The Earth as Therapist (Grounding Exercise)
🎧 When your head is in the clouds, you’ll need your feet on the ground.
Hi, If you’re new here, I’m Kate, a psychotherapist sharing weekly Letters from Therapy. If you enjoy my writing, make sure you’re subscribed. Improve your life and relationships and join me to nurture your soul, accept yourself and find deeper meaning, by upgrading to a paid subscription. You’ll get enriching discovery tools, worksheets and journaling, the podcast, the Heal Your Past Course and more. You’re invited!
Earth To Earth
Dear friends,
If you’re here reading this, I guess you may be a deep thinker like me. I’m often reflecting about atoms and earth, time and space, love and souls, and why my neighbour pretended she didn’t see me last week.
In between, I wonder where all the odd socks are, if dusty corners are acceptable in society, and what ‘fridge surprise’ to cook for dinner.
If your head is often in the clouds, you’ll need to keep your feet on the ground.
This giant rock we live on has produced life, including yours and mine. Let’s not forget about our ancestors who go back thousands of years, who used the earth for homes, food, shelter and inspiration - as we do now, though more intimately, and elementally, with their hands dirty.
When loved ones die, we sprinkle earth into their graves, or scatter their dust into the winds. Maybe you’ve done this too. We send them back to nature where they came from, rejoining them with the earth that bore them.
Modern life is a far cry from how our ancient ancestors lived, for both good and bad, and far from what our minds and bodies evolved for.
When we are distressed, we can detach from our beloved earth and spiral in thought and feeling, losing ourselves in intense emotion. Chaos reigns.
Though horrible, this is normal, as our psyche reorganises against an event, a change, a realisation, an intense bereavement. Our mind’s structure sometimes needs to go through a seismic shift, like mine did after my little babies died all those years ago.
The pain is what we feel while our mind updates to a new reality. It can feel like a volcano erupting as tectonic plates shift against each other, and form a new structure.
It’s not normal if we feel like that all the time, like those who suffer with anxiety disorder, or because they have become so engrossed in a story of life that they are detached from reality. (In extreme cases, this is the chaos of psychosis).
When there is an earthquake, people often feel like they are going crazy, as they feel the ground beneath their feet literally move and yet it is still there.
When life is unstable, it doesn’t mean you have to be.
I know many of you enjoyed my recent ‘30 Second Calm Reset’ post, and the ‘The World Will Hold You,’ to make good use of your breath and your senses, to make sure you keep your shit together.
Todays post is another simple tool if, like me, your head is often on the clouds, or if things get on top of you (and I don’t mean the missing socks).
Grounding with your Feet Exercise
This simple exercise cuts through spiralling thoughts and dis-regulated emotion, whether there is an obvious cause or not. It is another quick way to become present, wherever you are. You can read it, then try it.
Stand up if you can. Feel your feet weighted on the solid ground as it supports you. Notice the strength of the earth beneath you. Notice the point of contact between your feet: toes, heels, soles, and the ground.
Imagine the earth’s strength rising into you. Notice the strength of your own body - your feet, your legs, hips, spine, torso, all grounded in this space, tall and strong with the earths energy rising up through you.
If you are sitting, you can feel the ground and the support of the chair beneath you.
(Bonus points if you do this outside in bare feet!)
That’s it.
Do this for a minute or three. At home, at work, in the forest or with chaos all around you.
You and your earth, strong, solid, together, made of the same stardust. You, swirling too with your unique and beautiful life and soul.
Thanks for reading! Let me know your here by pressing the like. So, how did you find it? Tell us how you got on in the comments?
With love,
Kate
P.S. Feel free to share this post or restack on Substack. This helps me reach more people who may need to read this!
P.P.S. the Heal Your Past series continues on Mondays for paid subscribers. Next week: Managing and Moving on from Difficult Memories, including 9 ways to do this and therapeutic journaling prompts.You are welcome to join in, if you’re ready to let go and move on.
How did you find this grounding exercise? What changes or experiences did you notice? When might you find it a useful practice in your life?
Lovely written Kate. I esspecially love your first sentences. I like therapists who are also philosophers :-) So do keep thinking about missing socks and other great questions!