What is Grounding

Grounding is a well-known concept often mentioned in the new age, healing and spiritual communities.

Grounding may be suggested by a “new ager” as a solution to heal and solve problems. Whether you are feeling stressed, unfocused, unproductive, want a deeper spiritual connection or more, grounding can become a solution. It truly can be thought of as all-round cure for many different challenges. 

This is because it is more than a new-age concept.

Grounding is also an active spiritual technique one practices to aid in self-healing.

This is because being grounded is so important and the lack of it impacts many different aspects of our holistic lifestyle, physical health and how we function in our lives.

Grounding is often missing from our everyday life in the city where it should be an integral part of our everyday life.

What does grounding mean?

Grounding as the name implies, is not only being on the ground. It is being hooked into the earth. It is developing a deep connection and energetic flow between us and the earth.

When we are not connected with our earth, our energy is scattered. It is all over the place. Because of this, we do not feel whole and at one. We cannot focus and be productive.

Grounding becomes the action or intention we choose to bring our authentic energy back to ourselves. Grounding is about keeping our energy consolidated. It is about calling the missing pieces back, becoming more present in the present moment, connecting deeper with the physical experience of life and aligning ourselves with our earth.

Grounding and Energetic Trauma 

Being ungrounding often happens through energetic trauma.

Energetic trauma can be thought of something major: a passing on of a family member or witnessing a murder.

Or it can be the smaller things: having a near-miss of accident, where a car cuts in front of you and almost, but not quite, knocks you off the road. It can be fighting with a store manager about bad service.

It is really anything that makes us feel unsafe, unsettled or threatened in any way.

Energetic trauma can also go a bit deeper.

It can be a trigger. It can be something simple: such as a red vase in a room your parents fought as a child. You’ve associated the red vase with fighting and therefore when you are given a red vase by a partner, you feel triggered. It doesn’t feel safe.

Whether it is a “huge” trauma, little daily traumas or trigger traumas, these aspects cause a trauma response within us. We don’t feel safe and so our defense mechanism kick in.

This defense mechanism disconnects us from the physical reality to promote survival. This disconnects us from our bodies. It makes us feel ungrounded.

Symptoms of being ungrounded

The symptoms of being ungrounded can be summed up in not being fully and equally embodied within your body: mind, body and soul.

You may feel like all your energy is playing around in your head area. This may manifest as being dizzy. Or the feeling of being “spaced out” and not mentally here. You may find it hard to focus and concentrate. You may become forgetful. You may lose track of time.

You may feel disconnected and not within the body. You may feel the body is hard to navigate: you may be clumsy; dropping things or hitting your knee on the side table or stepping of lego pieces on the floor.

You may be drained: like a tank that is running on empty without a way to refuel. No matter how much sleep you have, you still wake up exhausted.

When you are emotionally ungrounded, you may feel your emotions are all over the place. It may feel they are controlling you and you are floating along for the ride.

Spiritual ungroundedness can be when you are not conscious or empowered of what is going on energetically around you. In everyday life, things just don’t align. A simple trip to the supermarket may lead to almost hitting a tree, knocking tins off the shelf, forgetting your credit card and the car battery not starting (a sign of disempowerment). The little things don’t align.

The importance of grounding.

We can see through this article the importance of grounding.

The disconnect between the earth and ourselves comes through energetic trauma. This is a normal and healthy reaction: it is there to protect us. We react in a way that keeps us safe.

However, this is not healthy for the long-term and, as noticed in the symptoms of being ungrounded, it affects our lives and how we function.