Grounding — Definition

Grounding is a basic skill in most spiritual and somatic traditions. It means returning attention from rumination, anxiety, or dissociation back to physical sensation — feet on the floor, breath in the belly, sound in the room. Techniques include barefoot walking, slow breathing, eating something dense, or naming five things one can see. In subtle-body language, it is sometimes described as drawing energy down through the root chakra into the earth. The functional outcome is the same: the nervous system settles.

Example

Before a difficult conversation, a thirty-second grounding pause — feet on the floor, three slow breaths — is often more useful than a long pep talk.