June 10, 2025 • 24 mins
Grounding shifts the autonomic nervous system from "fight or flight" (sympathetic) to "rest and digest" (parasympathetic) states.
Benefits to grounding:
Mindful Awareness
Breathwork
at https://www.patreon.com/c/EarthandWater
Join the cause: savanah.s.blake@gmail.com
Twitter/TikTok: Earthand_water
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Benefits to grounding:
- Reduced stress and anxiety
- Improved sleep
- Reduced pain and inflammation
- Increased energy and vitality
- Restores electromagnetic balance in the body
- Improved mood
- Better circulation and heart health
- Faster wound healing.
- Enhanced immune system function.
Mindful Awareness
- Body scans
- Checking in with the senses
- Being aware of thoughts & redirecting them as needed
- Sinking the weight
- Relaxing everything down
- Walking barefoot (Earthing)
- Touching grass
- Gardening
- Going for a walk
- Spending time in nature
- Growing roots into the earth
- Energy dialysis with the Earth
- Root chakra clearing
- Cleanse the Energy Blocks of the Root Chakra; Guided Color Visualization Meditation 396hz
- How to Heal Your Root Chakra to Ease Anxiety & Feel More Stable 396hz
- Mycelium Energy Exchange: a Guided Meditation to Attract What You Need & Want
Breathwork
- Breathing deeply, utilizing the diaphragm
- Extended exhales
- Relaxing on the exhales
- Following the breath on it’s journey in and out
- Imagining inhaling certain helpful energies
- Imagining exhaling unhelpful energies
- Dancing
- Stretching
- Strengthening
- Sports / Games
- Exercise of any sort
- Clubs
- Volunteer groups
- Team events
- Yoga classes
- Meditations
- Full video ad free pod episodes
- New & full moon manifestation episodes
- Journaling prompts
at https://www.patreon.com/c/EarthandWater
Join the cause: savanah.s.blake@gmail.com
Twitter/TikTok: Earthand_water
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/earthandwateryoga/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey guys, and welcome back to the New Earth Alchemy podcast.
I don't have a guest with us today. Today it's
just me and you, probably some birds and some chickens
if you are listening very closely. Today, I wanted to
come on and talk about grounding, grounding our energy, what
that means, and how to do it. So think of
(00:24):
your body as a electrical circuit, an electrical system, because
it is, and just like any other electrical system, you
have to ground the electricity in order to keep the
current balanced in check, right And if you don't do that,
if you don't have that grounding wire, then the energy
(00:45):
can get chaotic and all over the place. And essentially
your body does the exact same thing in the exact
same way. Instead of using a grounding wire, all we
have to use is our minds. All we have to
use is our thoughts in order to ground our energy.
Now we can ground through our feet as well, through
(01:05):
our skin. Doesn't have to be our feet, it can
be our hands, It could be anything, and you can
you know, we've heard of earthing a lot lately, and
just getting barefoot or physical touch skin to ground anyway
you can. That is a form of grounding for sure.
So you know, any chance you get, walk barefoot in
(01:27):
the grass, on concrete, on rocks, touch grass, you know,
touch grass, do that. Those are all great things to do.
But you can also anytime, anywhere, no matter where you're
at or what you're doing, ground using just your mental
thoughts and your processes. Practicing this, doing this, trying to
(01:49):
stay grounded for longer, extended periods of time, is going
to help reduce stress and anxiety, overwhelm, It's going to
help improve your sleep. It also reduces inflammation and pain.
That's cool, increases your energy and vitality, improves your mood,
(02:10):
helps you regulate your emotions. You have better circulation, heart health,
faster wound healing, and enhanced immune system function. So this
switches over your fight or flight response into the wrist,
digest and heal. Remember, your nervous system is like a
(02:33):
light switch. It has two modes, and either it's in
one or it's in the other. So if it's in fight, flight,
freeze faun you know that side, then it cuts off
the wrist digest heal mechanisms. So it can't do both.
It has to do one or the other, and most
(02:54):
of us are stuck in the fight or flight, which
cuts off all of the other stuff. And that's when
you see, that's why stress levels, our stress levels are
the most important factor in our health and well being
physically and mentally, mentally and physically, Okay, those corsol levels,
they cut off the healing mechanisms. The rest digest and
(03:18):
heal is you know, just because your your body may
be going through the motions of digestion, but it's not
absorbing anything. It's not going it's not doing what it
needs to do with the food by taking it in
and sending it where it needs to do because it's
too busy. It's too busy in fight or flight. Okay,
(03:40):
fight or flight is designed for right now, immediate threats,
and you don't need to digest your food and absorb.
