A Guided Meditation for Grounding [HMHE Podcast Show Notes – Ep 34]
This week on the podcast, I lead you through a guided meditation for grounding. This meditation will support you in grounding your energy, soothing anxiety, and connecting more deeply to your body, your environment, and the present moment.
A few weeks ago I shared eight ways to ground yourself and in that episode, I mentioned a couple of grounding meditation styles – orienting meditation and five senses meditation.
I want you to have these grounding meditations in the form of a podcast episode so that you can come back and listen time and again when you’re feeling stressed, anxious, scattered, or off-center. Or when you’re feeling just fine but want to tune up your awareness of the moment and deeply connect to your body and environment.
This is also an excellent meditation to use whenever you’re traveling to a new place, and when you’ve arrived back home from a trip.
You can do this meditation while walking, seated, or laying down.
Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash
What is meditation for grounding?
This meditation is a combination of several meditation styles that I’ve been trained in and have practiced personally for years. It is based on the Ayurvedic and Tantric traditions, and in modern neuroscience. I was originally introduced to these meditation styles during my Ayurvedic Health Counselor training at the Shakti School.
According to Ayurveda, all mental and physical imbalances are due to an imbalance of the five elements – earth, air, fire, water, and ether. In the case of feeling anxious, stressed, or scattered there is an excess of the air and ether elements. So, in order to bring our body and mind back into balance we want to bring in the other elements – water, fire, and especially earth.
Therefore, people often find the most common forms of meditation ungrounding. Instead of focusing on the breath (AKA the air element), we want to bring our attention to our physical body and our physical surroundings. This guided meditation for grounding does just that.
Why does this type of meditation for grounding work?
During this grounding meditation, you are orienting your body and mind to your surroundings.
One of the primary jobs of our brain is to build an internal model of the outside world so that it can operate efficiently and, more importantly, protect us from danger and perceived threats. So your brain absolutely loves being flooded with information about the specific time and place that you are in.
When you slow down, become more present, and give your brain this external information that it craves, you give your brain and body time to adjust to your current reality. If you’re in a safe space then your body can shift and release any structural patterns that are the result of underlying stress and anxiety.
This creates a positive feedback loop. As you meditate the brain receives information through your five senses that you are in a safe space. Then the brain sends signals to the body that it can relax, the body begins unraveling and releasing its stress patterns, it sends signals back to the brain that we’re relaxing, and the brain in turn relaxes more deeply into a sense of felt safety.
As we shift from an anxious and stressed state to a more grounded state our body gives us signs. Common signs include yawning, watering eyes, a tingling sensation, or a deep exhale. What signs does your body give you?
Meditation Outline
Below is a brief outline of this guided meditation for grounding. Listen to the podcast episode to be guided through this powerful meditation practice.
Grounding Meditation Practice
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- Settle into a comfortable seated position or start walking
- Bring your awareness to your emotions and notice how you’re currently feeling
- Orient your body to your surroundings
- Five senses meditation
- Body scan
- Bring your awareness back to your emotions and notice if anything has shifted
- Closing
Listen back to this guided meditation for grounding any time you’re feeling a bit off and you want to reconnect to your body and your surroundings. I use this type of meditation daily to ground myself when I’m traveling and when I’m going through other big life changes.
How did the meditation go for you? What shifts did you notice in your mind, body, and emotions? I’d love to hear about your experience! You can email me via my email address below.
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Featured image: Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash
