As an empath, or someone who tends to pick up on and absorb the energies and emotions of others, it can be challenging to know how to ground. You feel pulled into the feelings and experiences of the world around you. You get overwhelmed by the sheer force and magnitude of anxiety, pain, and suffering that seems to be everywhere. Even feelings of joy, happiness, and love can feel overwhelming when they aren’t yours!
It’s hard to distinguish, discern, and understand your own emotions when you’re prone to soaking in everyone else’s. This can leave you feeling flooded, ungrounded, and drained.
Grounding for Empaths
Knowing how to ground is an important skill for everyone. However it is essential for those who identify as an empath, highly sensitive person, or intuitive. That’s because the world’s emotional, sensory, and general energetic or psychic output are much more likely to flood and overwhelm you. You may not know what is happening, but you will feel the effects of this in your body, mind, and heart. It can cause unexplained and confusing feelings that don’t seem like yours. Further, you can feel an inexplicable energy drain and loss. Additionally, you can experience a strong desire to isolate and be away from the others in order to cope.
As an empath, your system is designed to pick up on the more subtle cues in the beings and world around you. Not just with humans but with animals, plants, places, and experiences. The sheer volume of information that you pick up on as an empath, HSP, or intuitive is overwhelming! That’s why it is so important to learn the skills you need in order to navigate this world with protection, confidence, and ease.
Knowing how to ground is a key component in learning how to navigate the world as an empath.
Learning How To Ground
First it’s important to understand what grounding is. Specifically, grounding is a practice of energetically and physically rooting your being within the Earth all around you. Especially to the Earth beneath you that is holding you up and supporting you.
Centering and grounding go hand in hand. Centering is about bringing your energy, attention, and awareness back to your own self first. Grounding is connecting to the Earth to help you stay centered. These practices support and affirm the sacred space of you as separate but interconnected with the world. Knowing how to ground can help you anchor into something strong and solid, especially when you feel anxious, overwhelmed, or drained. It can also help prevent you from experiencing overwhelm, by connecting you to the the support of the Earth.
You can ground anywhere by using energetic and physical practices. Energetically, you can ground by using visualization, meditation, and spiritual practices. Physically, you can ground by focusing your awareness in your body as you touch the soil, a plant, a tree, boulders, or the surface beneath you.
How to Ground in 3 Steps
Here are 3 easy and brief steps you can do anywhere to help you ground. Ideally, try to practice these daily before you feel overwhelmed. That way your being can get used to this experience. Therefore when you do find yourself in a state of emotional flooding or overwhelm, you have this skill already available to draw upon.
- First- Center in Your Self. Wherever you are, gently invite your attention and awareness back within yourself. Imagine a protective circle around you, separating you from whatever situation you are in. This circle defines the sacred space of you. From that place, try to feel your body in space. Notice your breath as it flows into and out of your body. Feel the texture of your clothing against your skin. Notice any sensations of tension or relaxation in you bones, breath, and muscles.
- Second – Visualize Yourself As Rooted. Imagine a cord running through the center of your body like a tree trunk. Feel this cord as almost an extension of your spine. It should extend all the way up through your head, branching out and into the sacred space of you. Then travel all the way down, spreading out like roots and into the ground beneath you. Feel how the earth below, around, and above all supports you. How this allows your being to be grounded in time and space from every angle. Focus especially on the roots within the soil, coming down and out through your feet.
- Third – Connect with the Earth – If you can, feel your feet on the ground beneath you. Place your hands in soil. Walk barefoot on dirt, grass, or sand. Lean against or even hug a tree if you feel comfortable. Spend at least 15 minutes with your skin touching the Earth beneath you. Or just visualize a beautiful, safe place which you have been to before. Ideally a place in nature. Try to imagine the unique colors, shapes, scents, and textures of this natural place. Feel how your roots are nourished and supported through this beautiful, safe place.
Further Support on The Empath’s Journey
Grounding, centering, learning how to set boundaries, and practicing self love are all key aspects of the empath’s journey. Keep practicing these skills to support yourself in creating a safe, joyful, and abundantly nourished life as an empath.
As always, if you would like support on exploring how to navigate the world as someone who feels and intuits deeply, I am here for you. Please feel welcomed to reach out. As an empath and highly sensitive person therapist in Berkeley, CA, I especially understand the challenges of this journey. It is an honor to support you.
In Healing,
Phoenix
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