How to Enhance a Grounding Practice
In this post I’ll be taking a look at what grounding is, what’s happening when we feel the need to ground, and how to do it so we grow capacity.
So, what do we mean when we say “I need to ground.”
Typically we’re seeking a state of feeling good and stable. Perhaps, calm and connected, maybe even neutrally present with the surroundings.
Grounding is gaining popularity in our modern times, yet is nothing new, and is essentially touching the ground, tree, plant, or rocks with our bare feet or hands.
Research is showing that skin conductance with the ground has a significant and positive impact on our autonomic physiology, from lowering blood pressure, improving inflammation responses of the immune system, and improving sympathetic and parasympathetic tone. If you’re interested in going deeper, peer reviewed articles are provided below:
Grounding and Heart Rate Variability (HRV)
One-Hour of Grounding Improves Inflammation and Blood Flow
Being in an environment that’s soothing for our systems is a beautiful start. Yet it doesn’t increase our capacity for complexity in life, at least not alone.
For this to be enhanced our attention needs to receive what’s naturally available in the environment more so than attending to internal sensations, feelings, and thoughts that impede in our enjoyment of the moment.
Here’s the quick and easy guide:
3 Steps for a Grounding Capacity Growing Practice
Notice what catches your attention in the environment, through any of the senses
Does this bring up any pleasure in your being? Great, feel as much or as little as available
Repeat
For capacity to grow, the autonomic nervous system needs/wants to ‘learn’ to receive from the environment, not through added practices, like breathing techniques to calm ourselves down, let’s say, but through receiving signals of safety from the environment in through the 5 senses. The recognition of this process is termed Orientation and is coined by Steve Hoskinson, founder of Organic Intelligence™.
How is the temperature? Is there a breeze? Sounds?
And does noticing the external bring a sense of pleasure to the internal?
In this way we’re taking in the pleasure and noticing how that feels, more than sensation, thoughts, memories that might impede on the pleasure of being grounded and connected in the moment.
Grounding, can be a useful bridge to help us orient to signals of safety and pleasure that is available more than the displeasurable internal stressful signals that are irrelevant with the present moment.
It’s so easy and essential, it bares repeating:
3 Steps for a Capacity Growing Practice
Notice what catches your attention in the environment, through any of the senses
Does this bring up any pleasure in your being? Great, feel as much or as little as available
Repeat
And from there you go about your day.
This isn’t about solving any problems, as useful as that may be in the moment. When relevant problems need solving. The autonomic nervous system is an unconscious system that when has more capacity to run smoothly, can interact with all kinds of situations in ways that require less effort and energy to resolve. Leaving us with more energy for things in life we’d rather enjoy.