Ground. How to Feel Grounded when Life Feels Chaotic

Visit my website:  www.glimpselove.comGround — How to Feel Grounded When Life Feels Chaotic

Season 1, Episode 1  |  The GLIMPSE Method Podcast with Megan  |  glimpselove.com

Episode Description

What does it actually mean to feel grounded — and why does it matter more now than ever? In this first full episode of The GLIMPSE Method Podcast, we explore the G in GLIMPSE: Ground. Host Megan takes you on a snowshoe through Minnesota with her dog Spike and unpacks why grounding isn't a wellness trend — it's a remembering.

From the science of earthing and electron absorption to the breathwork techniques Megan uses with every client, this episode gives you practical, accessible tools for nervous system regulation, stress reduction, and reconnecting with your body and the earth beneath you.

Whether you're a burned-out mom, a high-achiever running on fumes, or someone who can't remember the last time you felt truly present — this episode is your invitation back.

In This Episode

• What grounding really means (and why electricians get it)

• We are energy — the science behind why being ungrounded makes us short-circuit

• Earthing: touching the earth, absorbing electrons, and what studies actually show

• Megan's personal story: sobriety, nature, and finding her way back to herself

• How Spike the hiking dog became an unlikely grounding ritual

• Cold plunges, sunrise mornings, and what a grounded daily practice looks like

• Grounding pads & sheets — do artificial grounding tools work?

• Grounding in breathwork: why every GLIMPSE session starts here

• Michael Phelps, visualization, and preparing for what could go wrong

• A guided grounding breathwork exercise you can do right now

• Morning and evening rituals to start building your grounding practice

• A sneak peek at next week: L — Love (and not the kind you're thinking of)

Episode Timestamps

00:00 — Intro: Snowshoeing in Minnesota with Spike

02:30 — What does it mean to be grounded? The electricity analogy

04:00 — We are energy: atoms, cosmic dust & why grounding matters

05:30 — Megan's story: sobriety, nature & the hike that changed things

08:00 — Earthing: what the science says about touching the earth

10:30 — Technology, ancestors & how we lost our connection to nature

11:30 — Artificial grounding: pads, sheets & their limitations

13:00 — Grounding in breathwork: visualization, roots & safety in the body

14:30 — Michael Phelps & the power of visualizing what could go wrong

15:44 — Guided grounding breathwork exercise (pause-friendly)

19:00 — Morning grounding rituals: bare feet, cold plunge, sunrise

20:30 — Evening grounding practices & affirmations

21:30 — Coming up next: L — Love

✦ Guided Grounding Exercise (15:44)

Not in a safe space to listen right now? Pause and come back. This short breathwork exercise will guide you to:

• Settle into your body and feel the chair holding you

• Imagine roots or light extending from your root chakra into the earth's core

• Connect to a felt sense of safety, support, and presence

• Use deep nasal inhales with a brief hold and a full exhale to regulate your nervous system

This is the same grounding practice Megan opens every GLIMPSE breathwork session with. It takes less than five minutes and works anywhere.

Grounding Practices to Try This Week

MORNING

• Go outside barefoot — even for 60 seconds. Grass, dirt, sand, or snow with your hands

