169. Slowing Down And Grounding

Hello. Hello, my amazing, beautiful listeners. How are you? How are you on this day in particular? Oh, the holidays. Just, just a mixed bag of emotions for many of you. Right. Well, if you are feeling sad, welcome. If you are failing. Lonely welcome. If you're feeling overwhelmed, welcome and if you're feeling left out, welcome.

If you're feeling any amount of gratitude welcome. I will say that I am truly grateful for the opportunity to have this platform. This podcast to do what I do every day, hold that very sacred space for those navigating, betrayal, abuse, and divorce. I am grateful that I have a way to give voice to the complexities of this journey and grateful that you join me each week. Grateful for your support, your comments, your emails, those of you that show up in the spaces that I create.

Thank you for joining me today. I truly am grateful for that. I wanna offer a brief thought and a meditation today, as I'm hoping to encourage you to slow down. I wanna invite you to reflect and connect to your body. I can probably guess that most of you are not doing this yourselves, so I will take this time to make space and invite you in.

Let's slow down With the holidays here and still more coming, it is easy to feel pulled in a hundred different directions. With the shopping and the planning and the family Dyna dynamics right now it all adds up. For those of you healing from betrayal and divorce, it can feel even more intense. Some of you are still navigating the, the ex in-law dynamics and some are navigating the split custody of holiday time with kids and some are alone for the first time.

If you are doing that holiday split, some are still in the middle space of divorce, dealing with the awkward and the challenge of same. Shared space in your holiday with a whole lot of emotions surrounding that. just in general, holiday season can bring a hustle, right, A hurry. when we have already been living in a hustle, right, the doing more, being more, trying more, proving more.

You're not alone, especially right now. So we need to take time to ground. Now, many of you, if not all of you have heard this word, right? Grounding, get grounded need to ground yourself. But what in the heck does that really mean? What does grounding actually do?

So the word grounding comes from the idea of being connected. To the ground, like literally standing on earth in electrical systems, grounding is about creating stability and safety so that the energy doesn't overload. The same is true for us, and here is something so fascinating.

Scientists have found that the earth carries its own natural frequency. Some call it the Schumann resonance. It runs at 7.83 hertz. When we connect with the ground barefoot, our bodies begin to sink with that frequency. It helps calm the brainwaves, it helps regulate your rhythms and even neutralize that stress that builds up in our nervous system.

Just like electricity needs grounding to avoid chaos, your body and mind. Needs grounding to avoid the chaos, to stay safe, steady. And right now there might have been a lot of chaos and still continues to be a lot of chaos in your life, and your energy is most likely charged up or really, really low. I love how so many traditions like indigenous, yogic, somatic have always taught.

That we heal. When we reconnect with the earth. We have this incredibly free resource given to us , to help us regulate, to center, to get grounded, rooted, anchored, and come back to our higher self. So when we walk around the earth barefoot, you sit on the earth when you put your hands deep into the soil of the earth.

This activates your parasympathetic nervous system, slows your heart rate, regulates your cortisol, balances, the circadian rhythms, which helps regulate your sleep and your hormones. How many of you would love to have more regulated sleep? When we ground regularly and consistently, it reduces inflammation in the body by discharging the excess positive ions.

Rebalancing with negative ions from the earth. Fascinating, right? I love the science of this. Can you tell, this improves your mood. It boosts serotonin, dopamine in a healthy way. It brings awareness out of those spinning rumination. What if type thoughts that we can really get looped and stuck in, and it brings you back to the present moment.

When we are earthing, like skin contact with the earth and even just orienting to the direction of the sun, like right now, I'm sitting in my office, those of you who can see on YouTube, I'm sitting in my office and I know that the sun is to my right, just.

When I start to feel overwhelmed, when I start to feel anxious, when I start to feel that flood in my in when the brain kind of starts to flood with the emotions, when I notice that's starting to rise up. Something very simple that I can do even when I'm in the middle of a session is just orient to the direction of the sun.

Just I know that the sun is right there and I am right here.  I just took a deep breath. That right there. Helps slow down, helps activate that parasympathetic state. Feeling the sun on your body, and though feeling the warmth in your bones. I love laying on the pavement in the warm sun, especially when we're coming out of winter, those winter months, and the sun is starting to come out more and it's creating more heat.

My daughters and I would always say, let's go. Let's go lay like lizards, because you just feel like a lizard laying on the pavement. And who knows what our neighbors thought, because literally on the pavement, in the driveway, just laying like a lizard and feeling the sun, feeling the warmth deep into the bones.

This is healing. When you have been betrayed, when you are experiencing that deep hurt and pain, your nervous system's going to get stuck in fight, flight, freeze. Grounding helps your body, it helps it to just feel safe. Right now, it's not gonna do all the deep work that the somatic work like I do with brainspotting and the Alexander technique, right?

