Grounding

As many of you know, I visited my home in the UK last month. This is a long journey from North Carolina, up to 9 hours each way flying through the air over land and ocean. Nothing could feel less grounding! As much as I love the opportunities this mode of travel brings, I cannot help but feel as we hurtle into the sky, how vulnerable this is for the human body, that has developed to be close and connected to the ground beneath our feet.

To be grounded isn’t necessarily something that requires our feet to be touching the earth, even though it can certainly help. Trying to cultivate a sense of being grounded, and the positive aspects of being a grounded person, are ideas that are spoken about a lot and yet I feel are still elusive in their meaning. Maybe because being grounded is an experience that can only be felt from within; we can ‘fake it til we make it’ by being calm, level headed, outwardly transmitting a sense that we are in control. What we experience within might be more difficult to fake.

In defining this word, we think of being stable, firmly rooted in reality and reason, ‘down to earth’, even ‘sensible and unpretentious’ (Merriam-Webster.com). We know, maybe instinctively, that when a person has these qualities, they are coming from a place of even breathing, of physical ease, of authenticity and connection to themselves, so that they can reach out and connect to others in a supportive and meaningful way. These people seem relaxed and clear-headed.

My own experience of practicing grounding has gone through many changes. It has ranged from needing to keep a cool head in a crisis, to giving an impression of professionalism that was mostly dictated by someone else’s idea of what that looked like. These appearances often didn’t match what was happening in my internal world, and some part of me tried to stuff everything down that contradicted the image I was attempting to give. There wasn’t enough space in my container for anything that didn’t conform to what I felt should have been there.

Today, I recognise that being truly grounded is more about acknowledging and being aware of that internal landscape, and practicing being a large enough container to give space to my self, without

needing to change anything. Knowing that seemingly contradictory feelings can exist equally, side by side. Practicing being whole. This relies more on allowing free somatic expression from a rooted foundation; I can breath, feel, experience thoughts, be in my feet and legs and whole body, and be even more authentically present for the world than if I was trying to ignore all those things. Like a tree, with so many branches and twists and turns and seasonal changes, rooted deeply, undeniably constant.

As with all these practices, this is not a perfect process! It’s something I aspire to, and believe in. Some days it can feel impossible to stay grounded. What does being grounded mean to you? How do you feel when you’re with someone who seems very grounded? What helps you to get closer to your best grounded self?