• Watch the sunrise before reaching for your phone

• Try morning affirmations before getting out of bed

• Cold plunge or cold shower to wak

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi there, it's Megan and Spike, the dog. We just got back from a nice snowshoe at the dog park. I have never seen him so happy with all the snow we've gotten recently here in Minnesota. Um it's been harder to motivate to get him out, but I did get some snowshoes. Uh, it's probably been over a year ago. I had to cut the little plastic, um, I don't know what you call them, plastic fasteners from them because I haven't used them yet, and it was so fun. Umly problem is I wore very short boots, and so my entire boots fill filled with snow, but we had a great time and we got out in nature, and that is what we are talking about today. We are talking about the first letter of glimpse, which is ground, being grounded, and so as every electrician would tell you, or even just any lay person, electricity needs to be grounded. That is very important in that vein. Um, and that got me thinking about, well, I was thinking about us being grounded and how important that is, and then I was like, Well, we're all just made of energy anyway, at this, you know, simplest form. We are atoms, um, we are energy, we do vibrate. So if we are not grounded, um things can get kind of haywire in our lives, and I think now more than ever, people are not grounded, and when electricity is not grounded, it can overload, short circuit, it's dangerous. So ask yourself do you feel grounded? When is the last time you felt grounded? And um what does that mean to you? Uh, I know um part of my story, I don't think I've talked about it on this podcast, but I do have another podcast with my husband called The Dry Life. And we had a time in our life where we were drinking quite a bit and using that to kind of numb out and um and not face things. I think maybe I was trying to ground with that, but that doesn't really work. And so basically what we ended up doing was just pushing things out. And when your main hobby is drinking, you don't really get out into nature. I mean, I did go for walks, you know, in the afternoon sometimes, or in the mornings sometimes, but um my main goal was to drink and drink with my friends and drink with my husband. Um, so in 2022 we stopped that. Um my husband stopped in 2021, did he? Yeah, because he stopped in in November and I stopped um the subsequent June. Um and that brought us I mean it took a while, just quitting didn't give us you know grounding that we needed, but it did uh make space for other things. So we um moved shortly after we stopped drinking to a house kind of outside um of I don't even know if you'd call it a suburb, it's pretty far away from about 30 minutes from Minneapolis out west. And there is a hiking trail really close, just three miles away. And it's this beautiful loop. There's a lake there, and I started just going and doing that. We had two older dogs, um, and they did that hike a little bit, but they were more um maybe go to the dog park for a few, you know, 15 minutes and then get tired out. But then we got a puppy, the one that's laying at my feet grounding right now, Spike, and oh my gosh, does he love to hike with his mama? Um, and he's so good. He's well, he's so bad at home, like he'll run out of the house and not come back. But when we're hiking, I take him off the leash and he will run ahead a little bit and he always comes back to check on me. And um, that's really cute actually, but we enjoy hiking together. And so I asked for snowshoes because in Minnesota, you know, you can't really hike all the months of the year. Um, and I finally used my snowshoes today. So yay, me. And Spike was so darn cute. So that is our topic today is grounding. So, as I mentioned before, at our most basic level, we are atoms, energy and motion. We are literally made from the same um particles as cosmic dust from billions of years ago, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen. And we are not separate from nature. And I think as things progress uh with technology and just structurally and economically everything, I think we spend a hell of a lot less time outside than our ancestors did. And certainly than I did. I think I've talked about this before in the podcast. I mean, when I was a kid, I didn't have internet, obviously. It was the 80s, but um, I did have a computer and I did play some fun decathlon, and what was what was another one I liked? I liked we had in television because my dad had to always be different and get different things, so we didn't have Atari or anything like that. But in television we had a game I really like to play called Bump and Jump. Um, anyway, I digress. So basically, I was we were outside a lot, a lot of the time. And um my ancestors were farming people, so they were outside a lot of the time. And I think that you naturally, well, not I think, I know that you naturally ground when you're outside in nature, um, and there is this uh thing called earthing. I don't think it's new, but it's maybe brought as a new concept. But there are many studies out there that I just kind of perused in preparation for this podcast on grounding, because honestly, I was thinking of grounding in the breathwork sense, which I will end with, but for now, so earthing um and grounding uh is basically just touching nature. So getting your bare feet in the grass, in the sand, um, outside, touching a tree or um gardening, digging in the dirt, just getting in touch with the earth. And your body absorbs electrons from the earth, and that has been um studies have shown that it decreases inflammation, it do it settles your nervous system, a lot of benefits. Um people feel less stressed. Um, and so I hope to find somebody that does earthing or practices it. I think you can actually get. There's like um, I saw that there were courses online about earthing, but I would just be curious to talk to somebody about that and what that entails and you know, maybe get into more depth about that because that kind of interests me. Um, I have tried to now it's harder in the winter, but in the summer, every morning I take time to ground, um, to go outside. I like to be able to see the sunrise. Um, I have a cold plunge on my deck that I love to do. That um maybe we'll talk about that another time, but that definitely is a mood booster and it just makes you feel kind of like a badass. Um so I spend I wake up earlier just to spend time, you know, grounding and um doing my cold plunge, being out in the natural sunlight, and that really does wonders for my day and my week. Um so those are some things you can do um as far as breath work goes. Before I get into breath work, also I wanted to mention there are some, I guess I'd say artificial ways to ground. Um, you know, there's grounding pads, grounding sheets, um, and a lot of the studies are done with those. So they actually plug into the electricity, and there have been benefits, the same kind of inflammation reduction, um, nervous system regulation, um, less stress and um those things um do work, but they did mention that if it takes longer when you're doing those kind of artificial type grounding practices, but if you go outside and you're actually interacting with nature, that that's a much stronger um way to ground or to earth. So um but with breath work, we always start out with uh grounding. It's very important when you're gonna be leading somebody in active breath to make sure they're feeling safe and grounded. So um ways to do this is it's almost like um internal earthing or like earthing visualization. So as we know, and I've probably talked about this before, visualization is super beneficial. Pro athletes use it. Um a lot of people use it. Um, and actually it can affect like your heart rate when you're visualizing, like running a race or something like that. These athletes actually their heart rate does go up. I know I read about Michael Phelps. He was a I don't know much about him, but he did visualization. Um and actually he not only did like positive visualization, he also visualized things that could go wrong and how he would um how he would react to that, which I think is kind of a cool thing because I I think it happened to him where he I heard a story about him where his right when he got in to do the butterfly, I think this was during the Olympics, his goggles filled up with water, and he, I mean, you don't have time to fix that. And so he basically did it blind, and I guess he had done that in a visualization, or maybe many, and he did fine, he was prepared for that. So that is super interesting. Um, but yeah, for grounding, you know, we feel into our body. We I think at the end of this, I'll do a little breathwork exercise, and you can feel free to pause it and come back to it if you're not in a safe space to do it. But um it might be interesting for you to see how that feels and to feel if it feels foreign or if you can remember the last time you felt grounded. So um, you know, basically what we do is feel into our bodies, um, imagine uh be a connection with the earth, whether it be roots connected to you from your root chakra all the way down to the earth's core, or maybe just like a light that shines from you to the earth, and just imagining those kind of things while just being in your breath, your eyes closed, relaxing can be really calming and really promote safety in the body. So I'm gonna put some music on and lead you through a short grounding um exercise at Glimpse. All of my breath work experiences start out with grounding. So um pause and then uh get comfy and we will start that now. Okay, go ahead and sit down comfortably.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