You don't need to focus on healing the cells and
the wounds and any kind of pain you have going on,
any tightness you don't. Your body doesn't is not concerned
with those things. If there's a tiger chasing you, you know,
(04:03):
it just needs to get away from the tiger. And
then when everything's safe and secure again, that's when we
can switch back over to the regular day to day practice.
You know, if your house is burning down, you're not
going to stop and do the dishes. You're not going
to start folding laundry. It's the same concept. So when
(04:23):
our stress responses are heightened, essentially the house is on fire,
we need to put out the fire and then we
can go do the dishes and you know, fold the
laundry until the kind of you know, priorities right, Unfortunately,
are today's society and culture and our lifestyles have us
(04:46):
in fight or flight pretty much NonStop. The house is
always on fire. And yes, we've gotten used to this,
you know the memes. This is fine, the house is
on fire. This is fine, but it's not okay. We
can't live like that because it's going to deteriorate our body.
(05:06):
So practicing these grounding techniques are going to help us
more intentionally switch over from our fight or flight into
our wrist and digest. So lots of ways to do that.
We're going to go over them one by one. You
can pick out the ones you like, the ones that
you sound like may fit you in your lifestyle. It
(05:28):
may get a little overwhelming with the amount of information,
but I'm going to put all of the notes down
low in the notes area so that you can glance
back through them, refresh your memory, pick out what you
want to do, which you want to try again, It
doesn't matter. Make it your own. Don't worry about being
(05:49):
particular or this is the right way to do this.
There is no right way. Okay, all of this is
very abstract. You just kind of have to play with it.
See what works for you, See what you like. Make
it your own. If you have less amount of numbers
of things to do, like steps. If less steps is
(06:11):
what works for you, which is what works for most
of us, then great. Eliminate the ones you don't need,
skip over the ones you don't need. As long as
you're getting the same results. You know, we're tuning our energy.
As long as you're getting those results, it doesn't matter
how you do it. If you need more steps, add
more in. If you have questions, let me know. You
(06:32):
want to make it as easily accessible to yourself as
possible so that you can come back to it often.
So we already talked about connecting with the earth barefoot
or touching grass or whatever whatever have you. Sometimes it's
a little hard to do though, right if you're sitting
in the middle of traffic and you need to ground yourself.
Can't really pull that one out, So instead, a super
(06:55):
common one is to simply mindfulness, being aware of your body,
your surroundings, the internal, the external, aware of everything in
this moment that we could be aware of, you know,
inside our body, outside our body, our surroundings. Tapping into
(07:18):
our senses. What do you smell, what do you hear,
what do you taste, what do you see? All the things,
all the things, the senses, scanning through the body and
noticing how this feels, how that feels. Again, really paying
particular attention to the lower half of your body, shifting
your weight into the lower half of your body. A
(07:40):
lot of times we don't realize that we have all
of our energy, attention, weight, stress up in our upper
half our body. So probably just now you're like, shift
my weight into the lower half of my body, and
you just you don't even aware, you're not even aware
that you're not, because it makes sense that you would
(08:01):
already be right. But a lot of us are living
up in our shoulders and the tension, the stress areas.
So instead melting all of that down. Visualization processes help
a lot of people so imagining your growing roots from
where you're sitting, where you're standing, whatever. A lot of
(08:24):
people like to visualize the roots starting at the base
of the spine. You can also do the they start
at your feet. Whatever works for you is fine and
exactly correct. You can visualize the root chakra spinning healthily.
If you're familiar with the root chakra. Anything to do
(08:46):
with that is also helpful. So healing your root chakra,
focusing on your root chakra, all of that is super
useful for grounding. Also kind of all the same thing
a little bit, a little bit. If you want to
know more about the root chakra, I'll put information about
that and how to find more info on it, because
i have content specifically on each chakra, so I'll just
(09:07):
link those below. A lot of people like to visualize
after you get your chords connected, your roots connected to
the earth, imagine an energetic exchange. So maybe you have
say two chords roots connected to the earth. One is
draining all the excess energy in your body that you
(09:30):
don't need, all of the unhelpful energy, all of the
problematic energy, and the other one is it is an innerchange,
so bringing up from the earth. The other one is
good energy, balanced energy, positive energy. So it's kind of
like energetic dialysis. So you're running your energy through the earth,
(09:52):
clearing it, cleaning it, and bringing up new positive energy
energy that you need, energy that you've been looking for.
