How To Ground Yourself

Sweet friends, today we offer grounding techniques for uncertain times. It's natural to feel anxious or ungrounded at times, and especially during coronavirus. Here, we talk about how to calm down when the world is topsy-turvy.

We share our own experiences with feeling anxious, scared, or ungrounded — and then we share practical tips and spiritual tools for ways to calm down. We may not be able to control pandemics or covid-19, but we can find safety within. Sending you love. You're not alone.

Transcript

Thanks for joining us here on Pretty Spiritual where we're attempting the unthinkable about how to navigate this messy, Beautiful, Imperfect life with spiritual tools, What, Principles, And our own personal stories. So we're not experts, We're not religious, We're definitely silly. We're honest, Real, And willing to share. So join us as we connect, Bond, And grow together. Thanks everybody. Hi everyone, Welcome to Pretty Spiritual. Hello friends, We miss you so much. Hey! I'm Lindsay Poney and we're all calling in via an internet platform today hoping that we are going to be able to share an episode with you. I'm here with Ella. Hello, I'm Ella. And also I have the wonderful Annie. Hey, This is Annie. So yeah, We've turned off our videos and we're attempting to connect and it's over the phone and so really I'm just sitting in here not alone but alone together and feeling, You know, Just that I want to connect and we're hopeful to connect with you. And today we are going to attempt to talk about the topic of how to calm down or calming ourselves or using our bodies to ground ourselves in uncertain times or turbulent emotional storms. Oh those are my fav. Oh goody. Also I thought of the terms of embodiment is a way. Some other terms are grounding. Another very cool one that Ella brought up when we were talking about this conversation was earthing. Real thing. Real thing, Very cool. And I was, As we're all quarantined or sheltering in place as has been requested for us to do, I guess it made me realize how disquiet and calm I truly am. I mean it's hard to look back but if we do, Can I honestly say that I was ever grounded or calm before the whole? I feel like not saying the words of like COVID or pandemic. Right because if you don't say it, It's not here. It's not happening. I think that works pretty well I think for a while. We're just choosing to call in to each other and not hanging out. Denial is a real spiritual tool. I feel like they visited that territory in the past and it's still valid. Still will continue to visit that. Yes we will. Yeah so I was just wondering, I feel like the sheltering in place and being quarantined and the social distancing and all of that really kind of set the stage for me to become really in touch with how un-calm I truly am even before this happened. But there were so many ways to check out or distract myself. And so here I found a listing of like how to notice if you're ungrounded or not calm. So here are some things in case you really can't remember if you're not in touch with it right now. So even before all of this happened, Have you noticed yourself ever before experiencing being distracted easily? Yes. Spacing out. It's my whole area of expertise. Get ready because I think it'll be this whole list. What it is for me. Overthinking. Ruminating. Oh boy. Engaging in personal drama. Okay. Experiencing anxiety and perpetual worry. Who's been spying on my brain? We're really about to get in there. Oh god. That's worse. Yes it does. Possessed by desires for material things. Received easily by yourself and others. That one's a little more slippery. And then obsessed with your own image and vanity anybody? Pretty much forever. Maybe. Don't worry. The world is full of impermanence Ella. That's what I was telling myself today as I was looking in the mirror. So being ungrounded is an epidemic that we usually don't notice and we can't notice. But thanks to our real life pandemic I've realized how discomposed and even perturbed I am on a deeper level. I've actually been able to do deeper work during this time after the two weeks of freak out that is for me personally. And recognizing this side of me that's calling out asking to be guided towards centering grounding and calming down. I honestly believe there's a bridge that we can cross into help us ground to get centered and to calm ourselves. Whether in the midst of a pandemic or simply the pandemonium of our spirits lodged in our restless minds. Can we bridge the gap from our minds to our hearts where inner resource of calm and tranquility can be contacted? I actually am beginning to think so. I never did before. So loves to be grateful for. Let's find out. Ella why don't you start us off with how has it been uncalm in your life and how have you been calming yourself during this time of the quarantine or just any time before when there was unrest that you were aware of? Such a great topic Pony. Thank you so much. So I have the advantage of my life fell apart like a month before quarantine happened. And so I was I got a little head start on the uncalm in January February my long term partner and I split up we had lived together and so I also moved. My job ended that I had been out for like three years. All this happened within like a relatively short timeframe until like my personal personally my life was on fire but like the rest of the world was kind of still going about its usual business and for me what that meant was that there was like all of this