Try to have your feet on the ground, relax your shoulders down, notice your natural breath, you'll inhale, reaching all the way into your belly, relax a little more and each exhale. Do you think of your spine all the way from your neck all the way down over back to your pelvis? Feel the chair holding you, supporting you. You can imagine roots, light extending from your root chakra, your sacrum, all the way down through your feet, through the floor, and into the earth surface as you connect to the earth. The safety feel held and try to relax a little bit more again. Feel the chair holding you. You're safe, you're connected to the earth, and take one deep inhale through your nose, fold it a little at the top, and exhale out one more deep inhale through the nose, holding at the top, and releasing beautifully. Start to blink your eyes open if they were closed. Make eye contact with some some object, object in the room.

SPEAKER_00 17:34

Anywhere. Okay, so that was just a little off-the-cuff breathing exercise for you. Um, some ideas to do in the morning. Um, like I mentioned, going barefoot in the grass, um even just touching snow. If you're in Minnesota like me or somewhere cold, touching snow with your hands, obviously for a short time. That can bring some of the grounding um and earthing. Um, try not to grab your phone first thing in the morning. Maybe if you have to look at the time, okay. But try to leave your room and or not, maybe you don't, I shouldn't even sleep with my phone in my room, but I do. Um but try to leave it, you know, 15 minutes and just kind of wake up and think about your day. What I've been doing is morning affirmations um before you even get out of bed. So um that can be uh fun. I'm gonna work on some of those uh with you guys in the Sunday shift and even more so in my three-week mini series that I'll be doing in April um to get a more personalized kind of mantra or affirmation. Um in the evening, it might be really helpful to do like a breathing exercise where you're just kind of feeling into your body, feeling into the ground, um imagining being in touch with the earth. Um remember this is not a trendy um wellness, like a grounding isn't a wellness trend, it's a remembering. So you are made of the earth, and the earth is always beneath you, you're always supported, and you are held, and you always have been. So just remembering that can be quite helpful. Um next week we are getting into uh the L Love, and I'm not talking about what maybe you think I'm talking about the kind of love. Um this is a love that changes everything, and I'm excited to dive in with you. Thanks for listening.