I have a meditation that I will also link below
that kind of helps you walk through this process. Some
people have suggested imagining that you are a tree with deep,
(10:12):
strong roots or a mountain immovable and stable, meditating on
the words of groundedness like stable and safety, security, those
words that hold energy, So focusing on them and thinking
to yourself repeating them maybe grounded, grounded, safe, safe, secure, stable, solid.
(10:41):
I used to write these words down on post it
notes and post them put them randomly around the house
in my vehicles so that I saw them often because
a lot of the biggest, the hardest parts of doing
these practices most of time, is just remembering that they
exist and that they are tools to be used. You
can also use these words with your breathwork. Breathwork is
(11:04):
also grounding, So just focusing on the breath is like
basically really all you need to do, but you can
add more to it. And I understand that breathwork is
a whole subject to in and of itself. So if
I'm not careful, I could end up turning this entire
episode from here on out just into breathwork and about it,
(11:25):
but in a nutshell focused on your breathing. We want
to breathe deeply into the belly, utilizing the diaphragm. We
don't want to Shallow chest breathing is what we mostly do,
most of us. If you watch babies breathe, their bellies
are going up and down, like when they're taking a nap.
(11:46):
Watch them. Their bellies are what's going up and down.
That's because they're still utilizing their diaphragm and breathing deep
into those lower parts of the lungs, those lower chambers.
Shallow chest breathing is something that happens when we're in
our stress response and a lot of us get stuck there.
And you know, also with our body image issues, everyone's
(12:11):
like sucking it in all the time, and that constricts
your breathing also, So learning to relax, learning to breathe
in the belly, it's okay. And it's also important to
know that when you start changing your breathing habits and
trying to consciously bring it deeper into the belly. It's
going to take a little bit of practice, especially if
you've been shallow chest breathing for many, many years. It's
(12:35):
going to feel possibly like your hyperventilating at first, like
you can't breathe properly, and oh man, what's going on.
This is supposed to help my anxiety, this is actually
making my anxiety worse. So there is you should know
that there is usually a little bit of a learning
curve there, a little bit of a bridge that you
have to cross before you get to the easier benefits
(12:58):
of focusing on your breathing but in a nutshell deep
in hells deep in the belly all the way, and
then exaggerated exhals, focusing on the release and relaxation as
you excel. So you can incorporate words into this in
(13:20):
a couple of different ways. You can again imagining the
energy of the word piece serenity, I don't know, just
pick a random word that you like and focus on
the energy of it, and you can imagine yourself breathing
in this energy, and then as you exhl blowing away
(13:41):
anything that no longer serves you. Just leaning into all
of that exercise can be a great grounding practice. And
I know a lot of people don't want to hear that,
but it's actually one of the easier practices if you
ask me, because you know so attuned to our physical
(14:02):
environment and our physical bodies that sometimes it can be
a little bit easier to approach these things from a
physical standpoint first, until we can find the mental, spiritual
stuff on the inside. And I promise you, if you
think you don't like exercise, you just have not found
the exercise that works for you. Okay, I hate exercise,
(14:25):
which is hilarious, right, given who I am. I do yoga,
I'm a yoga instructor. I do play a stupid amount
of pickleball, and I also do jiu jitsu. I've always
been into martial arts, but I cannot. I cannot go
to the gym and lift weights or get on these
(14:47):
exercise machines. They bore the crap out of me. I
have to trick myself into exercising through games and play yoga.
I got into it because I came across a Pinterest
article many many years ago than entitled how to exercise
if You're lazy, and I was like, that's it, that's
me tell me more. And it was about yoga, specifically
(15:10):
restorative yoga. And here I am like fifteen years later,
and that has worked for me because I could just
it started out. It's easy access, easy entry. Because I
always tell people, if you want to get started being
more consistent with a practice, if you have a show
(15:33):
that you like to watch, sit in the floor while
you watch it, stretch and then you know that just
kind of turns into more. So that's a great entry level.
Sit in your floor and stretch. Stretching is super grounding.
It's that physical practice, not only stretching, but strength building.
(15:56):
So all of that. Anything you can really get into
your body and activate the strength of your body is
going to make you feel more grounded. Pickleball is also
very low entry and great cardio. And when I say
like very low entry, some of the people beating our
butts are like in their seventies, okay, And if they
(16:17):
can do it, you can do it. Kayaking, hiking. There
are a thousand different ways to exercise that we don't
generally call exercise. We call it other things. Make it
a game, find something you enjoy, but just just keep
bouncing around from this to that. My husband played disc
golf for a while, he just he plays basketball. He
(16:39):
kind of just bounces around from one thing or another.
