The Transformative Power of Grounding

In this conversation, Ashley and Nate delve into the concept of grounding, particularly in the context of navigating chaotic times. They share personal experiences and insights on how grounding practices can help individuals reconnect with themselves and the earth, fostering a sense of belonging and enhancing intuition. The discussion emphasizes the importance of grounding as a foundational practice for emotional health and spiritual growth, offering various techniques and reflections on the transformative power of being grounded.

Transcript

Hi everyone. Hi Nate.

Nate (00:04.934)

Hey Ashley.

Ashley Henderson (00:06.318)

Welcome to this episode. We're talking today about grounding and it seems like a really good time for us to go into this topic a little deeper talking about our own experiences with grounding and kind of going into our practice like how

we actually practice grounding and then what it's doing for us because we both shared today how important this practice has been over the last few months. And now we're moving into sort of a different era in our culture. And I think grounding is going to be the key to navigating the and not even in a political way, just kind of the style of

this White House is to create chaos. so grounding is a beautiful way to be with what is, which is going to be chaotic because that is their style. And I wanted to start by sharing that I have had some personal upheaval in the past couple of months.

I have a family member who had a injury and I had to go into this other mode of caretaking and it just, you the whole process when things happen to us in life and we have to switch gears and it opened up some stuff for me and I was really working through some hard emotional baggage, for lack of a better word.

And I got to a breaking point with it. I was working with it. I'm very conscientious about working with my emotions and whatever's arising. But I got to a point where I just said, okay, where do we go from here? What do do with this stuff? And I remembered that I have some really amazing tools to work with.

Ashley Henderson (02:33.794)

whatever is happening in my life. Obviously, I'm a meditation teacher. This is what I do. But sometimes when you're in it, you're in it. so it was this beautiful opening, this beautiful moment to bring what I had been working with into my meditation practice and really create a lot more time and a lot more space.

And what opened up was this deep, deep grounding that the more time I spent grounding in my meditation, the more spacious the container was, the more insights I got about what I was kind of grappling with. And it's really not taken much time at all for it to move and transform and shift. So it's good timing to sort of talk about what that feels like and

maybe what am I doing and you know and then also kind of what what it can do for all of us in in working with the concept of grounding but before I go into all of that I wanted to just see if you had any thoughts that you want to share.

Nate (03:47.913)

Yeah, well, I love listening to your story and I totally agree that when things start to get really intense or heavy, it's very easy for me to kind of forget my tools and then you kind of, hit some proverbial wall or something or setback and it's almost like kind of a hit yourself on the head moment. You're like,

yeah, I need to start doing the things that I know will help me, will serve me, will bring me back in line and absolutely I use grounding as a major component of that. So listening to you talk about that, a lot of that resonated. Over the holidays I had spent a lot of time with just doing a lot of things outside of my normal bandwidth. I think I was expressing to Ashley this, I live in kind of a remote part of

New York right now and I do a lot of hiking and I do a lot of time with my family, just my immediate family. And over the holidays, I really opened things up and I was around a lot of people and visiting and traveling. And I didn't have anything major happen, but I did notice about halfway through a very busy month and a half period, I said, yeah, I needed to.

I needed to ground, needed to get outside intentionally, I needed to start bringing back in a practice of taking some time in the morning before I let my energy kind of co-mingle with everything else that's happening and find my center. And so it'll be interesting as you and I talk about this, we get a little bit into the nuts and bolts about, you know, kind of how we define grounding and what tools or techniques within that.

word are what we use or utilize and kind of the benefits of it. And I definitely agree that not just the political stuff going on right now, I think that's a big piece of it, but I also just feel that there's a momentum, an energetic momentum or inertia happening. And I don't know that

Nate (06:12.035)

everyone is fully tapped into kind of who's driving this energy or even if there is a driving factor I'm not so sure but what I notice about the energy is that it's mainly not mine and that if I don't take some steps to kind of take ownership over my own energy and corral it and as I'm

I like to say become a steward of your energy, then you just become subject to the whims of everything that's happening out there right now. And you can see whatever, you're listening to the news, the radio, whatever, even your social media feed, if you let that dictate kind of the flow of your energy, it's gonna be a bumpy ride right now because there is a lot out there.

good, bad, all of it. It's just, it's a lot. So I think I agree right now is really a timely moment to talk about ways which we can slow things down and pull your energy back into your center so that you're not, you know, you're not subject to the whims of all the other stuff that's going on. So let's dig in Ash. When you think that you're taking a, well we both have kind of a rich history of.

