Grounding and Being, In Reality
In my approach, the first step towards healing the hurts and predicaments that block us from realizing our enormous potential for feeling inspired, joyful and fulfilled is to see the world as it actually is. To do this we have to have our feet firmly planted on the floor – we have to be grounded.
Being grounded means something slightly different to everyone, but in Body-Centered Psychotherapy, being grounded means that we are aware of what is happening within us and around us, in a specific moment. Each of our orientations in reality develops gradually as we grow. The trouble is, certain life experiences can cause our sense of reality to become distorted, without us even knowing it.
When we are caught in emotional conflicts, for example, it can be said we are “hung up” on something. Emotional conflict is painful and we can literally lift our selves up and out of our grounded reality to avoid the pain of a thorny or challenging situation.
This lifting up to avoid pain often rescued us, when we were young. As children we hadn’t, as yet, become aware of other, more effective strategies to resolve conflict. At that time we had no knowledge, nor any power to advance down a more effective road.
And, as we lifted our selves up off of our ground, again and again, to avoid pain, the repetition became a pattern or a distortion in our reality. In other words, what advances with us into adulthood, is the distortion. We thought that by allowing our selves to become ungrounded, we could avoid the pain and the consequences of unresolved conflict.
As adults, even though we have the opportunity to discover and engage a more mature perspective and we have distance from those past situations, our distorted reality is blind to our opportunity to take action and move toward a resolution of the conflict, because it is understandably locked in our childhood illusion. Yet, without taking the step of firmly planting our feet back on the ground, and sensing what is real, we cannot begin the process of discerning truth from childhood distortions.
Grounding is an exercise that takes almost no time, and will make a significant difference in your life. The outlay of just a few moments of awareness of how you are standing on the earth can literally expose a vast new world of positive experiences.
In my next post I’ll go into this simple and powerful process and give you some easy, safe and comfortable techniques for accessing your world in a life changing way.