uncalm and then I got I had enough time being with the uncalm to get into discomfort. So for me what happens when a lot of the time when life is like going well and is kind of not actively falling apart is that I'm just sort of like in the routine of the day to day and I fall victim much more easily to the delusion that life is going to stay like this forever, You know, But when life falls apart in like a really dramatic way usually that simplifies things a lot. And so when things get really simple for me because there aren't other options then it's a lot easier for me to make the decision to do the work of grounding and calming because I am desperate for it and frankly there aren't really any other viable options. I also want to say that I have worked from home for quite a while now and so I have this advantage of like a physically a slower lifestyle probably than a lot of people in our society do and that's helpful for me just because my body doesn't with chronic illness doesn't kind of have the capacity to run around all the time and that was a slow transition for me as well from like kind of willing my body into situations that would cause me physical harm and then like learning to do things that I thought were I wasn't allowed to do like rest in the middle of a work day or cancel plans at the last minute etc. So okay how have I been calming myself? One kind of move a spiritual shift that's been happening for me in the last few months is going from essentially feeling like put on my heels by others and the needs they have and the requests they have of me versus like really grounding down into my own power and authenticity and so that's something that has been so alive for me during this quarantine period is that frightening things will happen and I'll feel myself like push back onto my heels so that I kind of have that feeling of like I'm falling and there's nothing underneath me and sometimes I actually need to stay there and like let the fear and the unpredictability and a lack of control and how hard it is just kind of like break me apart and I'm a big I'm a big fan of meltdowns if you haven't heard me talk about that already so sometimes I think there's like real value in letting yourself fall apart and feeling and expressing all of those sticky emotions and kind of releasing them but also it's been really helping me to when I notice myself push back on my heels and I'm ready to look for grounding and stillness and safety inside myself that has been a really helpful thing because life was falling apart in such a dramatic way I've been very into like a week ago I've been totally consumed with like just the logistics of life and so I've been there hasn't been space in my waking hours to really process any of the feelings on a deep level and so they've been coming out in dreams and in other ways but now there finally is some emotional and physical space opening up for me to have this experience and I'm excited to share about what I'm doing with that thank you thanks Ella you're welcome you're welcome okay thank you so much Ella I appreciate that for me during this time I don't know if it had anything to do with everything that has happened my life hasn't changed very much I work for insane people who pretend that this isn't happening so I am just pretty much going through life the same working you know there has been things that look different and the way that we behave going to grocery stores and whatnot is different and I have more weird feelings there's a lot more weird shame present I think because if it were up to me I would be just staying home this whole time so that's some extra stuff that I've had to deal with but other than that I haven't really I've been fortunate enough to get paid I'm fortunate enough to I personally don't have my own children I raise other people's children as my job and I'm just really thinking about all the sweet family units and people who have really had to are I'm just sure struggling right now with having to be wear so many different hats like try to work from home try to parent from home try to be a school teacher now try to tend to these young children's emotional bodies when there's so many restrictions here now and I just I really just want to you know take that moment and think about all the people that are really affected besides the people who are sick and dying even if we aren't caring about it doesn't mean that it's not happening and so confusing with all of the I just don't watch the news so that's one of the ways that I'm a tool that I have that seems to help me very much so I've been doing a lot of really deep insight work though previous to this and obviously I'm on a spiritual journey trying to grow and get to know myself and especially my shadow side so this seemed like a really big catalyst for me to be able I felt like it's really almost kind of like a retreat where you go for like 10 days or 30 days should we say it's like day 30 now and it's the same thing is kind of happening every day so I've really got to see myself in my thinking in my mind all of these distractions just like I was talking about in the introduction have been taken away and so to really see my mind at unrest has been almost I don't want to say it's surprising but I guess I was just using so much blame in other areas it was easy to just kind of blame or not feel that was what I've really been noticing is that I thought before I would just swallow down these things that I didn't want to believe or I didn't want to be true or I