10 Effective Ways to Ground Yourself

Grounding is a technique that helps keep someone in the present moment. It is only in the present moment that we can fully live our lives. Grounding techniques can reduce anxiety, quiet the mind, and connect you to your inner voice. These simple techniques can ground you in your own truth and help you get to know your inner self. Grounding is also essential for basic health and survival. Grounding enhances your ability to function effectively on a day-to-day basis. When poorly grounded, your spatial understanding is impaired. You may stumble around physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. Here are 10 effective ways to ground yourself:

1. Start With Your Breath. Breathe deeply through your diaphragm and gently exhale any tension you might feel, clearing the energy channels of your body. Breathe in through your nose and exhale through your mouth. Let your abdomen rise and fall as you breathe. This deep breathing signals the body to relax and helps calm your mind and spirit.

2. Meditate. Meditation is probably the most popular grounding technique. Sit or lie comfortably, and then close your eyes. Simply focus your attention on your breath without controlling its pace or intensity. Feel yourself relaxing with each breath. Release all of your worldly concerns, doubts, and fears, allowing them to drift off on the air of the wind, on the breath of life. If your mind wanders, return your focus back to your breath. Maintain this meditation practice for two to three minutes to start, and then try it for longer periods.

3. Play a Drum. Drumming is perhaps the oldest form of active meditation known to humanity. One of the paradoxes of rhythmic stimulation is that it has not only the power to move your awareness out of the confines of the conceptual mind into realms beyond time and space but also the capacity to ground you firmly in the present moment. It allows you to maintain a portion of ordinary awareness while experiencing non-ordinary awareness. This permits full recall later of the visionary experience.    

4. Touch the Earth. Just take off your shoes and socks and get outside. Physically touching or sitting on the Earth has a calming and grounding effect. Nature calms, helps you connect to something larger than yourself, and provides a much-needed break from your busy life.

5. Focus on Your Root Chakra. Close your eyes and focus your attention on the chakra at the base of the spine. The vibratory center located at the base of the spine grounds spiritual forces in the body to the Earth and the physical realm of reality. Visualize this energy center as a red disc of light, about the size of a silver dollar, at the base of your spine.

6. Stand Like a Tree. Stand with your feet parallel, about six inches apart, and your toes aimed straight ahead. Your knees should be slightly bent, removing any strain on your lower back. Rest your hands at your side or place them over your navel. Close your eyes and imagine that you are a tree. Visualize your head as the crown, your body as the trunk, and your feet as the roots. Imagine roots growing out the bottom of your feet, extending deep into the ground beneath you.

7. Walk Mindfully. Mindful walking can be practiced anywhere or anytime. Simply take a walk and be mindful of every sensation you feel. Breathe naturally and fully, deeply filling your lungs with each inhalation, but being careful not to strain in any way. When your attention drifts away from the sensations of walking and breathing, take notice of those thoughts or emotions without judgment and gently direct your awareness back to the present moment, back to the walking.

8. Carry a Grounding Stone. A grounding stone is any small stone that helps make you more reality-oriented and pulls you into the current moment. Black obsidian is a good grounding stone to carry or wear in your aura each day. Black tourmaline is one of the most effective stones, as it works for both spiritual grounding and protection. These crystals are easy to obtain as tumblestones, and easy to put one or more of the grounding stones in your pocket every day.

9. Use Your Voice. Repeat a mantra, chant, or positive affirmation. Hearing your own voice actively gets you out of your own head. Repeating a soothing affirmation powerfully grounds you in reality, by reminding you what's most important to you.

10. Take a Shower. This is one of my favorite grounding methods. Heat increases blood flow, slows your heart rate, and calms you down gently. I personally find this technique to be very effective. The heat and water pressure from a cleansing, hot shower always grounds me, bringing me back to the here-and-now.

The Transformative Power of Chanting

Given our contemporary hectic lifestyles, chanting is the most conducive path of spiritual practice for the times we live in. Chanting has no limitations of time and space and can be done anytime or anywhere. Chanting as a spiritual practice helps to foster maximum spiritual growth and overall well-being. It is a simple and effortless way to still the chatter of the mind. It is one of the quickest and most powerful ways to open the heart and connect with a power greater than ourselves.

Chants move us to a level of awareness beyond form, a place where we discover our own divinity. Different chants have specific purposes for invoking or paying homage to helping spirits and deities. They create a vibratory resonance that allows these spirits to be called forth. As the chant invokes the intended spirits, the chanter comes into resonance with these spirit helpers as well.

Many chants are mantras--single words or phrases repeated over and over. Mantras, when spoken or chanted, direct the healing power of Prana (life force energy). The syllables of each spoken word reverberate specific qualities of energy. As Ute-Tiwa shaman Joseph Rael explains in his book, Being and Vibration, "the consonants propel or give form, while the vowels carry the essential meaning or fundamental truth embedded in each syllable."

According to Rael, the vowels reveal the power of the word while the consonants conduct the power of that energy into a healing current, giving it physical, mental, emotional and spiritual impulse. The vowel sounds connect us to the spirit world; the consonants connect us to the relative, to placement in physical world. Vowels are spirit and consonants are direction.