He'll do this for a little bit until he gets bored,
and then we'll do this for a little bit until
he gets bored. And you'll you'll find amazing benefits if
you not only in the grounding aspect of yourself, but
the pickleball community, the martial arts community, all of these things,
the yoga community. They're communities that you come to a
(17:02):
yoga class thinking that you're doing it for exercise. Oh
you are, but you enter it through that avenue and
it ends up healing all sorts of things for you
because you find yourself becoming a part of this community,
which at the end of the day, most of us
are issues are lack of community, lack of support. We
(17:26):
don't have our villages so readily available anymore, so we
have to kind of work at building those again. So
sometimes I go to pickleball not because I need the
physical activity, but because I need the community aspect. I
need that emotional mental like encapsulation of people around me
(17:49):
who know who I am and like me and can
reassure me and chat, and it just it heals that
that so many of us are missing, So yay for
unforeseen benefits to all of the things, right, But you
can get that, you can find that community aspect and
(18:10):
you know, finding your community your support system that is
also grounding. It's very grounding. We're communal creatures where one
organism connected more than we could ever imagine that we are,
and feeling disconnected to one another really frazzles our energetic
(18:30):
system and leaves us feeling all out of whack and
short circuited. So if you're having trouble staying grounded and
you've been trying all of these things, and you're like, Savannah,
I need I know all of this stuff. Give me
the good stuff. What is the other stuff? Because there's
got to be other stuff because this stuff isn't working.
(18:51):
Most likely it's the community aspect that you're missing, and
you would be amazed at the thing the emotional and
physical things that are healed through that community connection. You know,
we're so cut off. That's our crown chakra. Most of
us can't make it there. You know, I talk about
(19:13):
Mazlow's pyramid and how you have to start at the
bottom base. You know, the root chokra. Most of us
are pretty well stuck in the lower three chakras, and
we can't get to full actualization without that community aspect.
And you can find that community aspect in all sorts
of different places. And I know that it's scary, and
(19:36):
we have social anxiety and people have hurt us. There's
no doubt that the worst emotional pain, trauma, all of
the things in our life come from other people, other individuals,
especially those that we thought were part of our community,
part of our village. But there's also nothing more important
(19:57):
that heals us. There's nothing more heal, you know, it's
the cause and the cure. It's just annoying because it
can be really hard to figure out how to rebuild
your community, reassert yourself into a community, especially if you
are starting from scratch and dragging along a lot of trauma.
(20:19):
Relationship trauma in all of its forms. I mean, I
don't mean relationships romantically, but all of the forms, the family,
the friends, the acquaintances, the all of the types of relationships.
But allowing yourself to venture out and be brave and
dip your toes into various communities, maybe not looking for
(20:45):
like you don't want to go into it looking for
community per se, like maybe you do, but that can
be You don't want to be too strong out the gate.
You don't want to come on too strong, come off
too strong. You want to dip your toes in with
a hobby, you know, start with the thing, not the people,
and then see if it's for you, you know, because
(21:07):
you have to figure out you have to make lasting connections.
So it has to be organic, which means that you
have to genuinely be interested in the thing that you're
going into. You can't just sign up for all of
the clubs, no matter what they are, hoping that you're
going to find your people in one of those. You
have to be specific with Okay, well I am interested
(21:30):
in anime, so let me find a club or something
community wise that has to do with that, or you know,
a book club or a chess club or cooking classes
or whatever whatever. Whatever. There's so many different types, but
just look for something, anything that you can consistently show
(21:52):
up for be a part of. There may be some
volunteer groups in your area that you can join, you know,
depending on what is available to you depends heavily on
where you're located. Where I'm located it's growing, but there's
not a whole lot of options if you're not into sports. Honestly,
(22:13):
where I live, we like in the south, everybody's very
sports oriented and you can find different clubs and groups
and stuff in the city just a couple of you know,
a little bit over a few miles to the left,
but for the most part in my town it's pretty limited.
So it might may also be limited for you as well,
(22:35):
in which case, like if you have the capacity to
start a group of some sort. There was a for
a couple of years I ran a mom's anxiety group
because I was a mom struggling with anxiety, so I
needed and I was already studying how to lessen my anxiety.
So I was putting these groups together like once a
(22:57):
month where we met and talked about our anxiety and
do little exercises and ways to help it. And that
became you know, I couldn't maintain that the way it
needed to be maintained as a new one, but some
people can. If you can't, that's okay too. You know,
you can start with online community. There's lots of ways,
(23:20):
lots of things, but please don't let anxiety hold you back.