didn't know how to deal with or I really find myself pushing away the discomfort or like fighting with the for so long my strategy has just been not to feel not to talk about and then certainly not to actually trust my reality of what's going on because those are my old strategies for surviving they are now my habits and how I live and so this time has really although it's been incredibly uncomfortable because of the repetition of over and over again and mainly being with my self I have really got to get to know these this unrest that lives within me and I think a lot of for me really is in my thinking mind and I didn't realize it but I'm kind of addicted to just thinking and planning and thoughts and pushing away the feelings and pushing away what I don't like but then the thinking and then what to do in the planning and today in meditation I noticed another kind of sneaky way that I get out of this what I want to call being like body full in my body is to really plan on helping others and isn't that so perfect my codependency part is also in there also just you know adding fuel to the fire of like oh this no this is good for your mind to think this way because you're going to be helping other people you know and it's just more of that getting away and pushing myself away from what's here which is you know in various different forms I need to work to calm myself and to remind myself that in my body and in my heart it's a safe calming place but I am so addicted and used to just being in my mind and being in the thought process and just planning and doing and whatever form it takes up that day of what it's going to look like for me to be productive or useful or getting things done or being better I am now getting to see that like that is the unrest and the disquiet and the it's adding more fuel to this fire of not being okay and what I want to talk about when I get to the tools is how to recognize this and how to hopefully become more body full so that's my plan later. Body full I really like that. Yeah I yeah I'm pretty sure that it was my partner so anyways he of course they get full credit. Thanks Justine! It only took three years okay Annie. Thank you so much and Pony I loved when you were calling out what I call a character defect of the people pleasing and lately I've been thinking too about how the things that are my biggest challenges like my people pleasing can also be one of my greatest assets if I just learn how to shift and channel it in a different way so I just wanted to give us all that gentleness and I was also thinking how it's hard to do this podcast without looking at Ella and Lindsay because we usually record together in a room and there's an actual energy that I can feel between the three of us of us just physically being together but then I had this realization that us doing this over headphones and without being able to see each other is actually how listeners experience us and so maybe this is kind of neat because we get to see what it's like to just be part of that experience. Pony I really love this topic and miraculously the quarantine is the most grounded that I have felt in months which I know is kind of a controversial statement and I promise not to hiss at you too much and I also want to give a shout out to people who you know like Ella was saying I work remotely and my wife does too and so we have the privilege of our our work not being impacted by this and the the way that financial fear can be ungrounding is really hard and so I just want to send love out to anybody who's experiencing that right now or health things or like Pony was talking about with the family dynamics of having to care for kids like this is a really destabilizing time in a lot of different ways and so I when I share that this is the most grounded that I've felt I also want to acknowledge that those aren't that there's obstacles that some people are up against that I don't I'm not having to face right now and I just I wish everybody peace and safety so this is the backstory why I feel grounded in the midst of a global pandemic I've shared a lot on this podcast of being on an SSRI which is a type of medication for anxiety and that I was on it for six years and I also shared very triumphantly I'd like to note that I have been weaning off of it and successfully and then I shared that I was completely off of it so I did I weaned off of it over six months and I felt super proud of myself like I had accomplished something and that I had like kind of healed in some way and it was really interesting because over the six months of coming off this SSRI it was you know through mid 2019 to the end of 2019 I didn't notice the subtle way that fear and anxiety and obsessive thinking which for me obsessive thinking looks like really intensified narrowed focus on negative topics you know like I'll take one topic and just hang on to it so those things were gently creeping back in and that lack of grounding or that inability to self-soothe or get out of fight or flight was starting to go away from me but I didn't notice it because it was happening really slowly and in retrospect now I've been able to go back and look at journals and see like over six months how that how my how it was changing but that was how I'd lived for decades before I started taking the SSRI of this like state of fear all the time and when I first started taking it it worked right away and I was like oh my god is this how people's brains work is this how they feel you know are they not constantly in