Originally posted on Patheos Pagan in 2018
If you have been working a lot with energy or you have had a particularly spiritual ritual or experience you may find yourself feeling a bit lightheaded or even with a headache. This usually means you need to ground. This is important and not just when in ritual, you can ground and centre whenever you need to and in fact it is a useful trick to do during your day.
Energy work can make you feel very floaty and although it is a nice feeling for a while there will be a hard come down afterwards. To avoid that you can ground yourself. This is a way of connecting with the energy of the earth and releasing any excess energy out from your system.
Grounding involves connecting with the Earth to calm and focus you. You know that totally hyper feeling you get sometimes? It might be after ritual, it might be when you have gotten yourself worked up into a complete hissy fit, and it might be because you have eaten too many marshmallows (ahem). Grounding allows you to drain off that excess energy and re-focus.
Some easy options are to clap your hands and stamp your feet, to eat something such as chocolate or cake (obviously my personal choice) or you can place your hands palms facing downwards onto the ground and allow the excess energy to drain back into Mother Earth. Take your shoes off and go stand on the grass, the soil or the sand.
Grounding exercise
If you are feeling really hyper you could work with a root grounding exercise:
Sit or stand comfortably and close your eyes.
Visualise roots beginning to grow from the soles of your feet or the base of your spine, as they grow twisting and turning they plunge down into the lush soil of Mother Earth.
The roots push down deeper into the soil allowing any excess energy to seep out and into the earth.
If you stretch down far enough your roots will tap into the centre of the earth and can draw up the balancing, comforting energy back into your body to bring you peace, calm and focus.
When you are ready slowly draw your roots back up through the soil and into your body.
If you are really, seriously hyper I find it helps to visualise your arms stretching up to the sky at well, feeling your arms, your hands and your fingers becoming branches and sprouting leaves.
This can be an exercise where you sit on your yoga mat with incense burning and plinky plonky music to give a really good experience. However it can also be a seriously quick grounding when you have two minutes to spare. Perhaps at work when things have overwhelmed you, nip to the rest room and just send those roots down for a minute or two.
Try out different types of grounding exercises and see which ones work best. Keep a record of which ones you worked with and how effective they were.
Grounding crystals
There are also crystals that can be used to help you ground, hold them in your hand or keep them in your pocket, some suggestions to use are:
Amethyst, calcite (orange), carnelian, fluorite, hematite, jasper, kyanite, labradorite, obsidian (black), petrified wood, pyrite, quartz (rose), quartz (smoky), tiger’s eye or tourmaline. But a good ole natural pebble will also do the trick.
Grounding herbs
You could make yourself a grounding medicine pouch and fill it with herbs that help to keep your energy stable such as:
Beech, Cornflower (Batchelor’s Buttons), Cramp Bark, Cypress, Dogwood, Echinacea, Grass, Honesty, Honeysuckle, Horsetail, Knotweed, Lungwort, Magnolia, Mugwort, Patchouli, Plantain, Primrose, Sorrel, Tulip, Valerian, Vervain, Yew
Grounding food
Eating is an excellent way to calm your energy, chocolate is my go to food after energy work and the aforementioned cake works well too. But these foods are particularly good for grounding: Barley, beetroot, borage, bread, cake, cookies, pistachio, potato, rice.
It really is a quick and simple exercise to work with but so beneficial in keeping you calm and focused.
