Centering and Grounding & Why you need both.

Stress is as pervasive as the air we breathe.

And though I hear the terms Centering and Grounding being used a lot by, well, everybody, I think it’s worth the energy to actually define the two. I frequently hear them spoken about as though they are synonymous.

They aren’t.

Each has its own identity and each is infinitely important to your well-being. For anybody who considers themselves Highly Sensitive or deeply empathic–if you are strongly affected by the world around you–a daily devotion to your own centering and grounding can be literally life-changing.

It’s important to know each individually.

Centering

I personally think about Centering as an intentional return to my whole self. I like to visualize my heart being a momentary center point in the benevolent universe, creating a safe sense for my place in the cosmos. Centering aligns my emotional, spiritual, and mental states, creating a sense of inner balance and calm.

Centering is a soul-centered strength-building practice that cultivates an inner sense of peace. It’s a foundational reminder of what is truly important. It brings to focus what you need from yourself to build and nourish your spirit and your life.

Adopting a centering practice is a powerful pathway for emotional regulation, and a key ingredient for building resilience. Feeling lost? Confused about something? Can’t see your way forward? Stop everything and devote ten minutes to a simple centering exercise. There is nothing so powerful for finding clarity and connection to the deeper meaning and purpose of every conflict, question, or problem.

A few ways to Center…

Intention: Ask yourself, how would you like to feel today? What would you like to receive from this walk you’re taking, for example? How will the most empowered version of You show up to work today? Which of your deeply buried super powers is asking to be revealed today? What is asking to rise to the surface of your life today? How would you like to see the world today?

Hand to Heart: Sit or stand with your spine straight. Put your hand to your heart. Visualize yourself floating in the cosmos, suspended by all the love of the universe. Send a soft, gentle, white light from your hand to your heart. Feel your mind, spirit, and body receive the healing and rejuvenating light with open receptivity.

Journal: Devote time every day to speak to yourself, pen to paper (it’s been found to be much more calming than fingers to keyboard). Ask yourself what answers you seek, and allow yourself to free-flow your own response from your Highest Consciousness–that voice inside of you who never fears or falters. Don’t censor yourself, don’t worry if you don’t understand the response for now. Don’t expect the answers to be logical or realistic, and don’t fret if you feel a big ol’ blank. Just write whatever comes to you, even if it seems like a jumbled mess of garbage. Just keep practicing to build your inner trust, learn to hear yourself, and sharpen your faith in your process.

Meditation: Spend some time in quiet stillness, noticing your breath, noticing your thoughts as a way to quiet them. Don’t try to do anything–just be in the moment. You may also prefer to listen to a guided meditation to help you achieve inner stillness. Any way you prefer it, just allow yourself to Be.

The Best Time to Center.

Ritually.

I encourage you to build a centering practice ritual, to be done at the same time every day, even if it’s for only five minutes at a time. For the past twenty years I have spent the first hour of my pre-sunrise morning centering with calming music and my journal. I stretch out on a long couch right underneath my living room windows and sip my hot mushroom drink. I watch the birds rise with the sun, conducting their own morning rituals outside the glass. I write three or four pages (often while juggling Zem), sorting out my mind’s tangles, asking growth questions of myself, and then answering from my most empowered self. Sometimes the answer is that there is no answer, and that’s okay too. This practice helps me center back into the wisdom of letting go, to release what is not mine to control. I then align with a plan for my day that feels purposeful and meaningful.

Spontaneously.

Centering is useful in the difficult moments too. If you’re emotionally dysregulated, or trapped in micromanaging or ruminating, centering can help. When you’ve lost your way, or can’t find your meaning, centering will offer you insight & inspiration. If you’re trying to force life, rather than open to life…

Grounding

Equally important, but with a slightly different focus, Grounding is the earth medicine practice of connecting yourself to the present moment through your senses. The goal is to anchor you in the here and now.

I think about Grounding as a way to send my energy cords into Mother Earth to move stuck and excess energy out of my body and nervous system. For me, Grounding is 100% connected to plugging back in to my place within the web of nature.

We are nature. Our bodies are nature. And losing sight of that creates very real stress, even when we’re not conscious of the disconnect.

Grounding in any form often serves the dual purpose of acting as a vagus nerve toning practice which calms the nervous system, decreases anxiety, and brings awareness back to your physical body. Grounding helps you to alleviate feelings of disconnection, unbelonging, or dissociation.

A few ways to Ground…

Sensory Scan: With the senses available to you, take a moment to process what you’re seeing. Take that in. Now move it through all of your senses. What are you smelling? Is there a subtle fragrance in the air, such as ozone after a fresh rain? (Otherwise known as petrichor, which translates to the immortal blood of the Gods. Love that!) What about the taste in the air after a spring rain? Kind of metallic? How do the rain drops feel on your skin? How does it sound when it gently or forcefully meets the earth? Try this practice anytime, anywhere, with any circumstance. Peeling an orange? Move through a sensory scan while you’re doing it. Use every opportunity you can to ground with your senses.