terror so I was getting more and more ungrounded and like ruminating stuck on ideas and then fast forward to January I had a really bad panic episode and some PTSD symptoms were re-emerging in some very alarming ways and so with medical help I decided to go back on the medicine and right as I did that's when shelter in place started happening in California all of a sudden it was like the six seven months of like feeling all that fear and that panic and that stuff that I didn't have control over like it was just how my brain works apparently that went away and I was just kind of returned to a normal state of having a sense of balance going back on the medicine I struggled like I'd failed but as I began taking it again this this is the greatest gift that I've ever given myself because as this really truly scary thing is going on like this pandemic and this kind of global sense of lack of control I actually had a baseline of being safe in my own body so that when outside stuff scared me I could use tools and they would work you know whereas before it was like I didn't have any inner stability so I'm going to share some tools that that work for me now because I do have that baseline of stability when we get to the tools section. Yay Annie that was so sweet thank you. Yay oh very sweet we're all trying so hard. We are little tender bunnies. Yes it's such a wonderful time we're going to move into tools very exciting I need all the tools all the time turns out I have someone some can I notice that I have this super heavy toolbox that's full of tools can I open it and use them when appropriate so for me. Virtual home depot over here. For me the first part of the tools section in becoming body full is I have to recognize and accept and acknowledge that I live in my head I told my I should say our therapist oh and I have the same therapist now sorry. What what it has FOMO but it's fine. I was telling her as we were working through this this week I said I just want to be a walking around torso you know instead of this floating head and it's so great because with that realization that I am oftentimes constantly lost in thought distracted you know what just from all the list of what I was talking about in the introduction you know check check check distracted spaced out ruminating personal drama vanity like you know so my floating head that I'm in the first step for me is to recognize that that's going on you know and it's okay that it's been years and years and years and years and years and that I will probably that this is a practice and it's a journey and a process recognizing that I'm locked in my head or not calm right because when I'm in that thinking thought process it's not calming it's not soothing and I've got you know that I've got a lot of things going on from here to there and so getting to know one's specific type of unrest is also a really big piece of this for me also to see how I act out when I'm not grounded has taken me a really long time and for many years I was in non-acceptance that my tone and my aggression are actually the signposts that are letting me know that I am not that I'm actually living in my head and in this addiction to my thoughts and that's been the really big piece for me that's taken a long time so getting to know myself and what my personal cues that becomes the doorway for me to start the practice of attempting to become bodyful so instead of being lost in thought being distracted all of the things noticing the signs or even being able to listen to some of my closest people who are my mirrors to let me know so that takes time so let's just say that recognizing you're not calm first right noticing that you're lost you're that floating head or that you just feel unrest so how do I come back and begin to get calm and ground myself for me becoming more bodyful what I what I've been doing this week is so I started my head right that's where I know that I live I notice I'm in my head and so I'm I'm doing really deep breathing and I'm noticing where all my attention and all of that is is in my head and then I start to think what would it be like for me to travel down into my heart and during this time what I noticed for me is that I really it's felt like frozen before I thought I was like an iceberg you know I I had all these frozen feelings in my throat and I didn't know how to label feelings I thought that if I didn't touch them or have them then they didn't exist and so it all became very frozen and for a few years I've been kind of melting this iceberg and these feeling I've been learning about feelings on our tools page we have a wheel that has feelings there are so many great things there for us to get in touch with some of these things that we may have been blocking for so long and that's what I did I would swallow these feelings and I would swallow it down I would get very I have a lot of trauma and tight jaw pain and that's also another doorway for me to recognize I'm in my head how can I bridge my head to my heart and so I've started taking really deep breaths and then I would do throat breathing which I just learned about it's kind of like a throat massage thank you instead of just breathing in and out of my nose and kind of being stuck in my head I started doing in my meditation where I would breathe in and then I would breathe through my throat like the throat chakra and then I would get down into my heart and then after I had done this a few times which is actually it was really hard for me to do because like I said it's