Ashley Henderson (07:29.336)

Yeah, tough.

Yeah.

Nate (07:37.702)

just kind of normal ideas around grounding, but you're also taking this really cool class right now and you're diving in even deeper. So I'm gonna let you talk about that process and what you've learned or maybe ways you've enriched the idea of traditional grounding.

Ashley Henderson (07:57.248)

Yeah, I mean, I don't even know what traditional grounding would even be, but...

Nate (08:00.507)

I don't even know if I know what it means, actually. When I said it, I was like, traditional grounding. is... Alright.

Ashley Henderson (08:06.882)

But maybe if that exists and we will find out about it. But for me, I have a lot of tools. I I worked with an energy healer for 10 years. I really have a lot of energetic grounding tools. I think there's, I think I'll talk about the energy.

Nate (08:09.43)

Yeah.

Ashley Henderson (08:33.518)

piece and I can even just walk us through like a mini grounding and I think there's more, there's so many ways. I mean, just putting your feet on the ground, putting your hands on the ground, connecting to the earth, connecting to nature is grounding. There's so many ways to ground. And if you would just have an intention of grounding and you make your own grounding ritual, you will be grounding. know, it's like, but I'll just walk through.

you know, briefly, because it, you know, lately, my grounding practice has take has really been slow and deep. But you can also ground yourself throughout the day just by becoming conscious of your energy. So the some important factors about grounding is just bringing your attention down into the lower part of your body. So, you know, your pelvis,

maybe bringing some breath down there. And you can start to feel that when you bring your breath deep into your body, into your pelvis, into your belly, you can kind of feel your shoulders naturally relax.

You can feel that you've moved away from the mind. Because most of us are living up in the mind. So you're just bringing your attention down deep into the body. And even that shift is very grounding. And then we all have an energetic cord that runs from our seat down through the layers of the earth.

connecting to the center of the planet. And this is just an energetic chord. We all have it. And so my grounding practice includes...

Ashley Henderson (10:33.482)

visualizing that grounding chord.

If you need more support, can bring it all the way up to your waist. You can visualize a tree moving down a tree trunk, bringing itself down through the layers of the planet. Sometimes I visualize an anchor like an anchor of light. For some reason, that helps me ground deeper.

and you're hooking in or you're wrapping roots around the center of the planet.

And there's a sense here that you are now connected. You're feeling into your connection to the earth. What's come up for me lately with this practice, I can kind of stay just in my grounding cord for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, just feeling into this connection.

and seeing as I stay with it what emerges. And one of the themes that's been emerging lately is a sense of belonging. Belonging here on the planet, in this body, belonging to the earth. And then that opens up a belonging to each other, that sort of oneness, belonging to nature. And this exchange of information, this exchange of

Ashley Henderson (12:08.942)

intuition or energy with nature, with the planet itself and with each other and all its inhabitants. So I could just stay there and there's something very healing about simply touching into that sense of belonging. And I think if anybody was interested in grounding and they just

took that on as a practice, a daily practice for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, however long, you would see a real difference in how your energy changes just by connecting to this energy line and seeing what happens. I love that part too. You're not trying to make something happen, but just by the connecting to what's already here.

and trusting that it's already here, all that connection is already happening, but by bringing your attention to it, and then opening up to curiosity and seeing what flows in. For me, what's been flowing in lately is belonging, and it's really powerful to feel a sense of belonging on the planet. I haven't always felt that. And then bringing that Earth energy up into the chakras.

people may or may not have familiarity with the chakras, but grounding is really happening in the lower chakra. So the root chakra at the base of the spine, the sacral chakra below the belly button, and then the solar plexus in like the center of your rib cage. And just bringing this earth energy up and supporting this kind of...

the lower chakras is going to really support you feeling grounded throughout your day. It's a beautiful practice. So I don't know if you have any thoughts about that or I don't know where you wanna go from here.

