"Its a way to connect to everything that is"
Of the Ether Podcast, previously known as The Kind Witch Podcast
Episode 1
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Below you'll find the transcription of the episode.
Welcome to The Kind Witch Podcast where we helped the modern intuitive connect to their body, authentic self, the aether, and beyond. I'm your host Alyssa McDowell, The Kind Witch, Reiki Master and Founder of Kind Publishing Co. I'm so grateful you are here. If you like this episode, please be sure to subscribe to The Kind Witch Podcast, or share it with a friend. Let's go.
Hello! Welcome back to The Kind Witch Podcast. I am so glad that you are back. Today we are going to talk about what it means to be grounded. Being grounded is something we hear all over the spiritual space, especially in energy healing.
“You need to be grounded!”
“Make sure you’re grounded!”
“Have you walked on the earth today?”
But, have you ever stopped to think about what this actually means? I mean, for real. We hear this literally all the time. What does it mean to be grounded?
I feel like a lot of us know what this means, maybe, organically—we know how it feels— but, what does it actually mean?
For me, there’s two different ways to be grounded. One makes the second one easier—it is still necessary—but it does get overlooked a bit more than the other. Whether you are in the healing space or not.
The first kind of grounding we’re going to talk about is also known as ‘Earthing.’ It's a practice of being in contact with the Earth—like physically having skin-to-earth contact. And being ungrounded is actually a relatively new phenomenon for humans. Our species used to be in contact with the Earth in some way for the majority of the day. Grounding is also a practice of connecting and tuning into our very earthly vessel. Our bodies are something that are actually only able to exist right here on Earth. And it makes sense that we need to remain connected to that Earthly thing. Grounding is an ongoing practice, because we live in such a fast-paced, capitalistic society, because we are outside as much as we should be, because we're not nourishing our bodies as well as we should, because we experience stress and overwhelming emotions all the time—and most simply, because we're human. Our vessels as much as we maybe want to ignore them…are our vessels. It is what routes in our consciousness, and our human experience.
And if you think about it, when was the last time you had your bare feet on the grass, the dirt, the gravel, the sand? And if you can remember that time, can you remember the time before that? I'm sure you can get the picture here. The skin-to-earth contact does not happen often at all—especially when we're adults. My husband loves to tell my children to always wear shoes outside and I'm like, “No! That skin-to-earth contact is so needed!” It's so needed. When our skin can touch the Earth—magic happens. And no— for real—like magic happens.
In the book Earthing by Clinton Ober, Stephen T. Sinatra M.D., and Martin's Zucker, they put it this way.
“The Earth is a six sextillion (that’s six followed by twenty-one zeros) metric ton battery that is continually being replenished by solar radiation, lighting, and heat from its deep-down molten core. And just like a battery in a car that keeps the motor running and the wheels turning, so, too, do the rhythmic pulsations of natural energy flowing through and emanating from the surface of the Earth keep the biological machinery of global life running in rhythm and balance—for everything that lives on the land or in the sea. People, animals, fish, plants, trees, bugs, bacteria, and virus.”
When we do something as simple as having direct contact with the Earth, the Earth transfers natural electrical signals to the body. These signals work to maintain the order and frequencies of our body. Meaning that the natural electrical signals that come from skin-to-earth contact, help regulate all the electrical subsystems of the body—your heart, your brain, your nervous system, your muscles, your immune system. An easy example to follow would be that the movement of nutrients and water within the body is regulated by electrical fields. So the more grounded we are, the more grounded you are in your body, you will have an easier time absorbing nutrients. You will have an easier time regulating your emotions. Your blood will have an easier time transferring oxygen everywhere it needs to go. When the body loses its connection to the Earth, it becomes vulnerable to dysfunction, inflammation-related diseases, and even accelerated aging. So when we ground as a way to absorb the electrons, it reduces electrical imbalances in the body and the oxidative free radicals, help decrease chronic inflammation and the onset of multiple diseases.