It's okay, to be anxious and show up anyway. Okay,
most people are not mean, most, especially as an adults,
most people are not mean. And if you find a
mean one, you can probably bond with the other ones
about the mean one, because if you think that they're mean,
(23:42):
all the other ones think that they're mean to and
y'all can chat about that. Most people these days in
group settings are wonderful. We're all collectively trying to build
our communities and build our villages back from scratch, so
we have that in common already, and most of us
just want the best for one another. So please don't
(24:03):
give up. Please keep trying to find your place and
your people, and try to remember to stay as grounded
as you can, as often as you can. And I
hope these practices helped. I hope this Little Info podcast
episode helped. There's notes below if you need more info.
If you have questions, please never hesitate to ask. If
(24:26):
you want to get started with yoga, I have some
online videos that I've been posting to the Patreon to
help people get into that. But I hope you're doing okay,
and if you need anything, let me know. Thank you
so much for being here and I'm as stay
Hey guys, and welcome back to the New Earth Alchemy podcast.
I don't have a guest with us today. Today it's
just me and you, probably some birds and some chickens
if you are listening very closely. Today, I wanted to
come on and talk about grounding, grounding our energy, what
that means, and how to do it. So think of
(00:24):
your body as a electrical circuit, an electrical system, because
it is, and just like any other electrical system, you
have to ground the electricity in order to keep the
current balanced in check, right And if you don't do that,
if you don't have that grounding wire, then the energy
(00:45):
can get chaotic and all over the place. And essentially
your body does the exact same thing in the exact
same way. Instead of using a grounding wire, all we
have to use is our minds. All we have to
use is our thoughts in order to ground our energy.
Now we can ground through our feet as well, through
(01:05):
our skin. Doesn't have to be our feet, it can
be our hands, It could be anything, and you can
you know, we've heard of earthing a lot lately, and
just getting barefoot or physical touch skin to ground anyway
you can. That is a form of grounding for sure.
So you know, any chance you get, walk barefoot in
(01:27):
the grass, on concrete, on rocks, touch grass, you know,
touch grass, do that. Those are all great things to do.
But you can also anytime, anywhere, no matter where you're
at or what you're doing, ground using just your mental
thoughts and your processes. Practicing this, doing this, trying to
(01:49):
stay grounded for longer, extended periods of time, is going
to help reduce stress and anxiety, overwhelm, It's going to
help improve your sleep. It also reduces inflammation and pain.
That's cool, increases your energy and vitality, improves your mood,
(02:10):
helps you regulate your emotions. You have better circulation, heart health,
faster wound healing, and enhanced immune system function. So this
switches over your fight or flight response into the wrist,
digest and heal. Remember, your nervous system is like a
(02:33):
light switch. It has two modes, and either it's in
one or it's in the other. So if it's in fight, flight,
freeze faun you know that side, then it cuts off
the wrist digest heal mechanisms. So it can't do both.
It has to do one or the other, and most
(02:54):
of us are stuck in the fight or flight, which
cuts off all of the other stuff. And that's when
you see, that's why stress levels, our stress levels are
the most important factor in our health and well being
physically and mentally, mentally and physically, Okay, those corsol levels,
they cut off the healing mechanisms. The rest digest and
(03:18):
heal is you know, just because your your body may
be going through the motions of digestion, but it's not
absorbing anything. It's not going it's not doing what it
needs to do with the food by taking it in
and sending it where it needs to do because it's
too busy. It's too busy in fight or flight. Okay,
(03:40):
fight or flight is designed for right now, immediate threats,
and you don't need to digest your food and absorb.
You don't need to focus on healing the cells and
the wounds and any kind of pain you have going on,
any tightness you don't. Your body doesn't is not concerned
with those things. If there's a tiger chasing you, you know,
(04:03):
it just needs to get away from the tiger. And
then when everything's safe and secure again, that's when we
can switch back over to the regular day to day practice.
You know, if your house is burning down, you're not
going to stop and do the dishes. You're not going
to start folding laundry. It's the same concept. So when
(04:23):
our stress responses are heightened, essentially the house is on fire,
we need to put out the fire and then we
can go do the dishes and you know, fold the
laundry until the kind of you know, priorities right, Unfortunately,
are today's society and culture and our lifestyles have us
(04:46):
in fight or flight pretty much NonStop. The house is
always on fire. And yes, we've gotten used to this,
you know the memes. This is fine, the house is
on fire. This is fine, but it's not okay. We
can't live like that because it's going to deteriorate our body.