Feel the Earth: Take a moment to feel the ground you’re standing on. Barefoot on the beach, the sand of the desert (be careful of the cactus!), your own lawn, the forest floor, even through heavy boots on the snow-covered tundra… Sense your feet connecting with this planet earth, and visualize having energy roots sprouting from your firmly planted soles extending deep into the heart of mother earth. You can do this even if you’re in a high-rise tower. Just visualize the earth far below the reach of the concrete, and see your own invisible roots traveling down fifty floors if you have to, eventually reaching the cool, dark, nourishing earth hidden far below. Feel nature pulling the anxiety out of you and neutralizing it effortlessly as one of its great elemental powers.

Indoor Plants & Gardening: Whether your plants are inside, fully domesticated in pots, or whether you’re tending a garden plot, be it vegetables or flowers, anytime you’re caring for plants it’s powerfully grounding. Burying your hands in potting soil, even through gloves, is a direct conduit to nature’s stabilizing forces. Even giving your indoor plant a leaf bath is a super-connector to grounding. Plants are deep medicine, and if you have neither indoor pots nor an outdoor garden, you always know where to find any member of the plant kingdom. They’re always there, just waiting to assist. A connected human is a safe human in their eyes. To be grounded means we are much more intentional about our impact on the outer world, and our place within the circle of symbiosis.

Strong Legs: For those who are able, stand in a slight half-crouch, like you’re ready to spring like a cat. Bend your knees just enough to feel your quads, calfs, hamstrings, and feet strongly activated. Gently pat your quads, feel their strength, assess their power–they are your mobility all day, every day. Connect that strength with the strength of the earth, feel that conversation between evolution and who you are in this very moment. Where would you like this energy to take you? How do you give thanks to all this power that we so often take for granted? (This practice can also be Strong Arms, for those whose mobility depends on their arms! Just bend your elbow and flex. Feel the conversation in that strength.)

The Best Time to Ground.

Ritually.

Grounding can be done ritually, every day, by just setting the intention that when your feet touch the earth, you are feeling the rootedness of the moment.

Grounding can also be done through mindful eating, by doing a sensory scan with whatever you’re tasting, bringing in all of your senses, not just your taste buds. This also helps you create sacredness around the eating ritual itself, slowing you down and allowing mindfulness to intuitively guide your nutritional patterns.

One of my grounding rituals is a five-mile hike three or four times a week. For the duration I set the intention that my energy roots connect deep down into the rugged, orange canyon. With every step, I feel my reach extending deep into the Precambrian sandstone, shale, and limestone. I can feel the ancient landscape pull from me the excess, like a charcoal mask cleans the pores, all of the stress energy my body is holding on to, all of the empathic emotions that don’t belong to me, and all of my irrational desire to control that which can’t be controlled, common baggage of the Highly Sensitive Person.

Spontaneously.

Choose a grounding tool or exercise when you’re feeling like you can’t concentrate, when you’re dissociating, or when you’re feeling hopeless or powerless. If you’re here but not here, if you’re feeling scattered, or if you can’t seem to stop that incessant scrolling. Grounding tools are powerful for when you’re distracting yourself with filling-the-void activities that you know are keeping you stuck.

In Conclusion…

I don’t believe we can be whole human beings unless Centering and Grounding, intentionally and purposefully, become day to day defaults for us. I don’t believe we are capable of manifesting, of achieving our dreams, or keeping our heads above the water through this extended tempest we call life without Centering and Grounding on the regular.

I find that many people do have Centering and Grounding practices, but aren’t aware that’s what they’re doing! We are hardwired to regulate our nervous system through these channels. The benefit to knowing the difference between the two, and the gifts of each, is that when we cognitively understand the purpose of our actions, the medicine of those actions becomes greatly intensified! We can take a walk every day, but when we learn about the cardiovascular, spiritual, and psychological benefits of that walk our body feels those benefits even more greatly, a phenomenon scientifically validated by testing blood markers before and after. It’s fascinating.

Leave me a Comment!

Do you have any questions about this article? Do you have a story to share about your own Centering and Grounding rituals? Are you in need of any guidance around either? If so, please leave me a comment right here on the blog. Though I do need to approve it before it’s published (as a security layer against would-be spammers) I’ll do so as soon as I am able. I appreciate you!

Much Love!

Kristy Sweetland, MA, CPC, BCC

P.S. ~ If you’re struggling with an inability to Center or Ground, please hop over here to see how I may be able to help you. You may just need a little assistance getting from here to there.

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