The more we modernize, the more we disconnect from Earth. Between our synthetic soles, the fabric we wear, our carpeted flooring, the chemicals in our mattresses, living and working several stories off the ground…we are becoming more and more disconnected. Unless we purposely ground.
The act of grounding allows you to receive and recharge. Studies have shown that when we reconnect to the Earth by grounding, we can experience:
A reduction of inflammation
reduction or even elimination of chronic pain
blood flow Improvement
stress reduction
more energy
improve sleep
and accelerated healing from injuries and surgeries
That’s a lot, right?
So besides the physical well-being of being grounded, being grounded is also very much tied to our consciousness—to our emotions as well. This is what I feel most inherently and my own grounded practice. So, not only do we need to ground, as a way to connect to the Earth and recharge our bodies, but it's also a way to connect with ourselves.
So, let's say there's two parts to us—we have our physical body and our consciousness. Our physical body is what allows us to live here on Earth and experience being human. Our consciousness is how we connect to the Divine, Source, spirit, and, really, ourselves—our experience. We need both—our consciousness and our body—to experience this lifetime on Earth.
A while ago, I worked at a terrible job. Like I hated every single minute. I cried many times throughout the week after week…after week after week, because I was completely miserable and was treated so horribly. During this time, I was also doing a lot of shadow work and receiving mentorship and energy work. And one of the things I heard most often during this time was that I needed to ground.
I saw my mentor. “You need to ground.”
I saw my reiki practitioner. “You need to ground.
I saw my reiki teacher. “You need to ground.”
I could not escape this message. The messages of the retelling of: You need to ground.” “You need to ground.”
So I knew all the different strategies that I needed to do to ground. I knew them. I knew to go, sit outside, lean against the tree, put your bare feet on the grass as long as possible every day, if you can. I knew the strategies. But whatever I did, it was never enough to truly ground my energy. Everyone kept telling me that my energy wasn't grounded and they were right. They were totally right. I could feel I wasn't grounded but it took me a long time to connect the dots…to figure out why I wasn't grounding.
And I wasn't grounded because I was purposely, albeit unconsciously, blocking my ability to ground. I was literally disassociating from my feelings, in order to escape that toxic job. I was in protection-mode from a traumatic experience ,and the safest way for me to cope was keeping my consciousness outside of my body as much as possible. I was so ungrounded during this time that I can barely recall anything that went on at that job today. Because I wasn't in my body. I wasn't allowing what happened in my daily routine to ground and imprint into my system, because I was so focused, or the only thing that I could focus on, was being in fight or flight.
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When I was researching all the things about grounding for this episode, I learned that because grounding helps connect you to the present moment it's actually often encouraged for people who experience anxiety and PTSD, because it brings us back into our body after we learn to separate our consciousness. So these two different strategies of grounding are separate, but needed. So the first one, as I mentioned, is going outside skin-to-earth contact. And the second one is being grounded within yourself. Pulling your energy back down into your body and being fully aware of your surroundings, of your emotions, of yourself. And the first strategy helps you do the second strategy, but they are two different things.
And so you'll hear in the spiritual space, in the healing space, when you are spending a lot of time meditating, expanding your awareness outside of your physical body, sometimes into different dimensions, you can see why grounding needs to be a pillar in your routine. Because it's very easy to keep our energy outside of ourselves. Because it's fun, right? It's fun opening ourselves up and communicating with divine energies. It's fun being outside of our physical reality, of our physical routine, of our 9–5, of our chores, and our jobs, and it's fun playing with the universe in that way. Right?
But we can't forget to bring our energy back down into our body to recharge to connect with our Earthly vessel. That's the whole point of why we're here; to have a human body. We need to actively and intentionally keep the two together, the body and the consciousness, in order to remain grounded and in-tune with ourselves. And because we're doing these fun things, yeah, it needs to be an ongoing practice.
