Grounding
Being in your body, and on the earth.
Grounding is a simple idea from body psychotherapy. It means being present in your body and in contact with the ground under you. When we are grounded, strong feelings can move through us without sweeping us away.
At Dojo Bianco, grounding isn’t a technique — it’s a meeting. Imagine the cool stone beneath your feet, olive branches moving in a slow breeze, and your breath arriving without effort. We’re simply remembering that the body knows how to be here.
“And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.”Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923
Grounding comes from Alexander Lowen and John Pierrakos, and it sits at the root of the body psychotherapies. Barbara Brennan developed it further, adding energetic and hands-on ways to work with it, for oneself and in a healing relationship.
It has two sides: being fully present in your body, and feeling connected to the earth. It is a movement of awareness downward, into the body, into our biology, into our own nature. Susan Aposhyan describes it simply as letting the weight of the body pass down into gravity.
Grounding gives us a way to contain strong emotions and sensations, and to stay present with difficult or powerful experiences. Next to it sits centering: an ongoing sense of self, of “me”. Physically, it is our point of balance.
Where are you, right now?
Three questions. Choose the phrase that feels closest. There is no right answer.
Three minutes is enough.
Stand or sit comfortably. Let your shoulders drop 2 millimeters. Feel the gentle weight of your body moving downwards. Inhale softly through the nose. Exhale a little longer than you inhale.
Go gently. If standing is not comfortable, do the same practice sitting, feeling your feet on the floor and the chair beneath you. If you feel dizzy, sit down.
Be a tree.
A gentler way to ground, through roots, trunk and branches.
Stand, or sit, with your feet on the ground. Let your eyes rest, open or closed.
pauseFeel the weight of your body. Let it go down, through your legs, into your feet.
Imagine roots growing from the soles of your feet. Slowly, into the soil. Past stones, past the cool layers of earth.
pauseNow feel your legs and your spine as a trunk. Upright, without effort. Something that can move in the wind and still stay.
Let your breath travel down the trunk to the roots, and back up again.
pauseFeel your head, your arms, as branches. Open to the light and the air.
Roots below. Trunk in the middle. Branches above. All one tree.
longer pauseNotice what is here now. Nothing needs to be different.
When you are ready, feel your feet once more, and open your eyes to the room.
Colours around you.
Look at what surrounds you and notice its colours. Choose one, then find at least one other thing of the same colour. Then another colour.
For the days after.
Nothing you write or think here is stored. Take one question with you.
- What felt more available — breath, weight, or space?
- Where did your body say “yes” to grounding?
- One sentence you want to remember for later.
Grounding is not about being heavy — it’s about being related. Today’s meeting with the earth is enough. Tomorrow, we meet again.Dojo Bianco Teaching