7 Powerful Ways to Ground and Center Yourself
Countries around the world have seen an unprecedented explosion in technology over the past 50-100 years. It’s brought higher quality of life, and with it, greater freedoms to navigate the world. Some basic examples include GPS, instant internet access, and the ability to keep in touch with friends and family at a moment’s notice.
Sometimes however, technology hurts more than helps us.
A large part of our physical world is greatly impacted by our life in the digital world. This constant communication and media consumption makes you anxious and over-stimulates your brain. It fries your brain.
Screens are found in almost any room you walk into now. You spend hours of your time every day looking at your phone or computer a few inches away from your face.
But technology isn’t going away anytime soon. That’s why it’s important you know how to feel your natural, happy self. Grounding and centering yourself provides your mind and body a much needed break from the digital world.
Below, find seven things that will make you feel grounded, centered, and happy.
1. Go Barefoot
Going barefoot on grass, sand, and dirt is shown to have immediate stress-relieving effects and overall better health. It’s no coincidence that people who spend time outside in nature are the happiest!
If you know something about electricity or wiring diagrams, you know that GND represents Earth, or ground. This is because the Earth neutralizes any and all charges and ions it encounters.
When you walk around in rubber-soled shoes, you don’t have a chance to exchange your body’s pent-up ions with the Earth. Instead, they get built up inside you without any outlet. You become ionically constipated and inflamed.
It’s widely known that rubber insulates electricity and blocks pathways that electrical charges would otherwise take.
When you take off your rubber shoes and go barefoot, you ground yourself to the Earth.
2. Sunbathing
Humans get their energy from many sources. Food, water, time alone, time with other people, and exercise are just a few examples. But one neglected energy source that has a huge impact on you is the sun.
Sunlight is one of your body’s main sources of energy. When your exposure to the sun is limited, so are your energy levels. Daily sun exposure is even proven to reduce depression, reduce stress, and can strengthen your immune system.
When you’re exposed to sunlight as the sun rises, it stimulates your body to release chemicals that wake you up and start your day. A few hours later as the sun sets, it triggers your body to make you feel sleepy and get you ready for bed. Sunlight is vital to a healthy circadian rhythm.
Did you know that about half of all Americans are vitamin D deficient? This is because most people don’t spend enough time outside in the sun’s rays. Receiving at least 30 minutes of sunlight per day is crucial to keep your moods high and healthy.
If you wake up around sunrise or enjoy watching sunsets, try staring at the sun as it is just breaking the horizon. It’s safest for our eyes to look at the sun at these times because the UV is lowest at sunrise and sunset. As you gaze at the big ball of fire in the sky, you’ll feel a calming sensation wash over you like a hot bath on a cold night.
This exercise is called sun gazing. It allows you to reset your circadian rhythm, among other benefits.
3. Stretching/Exercise/Yoga
When your alarm clock goes off in the morning, your pets jump off your bed and immediately starts stretching their body for the day. Why aren’t you?
When you don’t stretch your muscles out, they remain in their tight state. This reduces mobility and keeps lactic acid in your muscles, making your body more sore and tight for longer. Stretching and exercise gets your blood pumping to stagnant areas that need increased blood flow. Any athlete will tell you that exercise and stretching improves cognitive function and working memory.
If you want to combine the benefits of stretching and working out, consider joining a yoga studio. Not only will you leave feeling accomplished, but you also get a chance to engage with your community members around shared interests.
4. Sleep Naked
Sleeping naked is one of the easiest ways to ground and center yourself.
Benefits include faster time to sleep, better quality sleep, higher fertility levels, and elevated self-esteem.
5. Avoid Seed Oils
Eating healthy hasn’t always been so hard like it is today. One main culprit of the unhealthy foods that are so prevalent in our diets today are seed oils.
Seed oils are toxic and are hyper-refined versions of the GMO crop they once came from. It’s cheaper to use seed oils than natural ingredients, so that’s what food producers use. These seed oils have been silently substituted into everyday food items with hardly anyone noticing.
Canola oil, soybean oil, corn oil, sunflower oil, rapeseed oil, sesame oil. The list goes on. The effect of all of them? They make you fat, diabetic, mentally slow, they give you heart problems, inflammation, and can even turn you infertile!
Next time you make yourself a meal, look at the ingredient list of what you’re eating. You’ll be surprised at the amount of toxic seed oils they’ve managed to slip into your daily foods right under your nose.
Take back control of your health. Do yourself a favor and begin throwing out everything that has an industrial seed oil in its list of ingredients.
This means getting rid of the margarine and replacing it with 100% butter or ghee.
Throw out the name-brand mayonnaise and condiments, which have a shocking amount of soybean oil in its ingredients.
Limit your trips to restaurants, especially fast food. The food is likely cooked in some type of seed oil since it’s cheaper that way.
Chances are you’ll be spending a few extra dollars at the grocery store to get the natural and whole foods.. But you either spend money now and have a clean healthy body, or you spend it later at the doctor’s office, overweight and unhealthy. Your choice!
6. Use Blue Light Filters
Blue light is exactly what you think it is: blue colored light.
I have beef with blue light because it messes with your brain’s circadian rhythm. It stops your body from producing the melatonin it needs to wind down for bed. You wind up having poor sleep and eye problems. Issues include blurry vision, eyestrain, dry eye, macular degeneration, and cataracts.
Eliminating your blue light exposure can be tough, considering the amount of time you spend looking at a screen. Heck, you’re looking at a screen right now!
To combat this, set timers for night lights on your devices. If you’re on a windows desktop, you can easily do this by right-clicking your desktop background and selecting “Display settings” at the bottom and selecting the “Night Light” button to “On.”
If you’re on a smartphone, search under the display settings and find settings relating to “eye comfort” or “blue light shield.”
If you want to maximize the benefits, stop using electronic devices for an hour or two before going to bed. Use this time away from screens to meditate, read, or journal by candlelight.
7. Minimize Medicine Intake
Medicine and healthcare has become an increasingly popular topic over the past few years. But believe it or not, medicine isn’t the answer to every sore or ailment you may have.
Prescription medicines make you feel numb and lifeless. They dampen your innate personalities, and with that, your spirit.
If you exercise, get adequate sunlight, eat whole, healthy foods, and spend time journaling or meditating, there’s almost no reason for anyone to need medicine.
There’s money to be made off you when you’re sick and unhealthy. When you’re dependent on a pharmaceutical company to give you medicine to be healthy, you become a consistent source of income for them. They use your trust in them to take advantage of your natural health and turn you into a subscription service.
If you get sick or have an ailment, consider natural solutions. All it takes is a one-second internet search. Often, natural solutions are much cheaper and oftentimes more effective than what’s been synthetically created in a lab.
Conclusion
Grounding and centering yourself is important in today’s world now more than ever. The remedies listed above never fail to bring me out of a bad mood, and they always leave me feeling happy and optimistic about life.
Next time you feel stressed out or anxious, be sure to:
Go barefoot and physically ground yourself to the earth
Catch some rays of beautiful sunshine
Activate your muscles in some way to remind yourself that you are a living, breathing human being
Sleep naked with pride
Avoid seed oils like they’re the devil
Minimize blue-light so you can sleep at night
Eliminate medicine intake as much as possible
Interested in learning more? Check out this article: 3 Reasons Why It’s Good to Live in Your Own World