Nate (14:19.162)

Yeah, I mean that was, I think when I was thinking about traditional grounding, that's really what I was thinking about was kind of your energy cord, your lower energy centers connecting into the earth. And I do, I really love what you were mentioning there, the feeling belonging. I think that's a big thing right now. I think there's a lot of...

At least what I hear or feel when I'm kind of checking in with my spiritual feed and listening to things, there seems to be a feeling of like, this is too much and I want to just kind of be done. I hear a lot of people just feeling really overwhelmed and there's people who believe that we're starseeds and like, I didn't sign on for this, I want to go back to my starseed planet or whatever and then.

And that's like the woo and then there's the non-woo people who are just like, over this. I'm too overwhelmed. And I think what we're talking about here is that when you can take a moment and you can pull your energy in and you can really, really connect to the earth, to mother earth, you will then be reassured that you indeed are meant to be here. Otherwise you would not be here.

And that this time on the planet is really important and that you know part of that anxiety or distress that people might be feeling is because of disconnection. Disconnection from the earth, disconnection from each other and not understanding that we are part of this vast web of life and that all of this is you know we're part of the orchestration of all of this stuff. So I mean

Ashley Henderson (15:55.214)

Mm-hmm.

Nate (16:13.283)

Yeah, when you slow down and you tap into that knowing, you're tapping into a pretty big portal of power, you know? And it's there. It's right underneath your feet, which is kind of the crazy part about grounding.

Ashley Henderson (16:28.098)

Yeah, actually that reminds me of, I forgot about grounding in the feet that we have chakras in the bottom of our feet too. And we can pull earth energy up through the bottom of our feet and through our legs. And that can be a really powerful tool to ground. And then I also thought of the ground of being and the beautiful invitation that

Nate (16:36.057)

Totally, yeah.

Ashley Henderson (16:57.996)

when I would sit with Adyashanti, that's the ultimate invitation, I think, to a spiritual awakening or a meditation practice is to arrive, and you never really arrive, you're just constantly always arriving into this ground of being. And really what that means is I'm free enough from my conditioned mind, from the illusion of separateness, to simply rest in being.

And that doesn't mean that you're just lying around all day doing nothing. There's a sense of relaxation and calm and belonging and knowing that you're safe, that everything that happens is okay, that who you are is enough and perfect and whole, and that we're here to be and become through life experience. And the other piece that

opens up when you get more and more and more more grounded, when you sink more and more into that ground of being is intuition, which is really a lot of what we talk about on the podcast and an enormous benefit, in my opinion, to doing this work is to be able to start to listen deeper and deeper to that.

intuition and start following it and it takes you out of the matrix and into your whatever the path of the pursuit of worthiness and then you know into this just like creative way of living where you're really listening deeply and trusting whatever's coming. I mean that's just a powerful powerful way to be alive to be in this human body.

grounding is sort of the, to me, probably the most useful thing that you could do on this path because, you know, as people talk about like opening up psychic abilities or third eye or channeling or, you know, going into these higher chakras, you really can't.

Ashley Henderson (19:17.41)

do that without a sense of ground underneath you. think people can get untrustworthy information from that all the way to kind of losing your mind. you're trying to open up your higher chakras without having ground, people really lose touch. it's kind of counterintuitive to go into the root in order to open up

Nate (19:32.075)

Yeah.

Ashley Henderson (19:46.924)

the higher, you know, higher intuition, but that's kind of how it works. I think that's how things start to open for people.

Nate (20:02.29)

Ash. I got texted. I have to go pick up a kid.

Ashley Henderson (20:04.59)

Nate (20:11.402)

I just got him like, a sick cat.

Ashley Henderson (20:14.978)

Hmm. What should we do? I love this podcast.