Releasing the shock. But if we can't creed enough safety in our body, then we can't do that deeper somatic work. In fact, a lot of times my clients will come and say, I wanna do brain spotting, or I wanna do some of the somatic work that you that you specialize in. And, through asking questions and seeing where they're at in their journey.

Oftentimes I'll say, you know what? Let's, let's go back to some basic grounding skills first that we can create enough safety in your body so that we can get to the deeper work.

grounding can help you do that,

even in the moment. It, it's just that a moment and the more moments you create for your body, the more it starts to believe that you are. Okay. this might sound great and you may even believe me, but why don't we do it more often? Right? Why is there oftentimes a resistance? Well. You might relate to some of the thoughts like, I don't have time, or it feels lazy to slow down.

That was my big one. If I stop and slow down, , then one of my old automatic thoughts that runs from childhood is, you are lazy. or maybe you think if I stop, then all the emotions are gonna catch up to me or. I should be further along in my healing already. I, I don't, I shouldn't be needing this type of grounding.

I should be over this right now.

We even try to hustle for our healing, which again, is amping up our body to trying to rush the process so that it doesn't hurt anymore, but. Healing cannot be microwaved. Grounding is the absolute opposite of hustling. It's about letting your body set the pace. It is time to slow down, slowing down is the way to speed up your healing.

Yes, you heard that right? Okay, so if you have taken time to listen to me this long, let's take the next five  📍 minutes.  For a grounding meditation. Even if you're driving,  📍 just take this in as much as you can.  So take a moment

 if you can take your shoes off and put your feet  on your floor.  If you're sitting in the chair,  even if you're on your morning walk, take your shoes off. Walk barefoot. Let your feet be on the ground

  as your feet are on the ground.  I'll give you a minute to settle in there  so you feel your feet firmly planted on the ground. Take a moment and do what I mentioned earlier.  Orient to the direction of the sun or the moon.  Where is the sun?  Or where is the moon?  just notice where you are at.

 In relation to the center of the moon,

 feeling your feet firmly on the floor. Imagine roots growing out the bottom of your feet and anchoring down into the center of the earth, deepening into the center of the earth.  Very slowly let those roots grow. Deeper and deeper.  As they center you, ground you, anchor you,  hold you in place.

 Take a moment to notice your breath  notice your body in response to your breath. As you inhale, slowly  expanding your belly,  letting your chest rise  your ribs expand,  holding that breath. Releasing through the mouth very slowly,  pushing that breath all the way through your body, down and out the bottom of your feet.

 We're gonna do that a couple more times, very deep. Inhale in through the nose, expand the belly, let the chest rise. Hold the top,  exhale through the mouth, pushing that breath all the way through your body.  Down your legs, all the way at the bottom of your feet, anchoring and deepening that root into the center of the earth.

 Even further, take a couple more deep breaths on your own.

 One more good deep breath in. When you're aware of your breath in and your breath out, you are in the present moment.

 Notice the weight of your body as you're standing, as you're sitting, even if you're sitting in the car. Feel the weight of your body. Feel the points of contact of your body in the chair, the couch.

Holding you, supporting you

feeling the earth's gravitational pull hold you into the space right now.

Bring your awareness and attention to your ribcage,  the whole center of you. Deepen that rib cage, that center into the chair, just deepen in, hole yourself down into the chair, into the ground, just a little bit more  feeling that weight of your body.

Take a moment to briefly scan your body, starting at the top of your head and noticing any tension.

Any activation that you might not have noticed before. We're noticing not to change, but just to bring awareness to your body.  Notice any tension in your forehead, around your eyes, your jaw,  the back of your head, your neck.

 Shoulders,  gently bring those shoulders up towards your ears and squeeze, squeeze, and slowly release letting any of those shake,  shiver,  jolt pass through. Bring your attention to your throat,  your chest.

 Taking another deep breath and feeling your chest expand,  filling up with air  and exhaling One more time.

Scanning down your arms, your hands.

Maybe you were squeezing and tightening your fist  and you didn't even realize.

Notice your stomach, your core right there in your center, what's going on in there? To take a moment to notice, even if it's just noticing  the softness of your breath as your belly slowly rises and falls.

 Bringing your attention to your pelvic floor, your hips, a lot of trauma gets stored in our hips. Let's take a moment to acknowledge your hip flexors,  those joints  moving down your legs. Your thighs, your knees, your calves,  all the way down your feet,  down to your toes.   📍 Maybe your toes were scrunched and you didn't even know it.

Observing, becoming aware and saying hello to your body.  Maybe for the first time today, maybe for the first time in a really long time.  Hi body. I see you.  Wiggle your toes, wiggle your fingers  and say to yourself in this moment,  I am safe  In this moment I can rest.

