Grounding Your Energy Part 1-Anxiety Awareness Month
Apr 03, 2023
Charlyce Davis
April is Anxiety Awareness month. Anxiety is an emotion we all feel in good times or bad. When anxiety becomes constant, it can overwhelm your mind and body and lead to generalized anxiety
You can lower you anxiety with grounding techniques. In my ebook 9 Ways to Ground Your Energy, you can use 9 simple techniques to lower anxiety righ away.
In this episode, we will practice a few of the techniques that are in the book.
These practices are also a part of my 21 Day Meditation Challenge. This course is a way to start a daily meditation practice to help heal anxiety, or return to your meditation practice with gentle guidance.
My Integrative and Functional Medicine Programs are designed to take you from feeling unwell, stuck, inflamed, and sick, to a place of wellness. I will be offering my experience as a physician and Reiki Master to work with you on healing illness at the root cause.
Welcome to the Art of Healing Podcast community. This podcast is devoted to helping you find what works on your journey to health and wellness. This podcast is devoted to providing information on many healing modalities. Learn more about:
April is Anxiety Awareness month. Anxiety is an emotion we all feel in good times or bad. When anxiety becomes constant, it can overwhelm your mind and body and lead to generalized anxiety
You can lower you anxiety with grounding techniques. In my ebook 9 Ways to Ground Your Energy, you can use 9 simple techniques to lower anxiety righ away.
In this episode, we will practice a few of the techniques that are in the book.
These practices are also a part of my 21 Day Meditation Challenge. This course is a way to start a daily meditation practice to help heal anxiety, or return to your meditation practice with gentle guidance.
My Integrative and Functional Medicine Programs are designed to take you from feeling unwell, stuck, inflamed, and sick, to a place of wellness. I will be offering my experience as a physician and Reiki Master to work with you on healing illness at the root cause.
Welcome to the Art of Healing Podcast community. This podcast is devoted to helping you find what works on your journey to health and wellness. This podcast is devoted to providing information on many healing modalities. Learn more about:
Well, welcome back to the Art of Healing podcast. This is Charlyce and thank you for joining me for the month of April. April is anxiety awareness month. And so it's a great time for us to go through and practice. If you grounding exercises. So for this podcast and for the next few podcast, we are going to cover. Nine ways to ground your energy. Now, if you're listening to this podcast in your show notes, I'll include a link to download the ebook that goes with this, which so far has been one of my one of my favorite and one of the favorite downloads for a lot of visitors to my websites. And I get a lot of questions about it. And. Um, when I've had the chance to even, to provide print copies of it. So in your show notes. You'll find a link for the, to download the book so that you can have sort of a written. Follow along. And then to practice on your own. And once you download, it gives us a chance to stay in touch. Cause you'll get a chance to join my weekly newsletter, where I get all the information out as far as the weekly podcast. And. New articles and events that are coming up. Anxiety is something that we will all feel. It's part of the human experience. It's part of how our brains are wired. So we should have times that we feel anxious and sometimes it's a good anxiety. Like when you know something. exciting is coming up. You have your anticipating something. Great or beautiful. So you'll notice those changes in your body, like a fast heart rate and your stomach's a little queasy and we call it butterflies then. Cause we, you know, it's. It's nice. It's something we look forward to. But anxiety can become pervasive. It can become constant. And low levels of anxiety could start to consume your thoughts and those worry thoughts could becoming a driving factor. So much so that they start to affect not just you, your mood moment to moment, but affect your mood over days, weeks, and months. And when that starts to happen, it's becoming somewhat clinical. It's something like generalized anxiety disorder. Where it may even start to create symptoms like insomnia, digestive symptoms. Fatigue or being irritable and anxious. Trouble with elimination, including diarrhea or constipation. As well as just a general sense of unease. And for a lot of people, it can be that chronic unrecognized anxiety could set the stage for. Depression. So when we're talking about grounding, what we're trying to do is to give our thoughts, a little bit of guidance so that they're not always going towards worry or negative. As humans, we do have a negativity bias. It's built into our brains and it does help us to survive. If we tend to focus on what could go wrong because in a way that keeps us safe, but that could also be overwhelming. It becomes all we think about it could fuel. Thoughts of anxiety. So when we're grounding. We are simply trying to get our, our consciousness, our energy. We're trying to get all of that out of our head and into our bodies. And particularly into the lower part of our bodies. Which can often slow down those thoughts. And can give us a break from the anxiety, even for a few minutes. We