Nate (20:19.274)

I do, let's hold it, it's 20 minutes. I don't know if I can pick it back up today, it kinda depends, I might be able to, it depends on what kinda state she's in.

Ashley Henderson (20:22.296)

Okay.

Ashley Henderson (20:29.206)

Okay, we can do tomorrow morning. So you can patch two together.

Nate (20:32.188)

Okay, yeah, and I think we could... Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll just do a separate recording tomorrow and pick up the conversation without an intro, or we could do the intro if it makes you feel comfortable, and I will just edit the two of them together. Because I move them out of Riverside, I move them into Audacity, and then I can smush anything I want together. Yeah. No, because it's hard for me to get rid of all the ums and stuff.

Ashley Henderson (20:47.244)

Okay, perfect.

Ashley Henderson (20:54.699)

you don't do it in Riverside?

Nate (21:01.321)

The way that they're doing it, it makes our voice sound kind of weird.

Ashley Henderson (21:08.14)

Well, I love whatever you're doing. think you're doing an amazing job. So whatever you're doing is great. And I so appreciate it. Okay, I'll see you. So what do I need to do? Stop it?

Nate (21:11.601)

Okay, good. Alright. no problem.

Just stopped the recording and we got, I was watching the time I got it.

Ashley Henderson (00:04.954)

Another thought that I had about grounding is that when we're willing to go into our shadow stuff, like when we're really willing to go into the root and explore our

The stuff we avoid, you know, like the old scary stuff. We're willing to just sit with it. And that's a huge part of grounding.

This is the sort of revolutionary act of our time, because when we root down, when we're not afraid of our conditioning, and we're not afraid of our trauma, and we're not afraid of our emotions, and we can be with it all, all of a sudden we do have a sense of power. And I think that's what's gonna carry

this shift that needs to happen on the planet, you know, in relationship to, you know, how we're treating the planet, how we're treating each other, how we're treating ourselves. And I think this is like, if you want to take, if you want to take on, you know, the powers that be outside of yourself, come into your own power and start listening deeply from this grounded.

place and have the courage and the confidence that grounding offers to take risks, you know, to go into the unknown, to move past your, places where you might stop because of the conditioning or the fear or the protection. you know, grounding just opens up so much potential.

Ashley Henderson (02:11.216)

and can be like a revolutionary act. Kind of cool to think about it that way.

Nate (02:12.616)

Thanks

Yeah. Yeah, it's making me think about all of these kind of just real life analogies around grounding. Like, you know, what do we, what do we mine for all of our resources in the earth? We go to the ground. What does that process entail? It's kind of hard work. You have to, you have to get down into the muck and you have to like,

sift away so much stuff to find those gems, to find those nuggets, but it's like, it's all underneath you. It's all in the ground. So there's like a cool analogy there. Also, I think as a sports fan, I think about how, I'm gonna show my dude-ness here. Like in football, the person who gets the lowest to the ground is the person who has the most power and the most center of gravity.

And I think that although that might be kind of a light example, it's very true. Like that is, as human beings, that is where we find our foundation is like the more stable and kind of anchored to the ground you can be, the more you are not gonna be swayed or pushed around by life's ups and downs, and you're gonna really know your center. I mean, I did martial arts for a really long time and that was a huge part.

of karate was just, you could spend years and years just working on a stance where you would figure out you have your legs, both your legs. And then the third point was basically your root chakra. They call it your hara. And it's like your tailbone comes down. It's like a third leg. It obviously doesn't exist, but you have to energetically find it by kind of like lowering yourself into that position and finding stability in a triangle, which is also

Nate (04:15.877)

because then there's like sacred geometry there. But yeah, I mean, I love, so I love all those practical things around the way that we think about it. And then I was also just thinking about how, so we're talking about all these benefits, but like, and we talked a little bit about developing the intuition earlier, but let's talk about just like day to day benefits from grounding and maybe

you know, why, you know, why we're advocating this so much. you know, my grounding practices lately have been less in meditation and more in earthing. So going outside, getting onto the earth, going on hikes, hiking deep into the woods and then finding a rock or a tree or something to just sit on and ground.

