12 Steps to Grounding in Stressful Situations

The word grounding means different things to different people and can be used for a variety of purposes to achieve a specific outcome.

Generally, the outcome is associated to a sense of well-being, calmness focus presence and feeling safe. Grounding can and sometimes it is also called earthing and it refers to the connection that you have with the earth and how mother nature has the potential to heal and make us feel better.

No matter the name, context or the focus that we want to apply grounding, it is a very useful well-being tool that you can draw on easily without any need for special resources.

With practice we can learn to ground ourselves at any time of day and I use the tool of grounding in a variety of my well-being services and contexts.

An example of this is that we use grounding in Pilates to bring awareness to the physical body, postural state, physical pain, core connection and breathing pattern.

In meditative work, we use grounding to slow the nervous system and bring the body into a state of calm relaxation.

In empowerment self-defence we use grounding to bring the participant back to the present moment if they have either been working in an adrenalized , emotional state, they may be showing signs of trauma that can arise at any time or we just want to bring the heart rate down after physical movement.

In general terms grounding can be used to calm the nervous system when feeling high levels of stress or anxiousness. Grounding is also a very important tool to use when people are experiencing trauma like symptoms such as flashbacks, depression, high levels of fear and anxiety.

When we are highly stressed, depressed or adrenalized our sense of self connection is generally limited and we are mostly working ‘outside ‘of the physical body lacking in awareness of ourselves and the surroundings.

Our vision can be reduced to foveal vision and grounding will help us bring ourselves back to our expanded sensory state where as we can make safe and sensible decisions.

If we are in a state of foveal vision our focus is very limited to only what is in the small frame of our vision without the benefit of the peripheral vision.

Most of our sensory system such as our hearing and vision is also reduced. This puts us at risk in the context of decision-making and also at risk environmentally.

If we are outside, an example of that would be having limited awareness of traffic movements and we could walk out onto the road without seeing or hearing an oncoming car.