When chanting, you should hold the vowel sounds as long as you can. Consonants can be passed over very quickly while chanting. Breathe in through the nose and voice the sound as you exhale through the mouth. The in-breath is Sky energy; the out-breath is Earth energy. Sky and Earth are united.

The Way of the Sacred Clown

Clown Kachina

Sacred clowns are found in ancient cultures throughout the world and represent a reversal of the normal order. The most famous of these are the Koyemsi (or Mudheads), the dancing clowns of the Zuni Indians. In the Zuni tradition, the clown frequently disrupts and lampoons some of the most sacred and fundamental rituals. The Cherokee had sacred clowns known as Boogers who performed "Booger dances" around a community fire. But perhaps the most unique type of sacred clown is the Lakota equivalent of Heyoka, a contrarian, jester, and satirist, who speaks, moves and reacts in an opposite fashion to the people around them.

The sacred clown uses satire, folly, and misadventure to portray lessons on inappropriate behavior. The clown satirizes tribal life by acting out and exaggerating improper behavior. The sacred clown's obscene and sacrilegious actions infuse the most important religious ceremonies. Unbound by societal constraints, they help to define the accepted boundaries, rules, and societal guidelines for ethical and moral behavior. Their function can help defuse community tensions by providing their own comical interpretation of the tribe's popular culture, by reinforcing taboos, and by passing on traditions.

Principally, the clown functions both as a mirror and a teacher, using extreme behaviors to mirror others, and forcing them to examine their own doubts, fears, and beliefs. The main function of a sacred clown is to awaken people to innovative and better ways of doing things. The mischievous clown behaves in ways that are contrary to conventional norms in order to violate peoples' expectations. In such paradoxical states, people can assimilate new information quickly, without filtering. Sacred clown's lesson is to stop acting out of habit. We must be willing to plow old habits into the soil in order to cultivate new patterns that enhance our natural growth. Innovative change will revitalize our life and precipitate renewed growth and creativity.

Sometimes we unwittingly cut off the voice of our inner truth, or sense of what is correct; relying instead on old, soul-killing patterns of judgment, control, and distrust. Inner truth reflects, like a mirror, the higher, universal truth that exists in every situation. Yet even when our point of view is at its most positional, narrow and self-righteous, higher truth, often in the guise of the contrarian clown, is there to open the way back to balance and wholeness.

The Native American Flute

Next to the drum, the most important Native American instrument is the flute. The instrument evolved from traditional uses in courtship, treatment of the sick, ceremony, signaling, legends, and as work songs. During the late 1960s, the United States saw a roots revival of the flute, with a new wave of flutists and artisans. Today, Native American style flutes are being played and recognized by many different peoples and cultures around the world.

According to Ute-Tiwa shaman Joseph Rael, "The flute is an instrument connecting the two worlds, the non-physical with the physical. The breath of the flutist is the breath of God coming through a hollow reed; the sound is that of the invisible lover courting the visible lover, the metaphor of the lover and the beloved."

The flute opens a path of communication between the spiritual and earthly realms. The flute is related to the soul, which extends far beyond the physical body, connecting us to the symphony of the universe. Something transcendent happens when you begin to play a flute. You journey deep inside yourself and bring out the cosmic music of your soul. Nothing matters--audience, place, time--you just get lost in the music. You become the music--notes, rhythm, and melody.

The flute is akin to the breath, which is spirit. Its sound is like the wind, which is dispersive, changeable and unpredictable, yet it has the capacity to permeate anything. The flute is also akin to the birds and flight. Its chirp, warble, and bird-like notes make your heart soar. The flute is like the air; you cannot hold it or contain it, and yet you can never separate yourself from it. "Everything needs the air and so the flute represents the voice of the soul and the voice of the wind, and the voice of the birds--those things that are free, free to --move. So taken all together this trio, the flute, drum and rattle, represents the whole voice of Creation."

How to Save Earth from Ecological Disaster

In his book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, Daniel Pinchbeck developed the hypothesis that we are undergoing a transition to a new realization of consciousness, which will be embodied by a new fundamental paradigm that takes into account what Carl Jung called "the reality of the psyche," which is to recognize that its contents have a living reality, along with new social, political, and economic systems that mesh with this realization. Pinchbeck sees the rapid evolution of technology as an expression of this unfolding of consciousness. The acceleration of planetary crises can either incite a planetary awakening and a shift into a regenerative planetary culture based on sustainable principles, or a destruction of human civilization in its current form, and perhaps extinction for our species.

In his new book, How Soon Is Now: From Personal Initiation to Global Transformation, Pinchbeck outlines a vision for a mass social movement that will address the ecological mega-crisis that is threatening the future of life on earth. Drawing on extensive research, Pinchbeck presents a compelling argument for the need for change on a global basis. The central thesis is that humanity has unconsciously self-willed ecological catastrophe to bring about a transcendence of our current condition. Covering everything from energy and agriculture, to culture, politics, media and ideology, How Soon Is Now? is ultimately about the nature of the human soul and the future of our current world.