(05:06):
So practicing these grounding techniques are going to help us
more intentionally switch over from our fight or flight into
our wrist and digest. So lots of ways to do that.
We're going to go over them one by one. You
can pick out the ones you like, the ones that
you sound like may fit you in your lifestyle. It
(05:28):
may get a little overwhelming with the amount of information,
but I'm going to put all of the notes down
low in the notes area so that you can glance
back through them, refresh your memory, pick out what you
want to do, which you want to try again, It
doesn't matter. Make it your own. Don't worry about being
(05:49):
particular or this is the right way to do this.
There is no right way. Okay, all of this is
very abstract. You just kind of have to play with it.
See what works for you, See what you like. Make
it your own. If you have less amount of numbers
of things to do, like steps. If less steps is
(06:11):
what works for you, which is what works for most
of us, then great. Eliminate the ones you don't need,
skip over the ones you don't need. As long as
you're getting the same results. You know, we're tuning our energy.
As long as you're getting those results, it doesn't matter
how you do it. If you need more steps, add
more in. If you have questions, let me know. You
(06:32):
want to make it as easily accessible to yourself as
possible so that you can come back to it often.
So we already talked about connecting with the earth barefoot
or touching grass or whatever whatever have you. Sometimes it's
a little hard to do though, right if you're sitting
in the middle of traffic and you need to ground yourself.
Can't really pull that one out, So instead, a super
(06:55):
common one is to simply mindfulness, being aware of your body,
your surroundings, the internal, the external, aware of everything in
this moment that we could be aware of, you know,
inside our body, outside our body, our surroundings. Tapping into
(07:18):
our senses. What do you smell, what do you hear,
what do you taste, what do you see? All the things,
all the things, the senses, scanning through the body and
noticing how this feels, how that feels. Again, really paying
particular attention to the lower half of your body, shifting
your weight into the lower half of your body. A
(07:40):
lot of times we don't realize that we have all
of our energy, attention, weight, stress up in our upper
half our body. So probably just now you're like, shift
my weight into the lower half of my body, and
you just you don't even aware, you're not even aware
that you're not, because it makes sense that you would
(08:01):
already be right. But a lot of us are living
up in our shoulders and the tension, the stress areas.
So instead melting all of that down. Visualization processes help
a lot of people so imagining your growing roots from
where you're sitting, where you're standing, whatever. A lot of
(08:24):
people like to visualize the roots starting at the base
of the spine. You can also do the they start
at your feet. Whatever works for you is fine and
exactly correct. You can visualize the root chakra spinning healthily.
If you're familiar with the root chakra. Anything to do
(08:46):
with that is also helpful. So healing your root chakra,
focusing on your root chakra, all of that is super
useful for grounding. Also kind of all the same thing
a little bit, a little bit. If you want to
know more about the root chakra, I'll put information about
that and how to find more info on it, because
i have content specifically on each chakra, so I'll just
(09:07):
link those below. A lot of people like to visualize
after you get your chords connected, your roots connected to
the earth, imagine an energetic exchange. So maybe you have
say two chords roots connected to the earth. One is
draining all the excess energy in your body that you
(09:30):
don't need, all of the unhelpful energy, all of the
problematic energy, and the other one is it is an innerchange,
so bringing up from the earth. The other one is
good energy, balanced energy, positive energy. So it's kind of
like energetic dialysis. So you're running your energy through the earth,
(09:52):
clearing it, cleaning it, and bringing up new positive energy
energy that you need, energy that you've been looking for.
I have a meditation that I will also link below
that kind of helps you walk through this process. Some
people have suggested imagining that you are a tree with deep,
(10:12):
strong roots or a mountain immovable and stable, meditating on
the words of groundedness like stable and safety, security, those
words that hold energy, So focusing on them and thinking
to yourself repeating them maybe grounded, grounded, safe, safe, secure, stable, solid.
(10:41):
I used to write these words down on post it
notes and post them put them randomly around the house
in my vehicles so that I saw them often because
a lot of the biggest, the hardest parts of doing
these practices most of time, is just remembering that they
exist and that they are tools to be used. You
can also use these words with your breathwork. Breathwork is
(11:04):
also grounding, So just focusing on the breath is like
basically really all you need to do, but you can
add more to it. And I understand that breathwork is
a whole subject to in and of itself. So if
I'm not careful, I could end up turning this entire
episode from here on out just into breathwork and about it,
(11:25):
but in a nutshell focused on your breathing. We want
to breathe deeply into the belly, utilizing the diaphragm. We
don't want to Shallow chest breathing is what we mostly do,
most of us. If you watch babies breathe, their bellies
are going up and down, like when they're taking a nap.
