What Grounding Actually Is, and Why Every Teacher Starts There

The grounding practices are taught very differently by many different practitioners. Whatever state your energy is in when you sit down, the goal of grounding is simple: to bring your body and mind back into balance by the time you finish. For each of us on any given day, it may take more or less time for us to release pent-up energy, let go of scattered thoughts and complete the grounding exercise. This will transition your body mind and spirit into a state where you feel grounded to the earth, protected inside an energetic field and open to receive messages clearly. I can get my whole body buzzing just by thinking of starting a grounding exercise because my body responds now to my mind’s thought of calming down. It was not always that way; it took practicing with teachers and listening to meditations to tune my body to grounding. Now I can do it walking into a meeting and protect myself properly against any negative energy.

Most meditation, psychic and mediumship development courses begin with breath work. The teachers walk you through a quick grounding exercise to prepare you for the session. They usually do not include the words that we are going to complete a grounding exercise or tell you what they are doing and why they are doing it. It is almost always the first instruction, and it is usually not explained. You are told what to do just like an exercise trainer would walk you through stretching both before and after exercise.

So here is my explanation of grounding. What grounding is, why every teacher puts it first, what it can reasonably do, and what it cannot.

Grounding and protecting your energy are similar subjects with similar goals

These get taught as two things and most often blended into one thing.

After waking at the beginning of the day, your mind is already in a very relaxed state. Not much would be needed to calm your mind and thoughts to ground your energy. Once your day begins and you start thinking and begin moving then your state does begin to drift out of calm into a different state. Grounding is positioning your body, using deep breathing techniques used to calm your energy then releasing any excess negative energy into the earth to calm you down.

For beginners, if you start with meditation, you will understand the energy-calming steps. This should give you the confidence necessary to understand the grounding process. The energy protection is what you can add onto the grounding to push your energy out and protect yourself.

Why every teacher starts with grounding

The one thing that impacts most students is the energy they bring into any session. Teachers start their grounding sessions during any practice sessions to ensure the students enter the process in the right state. Look across development courses and the order is the same everywhere. Grounding, then protection and boundaries, and only then the exercises of perception work. The seeing, the sensing, the readings and other practices. It is safety-first sequencing, and it is consistent enough across otherwise unconnected teachers that it is worth taking seriously.

The reason given is always some version of the same thing: intuitive perception work opens you up, and opening without being settled first is how people end up overwhelmed, exhausted, or frightened by something they could have handled in a grounded state. Whether you take that energetically or psychologically, the practical advice lands in the same place.

Three different practices are called grounding, and only one of them is the type of grounding used for spiritual practices

If you research grounding, you will find different explanations, and it will confuse you with such a strange mix of results. The word carries three unrelated meanings.

The first is the spiritual or energetic one - the subject of this post. Practitioners describe it as recentering and reconnecting with the earth, with the aim of feeling centered, whole and complete. This is followed with a protection process to block any negative energies that could creep in while you are in an open state. That is the sense every development teacher means.

The second is sensory grounding used in a clinical setting. Grounding in psychology is a real, taught coping strategy for stress, anxiety and panic - the five-four-three-two-one sensory exercise and its relatives, where you name five things you can see, four you can touch, and so on down. It has its own literature and its own evidence base, and it is completely separate from the first meaning. If a therapist has ever taught you grounding, this is what they taught you.

The third is earthing: the claim that skin contact with the ground itself confers health benefits. Currently, not enough scientific studies or evidence exist about this practice. Its supporters link it to older practices, such as reflexology and traditional Chinese medicine, that work with energy through the feet. This involves barefoot walking to stimulate the flow of energy through the body. Anecdotal evidence and a few small studies suggest a connection between our energetic bodies and the earth that may reduce stress, calm cortisol levels and improve sleep. More studies are underway, so you heard it here first.

Three meanings, one word. It is worth knowing all the forms so you can understand which practice you are reading about.

What it can do, and what it cannot

Here is where I will not oversell or overstate any of these techniques.

Grounding will not make you psychic. It is not a technique for getting messages, and nobody claims this. What the teachers claim for it is narrower and more believable: that it settles your energy before you do something that asks a lot of your attention, spiritual openness and that it gives you a way to come back afterward. The protection aspect is equally important to keep out negative energies while you are in an open state.

There is also an ordinary reading available, and it is not a lesser one. Stopping, breathing deliberately, putting your feet flat on the floor and paying attention to your body for a minimum of 5 cycles of breathwork is a recognized way of calming a nervous system. That is true whether anything energetic is happening. If the ordinary explanation is the whole of it, the practice still works and is still worth doing.

