Dear Stoics,
You have probably heard this word so many times, perhaps when a friend told you their weekend in the mountains was “so grounding”, or when a stressed coworker said they needed to “ground themselves” after a call with a client. You can even buy grounding mats, sheets, and socks. “Grounding” seems to have become one of those words that has drifted so far into everyday speech that nobody even asks if it actually means taking your shoes off and standing on cold earth. The answer, as so often, is yes and no. Because, in fact, grounding is two different practices.
The first is the barefoot kind, also called earthing, and it is far older than the wellness industry. For most of human history, people lived in contact with the ground, walking barefoot and sleeping close to the earth. Ancient traditions gave that contact names and meanings: the flow of qi in Chinese medicine, prana in Ayurveda, the life force that many indigenous cultures understood as passing between the land and the body. The latest wellness chapter begins in the late 1990s with Clint Ober, an American cable-television executive, who noticed that his industry grounded its cables to the earth to prevent interference, and wondered whether humans had lost the same connection. His idea was that skin contact with the earth lets the body absorb free electrons that calm inflammation and settle the nerves.
Some studies since then have reported better sleep and less stress in people who walk or sleep “earthed”. However, those studies are few and small, often run by people with a stake in the idea, and the electron theory remains unproven. But the experience itself is undoubtedly pleasant: standing barefoot on grass makes almost everyone feel better. Does it really matter whether the credit goes to electrons or simply to stopping and paying attention to your body?
The second kind of grounding has nothing to do with soil. It comes from the work of trauma therapists, who needed a way to bring people back when a panic attack pulled them out of the present. Their discovery was that anxiety lives in time, in the rehearsed future and the replayed past, but the senses only work in the present. After all, you can’t smell or touch yesterday. So if you can persuade a frightened mind to focus for a moment on what the hands are touching and the ears are hearing, you have brought it back to the present, the one place where it is safe. This is the grounding that therapists teach to people with anxiety and PTSD, and it requires no equipment or trips to the woods.
There’s a way to hold the two together: earthing grounds the body, while therapeutic grounding holds your attention and senses. The first is a lovely thing to do on a Sunday morning; the second is the one you can reach for when your chest feels heavy during work. They both share the same job: to bring you back to the here and now, so the thinking part of you can return and deal with things in order.
If you’d like to try to combine both practices in your day-to-day life, but can’t escape to the forest every time you feel anxious, don’t worry, here’s our short guide.
The 5-4-3-2-1 technique. Slowly name five things you can see, four you can hear, three you can touch, two you can smell, and one you can taste right now. By the end, you are usually back to yourself.
Feet first. Sit down, press both feet flat into the floor, and notice the exact places where the floor pushes back. Hold for a moment.
Borrow a temperature. Hold a warm mug with both hands, or rest your palms on something cool, like a window or a tabletop. Let the sensation be the only thing you focus on for thirty seconds.
Name your surroundings. Say to yourself: it is Tuesday, I am in the kitchen, the light is on, my coffee is on the table, like the facts are anchors.
Lunch break earthing. If there is a patch of grass or a tree nearby, spend two minutes with your hands on it or your shoes off. If there isn’t, a windowsill plant and the sun on your face are a good substitute.
Visualize. Try Stoic’s Safe Space Visualisation exercise to imagine a perfect place where your mind can hide for some time.
You don’t need a forest or a special mat. Wherever you are reading this, the earth is always underneath you. You only have to notice it.
Yours truly,
The Stoic App Team
Forever is composed of nows.
Emily Dickinson
What do you feel when the phone rings and it’s a voice you haven’t heard in years? Or when someone says exactly the thing you needed to hear? Most of life is scheduled, but some of its best moments arrive without an appointment. This week’s theme, On Out of the Blue, makes room for them. From now until Sunday, open your journal every day and expect the unexpected.
