). When we lose our connection to the physical, embodied realm, energy spirals upwards into the mental realm. If earth represents our body, we tend to largely live in the clouds – in the airy space of our thinking minds. This may show up in day-to-day life as worries, fears, planning thoughts or rumination. We might be distracted, forgetful or preoccupied; overwhelmed, panicky or anxious. The body is the seat of our wisdom. Whilst we’re disconnected from it, we tend to look outwards for answers (to experts, to Google) rather than going inwards, getting quiet and receiving the messages of our intuitive knowing.
Grounding is an important resource in trauma healing and somatic work. It refers to the practice of bringing the energy back down into the home of the body, connecting with the solidity of the earth, creating a sense of greater inner stability.
When I think of grounding, I think of the image of an old oak tree, its roots buried deep into the earth, stable, secure, connected to the source of its sustenance through the solidity of its trunk. When our roots run deep, we’re solid, anchored, and connected to something larger. It enhances our capacity to stay centred and steady and to weather the storms of life. Like dropping an anchor, it helps us avoid getting swept away on the tide of an incoming emotion.
To find grounding, we tune into the downward flow of energy (in yoga terminology - Apana Vayu). We shift the locus of our awareness from the head down into the body, from the torso down through the legs and feet, and from the feet into the earth, yielding into the structures that support us. As we do so, there’s a calming, a quietening, a steadying that occurs. The nervous system settles, mental chatter dials down, our physiology shifts towards equilibrium and we reconnect to our sense of inner knowing and of trust.
When we work with grounding on the yoga mat, we move more slowly, more consciously, perhaps work with fewer postures and pause for longer in each. We work with practices that engage the legs - like tree pose and the warrior series - to create a strong foundation in the lower half of the body. We spend time in shapes that bring us low to the ground, and focus the gaze on a still point, or drishti. We surrender the weight of the body in savasana (relaxation pose), melting into the earth, supported by its solidity.
But we do not need a yoga practice to find this sense of slowing down, weightiness and contact. We can find it wherever we are in the present moment – seated, standing, lying down. It’s as simple as a shift of awareness. Activities like gardening, cooking, or really anything that takes us into the body can be the vehicle. Our intentionality makes the difference. Connecting to our sensory awareness, the breath and the movement of the body is powerful. Our sense of smell, taste, touch, sound and sight are all potent portals into the present moment and our embodied being.
Food can be a source of grounding too. Think warming, nourishing foods, solid proteins and foods grown in the earth.
writes beautifully about the therapeutic use of food on her Substack page I recommend checking out her page if you’d like to learn more on this.One of my favourite grounding practices is walking. Not the kind of walking where you’re focused on a destination or listening to a podcast, but the slow, conscious kind, where you feel the sensations of your feet meeting the earth and drink in the sensory landscape. Perhaps even barefoot if the conditions allow. Growing up in England, I don’t recall anyone walking outside barefoot, except maybe on a beach, and even then, the climate was quite prohibitive. Moving to New Zealand, I found people walk barefoot a lot more (even in the supermarket on occasion!) Over time, the barefoot walking bug grew on me. I started to discover the simple pleasure of bare feet on springy, dewy grass, the sensations of softness, coolness, moisture, that would all be lost to awareness through the rubber soles of shoes.
These days when I feel my bare feet on the earth it also evokes a sense of connection to the land, an awareness that different pieces of land carry different energies, histories and meanings. This is something widely acknowledged in Māori culture, where people’s connection to the land forms a part of their identity, their sense of belonging. Māori have a word for this, turangawaewae, loosely translated as ‘a place to stand’. I grew up in cities where the land was mostly sealed over with concrete. It took a long time (and moving countries) for me to appreciate how a sense of place and a piece of land can anchor us.
The earth can support us if we let it. In a similar way to how the earth absorbs the electrical energy of a lightning strike, you can also visualise ‘giving’ your emotional energy to the earth. Like the idealised mother figure, Mother Earth is big enough and vast enough to absorb it all.
What is your favourite way to ground? I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments below, and please do share this post with others.
I’ll be taking a little break from posting over the next few weeks while I do some travel and study, but I’ll be back with lots of fresh content from late September (including a series of posts on ‘Things I’ve Learned About Love’ 😊 ). Stay tuned and please add yourself as a subscriber to make sure you don’t miss out.
Great read. I absolutely love my solo wandering walks.
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