(11:46):
Watch them. Their bellies are what's going up and down.
That's because they're still utilizing their diaphragm and breathing deep
into those lower parts of the lungs, those lower chambers.
Shallow chest breathing is something that happens when we're in
our stress response and a lot of us get stuck there.
And you know, also with our body image issues, everyone's
(12:11):
like sucking it in all the time, and that constricts
your breathing also, So learning to relax, learning to breathe
in the belly, it's okay. And it's also important to
know that when you start changing your breathing habits and
trying to consciously bring it deeper into the belly. It's
going to take a little bit of practice, especially if
you've been shallow chest breathing for many, many years. It's
(12:35):
going to feel possibly like your hyperventilating at first, like
you can't breathe properly, and oh man, what's going on.
This is supposed to help my anxiety, this is actually
making my anxiety worse. So there is you should know
that there is usually a little bit of a learning
curve there, a little bit of a bridge that you
have to cross before you get to the easier benefits
(12:58):
of focusing on your breathing but in a nutshell deep
in hells deep in the belly all the way, and
then exaggerated exhals, focusing on the release and relaxation as
you excel. So you can incorporate words into this in
(13:20):
a couple of different ways. You can again imagining the
energy of the word piece serenity, I don't know, just
pick a random word that you like and focus on
the energy of it, and you can imagine yourself breathing
in this energy, and then as you exhl blowing away
(13:41):
anything that no longer serves you. Just leaning into all
of that exercise can be a great grounding practice. And
I know a lot of people don't want to hear that,
but it's actually one of the easier practices if you
ask me, because you know so attuned to our physical
(14:02):
environment and our physical bodies that sometimes it can be
a little bit easier to approach these things from a
physical standpoint first, until we can find the mental, spiritual
stuff on the inside. And I promise you, if you
think you don't like exercise, you just have not found
the exercise that works for you. Okay, I hate exercise,
(14:25):
which is hilarious, right, given who I am. I do yoga,
I'm a yoga instructor. I do play a stupid amount
of pickleball, and I also do jiu jitsu. I've always
been into martial arts, but I cannot. I cannot go
to the gym and lift weights or get on these
(14:47):
exercise machines. They bore the crap out of me. I
have to trick myself into exercising through games and play yoga.
I got into it because I came across a Pinterest
article many many years ago than entitled how to exercise
if You're lazy, and I was like, that's it, that's
me tell me more. And it was about yoga, specifically
(15:10):
restorative yoga. And here I am like fifteen years later,
and that has worked for me because I could just
it started out. It's easy access, easy entry. Because I
always tell people, if you want to get started being
more consistent with a practice, if you have a show
(15:33):
that you like to watch, sit in the floor while
you watch it, stretch and then you know that just
kind of turns into more. So that's a great entry level.
Sit in your floor and stretch. Stretching is super grounding.
It's that physical practice, not only stretching, but strength building.
(15:56):
So all of that. Anything you can really get into
your body and activate the strength of your body is
going to make you feel more grounded. Pickleball is also
very low entry and great cardio. And when I say
like very low entry, some of the people beating our
butts are like in their seventies, okay, And if they
(16:17):
can do it, you can do it. Kayaking, hiking. There
are a thousand different ways to exercise that we don't
generally call exercise. We call it other things. Make it
a game, find something you enjoy, but just just keep
bouncing around from this to that. My husband played disc
golf for a while, he just he plays basketball. He
(16:39):
kind of just bounces around from one thing or another.
He'll do this for a little bit until he gets bored,
and then we'll do this for a little bit until
he gets bored. And you'll you'll find amazing benefits if
you not only in the grounding aspect of yourself, but
the pickleball community, the martial arts community, all of these things,
the yoga community. They're communities that you come to a
(17:02):
yoga class thinking that you're doing it for exercise. Oh
you are, but you enter it through that avenue and
it ends up healing all sorts of things for you
because you find yourself becoming a part of this community,
which at the end of the day, most of us
are issues are lack of community, lack of support. We
(17:26):
don't have our villages so readily available anymore, so we
have to kind of work at building those again. So
sometimes I go to pickleball not because I need the
physical activity, but because I need the community aspect. I
need that emotional mental like encapsulation of people around me
(17:49):
who know who I am and like me and can
reassure me and chat, and it just it heals that
that so many of us are missing, So yay for
unforeseen benefits to all of the things, right, But you
can get that, you can find that community aspect and
(18:10):
you know, finding your community your support system that is
also grounding. It's very grounding. We're communal creatures where one
organism connected more than we could ever imagine that we are,
and feeling disconnected to one another really frazzles our energetic
(18:30):
system and leaves us feeling all out of whack and
short circuited. So if you're having trouble staying grounded and
you've been trying all of these things, and you're like, Savannah,
I need I know all of this stuff. Give me
the good stuff. What is the other stuff? Because there's
got to be other stuff because this stuff isn't working.
