Why is Grounding Important?

Think of your own personal energy an electrical field. Electricity needs a grounding wire to allow excessive or unwanted energy to go back into the earth.

In Western society, collectively, we don’t focus on the importance of grounding our own energy. We wear shoes and boots with thick rubber soles and drive cars all day that keep us separated from the grounding energy of the earth.

Grounding balances your first chakra or the root chakra. Your root chakra is located at the base of your spine and it maintains your primal connection to earth/the physical plane. When this chakra is off-balance, you can feel anxious or generally “out-of-it”.

When Should You Ground Yourself?

Grounding yourself every day is always a good idea, but there are other times when you might need an extra dose of grounding:

• Whenever you feel anxious or spaced-out
• When you feel the need to hoard things or when you feel like you “just don’t have enough”
• You’re having a hard time expressing yourself properly
• You feel disconnected from your body or your physical surroundings

What Does it Mean to “Ground and Center”?

Grounding and centering go hand in hand because they both help you focus your energy on the things you need to get done.

They both bring about a more balanced, harmonious state of being, on all levels of our beings: emotional/mental, spiritual and physical.

“Centering” basically refers to the practice of gathering any of our scattered energies back into our core, so we can strengthen our own inner power.

How to Ground and Center Yourself with Visualization

Sometimes it’s easy to ground yourself. All you really need to do is walk outside, take off your shoes, and stand on the grass in your bare feet.

You can also sit up against a tree or just sit on the ground with your palms on the ground. Any direct contact that your body can make with the earth will ground you, and you won’t really need to do many visualizations.

But, it isn’t always dry and sunny, is it?

The elements don’t always allow us to go outside and sit or lie on the ground, or walk barefoot. In these cases, you just need to do some visualization! Here is a simple visualization/meditation to help you ground and center, even if you’re forced to stay indoors:

• Make sure you won’t be disturbed for at least 10 minutes. If you have more alone time than this, 20 minutes is ideal. You should be in a peaceful, quiet, safe environment. Create an even more peaceful atmosphere with a lit candle or dim lighting. Incense such as Nag Champa is perfect for spiritual work, but also for grounding.
• Sit in a comfortable position on the floor, or in your favorite chair. Sitting directly on the floor is ideal, but if that isn’t comfortable for you, a chair or bed is fine.
• Close your eyes, and take 3 deep, slow breaths. You’ll start to feel your body and mind relax more and more with each breath. Let your consciousness settle slowly into the center of your chest.
• Imagine roots of light glowing from your root chakra. One central taproot, with smaller roots branching out deeper into the earth, connecting you to its calming energy like tree roots in the earth.

Soon you will feel calm and safe, with your excesses of energy draining off into the earth. If you’re not experienced with visualization, this will take some practice. Once you feel grounded and balanced, imagine your energy field as a glowing, undulating orb of light. If you’re feeling tired, depressed or anxious in some degree, your energy field will look dim and small, or sparse and scattered.

Visualize pure white light energy, and draw that energy into your body, with each slow deep breath you take. Imagine the glow of your orb brightening and filling with the colors of the rainbow.

Practice doing this every day or every other day. You will notice an increase in your vitality after a week or two! You will physically and mentally have more energy, and you feel more emotionally and spiritually balanced than you were before.