And then going back into my daily life and doing all my normal stuff, but having a complete like reset of my system and bringing that energy of stability, of knowing myself, of not being as emotionally volatile because I did that little process and then taking that energy out into the world. So for me, that's something that I find hugely valuable. And I know you have lots of thoughts on this, so.

What about you?

Ashley Henderson (05:47.1)

Yeah, it makes such a difference. Whoa, what a difference starting your day with any kind of grounding practice. And or and the day compared to the days that you don't, it's just a different thing. I mean, you're more patient. You know, you have the capacity for a higher perspective. I know for me, it's such a signal to me when I'm

Nate (06:00.391)

Right.

Ashley Henderson (06:16.316)

reactive or feeling irritated or something, it's such a signal to me to ground, to find that grounding. I can do it in the moment even sometimes, and using the impatience as a signal.

but there's a deep, deep, deep sense of okayness that starts to arise when you start to ground so that, you know, shit happens all the time. You know, this whole spiritual awakening thing does not mean that shit ain't gonna happen. It's gonna keep happening, you know? And it's more about, yeah, how we're receiving it, how we're seeing it, how we're managing it, you know? Where is it getting hooked? Where is it not getting hooked?

Nate (06:57.038)

haha

Ashley Henderson (07:09.576)

where are we able to pause and see and observe our own reactions and get curious about that. So it's just, it's a game changer. It's a real game changer to come into yourself and work on this stuff in yourself rather than trying to manage and control the outside world and start to see how your relationships change.

how people respond to you differently, how you can manage things differently. Yeah.

Nate (07:47.576)

Yeah, we were talking about before we started to record, we were talking about the

the kind of essence or sound or your vibration that you have and that you emit when you have been actively grounding yourself and you have a grounding practice, there's...

It's a clarity in the signal that you are sending out to other people, both energetically and even just real life 3D calmness, centeredness, knowingness. We talked about stability. You just think about your interactions with somebody who know, when they know who they are and they're centered.

and they may or may not be a spiritual person, but I guarantee you one thing, they're grounded and they have figured out through life how to do that. And so it's like, there's a way that this stuff can really, yeah, it brings you back to a powerful center of yourself and it has these benefits out in the real world. And I think one of them particularly is just a stronger,

essence of who you are and people then respond to you differently and are most likely going to be responding to the aspects, the higher aspects of yourself, not your wounding, not your ego, not your trauma. When you're grounded and you're centered in your true essence, then what you're going to get back from people is all this a really nice reflection of, you know,

Nate (09:37.619)

the parts of yourself that are the best part to yourself, you know, which is really nice because it has this reciprocating kind of, it's a feedback loop.

Ashley Henderson (09:50.204)

Yeah, it's like we've talked about this before, I'm sure, but it's moving out of survival mode and into more creator, know, empowered creator energy. yeah, I was thinking about part of my practice that's been really deepening lately. And this is just an oldie, but a goodie is clearing out my energy field as I'm grounding in my meditation, I ground and then

Nate (09:55.103)

Mm-hmm.

Ashley Henderson (10:19.494)

And then I really clear out my energy field of anybody else's energy. And what that does is it really allows me to have an experience of sitting in my own energy. And there's something that starts to get so, feel so good. And like, there's just the sense of aliveness when you're grounded and sitting in your own energy. I feel like when I find that,

I could just stay in that forever. It just feels so good. And then when you practice that, you really start to orient to it then you really don't like it when you're not in it. It's easier to recognize when you've become ungrounded or you're not centered or you're not in your own energy or you're matching somebody else's energy or something. You've kind of popped out of your own center.

It's much more noticeable when you have this grounding practice. But I love the, when I receive my own essence, I'm like, that's amazing. It's such a deep, deep reminder of what this whole thing is about. It's really about that. It's really about having the.

Nate (11:26.227)

Mm-hmm.

Nate (11:37.544)

Yeah.