will practice three of these simple exercises during the podcast. So, what you can do is listen and actually practice. If you're in a place where you can do it and there'll be short. You could also download the podcast and maybe come back and listen later. And then of course you'll have the ebook. Uh, nine ways to ground your energy. That you can also use to reference. If you just want to listen, then maybe practice on your own later. So for this episode, we'll start with the first of the exercises, which is a barefoot meditation. The barefoot meditation is just as it sounds, it's a simple exercise in which you will actually perform a standing meditation. With your shoes off if possible. And if you can be someplace where you could even be outdoors. Uh, If you're lucky enough to be like on a beach or near a beach or near a body of water. In you'll just simply remove your shoes, but you'll stand while you'll do this. So this meditation I've also shared in my book 21 day meditation journey. And it's just a simple exercise just to get that energy nice and grounded. So we'll go ahead and get started. So if you're ready. If you want to find a place, she'll feel comfortable standing. And if you can remove your shoes. If you're doing this at a time when that's not really possible, just stay in your shoes, but just keep your attention. To the bottom of your feet and keep your attention focused as much as you can. Take a deep breath in. And exhale through the mouth. And with each deep breath in just focus your attention on the bottom of your feet. As you inhale. I noticed the front of your foot. And you may feel. The air traveling up your body to the top of your head. Then as you exhale. Imagine as the air exits your. Your nose and your mouth. That it also exits your heels. So as you inhale. Feet firmly planted. In air is traveling up the front of your body, starting from the front of your foot. And as you exhale. The air leaves your body. As well is from your heel. And each time you inhale, imagine that your feet become even more firmly planted. But then you can also imagine that the muscles of your legs. Are strong, but not overly tight. So as you inhale, if you need to bring gentle movements into the legs or the hips. Or even a sway your body. And then as you exhale, you might imagine that your spine becomes a little straighter, a little bit taller. So when we're doing this barefoot meditation, I designed it to be this brief and this short, so that it's something you could practice. If you're noticing you feel anxious or edgy. In an elevator or waiting in line, or if you're waiting at a doctor's office. And maybe the situation is just one of those situations where it just doesn't feel very good. You could actually imagine just standing. And sort of doing this meditation, but of course, if you've got the option to do this in a setting, that's a little bit nicer. And you've got a few minutes to just remove your shoes and plant your feet. And when we get our feet in contact with the earth. It allows us to bring our energy out of our heads, into ground ourselves. Okay. So now that we've practiced the barefoot meditation. Why don't we try the next of our grounding exercises. In the book nine ways to ground your energy. This is the rooting meditation. So we'll do a form of that right now together. And again, you can listen now, maybe try this later on your own, but if you download the ebook. Which is free. It'll walk you through how to do this. If this is something you want to be doing on your own on a daily basis. So just like we did with the previous exercise, we'll want to do this standing. And with shoes on or off for the rooting exercise, whichever is accessible in your most comfortable with. So this time we want to intend to do this for about three minutes. And when you're standing, you might want to look down at your feet and just be aware of the spacing of your feet. So preferably your feet are about the same distance as your hip bones. So if you've got sort of a habit of leaning on one foot, or maybe standing with your feet, a little wider, a little bit more narrow, or just sort of favoring one side. Now take a moment to look down and just get a sense and make sure that you're using both feet and both legs is evenly as you can. But you can adjust throughout this meditation. Once you've done that then. Pay attention to your legs. You can look down at them. And maybe practice. Uh, just gently bending your knees and straightening. And then finding a place a little in between so that your knees aren't completely straight and lot. Your legs are strong, but your knees have just a little movement in them. And then from there, you'll just imagine a string pulling you at the top of the head. It pulls you as tall and upright as you can go. So from here. Just taking a big, giant inhale. And then exhale. And this time taking an inhale. And now. You'll start to imagine that there are roots coming out of the bottom of your feet. And each time you inhale you'll feel that these roots really grip to the ground. They're really holding your feet to the ground. So on the next big inhale. Get a sense of the roots at the bottom of your feet. And as you exhale, those roots actually start to grow when they grow deeper in through the floor. Into the earth. And so on your next inhalation. You might notice now that those roots feel even stronger. So that even if you sway, it feels like there's something holding you in