When I did my reiki master training, after the attunements, we were practicing and I just remember being so wobbly on my feet, because my energy was so far out of my body. I didn't realize it for what it was until my teacher pointed it out and she was like, “Woah! Alyssa, you need to– you need to bring your energy down!” And she helped me, but you can see why this needs to be an everyday thing. Because we get on to the next exciting thing…We're working with different spirits guides, were working with deities, we're working with our higher selves, we're working with the divine, with source, and we're learning new things, and we're traveling to different places in side our consciousness, but we have to bring it back down. As un-fun as that sounds, we have to…because you'll find that, at least I've noticed in my practice, is that if I'm not grounded, what happens consciously with my psychic gifts or in meditation, I have really hard time remembering later unless I ground into it—very purposefully—immediately. Because you don't have the physical senses to help lock in the memory into your brain. So our brains use our sight, our sense of smell, our sense of touch to record those memories. They kind of act as triggers, right? But when you're working in your psychic senses or in meditation and your higher self consciousness, you don't have those physical things to trigger your brain into locking in the memory. So, this is where you need to ground.
Whether you ground physically outside while you're meditating, or maybe you do something physical with what just happened, like writing it down. I always advocate for writing everything down, honestly. Because I'm so quick to forget what happens up there (in meditation) because it will fly out the window faster than I came in, honestly. And so, a way to ground what happened in your meditation with your psychic senses, with your spirit guides, is to write it down immediately after you get it. And I know everyone says, to me, you want me to write down everything? [laughing] Good for you, that a lot of things are happening! Yes, it can be cumbersome, it can be a lot, but…every time I don't write something down, an interaction that I had with someone I'm working with, a flight of inspiration, if I don't write it down, I almost always regret it because I will forget it. Because it's not grounded in me. It's not locked in my memory. So yes, if you can, when you're working in the spiritual space, when you're meditating, when you're experiencing those psychic-awareness sensations, write it down. Please, please, please: write it down or you will forget it because it's not grounded into you. I'm getting off on a tangent.
So how do you ground physically skin-to-earth contact?
Walk on the earth bare feet in the grass, the dirt, the sand, the gravel
Expose as much skin as possible as often as possible to the Earth or natural water sources, ike Lakes streams, the ocean, or even the rain
Lean up against a tree
Take a bath in Epsom salts
Drink spring water
I also like incorporating essential oils, like cedar or Sandalwood
You can ground with crystals like obsidian pyrite, or hematite or even smoky quartz is a good one
You can get a grounding mat for your bed or your office space—which is a mat that is specifically designed to recreate the charge that you would get from the earth. Which is really convenient for our modern, mostly indoor society. I have one that sits on my office chair that I sit on all day long.
You can make sure that you're eating whole organic foods straight from the Earth. You have to remember that the vegetables, and the fruits, the nuts that you're eating, they hold the vibration that the Earth gave them. Just like the Earth is giving you—that vibration, the frequencies, the energy your body needs to run at optimum levels. The things that you're eating, if you're eating whole foods, hold that same vibration. And when you in turn eat that, it is also becoming a part of you. When you think about it, would you rather have something that was nourished by the Earth that is allowing you to absorb those frequencies? Or would you rather put something that was processed in a factory or soaked with pesticides [in your body]? You can see how the frequency, the vibration would be different and how your body would interact with those different things.
Outside of the physical things, the physical ways you can ground with the skin-to-earth contact, how do you ground your energy back into your body? First, I want you to close your eyes. Take a deep breath in, in through your nose. Out through your mouth. This simple act alone will help center yourself. You can take one breath, two breaths, three breaths. However many it takes for you to collect your energy. Clear your mind and locate where the majority of your energy is. Is it outside of yourself? Maybe it's above your head. Maybe it's three-feet in front of your chest. Just find where it is. And don't touch it. This is very important. I don't care where it is, neither should you. But we just need to bring it back, okay. So, locate where your energy is. And then I want you to inhale again. And then, on the exhale. Imagine your breath is pulling your energy down into your body further and further down until it is at your feet. As all the breath gets pushed out of your diaphragm, imagine the energy of pushing is pushing your energy, bringing your energy back down into your body and solidifying it into your feet.