Ashley Henderson (11:43.026)

bodied incarnated experience of receiving your own energy. I really think that's it, you

Nate (11:49.33)

Yeah, absolutely. seeing other people's energy in feeling it and interacting with it in this like very healthy pro-social, pro-energetic kind of way. And like you and I experienced this quite a bit when we have our conversations, it's where we love chatting about spiritual stuff. You can just feel when someone's energy is strong but contained, there doesn't involve any hooks.

There's something there, it's very beautiful. And I think that is, like you were hinting at, that is why we're here. It's like, we're here to be both individuated strands of consciousness, but also part of this collective. And when you can kind of experience yourself in that wholeness of you, then when you interact with other people, you have a much better sense of where you.

and where others begin. And then the dance is playful and fun. And there's no weirdness, the weirdness that comes with, I need you to behave a certain way in order for me to feel good. And if you don't do that, then I'm a bad person or you're, you know, all of that nonsense. It all can very much go away pretty easily when you just come back into your center. And it's funny because as we're talking about this, one of the things that I'm

I'm contemplating is just I'm like, where, like, what is the relationship between grounded and presence? They're totally connected. And it's like this, it's kind of like a loop that I keep seeing. I'm like, one feeds into the other and I don't know if chicken and the egg, but they definitely seem to be playing in the same sandbox. So I don't know. What do you think about that?

Ashley Henderson (13:47.58)

I think they might be the same thing. I think they might be the same thing. If I'm, you know, maybe the different qualities of the same thing. I don't know that you have one without the other, truly. But I love what you just said. I actually think that's such a good point about the relational aspect. And you know, you can really tell

Nate (13:48.795)

Okay, yeah, that's what I was wondering.

Nate (14:01.881)

Right.

Ashley Henderson (14:16.828)

when you're in relationship with somebody and you have that grounded sense of trust and relaxation and a deep sense of okayness, and then you can mirror, you invite each other into that. And so if you're in relationship with somebody who maybe isn't grounded, you can ground yourself and that is this kind of deep invitation to somebody else to ground into themselves.

It's not about taking on somebody else's insecurity or fear or any anxiety. It's really about rooting down. Maybe if you can notice that, then you root down even more into your own sense of ground, which is this amazing invitation. Somebody else, it's safe. I can be in my body. You can be in your body. Everything is a...

Nate (15:12.985)

Yeah.

Ashley Henderson (15:14.296)

And I think that's such a gift to both offer and receive. I love it when I get that from people. And you kind of know you get it. You're like, I feel good when I'm around this person.

Nate (15:24.619)

Yeah!

Nate (15:30.649)

It also takes away a lot of pressure that can kind of, you know, sometimes if we get into an egoic thing with spiritual awakening or even just being a good person, it can carry a lot of pressure. Like I have to be good, I have to do things the right way. All of that can be very anxiety provoking. And if you...

kind of let go of that and you just come back to a deeper truth and a simpler truth, which is if I am grounded in myself and I am strong in who I am and I know my energetic signal and I put that out, that is it. That's all the work you really need to do because you are by default signaling to other people it's safe for you to be yourself around me because I'm safe with myself.

And it's also putting out a signal that says, know, I can find my I can find my home and my grounding and so can you. And you probably should. It's like this beautiful invitation that doesn't involve words. It doesn't involve moralizing. There's no preaching involved. It's just grounding yourself, finding your center, finding your essence before you take yourself out into the world and then let everything else just

It just, works itself out.

Ashley Henderson (17:02.654)

Well, yeah, it's so interesting because the opposite can also be true now that I'm thinking about it. That there were times in my life where I was maybe so ungrounded that being around somebody who was grounded made me really uncomfortable. Because part of sitting in your own seat, in your own ground is this kind of

Nate (17:22.777)

yeah.

Ashley Henderson (17:32.67)

tuning into the truth of life and being accepting of all of life. And that's kind of terrifying for a lot of people. I mean, I know it was for me and it can still be. If I hit up against things that I haven't fully accepted yet or seen or felt, a fear comes up like, do I really wanna go there? If you're with...