place. And as you exhale. Those roots get even deeper. And then on the next deep inhalation. Now you notice that. Even now you're more rooted than before. Naturally your body will sway and move that's okay. Because your feet are firmly and strongly rooted. And then with each exhalation. Those roots go even deeper. It seems the roots are trying to get to the center of the earth. Aren't they. Sorry for the next minute. I'll let you practice on your own. Just inhaling. Feeling the stability. Of the roots of your feet. And then exhaling as those roots grow deeper and stronger. Wherever you are. If you'd like to bring your attention. And maybe your gaze back down to your feet. And now just get a feeling. Of how your body feels, how do your feet and legs feel? How's your back feeling. How's your body feeling? And how does the energy feel in your head? Does it feel a little bit slower? Does it feel a little bit calmer? So that's the rooting meditation and it's one of my absolute favorites. Uh, I find myself. Rooting myself. Anytime I feel that my energy. Positive or negative. It's just getting to be too much. I like to just take a moment just to. Root down, grow some roots into mother earth. And then get myself back together. And for the last of our grounding exercises we'll do together, we'll do just a short form of mindful walking. There are some previous episodes in which we've done a walking meditation together. And so for this one, if you like to listen to your podcast while you're walking, this is a great time. You can be practicing while you're getting in your steps. Walking meditations are simple. It's a nice way to get yourself grounded. Why you're getting some movement. If you tend to lean more towards agitation when you're trying to sit and meditate. Meditating while walking is a nice way to get yourself centered, but while still moving your body. And it's a good way to practice. If you're trying to prepare yourself for more of a, a seated. We're laying down meditation. So if wherever you are, if you're outdoors or if you're indoors, First, just notice what's around you. I'm just noticed the sights, the sounds, the colors, the people, the animals. And you just take note of them and not anything in particular, just noticing those. And before you start to take your steps. Just notice your feet. And. Just notice how they're feeling. And now slowly take your first step. And make notice of how your heel makes contact with the ground, how your foot rolls. How the opposite foot corresponds and lifts. Then that heel hits the ground, the foot rolls across the ground. Onto the toes. And then gradually just pick up your walking speed. Comfortable pace is comfortable as you like, if you're a brisk Walker, that's great. If you want it to be. A little slower. That's great. But for the next few minutes, as you take those steps, go ahead and let your senses play with what's around you. So. As you let your legs move freely again, make notice of what you're hearing. My voice. Uh, what you're seeing around you, do you hear natural sounds or do you hear human made sounds? Do you see buildings or. Are you in a park or are you hiking? But just may notice. And as you're doing this. I don't necessarily make a judgment. Just make a note in your head. And you'll actually walk. In make those. Those mindful. Mindful acknowledgements for the next minute or so. Now during your mindful walk, you might also notice things like the air on your skin. You may become aware of your breath. As you walk. Depending on the speed you're walking. Your breath may have correspondingly become deeper. Bed for another minute or so, just continue to walk and notice. Notice yourself, notice the environment. So, depending on where you are in this experience, you might want to continue walking for several more minutes. But we'll go ahead and conclude our mindfulness walking for this. Grounding experience. So during this episode, we just did three simple grounding techniques with each other. Very simple can be done at any time. Don't necessarily require you to. Create anything special in your environment, but kind of my favorite things is, or some of my personal practices that I use. When I feel that I need to ground my own energy. So don't forget if you don't have a copy, you can get a copy of nine ways to ground your energy in your show notes. And once you've got that, you are. I mean, absolutely. I would love for you to continue some of these. And if you have a copy, feel free to share with your friends or family. You can actually just email it to them. And next week. We'll do three more of these grounding techniques together. And it will actually do that in another week. And then we'll conclude this month with a meditation of some kind. So as always I'm Charlise thank you for joining me for today's podcast. We'll connect next week in your show notes, you'll find links to my social media, to my website. Feel free to send me questions. It's always exciting to connect with you in this way. I do like to point out a few updates. Although this has been a grounding exercise and meditation together. I do want to point out to you that I am a physician and I have some functional medicine services and I'm so excited that I can actually operate. Outside of my home state. So you'll find some links in your show notes about what those programs are and how to connect with me. If you're interested. Thanks so much and connect next week. Thanks. Bye-bye.