been kind of an iceberg and like locked away and all the pressure in my jaw but when I actively start to make this bridge down into my heart then after I've done that a few rounds then I also start to go into my sacrum so when we're grounding we want to go from the head to the heart to the sacrum and if we can down into the feet and into the earth and so that's just the beginning I'm really hopeful that we'll get to do more whether it be on Facebook you can join our Facebook page at pretty spiritual podcast we have a group now where we can do some of these meditations and try those out perhaps we'll do them some on live on Instagram and so thank you all so much. Yay, Thanks Pony. So sweet. It's funny because for me it's been the grounding has actually gone the opposite direction I've always had really really strong physical sensations in my gut that's like the place I could always feel my feelings even if I didn't stay with them doing that kind of the kind of somatic healing work that Lindsay is talking about has been bringing sensation up to my first it was my heart and now it's feeling like my throat and my jaw which are places in my body that I just apart from it hurts there wasn't like a physical kind of sensation contact I could really make. So doing this kind of somatic work is making space for all of these experiences of grief and loss that I haven't had space to really like feel and express and one kind of simple thing that really helps me come back to myself is when I notice myself thinking about this is most present for me with my ex but I mean you can do you can use any kind of obsession as a signpost like Lindsay was talking about so I notice myself wondering what someone else's experience is like such a good codependent when I notice myself doing that especially with my ex because it gets really painful really fast that is my signpost to come back to my alive body what's what's happening right now so that has been a really useful signpost to me to just come home to my body and the other thing I want to say that's taken years for me to really want to embrace but that I first started learning at a Buddhist monastery is that we can enjoy embodiment like it's not a punishment which is what I thought at first and especially for me because I have a lot of physical pain and discomfort from a chronic illness it's really important for me to enjoy my senses whenever possible so I have this kind of like collection of sensory experiences that I like to give myself which is like that a hot bath is one of them being in nature fresh air especially being around I'm obsessed with trees and so during this quarantine to you know have an opportunity to exercise I've been going for these really long walks with our family dog Coco and she's pretty much my favorite being ever no offense you guys you're in a close second for sure I just adore this creature so much when we go for these walks I've been orienting toward away from this kind of chronic state of overwhelm which is like how I live my life and instead orienting toward like what feels playful and childlike about this experience because that is really that state of having the mind of a beginner like what would I think of a tree if I'd never seen one before I just see how much fun I can let myself have with embodiment enjoying the world around me really like appreciating the beauty and the relationships and the like physical experience of coming home last night Coco sometimes spends the night in my room and last night she we had gone for a really long walk and she was all curled up in her little puppy bed as is my habit I can't like let her just be tired in her bed I have to like wake her up to cuddle her poor dog and so I was doing that when I was I was kind of like nuzzling her and burying my face in her and it have been that like physical mammalian comfort like really hit something in me and I just started sobbing because I've been like oh I feel really deprived of that sacred pathway home which is being embodied with another being having physical touch as part of that experience and so I just I like laid down on the floor with her and put my little head at the edge of her puppy bed and I just kind of cried and held hands with her which she likes to do and I like to do also and I will finish by saying that you know like there are different pathways home for all of us to embodiment and especially if you have a history of trauma be like really respectful with what feels safe and good for you but for me these are pathways that are really working right now and the end result of embodiment practice whatever path you use to come home to yourself is that you get access to this safety of your body that's available in any time you want to come back to the present moment that vehicle is available and for me embodiment is about building that pathway home to my own experience and then practicing over and over again making that trip thanks Ella Annie tell us your tools well I love that you shared your story about snuggling and crying with Coco and Ruby is laying on the floor right next to me right now and my dog has been cried on so many times it is such an amazing resource like gentle warmth of a dog so I have two tools and one is a solitary tool and one is with a teammate I love teammates so the first one this is a solitary tool and actually my friend Jane shared this with me when this was years ago but I was really struggling with some anxiety and I told her that I felt like I was untethered like I could actually kind