 Take a moment to notice the colors around the room. Again, if you're driving, name the colors that you see around you.  Name them out loud. Orienting again to where you are bringing yourself back to this moment

if you feel so inclined. Wrapping your arms around your body and giving yourself a hug and thanking yourself for taking the time to pause to slow  to say hello  we really are saying hello to ourself.

 How do you feel? Do you notice any difference?  Do you notice a difference in your thoughts, in your breath and your energy? Hopefully that gave you a moment to ground a moment that you might not have taken otherwise.

   We live so much outside of ourself  focusing on all the things outside of us.

Many of these things that we can't control. So taking this five minutes at least once a day, but multiple times a day if you can, to just slow down and say hello can massively. Help your healing progression. Those of you that are always looking for that thing to do to make this speed up, this really slowing down will help it speed up.

I'm gonna offer a couple questions now. Okay. You can journal these right now or journal them later or just

see how your brain wants to answer them. Right here in the moment, but a couple things to ask yourself is, when I slow down, what feelings or fears showed up for me? When we took that five minutes just to, or however long that was. When we, when you slowed down, what did you notice? What feelings, emotions, sensations showed up?

Was there fear showing up? Oftentimes the fear escalates because we're ignoring it. Again, it's that weird paradox when we acknowledge it and say, hi, I see you. You're in my chest and it's tight, and you're right here. we breathe into that space in our body. Remember, your human body was designed to feel these feelings.

It knows how to hold space for them when you allow it. Which is why slowing down and grounding is so important. The next question is, where in my body do I feel the safest right now? So when you were doing your body scan, maybe there were some uncomfortable and not so great feelings in your chest, but maybe in your hands or in your fingertips, it felt safe.

It felt calm, it felt rooted. Grounded. Sometimes we want our whole body to feel grounded. And that often doesn't work either. When I'm doing brain spotting sessions, if I have a client that is at a, high activation number, like say they say, oh, well I'm at a 10 in activation, like being the highest, then what we'll do is we'll start with finding one place in their body that does feel rooted, grounded, or anchored.

we start there sometimes it's the tip of the nose or the fingertips or the ear lobes you have. A place in your body that is grounded, that is  even neutral  Sometimes when we're feeling flooded, overwhelmed chaos. Find that one place in your body that is calm, neutral, grounded. The next question, what's one way that I can give myself permission to pause even when it feels chaotic?

What is one way that I can give myself permission to pause, even if it feels chaotic. Maybe that's just writing on a sticky note. Permission slip. You have permission to pause,

then you stick that sticky note. Maybe in your car, maybe on your, on your bedroom mirror. In your fridge. Give yourself permission to pause. The last one, how might grounding help me trust my body and my healing timeline? How might this grounding and the practice of help me trust my body and help my healing timeline?

Those are some things to think about and consider journal around.

Grounding is not just a practice, it is a choice. A choice to honor your body and let healing happen at its own pace. You don't have to hustle to be enough. You already are enough, if you don't believe that yet for yourself, you can borrow my belief because I know that you are. You are already whole and complete just as you are.

You are not broken Things around you might be. You are not weak. The people around you might have become weak. You are not crazy. Those around you needed you to feel like that so that they wouldn't be found out. You are not less than because you are made for more  grounding is the way that your.

Higher self. Your soul, your spirit whispers to your body. I am here with you. You are not alone, and slowing down is not losing time. It is gaining presence and being present. It's gonna help you with that clarity, with that awareness, and with that acceptance. Seeing things as they really are is how we get unstuck.

Grounding and being present is gonna help you do that. The beautiful thing about Mother Earth is that she can hold what you cannot. She has the capacity to hold all of the energy and the chaos that you cannot hold anyone.

Let it go. Let her hold you. Let her study you and support you and remember,

it is a beautiful resource that we can take advantage of way more than I think we are. All right, everybody. Thank you for taking the time. For those of you who took the time to slow down with me today. If this was difficult, if you found this really challenging, get curious as to why. Reach out, get support.

Book a session with me. Let's practice. It just takes practice. I promise you will get there. With that intentional practice. Don't judge yourself or be harsh with yourself. If this was difficult, if you couldn't even get through that meditation, be kind and gentle. There's a reason why it might not have felt safe.

Wherever you're at. That's information that we can look at together and process together. Doesn't mean that you did something wrong or that you're doing any of this wrong, I promise. If you were able to slow down, I hope that you can continue this practice of slowing down even more. Maybe one more time today.

Maybe listen just to the meditation part one more time today, be curious about what you're noticing from this practice. The more you do this it helps you,   📍 supports you to become the creator of your life, become the chooser of your life to help support your ability to create the life that you really want, because you can take care everybody.