Do you remember what it was like to go barefoot as a child? I do. The asphalt was blisteringly hot. You had to leap for the curb for relief. The grass was cool and slippery when we ran through sprinklers. The gravel driveway jabbed my feet. Every sensation… emblazoned in my memory.

I was there in those moments, in my feet, in that eternal now. And it felt good. Summer stretched out forever.

We can’t go back to childhood. But we can recreate the simple pleasure of connecting to our feet and walking on the ground. And in the process, we can short-circuit stress and panic.

What is grounding?

Being grounded means your feeling awareness—and thus life energy—reaches down your legs and feet to the ground. You feel your body down to the ground. Ideally, it also means your electrically conductive body is directly touching the earth, connecting to the planet’s DC electrical circuit, like when you walk barefoot on grass.

Being grounded helps you relax

Sinking your awareness to your feet stimulates a downward flow of energy through the body into the earth, which is naturally relaxing. It also brings you into present time, where you can notice safety. This calms the nervous system. Connecting to the earth’s electrical circuit may also put the body into a healing state and stabilize the autonomic nervous system.  

Grounding helps with both stress and panic. When we’re stressed, we often have excess energy in our heads from swirling thoughts. When we’re panicked, we often have excess energy in our core, especially around the heart and lungs. This can make the heart race and cause panic attacks. In both cases, we need to send energy down the limbs.

How to ground

Put your attention on your legs and feet and feel them. Energy follows awareness. If you can feel your feet for a bit, your energy will start to sink.

If sensing your feet is hard, use the stimulation of walking and weight shifts to feel the pressure of your feet on the floor. Or press your heels into the floor, which directly stimulates downward energy flow.

For a racing heart and panic, start by increasing energy flow to your arms and hands. Conscious arm movement, like rotating wrists, will help. You can also “fling water” off your hands, or vigorously swing your arms down, while you exhale and “throw” your attention into your hands. Once your heart is calmer, ground down to your feet.

Of course, the easiest way to ground is to go outside and let planet earth help. Walk barefoot on grass, sit on the ground, dig in the garden, swim in the ocean. As long as there’s no plastic or rubber between you and the earth, you’re grounding.