of feel myself floating out of myself and she was doing and does a lot of energy work and so what she recommended is that I needed to root down in my root chakra essentially your base chakra in the energy system of your body and if you look at the beautiful pictures of what chakras look like it's the red spinning ball your pelvis and it's where in this tradition like how people are grounded it's basically the foundation so she had me start to envision this red swirling ball at the base of my body even just conceptualizing that there's an energy source there there's a place of energy there and then she encouraged me to take a walk especially among trees if I could and to hopefully do it alone so I wasn't you know chit-chatting with someone but if I was to be quiet and to picture this red root chakra spinning and she encouraged me to picture like an energetic line coming from the earth up to this root chakra and tethering me down and not in a scary way or a trapped way but in a way that it was feeding this source and also keeping me connected to the earth which is this source of energy that all of us has accessible to us but I think is for me really easy to get disconnected from when I'm on a lot of screen time when I'm in my head so that is one tool and even if you live in a really city area and you don't have a lot of trees around you anything outside just being in some fresh air and some nature and then doing that visualization practice and pending to that the second one is a teammate tool and so this is asking for help you know I love asking for help it's kind of a two-part tool so one is asking a friend who's reliable and a safe person to help you with this in advance so that when you're in a state of complete uncalm and fear and ungroundedness you already have this pathway set up to reach out so the pieces are already in place so maybe after you get off this listening to this podcast text a friend or reach out to a friend and ask them if they will be your gentle resource reflector I just made up that name it's very cool it's like a hipster band name for sure oh my gosh so have them ask you to list out your resources so when I'm not calm and I'm super fussed and I'm ruminating I might not know to even stop and list out my resources so that I know that I have resources you know like I'm kind of beyond that but I can call it usually I'm able to call a friend and be like hey I'm really freaked out things are overwhelming and the friend can say oh wow I they've I've already been employed I'm ready to take on my teammate cape and so what they will do so you can give them a script to say hey friend I've been getting overwhelmed I'm having a hard time when I call and tell you that can you gently listen and then ask me to list my tools so you know if I call Ella or Lindsay and say I'm freaking out I'm super overwhelmed things aren't okay they'll be like oh honey and then after they listen they'd say maybe could you list some of the tools that you have available to you what are some resources that you have so that's like takes me out of my ruminating and fear and brings me back into the knowledge that I actually have some stuff available to me to help me for me it really works well to list it out loud to the other person and sometimes that makes me crabby because I'm like I'm not a toddler I don't need to list things out of course I know I'm a you know but I just actually were our toddlers yeah and it it's actually kind of empowering because I'm saying this stuff and then I kind of get the body knowledge so just quickly I'll list a few of the things that I would list in this case which is meditation prayer taking a mindful shower and noticing the water on my body using a sequencing tool I'm happy to share the sequencing tool with anybody if they email us at pretty spiritual podcast at Gmail I have a list of resources they're really great taking a nature walk so then that you know listing those things out loud to someone it just it it gives me some power and some agency that I sometimes don't feel that I have when I'm feeling really ungrounded and scared and then a last tool is like pony mentioned we have started a Facebook group where listeners can come together it's a private group so anyone can join but it nothing that you post is public so you know it's kind of a safe and cozy place so cool because listeners are sharing different meditations that they like they're listing different resources so that's is like also a resource that you have available to you so come and check it out yay awesome thank you ladies so much for sharing and trying this new stuff as we navigate the technological world we can be so grateful for yes indeed oh well it's so great to talk about ourselves and all of these things and thank you so much for all your tools and just coming together and trying stuff together helps me so much with all of you I'm so grateful to all of you we would love it if you would connect with us online there's all the areas that pretty spiritual podcast thank you for tuning in and being we don't know what this is going to sound like so hopefully it's listenable and if not then if you're a sound engineer or something we would certainly love your input for our free podcast yes we would love that we are going to try and come back next week we're not even going to have a teaser because you know the world is impermanent things are uncertain nice save pony I like that I really mean it we should just be resting there we love you everybody thanks for listening bye bye