Maybe you’ve heard the term “grounding” or “groundedness” before.
If you watch Elliott Hulse on Youtube, he’s always talking about grounding and being grounded. They also talk about grounding in yoga classes.
But there is curiously little about grounding to be found online. If you Google “grounding” or “groundedness”, all you find is some new age sites from the 90’s or “grounding” related to electricity.
So what is grounding? Is grounding real?
I don’t have a definitive answer. I can only give my own experience.
The First Time I Became Truly Ungrounded
The first time I became ungrounded was before I had even heard the term. It was during my last year of high school, and I was intent on getting into a top university. During an intense week of work, my brain began to feel “cloudy” and slow, like my thoughts were moving in slow motion. It was hard to think about and remember things, especially complex concepts and ideas.
I was confused and had no idea what was going on. As a kid I had always been “bright” or “sharp”, and had never felt like this before. Inside my head, I didn’t (and couldn’t) feel like myself.
Trying to remember something from the day before was like trying to think back to a lifetime ago. If my normal thinking was like a runner in a marathon, then this was like running through treacle.
After I told my parents how I felt, they got worried and took me to the hospital. First I saw the hospital psychologist, and she asked if I was taking drugs. A doctor administered some tests, and he assured us that there was nothing physically wrong with me.
But clearly something was wrong: it felt like my brain was enveloped in fog. I had to read the same sentence five times over just to understand it properly. It was hard to make even basic connections in my head, like I had somehow forgotten how to think.
I was fine doing everyday activities, but as soon as I tried to think about anything even somewhat complex, my brain shot back up into the clouds.
I took a few days off from school and spent a lot of time resting. I forced myself through the work, and eventually the fogginess disappeared. I put it up to a random happenstance of life, and didn’t really give it any more thought.
The Second (and Last) Time I Became Truly Ungrounded
The second time I became ungrounded was during my third year of university undergrad, while I was writing a paper on Plato’s Republic
Plato is difficult to read and write about. There are always a whole bunch of things going on, all at the same time. “You have to read Plato with blinders on” said one of my professors.
Important themes and concepts come and go, seemingly at random, and if you try to stick to a single thread, you find yourself constantly flipping back and forth through the text. The arguments are complex and profound, but at the same time they’re often inconclusive.
A whole other level of thinking is required because of things like the Socratic Problem and the fact that everything is written in dialogue format. You don’t know what is historical fact, what is fiction, and what is somewhere in between, and you always have to question everything. Is this Plato speaking, or Socrates? Is this irony, or meant to be taken literally? How much of this is based on real events? Why? Is that important? Am I looking too far into this? Or not far enough?
It drives you insane.
Whenever I had to write on Plato, I always felt like my whole head had been dunked in a vat of Plato. For the weeks that I was working on the paper, the different lines of argument would be running through my head non-stop throughout the day. My brain was saturated and completely soaked through with it, all day long.
And so, trying to find flaws in Socrates’ defence of the just life, once again my brain found its way up into the clouds.
But this time, I didn’t go to the hospital. Instead I spoke to a mentor of mine, and right away she knew exactly what was going on. I felt the way I did because I was getting “ungrounded”, because I was thinking too much and too much up in my head. I wasn’t in touch with my body or connected to my “roots”.
When you become ungrounded, all of your energy and attention is up in your head, in the abstract realm of intellectual thought. This is what people are referring to when they say someone is “out of it” or “not all there”. The head feels foggy, slow, and like it’s up in the clouds.
Being grounded, on the other hand, just means that you are in touch with your body, and with the present moment. Your focus and attention is “down here on earth”, as opposed to how I felt: up in the clouds.
How to Stay Grounded
I do two types of exercises to stay grounded.
Grounding Meditation
I usually incorporate some aspect of grounding into my daily meditation.
One way you can ground yourself while meditating is to basically imagine your mind going down your spine. It sounds weird but imagine your brain or your mind sinking down along your spine, all the way down into your lower abdomen.
At the same time, imagine roots coming out of your feet and from the base of your spine and going deep down into the earth. Imagine these roots pulling your brain and your whole being back down into the earth.
I have absolutely no proof to back it up, but I feel like this exercise is something to do with activating the reptilian brain and the bundle of nerves which goes all the way down your spine and reaches out through the body with the nervous system.
In simple terms, you are both visualizing and physically feeling in a way that brings the energy in your head back down into your body.
You can also check out this post: A Simple Grounding Meditation in 5 Steps
Grounding Bioenergetics
I often do a grounding exercise as part of my morning routine. What I do is a modified version of the routine in this video:
The specific exercise is at 6:20. As you do the exercise, imagine your energy descending down into your lower abdomen, pelvic region, and feet.
The key to remaining grounded is to connect to your body and the present moment. Good luck!
What do you think about grounding? Have you ever felt “brain fog” or ungroundedness before? What do you do to stay grounded? Let us know in the comments section below.