Grounding. This term gets thrown around a lot. Sometimes it might even seem meaningless. If you’re looking for ways to feel better, and become more Whole? Grounding is an essential. Let’s start with the basics, and then take you deep into the concept. When you are done with this blog post, you may find the YouTube Empowerment Workshop (link at the bottom) useful – that video includes a discussion on the same topics below, and a practical meditation you can use to practice these concepts.
What is Grounding?
The term can be confusing. It can be applied in many fields and have different meanings. Ask a physicist, ask an electrician, ask a pilot, ask a psychologist, ask a gardener and each of these folks will give you a slightly different answer. As an energy worker, meditator, and healer, my definition may not agree with some of theirs, but we would all be right.
When working with electricity, a circuit is a closed loop that allows energy to flow along the loop and power things like light bulbs or computer screens. The human energetic system is both our light and our power source. We are a closed loop. In a system where the battery has plenty of power to light your light, there is no need to create a deeper “ground”.
Grounding Prevents Short Circuits
I don’t know about you, but sometimes my battery needs recharging, and I could use a little help keeping my light as bright as it could be. I need an outside power source. Humans fuel ourselves with breathing, with food, and water. We also generate internal battery power with movement, focus, emotions, intentions and spiritual connectedness. (If you can think of another way we fuel our physical and non-physical bodies, let me know in the comments!)
Grounding is a term that electricians and physicists use to describe a “neutral reference point” in a circuit. Put simply, good grounding is relative (more power will need more grounding than a circuit using less energy). Grounding creates the upper limit of energy to flow through the circuit. When your home is inadequately grounded, you may experience flickering or dimming lights, electrical shocks, and other (dangerous) unpleasant symptoms. Your energy field is also a circuit–a complex circuit to be sure, but it definitely operates on the same principles.
The Earth Provides a Powerful Ground
The human energy system will function better if you tap into the infinite grounding potential of the Earth. Using the unlimited capacity of the planet to balance your energetic flow means you will gain capacity in your system. This means you will navigate life more efficiently, with less danger of “shorting out” energetically, than someone who tries to just battery pack through life. It also means that when you access energetic sources beyond your body, you will ride the flow without “shorting out.”
Sometimes when folks in self-care related fields talk about grounding, they suggest walking barefoot on the grass. Still others recommend hugging trees. There are plenty of mindfulness exercises to help you find your physical body when emotional or stress states make it difficult to function. There is no right or wrong way to ground (except perhaps to pretend that you do not need grounding).
However, there are ways to ground more deeply, when you are ready. Remember, our electrician friends describe that ground as the sort of “upper limit”: the amount of power that can build in a circuit before a fault develops. So many of us who meditate, work with energy, or have spiritual beliefs of any flavor can often be found “reaching up” to a higher power or an energy beyond ourselves.
Remember to Ground DOWN before Reaching UP
Culturally, we are almost all taught to reach “up” when we reach beyond. We seek a bigger battery a to plug into. When you draw on external energy sources, you may struggle to stay empowered throughout the day. We put out more and more power, we draw more deeply our our metaphysical sources until…POP…we burn out or collapse in a personal energetic brown out.
The answer is to keep reaching up an out to those sources, but to ALSO put down some solid roots by grounding deeply into the earth. The planet is the source of each of your physical cells. You, the consciousness reading these words, are SO MUCH more than your physical body, but you are incarnating those beautiful, miraculous cells. Those cells can only take so much energy flow without connecting deeply to the planet.
As you practice, the way forward in expanding consciousness will require you to ground deeply into the earth. In this way, you draw on an energy battery far beyond your imagining. This can be from your connection to nature and the earth itself, your metaphysical sources, or to one another as a human community. We are magical! And it is the connections between us that power the alchemy of healing.
This Empowerment Workshop offers a presentation of these concepts and a practical mediation you can use whenever you need to ground yourself solidly to the earth.
