Grounding Connects You to Your Higher Self — Core Potentials - Osteopathy, Energy Medicine, & Nutrition

“My roots inspire me to grow being grounded.”

~Priya Bhatia

Grounding offers an instant way to discharge unwanted energies

Grounding supports us energetically

Grounding restores and rejuvenates our energy field

Grounding promotes an instant sense of calm

Grounding improves mental, emotional and empathic clarity

Grounding helps to give our life’s purpose somewhere to land

Being grounded means that our souls are plugged in and anchored into the earth’s energies. Grounding is basically balancing out the soul energies and physical energies in our bodies, by connecting us to the earth. When we raise our vibration, and open up to our higher chakras, it’s important to equally expand the lower chakras. In Energy Medicine, the Chakras are energy centres of the body that correspond to seven points along our nervous system. When the chakras are open, Qi, or vital life force, flows freely between them, uniting our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual bodies.

Our modern technocratic world has steeped us in the belief that the energy paradigm is more esoteric than real. Yet science can explain quite clearly that we live on and are symbiotically entwined with our electrical planet. The earth’s core is made of a flowing liquid iron that creates electric currents, which in turn generate a magnetic field. Our earth’s surface conducts energy.

Think about those times you have walked across a nylon carpet and then touched a metal doorknob and got a sudden zap. The friction created by you walking on the fibers build up a static charge that is then absorbed by your body. When you touch a metal object, as a conductor of electricity, you might experience a shock. That surge or zap is the excess static electricity leaving your body. Scientifically grounding is discharging the build-up either directly into the earth, or through a conductor into the ground. All our homes right up to electrical power plants require some type of grounding rod to help move excess built up electrical energy into the earth for our safety and stability.

We are living, pulsing, highly coordinated electrical and electromagnetic organisms. Our bodies, just like the earth, have a north and south pole that directs our energies in patterns. Our bodies are composed primarily of water and minerals, making us perfect conductors of electricity. The free electrons on the earth’s surface are meant to be exchanged with our body’s energy systems and help us stay mentally and physically healthy and balanced. Energy is our life force, and it animates every single cell and muscle and fibre in our bodies. When we are properly connected, we are able to both release excess energy into, as well as take up, energy from the earth.

Ancient traditions have long viewed the bottoms of our feet as maps.

It was much easier for our ancestors to ground when they still walked barefooted, allowing nothing to block the transfer of energies. This was the natural mechanism for bringing their bodies back into balance. When we are properly absorbing the earth's energy through our feet it promotes our natural “guiding organizing design system” to stimulate healing throughout our entire bodies. Ancient traditions have long viewed the bottoms of our feet as maps. They understood our soles contain the exchange points that suck and disperse the energetic currents. This important transfer of energy helps to coordinate our biological organism by bringing vitality to our organs and systems within our bodies. Our hearts and brains produce and use electrical energy all the time, but when our bodies receive extra electrons from the earth, it is able to cleanse, repair, and speed healing so it can return itself to its optimal state.

There are amazing health benefits of grounding. **Also described as “earthing” it has been shown to have direct electrical influence on the activity of our brains. It helps regulate our endocrine and nervous system by controlling our cortisol, which is one of our main stress hormones. This assists us in recovering from stress more easily. It helps to improve our mood, decrease fatigue, improve sleep, reduce pain, and even suppress heart disease. Electrons are likened to antioxidants in their ability to reduce inflammation and stimulate red blood cell circulation. It helps to neutralize free radicals that cause damage to our cells and DNA, that can lead to cancer and inflammatory diseases. By reducing inflammation, it reduces pain, muscle soreness, and cell and tissue damage.

Sadly, we don’t get grounded as easily these days. Wearing rubber soled shoes and walking on concrete hinders us from this vital earth-human exchange. People with grounding imbalances may experience many lower chakra physical and mental illnesses. When we see these types of ailments in Energy Medicine, it most often indicates that the base and even the sacral chakras are not receiving correct inflow and outflow.

Being grounded comes from ancient understandings of who and what we are. Looking at the Traditional Chinese Medicine teachings, acupuncture, and our meridian lines, it’s helpful to understand the flow of energy, often spoken of as Chi, Prana, or Qi. The “yin” energy is part of the upward flow of Qi energy in the body that we gather from the earth and suck up through the soles of our feet. This is why barefoot walking is so important. The “yang’ Qi is our spiritual energy that flows down from the higher soul through the head to intertwine itself with the yin. Our bodies are the tool that brings these two energies into sacred union. When we are grounded, we essentially become a strong container in which our soul can safely and productively dwell.

One of the first ways I notice that I’m not grounded is when I start having troubles being able to listen, focus, or learn. I have even heard some people say they can have troubles walking or even balancing. When I’m not grounded, I can feel more anxious, spacey, or even lightheaded and will become very disconnected to my body and my environment. I really notice it when I’m experiencing difficult emotions because my perceptions of the world become disharmonious and skewed. My attitudes can become negative leaving me feeling alone and unsupported. Energy influences the brain so having intense emotions creates strong energetic “thought” vibrations that can easily unground us and take us out of our bodies. Becoming ungrounded can cause a lack of integrity and coherence in our biofield. When our biofield (aura) becomes weak it can leave us vulnerable and susceptible to attracting more of our misperceptions.