(18:51):
Most likely it's the community aspect that you're missing, and
you would be amazed at the thing the emotional and
physical things that are healed through that community connection. You know,
we're so cut off. That's our crown chakra. Most of
us can't make it there. You know, I talk about
(19:13):
Mazlow's pyramid and how you have to start at the
bottom base. You know, the root chokra. Most of us
are pretty well stuck in the lower three chakras, and
we can't get to full actualization without that community aspect.
And you can find that community aspect in all sorts
of different places. And I know that it's scary, and
(19:36):
we have social anxiety and people have hurt us. There's
no doubt that the worst emotional pain, trauma, all of
the things in our life come from other people, other individuals,
especially those that we thought were part of our community,
part of our village. But there's also nothing more important
(19:57):
that heals us. There's nothing more heal, you know, it's
the cause and the cure. It's just annoying because it
can be really hard to figure out how to rebuild
your community, reassert yourself into a community, especially if you
are starting from scratch and dragging along a lot of trauma.
(20:19):
Relationship trauma in all of its forms. I mean, I
don't mean relationships romantically, but all of the forms, the family,
the friends, the acquaintances, the all of the types of relationships.
But allowing yourself to venture out and be brave and
dip your toes into various communities, maybe not looking for
(20:45):
like you don't want to go into it looking for
community per se, like maybe you do, but that can
be You don't want to be too strong out the gate.
You don't want to come on too strong, come off
too strong. You want to dip your toes in with
a hobby, you know, start with the thing, not the people,
and then see if it's for you, you know, because
(21:07):
you have to figure out you have to make lasting connections.
So it has to be organic, which means that you
have to genuinely be interested in the thing that you're
going into. You can't just sign up for all of
the clubs, no matter what they are, hoping that you're
going to find your people in one of those. You
have to be specific with Okay, well I am interested
(21:30):
in anime, so let me find a club or something
community wise that has to do with that, or you know,
a book club or a chess club or cooking classes
or whatever whatever. Whatever. There's so many different types, but
just look for something, anything that you can consistently show
(21:52):
up for be a part of. There may be some
volunteer groups in your area that you can join, you know,
depending on what is available to you depends heavily on
where you're located. Where I'm located it's growing, but there's
not a whole lot of options if you're not into sports. Honestly,
(22:13):
where I live, we like in the south, everybody's very
sports oriented and you can find different clubs and groups
and stuff in the city just a couple of you know,
a little bit over a few miles to the left,
but for the most part in my town it's pretty limited.
So it might may also be limited for you as well,
(22:35):
in which case, like if you have the capacity to
start a group of some sort. There was a for
a couple of years I ran a mom's anxiety group
because I was a mom struggling with anxiety, so I
needed and I was already studying how to lessen my anxiety.
So I was putting these groups together like once a
(22:57):
month where we met and talked about our anxiety and
do little exercises and ways to help it. And that
became you know, I couldn't maintain that the way it
needed to be maintained as a new one, but some
people can. If you can't, that's okay too. You know,
you can start with online community. There's lots of ways,
(23:20):
lots of things, but please don't let anxiety hold you back.
It's okay, to be anxious and show up anyway. Okay,
most people are not mean, most, especially as an adults,
most people are not mean. And if you find a
mean one, you can probably bond with the other ones
about the mean one, because if you think that they're mean,
(23:42):
all the other ones think that they're mean to and
y'all can chat about that. Most people these days in
group settings are wonderful. We're all collectively trying to build
our communities and build our villages back from scratch, so
we have that in common already, and most of us
just want the best for one another. So please don't
(24:03):
give up. Please keep trying to find your place and
your people, and try to remember to stay as grounded
as you can, as often as you can. And I
hope these practices helped. I hope this Little Info podcast
episode helped. There's notes below if you need more info.
If you have questions, please never hesitate to ask. If
(24:26):
you want to get started with yoga, I have some
online videos that I've been posting to the Patreon to
help people get into that. But I hope you're doing okay,
and if you need anything, let me know. Thank you
so much for being here and I'm as stay
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