Another practice is, you can plant your feet firmly on the ground, ideally on the Earth, but it's not necessary if you can't find Earth, but imagine your feet are rooting into the ground. Close your eyes feet flat on the Earth and imagine that your feet are physically growing roots and connecting to the Earth. Imagine how far they are growing and seeping down. Imagine them going down and off to the right and off the left, maybe they're interweaving. Just take a couple breaths there, while your roots implant into the metaphorical Earth.
Another strategy is just feeling your feelings—and really feeling them and processing them for what they are. Like I said, in my story, I wasn't grounded because I was heavily avoiding the feelings that that job brought up for me. I was avoiding all the uncomfortable emotions that this job and my boss, we're bringing up for me. This is why I can't remember anything because I was just disassociating so hard. I was not processing my emotions. I was pushing them away. I was ignoring them because I needed to to survive, sure, but it wasn't grounded. So you need to feel your feelings.
And then of course, I have to mention energy healing. I always always always close my energy healing sessions with grounding reiki energy with the intention of pulling your energy back down and anchoring it into your body. So if you're attuned to level one, I do have offer classes, you can do this yourself physically. Or when you go to have an energy healing, if your practitioner doesn't already do that, you can always ask them and they can do that for you.
But it does need to be an ongoing practice. It has to be a daily thing, if you can make sure to do it daily. It just needs to be, because our body is in our consciousness are two different things and we have to keep bringing them back together.
Alright, let's see if Spirit has anything to say about grounding? So, being grounded is about being in touch with everything that is. It's about connecting to Source energy. It’s about connecting to life, and breath, and everything that allows you to be just that. Everything that allows you to be life and breath. It's about connectedness. And, really, it's an experience of gratitude. It's a way to remember who we are outside of our individualistic point-of-view, even if you are really only paying attention to your emotions, but it's a way to unconsciously or consciously connect everything that is.
The Earth holds a vibration. The grass holds a vibration. The trees hold a vibration. You hold a vibration. And what if you could just spend some time with those things and become that vibration with them. I mean, can you imagine the freedom—the peace that would come with the vibration of a tree? Or the vibration of a flower? Or the vibration of a bumblebee? And what if you can connect to that just for a moment? By just touching Earth. To just connecting to what is here. Connecting to the mother that allows you to be here.
You have become so disconnected with what it is to Be. You are so focused on doing, and acting, and working that you forget that you can just be. You can plant yourself in the grass, just like the dandelion and just soak up the sun. You can root yourself like the tree, and store the wisdom of your ancestors. Grounding is probably one of the most simplistic practices that you can do to come back home. All you have to do is do it. You just have to take the time. It doesn't have to be for 10-minutes, it doesn't have to be for 30-minutes. Could be for 2-minutes. Just go outside, plant your feet on the ground, or in a stream, or take an epsom salt bath with the intention of soaking up the vibration that the Earth naturally and lovingly and desperately wants to give you. Because those vibrations are a match. They were literally made for you. They were made for you to use, to be in harmony with, and it's when you ignore them…when you ignore yourself and you ignore your emotions, that's when the imbalances happen, when the chronic illness happens, when the anxiety happens. It's all connected. Just as you are connected—if you connect.
Phew! Sometimes they surprise me with what they come through with.
So, if you want to read more about the science of grounding and what it can do to heal different illnesses or diseases, the book Earthing by Clinton Ober, Stephen T, Sinatra, MD, and Martin Zucker has very fascinating testimonials and information. That's it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed learning all about grounding how to ground to connect to the Earth and connect with yourself.
If you like this episode, be sure to subscribe or leave a review. Every action of support helps us significantly. Until next time, make sure you visit us at Kind Publishing Co., where myself and community voices bring education to the modern intuitive. We are at your destination for soul-focused transformation.
