Getting Grounded. In my book Love and Infertility one of my favorite tips or strategies for when you’re going through a trauma, crisis or uncertain event is to use “The Weather Check” strategy for yourself and within your relationships. I use this within my coaching sessions by focusing the first few minutes of each session on taking an emotional temperature and understanding the current conditions within my client’s lives.
I have been struck with the feeling that my coaching clients have been on the emotional rides of their lives. A good analogy is experiencing the Groundhog Day Effect within their worst imagined day, but not just a 24-hour period. It’s a longer dark day.
They have been riding the ground swells of losing pregnancies, coming to grips with ending a marriage and filing for divorce, moving headlong straight into managing health issues and sometimes losing their surefootedness in hope. Some dealing with the growing pains of a new relationship or a change in their home circumstances.
The other day I was in session with a client who experienced so much loss – unimaginable loss – and just kept going. Going through her grief. Going through medical appointments. And figuring out her unrecognizable life.
Daily day-to-day life which could be only categorized as a struggle. But she didn’t look at this time as a struggle; just what needs to be done. We discussed what a graceful commitment to driving forward might look like, sound like and feel like.
And we acknowledged and accepted that: We are fragile. We are precious. We are enough.
One of my favorite movies is Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray. With our world in a pivotal shift, the sense that we are living in a stuck fashion requires radical acceptance of what is; what is right in front of us day in and day out.
Practice Tip!
Practicing daily certainty and combatting uncertainty through the strategy of grounding is so important when you’re feeling confused, uncertain, overwhelmed, sad and fearful… and also when you’re feeling contagiously happy, content and calm.
Watch the YouTube videos here.
- First, let’s quiet our amygdalas! The amygdala is the stress spot in our brain. It’s the Fight or Flight Ruler! When you’re feeling as though you’re having a fight or flight reaction, breath in through your nose and out through your mouth three times. Feel that oxygen-rich blood begins to calm you and your body.
- Interrupt the pattern: Put your hand on your heart and quickly interrupt the pattern with self query. “What do I feel?” “What do I need?”.
- Refocus now from your head to your heart. Imagine a brilliant white light showering down over all of you, flowing with calm and peace over your body and puddling on the floor around your feet. Then in your mind’s eye imagine this white light flooding your emotional body and your mental body.
- Connect within. Feel your breath and feel your feet firmly planted on the ground and rooted into the center of the earth.
- Certainty is being right where you are, planted within the chaos and within yourself.
- When possible please make sure to walk barefoot on Mother Earth and pause for a moment to feel the energy and recharge. (Living in New England I still zip out and brave the cold to have the most important earth connection.)
Here’s a mini version:
A mini grounding version is to center yourself, hand on your heart if you’d like, and imagine roots going into the core of Mother Earth. Then imagine Mother Earth’s energy coming up through your root and out of your crown! Use this little quickie when you’re feeling wobbly and unstable within an interaction that isn’t quite right or feels off in some way.