You know, and that's where great teachers really come in who are holding this sense of everything is okay and everything is safe enough to feel and be with. And those are really profound transmissions for you to start to sense into your own trust and your own safety and your own okayness with exploring your own ground.

But I know there can also be like a rattling that can happen. Not everybody might be so into it now that I'm thinking about it.

Nate (18:32.393)

Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, when we when we start talking about like energetic entrainment, this idea that like with musical notes where they'll, you know, they'll pick up the same harmony or frequency and then the higher one will will move the other one up. And I think people energetically do this. And if you're around somebody who is in their power, very grounded and is in in sending out this entrained signal of that

kind of deep, authentic knowing and kind of coming from a very rooted soul place. Yeah, you might bounce right off of them. And other people are gonna bounce right off of you if you're in that place too. And that is probably a good thing because if the energetic distance between the two people is too big to cover in, let's say, an interaction, then it's like the universe's way of like,

putting rubber stoppers on the corner to make sure people don't hurt themselves. It's like, no, no, you too shouldn't play. You're in different rooms. And so you're just going to energetically bounce off each other. Or, you know, what you were describing, I would I would surmise, I don't know, is that when you're just close enough to someone who's holding a really strong signal that you're you're in their field.

but you're uncomfortable because you're uncomfortable with the distance between the two energies and you're like, whoa, if I was to be here, would have to pull my, I kind of have to pull my shit together and like pull my energy up. Or I'm just kind of like, I can only handle so much time. But all of that is cool because it all kind of happens on this non-linguistic level. It's just, it's happening. And that's like the beautiful thing about.

releasing the expectations around needing to help other people find or do anything. Like you just do your own, you just do you really well out in the world and the people who are going to match with you will find you and everyone else will just bounce off. And that goes for everyone at every levels with no judgment about what energetic level you are. You know, that's just that's law of attraction, right? We're going to. Yeah, it's cool stuff, though, to think about.

Ashley Henderson (20:45.662)

you

Ashley Henderson (20:55.537)

Yeah, totally.

What else about grounding?

Nate (21:05.297)

Well, I feel like you...

we're getting into a little bit around how grounding can help deepen your intuition, but you were kind of just talking about it in theory. I'm wondering if you're comfortable just sharing, I don't know, an experience or two about how.

knowing, I don't know, whatever. We had talked about it before, but it's been a little while now. So I'm not sure if you have one on hand, but just, yeah, something that could illustrate some of the ways that, know, so we've talked about our signal getting stronger. We talked about our kind of energetic stability, knowing yourself, but you had also talked about how almost like serendipity, things

things start to unfold in different ways when you're really doing a grounding practice consistently.

Ashley Henderson (22:02.918)

Yeah, I would even say it this way. I mean, I think that has been true as I've been really focusing on grounding for the last six months. Those serendipities are definitely, synchronicities are happening all the time. It's sort of like too much to say even. Like I think that it opened up something, who knows what it is. I also, what I would say about it is like the true, that stuff's cool, but

The true, true gift that I've received is...

The moving out of really trusting my intuition in such a deeper way that I'm really moving out of my wounding and my judgment to really listen and feel into a truth that lies beyond logic, that lies beyond cultural conditioning, that lies beyond my ego's desire to control or manage or be safe.

but there's this kind of deeper voice that you can just hear more clearly, just more obvious and feels more compelling. And I think that that's really the path that I'm playing out right now is hearing that deeper intuition more clearly and responding to it quicker and getting this

feedback loop of what feels like expansion or what feels like moving forward. I don't even know what feels like kind of trusting the path, trusting the process that I can just do that, that there doesn't have to be such a kind of grand plan of who I am and where I'm going and what I'm going to become.

Ashley Henderson (24:06.268)

all these things, there's just like no attachment to any of that. It's like, which way is the wind blowing today? What is my deeper voice telling me today about this life? And it's just, opens the door for a much, I would say, more interesting experience of life. I just think it's infinitely more alive, more interesting.

Nate (24:11.777)

Yeah.