I am not going to tell you which of those is true. I will tell you that I do it before every reading, and that the difference on the days I skip it is not subtle to me.

The practice, in its simplest form

You do not need a script, a crystal, or anything to buy.

Sit with both feet flat on the floor in a chair or lie down in a quiet space where you will not be disturbed. Turn off all distracting devices like your television or cell phone. Let your hands rest in your lap palms up. Make sure you are in a relaxed position. Now you start on the breathwork. The breathwork is the key to slowing down your body and relaxing your mind into an open state. Begin by taking slow breaths in through your nose for the count of four and hold the breath for the count of two pulling the energy up from your abdomen to the top of your head. Then exhale for the count of 6 slowly. The breath pattern matters the most. You repeat these breaths for 5-10 cycles depending on the calmness of your state when you began. Sometimes it takes longer to calm your mind and body.

Now shift your attention to the lowest part of your body you can feel. Your feet on the floor, the weight of you in the chair. Stay there for a few breaths. Some people picture roots going down, or a silver cord going down to the center of the earth twisting through the layers of earth, rock and water to the core of the earth. Then the loop comes back up through your feet and out your head up to the heavens and back anchoring you. Any negative energy can be sent out of your body through the cord to the earth to neutralize it. If imagery helps you, use it. Now you can form a bubble around yourself as big as your body, as big as your room, as big as the block you live on expanding out into the heavens of energetic protection around yourself. Once that is in place you can check your body starting at the top of your head going down by body part releasing any tension remaining down the silver cord. Checking your head, face and jaw, neck and shoulders, arms and hands, chest and belly, hips and legs down to your feet. If you notice something that is tense release and relax it taking some breathwork and using the exhale to blow out the tension. You can now repeat an affirmation “I am grounded and rooted to mother earth. I am safe and protected in my energetic bubble from all negative energies. I wish to connect with energies that are meant for my highest good only. I am fully present and ready to begin.”

That is the whole thing explained in the most basic parts and takes 5-10 cycles of breathwork to get you to calm your energy and release all tension of the day.

When to do it

Before anything that opens you up like a reading, a meditation, a development exercise, sitting with someone who is grieving, entering any area where you will encounter many people.

Afterward as well, which half the people usually skip. Closing down matters as much as opening up, and the teachers who take aftercare seriously are the ones I would learn from. The close out is simple thankfulness and gentle return to your body. “I thank the spirits and spirit guides accompanying me for their support and participation. I am safe to return fully present in my body. I am returning with only my energy.” Place your hands on your heart center and take the final set of 1 to 2 breaths in. Wiggle your toes and feet, move your legs and hips, wiggle your arms and fingers, move your shoulders and neck and gently open your eyes. Welcome back.

And in ordinary life, at the moments you would otherwise just brace: before a difficult conversation, after a crowded shop, when you have come off a call carrying something that was not yours.

What if you do not feel anything

Then you do not feel anything, and that is not a verdict on you.

Almost nobody feels much the first several times. The sensations people describe - heaviness, warmth, a tingling sensation, a settling - tend to arrive after the practice is ordinary rather than during the week you are trying hardest. Trying hard is its own kind of tension, which is the opposite of what you are trying to accomplish. Until you settle into this practice, doing deeper breathwork when you first begin is probably the easiest way for you to calm your energy.

So just like anything else you need to practice grounding anyway, briefly, often. Write down the date and one line about how you felt before and after. Read it back in a month. That record will tell you more than any single session will, and it is the same method I would give you for signs: notice it, write it down, look for the pattern later.

Closing

Grounding is the least glamorous thing in this entire subject. There is no story in it, nothing to photograph, nothing that makes a good clip.

It is also the thing every serious teacher puts first, and after years of doing this I think they are right. Not because it is mystical, but because it is the part that keeps you steady - and steady is what everything else is built on.

Start there. It only takes you a few minutes.

I have created many different products on my website as a reminder that grounding is an important aspect of my business and personal practice. Please visit the grounding collection or the energy protection gifts. These will provide a gentle reminder of the importance of grounding in your daily practice.

If this is where you are starting, the Grounding collection on psychicsoleil.com is made for exactly this - things to keep the practice in front of you rather than in a folder you never open. And if you would like to talk through where you are with it, readings are booked online.

Gentle Disclaimer

Interpretations of events occurring are personal and subjective. This article is intended for spiritual reflection and education and is not a substitute for professional grief, mental health, medical, legal, or other qualified support.