Anybody that knows me has heard me say, more than once, that staying grounded is of the utmost importance. You can Google The Importance of Grounding and get a long list of articles from electricians stating the importance of grounding. I actually did just this and noticed that an electrician’s list for why grounding is so important isn’t that much different than my list of reasons to ground ourselves energetically/spiritually.
Here is what the electricians have to say about why grounding is so important:
- Provides protection from electrical overload
- Helps direct electricity effectively and efficiently
- Provides Stability
Anyone who has installed a light fixture (or seen the guts of an electrical appliance) knows that the little green wire is the grounding wire. The thing to understand about electricity is that it is always looking for the shortest path back to the earth. Being that we are electrical beings transmitting and receiving electrical impulses at all times, doesn’t it make sense that we should stay grounded, too? Where’s our green grounding wire? The electricians get it.
That is why 95% of all the guided meditations that I use in my group classes, and with my clients 1:1, involve the exercise of grounding down using guided imagery, and imagining a grounding cord coming from the root chakra (near the tail bone) and burrowing itself deep into the Earth to provide the sensation of being grounded. I have even dedicated some of my free guided meditations on my YouTube Channel to guide my listeners on how to ground themselves using meditation.
But for some reason, whenever I recommend the process or intention of grounding to a student or client, I’m usually met with a sigh or a ho-hum. And for the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why. Then it dawned on me. I believe the problem lies with the word Grounding – this particular word has a bad wrap.
When we were kids and did something wrong, we were grounded or punished. For some of us, that meant being sent to do a chore we didn’t want to do or to have something great taken away from us. Being grounded stunk when we were kids!
If we ever found ourselves kicking off or wrapping up our vacation and being stuck in an airplane that had been grounded, that meant we weren’t able to fly. This restriction was most likely met with some degree of frustration.
It’s time we take the word Grounded off the bad list, and see it for the awesome essence it really is!
Grounded people are strong, balanced, stable, organized and use their energy efficiently and effectively to get things done. They also tend to be less emotionally reactive to others. (These sound a lot like the qualities on the electrician’s list.) If these same grounded people are also in tune with their right-brain/higher chakra qualities, they are unstoppable!
Imagine, for a moment, a giant Redwood tree! Do you suppose that monster of a tree has a deep root system or roots that only go into the ground an inch or 2? That’s right… the deeper the roots, the stronger and bigger the tree.
So, when a client or student comes in and they are complaining of being spaced out or forgetful or scatter-brained, I remind them the importance of being grounded. I’ll offer recommendations on grounding meditations, exercises, essential oils and stones to help the grounding process. That’s usually where the ho-hum comes but only because they didn’t truly understand the power behind being grounded. Yes, using our higher chakras to find our inner, creative artist is fun; or meditating to fly off into space to experience that sensation of being carefree is liberating, but feeling that sense of being grounded is empowering! It helps to take that mosaic you painted in your mind during meditation and put it on canvas by driving your butt to the art supply store and getting the supplies you need to turn your vision into something tangible. Being grounded helps to execute ideas. A properly grounded person can also release energy being thrown at them more easily while maintaining their center and not becoming emotionally reactive.
In short, being grounded, rocks and once my clients and students experience what it feels like to be truly grounded, they get it in a whole new way and incorporate it into their lives with more gusto.
So, the next time your meditation coach recommends that you ground, go for it with a smile now that you better understand the benefits. When someone shows you a red jasper (an excellent grounding stone), don’t keep looking to one-up it with, yet, another amethyst (an excellent creative stone for insight). There is room for both in your collection.
Go out into the world as a grounded human being and enjoy the stability, balance and power being grounded provides knowing that it is a key ingredient to your spirituality, not its antithesis.
To learn more about the importance of Grounding and Connecting, click here.
-Dawn Marie. © Copyright, 2016, The Zen Room