Ashley Henderson (24:34.142)

And what it feels like is a felt sense of truth. That's just my truth. Nobody else is, you know? I wouldn't need to convince anybody else of my truth. It just gets to be mine. And it's just, I don't know, more satisfying. I don't know what the right words are. But yeah, I don't know. What do you think? What's your experience?

Nate (24:57.504)

Well, I like that. I like the way that you were describing it was,

We do sometimes kind of talk about intuition or pathways unfolding or kind of getting little hits or whatever. There can be a way that it's kind of this elusive thing. It's hard to find and it's like, how do you get yourself into a place where you can receive those signals? And what you were just describing was that the signal is always there and now

I have access to it more readily because of this grounding practice that you have and then moving into a place of just a much deeper trust in an unfolding that doesn't have kind of

doesn't have a prescribed or predetermined kind of outcome. You're just like, know, every day I find my center, I walk out into the world and I know things are gonna work out. It does.

It is what I am trying to live as well. I do it better some days than others, but it is absolutely, as you said, a much more kind of enlivening and exciting way to live. it's, I would say that it is all coming from those two things, increase in trust and a release of fear.

Nate (26:33.691)

increase in a trust that you know that I'm meant to be here and everything is going to work out the way it's meant to work out and releasing fear about all the kind of nonsensical thoughts half of which are on even mine that my brain produces and just yeah which which as you know is we are entering into very new and kind of uncertain times for people I think

you know, hopefully what we're describing here is, you know, a life that is less anxiety provoking and high anxiety and maybe even a little depressed and more vibrant, more, you know.

more flexible and going with the flow and just a little bit more carefree even way of living.

Ashley Henderson (27:30.266)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. I can imagine right now that the chaos in the outside world, as things really change, they're changing. Yeah, I mean, yeah. I mean, we probably need grounding more than ever. This is probably going to invite people into doing this inner exploration or not. But I imagine there's going to be

Nate (27:39.728)

Right. A lot of it is change. I mean...

Nate (27:48.157)

Right.

Ashley Henderson (28:00.262)

a surge of people do, and there is already a surge of people doing this in our exploration because the trust in the outside forces are not going to be as reliable. And we need to find that inner ground, which is reliable. Because it is. The is-ness of it makes it reliable. It's always there. It never goes away.

Nate (28:18.874)

Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

Ashley Henderson (28:29.79)

It's an amazing discovery. We're always discovering it. It's an ever present discovery and requires a real surrender and allowing and courage and humility and all the good things. But the we were just talking earlier today, the path is worth it. Not easy all the time, but but has just been a big.

gift in this life to realize all of these things.

Nate (29:02.33)

Yeah, yeah, and I would say, although the path in kind of coming off of the mainstream path can be itself a little difficult to come back to bring it back to what we're actually talking about. Doing any kind of small grounding practice is actually incredibly simple and will be a high yield investment of your time. So you could, you can find a

of grounding exercises on YouTube, meditations, whatever, and you can get very involved. Or you can just stand where you're standing, take a deep breath, and just say, am here, I am now, this is where I'm meant to be. I am connected to my essence. That in itself is a grounding exercise. Hell, you can eat a little bite of dark chocolate and start in...

the earthiness of it and have that be a grounding exercise. You can touch a tree, you can look at the sun, you know. What we're talking about is, it can be a very small thing, but it's the intention that is the key here is intentionally take time out of your day to do some kind of a grounding practice because what you're really doing is you're reconnecting to your essence and to your...

kind of the, that you deserve to be here, that you are here for a reason and that, know, yeah, I don't, just kind of reconnecting to your energy in that grounding process and that you're safe and that it's all gonna work out, you know.

Ashley Henderson (30:49.48)

I love it. Yeah, that feels like.

Nate (30:49.665)

Yeah, it's easy is what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to leave it on like, yeah, just any little thing is gonna help.

Ashley Henderson (30:56.84)

Totally, totally. I love it. I think that's a great place to end and, you know, ending on the invitation. It's perfect.

Nate (31:04.323)

Absolutely.