Just like grounding your house allows for a balanced electrical circuit in your home, grounding your body and spirit helps bring balance to your life. Grounding is a method that is often associated with physically touching the Earth’s surface. It is believed that when our physical bodies make contact with our planet’s free electrons (unattached, negatively charged particles) it can be beneficial for our physical health. Some studies have shown that participating in regular grounding techniques can actually help us with fatigue, chronic pain, inflammation, sleep issues, and cardiovascular disease.
However, grounding is not just for our physical bodies. It can also have a positive and therapeutic affect on mental and emotional health, such as helping ease anxiety, depression, loneliness and the sense of feeling lost. Grounding activates our Root Chakra, which brings a feeling of safety, security and steadiness. The act of grounding allows us the opportunity to connect with our planet and all of its inhabitants, creating a sense of unity and wholeness. Being grounded can help sync your spiritual self with your physical self, so you stop feeling like you’re on autopilot and start feeling more in control.
There are many grounding techniques and they can be done indoors or outdoors. Here are just a few examples of how you can ground yourself:
Touching the Earth: Having physical contact with nature is always the first thing that comes to mind when talking about grounding. You can do outdoor exercises, like yoga in your yard or a barefoot walk on the beach. Gardening is a wonderful outdoor grounding activity too. On snowy days, you can connect with nature indoors by simply keeping house plants and touching their leaves and/or soil as you tend to them regularly. Soil and plants are nature too, indoors or out.
Take a Long Soak: Just like soil is a part of the Earth, so is water. So, why not consider splashing around in a lake or playing in the waves at the beach. Even soaking in a tub is a great way to relax, relieve stress and ground yourself. If you don’t have the luxury of a tub bath, a foot bath works too. Add some Epsom salts to your baths to help with grounding and have the added benefits of easing muscle pain, drawing out toxins and adding magnesium. I enjoy Epsom salt baths regularly, especially after doing spiritual work.
Crystals for Grounding: You can do grounding anywhere when you have the right crystals or stones with you. Here are a few to help you ground wherever you are.
- Hematite – This black-silver shiny stone with high iron content is connected with the Root Chakra. It is known as a “healing stone” that can also offer protection from negativity and provide a sense of safety, security and balance.
- Black Tourmaline – Known to be one of the strongest grounding spiritual stones, black tourmaline carries lots of positive energy. This is my favorite protection stone to wear as it helps protect you from negative energy as well as assist with pain and stress.
- Smoky Quartz – This detoxifying crystal helps cleanse negative energy, calm feelings of fear and depression and is also a top favorite grounding crystal.
- Red Jasper – The Root Chakra is often portrayed with the color red. So, it’s no surprise that Red Jasper is a beneficial stone for your grounding chakra. This nurturing stone helps bring balance while protecting against and cleansing negative energies.
- Black Obsidian – This crystal is known for clearing psychic smog and cleansing auras. It is not only a strong psychic protection stone but it also has a strong connection to the Earth making it ideal for grounding. This is a great stone for those who do healing and spiritual work.
- Shungite – This is another crystal known for it’s psychic protection properties but also known for it’s protection against EMFs (Electromagnetic Fields). Shungite is also connected with our first three chakras, including the Root Chakra. This explains it’s ability to assist in grounding and balance.
- Tigers Eye – Tigers Eye is known for assisting with balance, protection, luck and grounding. It can help you see the positive in any situation and encourage you to go after your dreams. This crystal is linked to the lower chakras.
Grounding Meditation:
- Find a space in your home where you feel safe and sit comfortably with your palms facing up.
- Close your eyes and breathe slowly, in through your nose and out through your mouth. Roll back your shoulders, releasing any tension you may be carrying with you.
- Relax your body and visualize golden-white light shining down from the sky above you and filling you with warmth as it washes away your pain and worries.
- The golden-white light that has completely filled your body begins to extend from the soles of your feet and the base of your spine in the form of roots.
- These roots break through the ground beneath you and dive into the soil as they spread out connecting your life force with Mother Earth.
- As the light flows into you from above, it flows through you and into the Earth taking with it the negative energies, fears and worries you have been carrying with you. The Earth cleanses them as they return to the source.
- Your energy is now linked with the energy of Earth, connecting you to something greater than yourself and grounding you to the strongest foundation there is.