About 15 years ago when I first started to read about spiritual techniques, “grounding” was highlighted as an essential skill. But it never worked.

Books and teachers promised if I grounded every day I’d be calmer, cooler and more in touch with the earth.

What’s funny is that it took me 10 years to understand what it is, really, and find a way to make it work for me.

I wanted to believe there was something to energy work, or guided meditations but nothing I tried had any effect besides leaving me frustrated and dissatisfied! Sheer determination is the only reason I figured it out.

This week I’ll be discussing grounding for non-earth types: people who definitely need to feel more grounded but who can’t feel a difference when teachers guide them to envision trees, sink their energy into the earth, etc.

In the future, I will discuss other techniques such as centering, shielding and clearing energy, all essentials to stay calm and collected in the hustle bustle world. Especially if you are a sensitive person, this stuff is key.

OK back to our grounded discussion.  So what is grounding?

Grounding is a practice of releasing excess, frantic or distracting energy from the body by becoming more in touch with the present moment, our physical anatomy, and the earth.

“Airy fair” spiritual people are not the only ones who need to do this: if you spend a lot of time anticipating other people’s concerns, you’ve been emotionally triggered by a bad movie or fight, you can’t stop checking your email, traffic is making you angry, or you’ve just been trolling around on the internet (hah! caught you), then you could benefit from this, too.

Basically any one feeling stressed, busy, harried, worried, anxious, distracted, sad, spacey, all over the place, unfocused, or anything other than calm, cool and collected can gain immediate benefits by grounding. If they do it right that is.

The thing is that a lot of people take the word “grounding” for granted. About 90% of the teachers I have had instruct students to connect with the center of the earth as a grounding exercise.

This may be difficult for you.

First off some people don’t understand how using the imagination can do anything physical to our bodies.

Scientific studies have shown that envisioning exercise can actually build muscle without moving an inch. What we imagine CAN have a measurable effect on our physical bodies. See The Brain that Heals Itself by Norman Doidge

Second some people just aren’t the earthy type!

In the Indian tradition of doshas, certain people are more energetically aligned with elements other than the earth like air and fire. I personally like to expand that line of thinking to other elements like water, or even wood and metal from the Chinese tradition.

My overall point is maybe you aren’t a tree or earth kinda person! And 90% of books and spiritual teachers are telling you to imagine you are a tree or to reach your energy into the earth? Would they tell a flame or a babbling brook to grow roots?

The only reason I am able to follow the directions of those teachers today is that years ago I began working with a different visualization. As I discuss in the youtube video guided meditation I made a year ago the cauldron has all the elements.

Finally I found the missing piece! For the first time I actually felt like those visualizations I was doing had an effect on my body.

Personally I feel enthralled that there is so much more to life than the earth, I love fire and water and air and wood and metal and spirit and wireless internet.

You need to know yourself and to find the visual symbols that resonate with you, so don’t just visualize a tree, visualize what you need to.

Do your thing even if a teacher talks about roots, so that you can shift your emotions. And if you don’t know what do instead, then try it all!!

I planned to make a video to lead you through this but it won’t upload right now. I’ll get it to you soon. Instead I did make a new video based on last week’s post on the Breakdown before the Breakthrough. 

 Try this experiment to help you find visuals that work for you. Woohoo!

Let’s try this:

Try feeling into the earth like water slurping down a drain flowing down to meet streams deep below.

Sink into the earth like a heavy anchor meeting molten steel in the center of the earth.

Feel your fire spreading down to meet the fires of magma.

Let your winds swirls through the earth’s pores to tunnel in hidden caves.

Then try that tree.

If you have any trouble, contact me for a free session to develop a personal practice that works for you, so you feel calm, collected and ready to rock the world. <3

Or attend the live event and Q&A to learn more about working with your intuition, Certified Ethical Intuitive Consultant Sofia Wren. Thursday Feb 5 2014 on G+ and Facebook