You are a living Magnet.

What you attract into your life is in harmony with your dominant thoughts.

~ Brian Tracy

pexels-photo-5502852 copy.png — Grounding ourselves is a way of bringing ourselves literally back to earth.

Being able to become grounded is an essential skill for highly sensitive people or empaths who tend to pick up the emotional energies from the environment around them. Without being grounded, it becomes difficult to discharge the energies we can inadvertently take on. Some of us are more prone to essentially leaving our bodies and not being firmly rooted. Grounding ourselves is a way of bringing ourselves literally back to earth. I had this “a ha” moment when I was training to be an Energy Medicine practitioner where I finally realized that my gifts of being an empath and my efforts to bring in the divine and really serve my purpose, were futile, unless I gave myself a solid ground to land on. I have learned and embraced the understanding that to be a good practitioner it is vitally important to continually train my body to be grounded.

Grounding is how we calm our bodies when we are overloaded by stress or overwhelmed by emotions. Staying in the present moment allows us to feel safe and in-control. When stressed we can get caught up in negative thinking about the past or fear the future. The more present we are in the body the calmer, safer and more in command we will feel. The body is a very useful tool for deep awareness and as a practitioner I use my grounded presence as an instrument to guide me with my clients. Feeling in tune means feeling and observing every sensation in my body as it speaks in the universal language of energy. It means being in the moment and just sensing the world as it is rather than through past memories or a conditioned filter.

Using our senses is a fast way to bring us out of our thoughts or intense emotions into the present moment. It’s also a great way to tune into your extrasensory awareness systems. If you find yourself spacing out, you could practise being able to quickly become present by naming 5 things you can see, 4 things you can hear, 3 things you can touch, 2 things you can smell and 1 thing you can taste. To awaken and fully experience life we need to be deeply grounded and present in the moment to be fully in our bodies.

Another great way to get out of your head and back into the body is by bringing your attention to your breath. The breath is the gateway to being present. Pay attention to breathing in through your nose and then out slowly out through your mouth. You will find that it engrosses you in your body’s senses and will calm your nervous system allowing you to become clearer and more grounded. After 10 breaths, you will feel much more connected again to your physical self.

Being in nature causes our energetic frequency to oscillate at the same frequency as the Earth. This brings us back to life. It breathes us. It restores and rejuvenates our energy biofield and energy systems, supporting both our physiology and our psychology. The physical task of gardening can help let out pent-up static energies. Energy meridian pathways also run off all our fingers and by putting your hands into the soil, you are instantly connecting to the earth’s abundant electrons. Eating the food we plant and grow, particularly root vegetables, like carrots, beets, garlic, ginger, radishes and sweet potatoes will also infuse us with the grounding energies of the earth. Hug a tree or touch a plant. Both are rooted into the ground and love to share their grounded energies with you. Tree roots extend deep into the earth and can wondrously rejuvenate you if you lean up against them. I sometimes like to carry a stone or crystal from the earth in my pocket, that I can touch, to quickly bring me back to the ground. Some great root chakra crystals include hematite, black onyx, and obsidian. One of the best ways I find to ground is going to my family cottage by the ocean where I can embrace my inner mermaid. Swimming in the ocean is a perfect way to ground oneself. Feel the cool water, soft sand, and even slimy rocks to feel more connected to the earth.

As an Eden Method Energy Medicine practitioner, we are taught to use a stainless-steel spoon. Rubbing the bottoms of our feet with this metallic material helps to correct the polarities of our cells. The metal attracts the iron in our blood, pulling our energies down towards our feet, while realigning the pathways for our energies to exchange with the earth. There are other wonderful Eden Method exercises you can do, like the Stomach Thump where you tap your cheek bones, encouraging the downward yin energy of the Stomach meridian to send energy back down into the earth. Connecting Heaven and Earth combines both drawing in the fresh energies from the higher soul and discharging excess static energies back down into the earth. By stretching the muscular webbing of our fascial lines, we are able to clear and open up the many meridian lines that run off our legs, feet, arms and hands and encourage proper energy flow. Doing the Hook Up helps to restore your biofield (aura) by encouraging the unified synchronization of your yin and yang energies (the energy flow pattern shield created by your North and South poles).

Close your eyes

As you stand with your feet on the ground imagine you are the tallest old growth tree in an ancient forest and your roots run so deep that they have sunk right to the Earth’s core. Listen to your body's tensions and gather all the frenetic, frazzled, frantic discordant energies and sink them down into the roots and give them back to the earth. Feel the warm calm of the earth entering your body in exchange. Like a straw, have your deep roots suck up the earth's abundant energies bringing it through the soles of your feet allowing it to feed your life force through the core of your body. Fill and expand every cell in your body with this life force. Feel the earth's gifts of strength, vigor, power and majestic calm.

Have a beautiful, grounded day!

Love Becca

**For further scientific reading, check out these studies.

Electric Nutrition: The Surprising Health and Healing Benefits of Biological Grounding (Earthing)

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28987038/

The Neuromodulative role of earthing

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21856083/

Earthing: health implications of reconnecting the human body to the Earth's surface electrons

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22291721/

Earthing the human body influences physiologic processes

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21469913/

The Effects of Grounding (Earthing) on Bodyworkers' Pain and Overall Quality of Life: A Randomized Controlled Trial