Being grounded means feeling a certain level of personal control with how you're feeling physically,
How you're feeling emotionally.
Ultimately,
It's a feeling of feeling safe.
And these are essential skills to have if you're someone who experiences a lot of stress or overwhelm or experiences anxiety or symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or even depression.
We're learning how to turn the volume down on the fight,
Flight,
Freeze response which is the brain's natural response to danger.
How are we doing this?
We are actively engaging a part of our nervous system called the parasympathetic nervous system which does put the brake on our nervous system when it's overly activated.
When our brain sees or perceives danger or our body is really activated with anxiety or high stress that's when it turns the sympathetic nervous system even higher,
Which gets us caught in a sort of an anxious loop of worrying or catastrophizing.
And then it freaks out our nervous system and activates it even more.
And we just kind of cycle into this spiral downwards in some ways.
So what does the brain actually do?
When we're feeling off internally the brain has a natural inclination to try and figure things out,
Problem-solve get us back into a state of balance.
And so what it does is it looks towards the future and it starts to look at all the worst case scenarios that possibly could happen.
And in doing that,
It actually kicks up our anxiety or what it does is it goes through our Rolodex of history and it looks through all the history of problems that are somewhat similar to what's going on right now.
And therefore it makes us a bit depressed.
What we need to learn how to do is bring ourselves back to the present moment,
Widening that space between stimulus and response with growth possibility and choice lie.
And in that moment,
Remind ourselves how to engage the parasympathetic nervous system and ground into this moment.
When we're grounded,
We tend to feel more at ease,
More calm,
Safe,
And secure.
Now,
If you're in a situation where you're not safe physically or emotionally with somebody else,
Then of course you need to draw real stringent boundaries and you might need to reach out to other people to get support with that.
So remember,
When we are in any heightened state of stress,
Our nervous system kicks into a fight,
Flight,
Freeze response.
So we wanna learn how to become present and engage these grounding skills.
But before we begin to practice these grounding skills,
We need to understand two things.
The first thing is,
In playing with these,
We want to engage them in times when there's not heightened stress.
And why is that?
Because for example,
You wouldn't learn how to walk during an earthquake.
You wanna learn when the ground is stable.
So when there's an earthquake,
We can have our balance and get our bearing.
And we want to also do this with a level of repetition.
Like anything else,
Repetition creates mastery.
So practice these in times of non heightened stress and do it with repetition so the brain can memorize the procedure.
Number two,
We are gonna be doing them in a way that engages the body and engages our senses.
So some things are gonna be,
We're gonna be engaging outside of ourselves and some things we're gonna be engaging our bodies.
We're gonna be doing them less with our thinking.
And why is that?
If you were having a tough moment and you wanted to go ask advice for a friend,
You wouldn't go to a friend who is panicking or overwhelmed and ask them for advice because you wouldn't feel like you'd get good advice.
So we're not trying to get advice from our heads.
We're trying to go inside of our bodies so we're gonna have a more of an embodied experience through these grounding skills.
Now,
As promised,
I'm going to share a very simple yet effective exercise that can support us in hitting the break of that parasympathetic nervous system to support us in states of stress and anxiety and overwhelm or even symptoms of PTSD.
And in the coming weeks,
I'll be sharing a whole bunch of videos that'll be other grounding exercises.
And for now,
Remember to engage us with a sense of playful curiosity,
Seeing what you notice.
And this exercise,
We're gonna call this the five finger breathing practice.
And so take a moment to bring up one of your hands and take the side of your finger here and place it on the outside of your pinky finger.
And now we're gonna combine breathing while watching our fingers and sliding up and down the fingers with the in-breath and the out-breath.
So on the next inhalation,
Go ahead and feel and slide your finger up to the top.
And then on the next exhalation,
Slide your finger to the side of that pinky on the inside of the pinky.
Inhaling up the next one,
Sensing,
Watching,
Breathing.
Exhaling down the side.
Inhaling up the other side,
Sensing,
Watching,
Breathing.
Exhaling down the side.
Just two more.
Up with the inhale.
Down with the exhale.
Sliding all around the loop here,
The thumb.
Sensing,
Watching,
Breathing.
All the way up.
Exhaling,
Sensing,
Watching,
Breathing on the way down.
So just pausing.
Noticing how you're feeling physically,
What's present emotionally,
Maybe the quality of your attention as well.
And of course you could take that all the way back.
You could set a timer for five minutes and doing it if you want to,
Something like that.
And that's a very simple exercise.
Also,
Just to help you be aware,
The more senses we're engaging,
The more we're anchoring our brain to the present moment,
Which is not where anxiety and overwhelm live.
It's inversely correlated with that.
When we're sensing in this moment,
When we're bringing our attention into this space to what's actually in the here and now,
Again,
We hit the parasympathetic nervous system.
We start to dial that in and we dial down the part of our brain that's busy worrying and thinking and doing things like that.
That's why that's effective.
Again,
This is something you want to play with when you're not in heightened states of stress and anxiety initially,
It's something you just want to get some practice with.
So your brain knows the procedure and then can begin to engage it when you're feeling a bit more anxious or stressed or overwhelmed.
And then in those moments,
When you start to integrate them into those moments,
That's when you start creating memories of being able to feel more confident and being able to actively dial down the sympathetic nervous system and engage the parasympathetic nervous system.
Now here's the thing,
The more memories you have of actively engaging the parasympathetic nervous system,
The more implicitly confident you'll become with all of this.
And some people get a little anxious about even the idea of like,
Well,
How do I know this is working?
I mean,
You can always give yourself a rating before this practice on a scale of one to 10 to say like,
Well,
How,
Where's my stress right now?
And then after the practice,
Check in with your body,
Noticing the tension,
Your heart rate,
Things like that.
And,
Or even with,
You can do it with your various devices as well.
Just check in,
See objectively,
Like is your body more calmer?
Is your thoughts a little more relaxed?
And you could do it like that.
Cool.
.
