Tuesday 24 March 2020

Grounding exercises for worry, stress or anxiety

I wanted to give you some ideas about how to ground yourself. If your mind is racing or you are worrying, grounding brings you back to the here and now and can be helpful with feeling overwhelmed or anxious.

Using visualisations and noticing your body can help keep you to calm down quickly and bring you back to the present moment. When we are full of worry and feeling anxious this can be really helpful.

As a massage therapist, I use these techniques all the time and these now feel normal to me, as I have to protect myself during sessions with my clients to ensure I don’t end up taking on everyone’s emotions or burning myself out.

We are taught good grounding before and after every treatment at Jing Massage training, and it’s something I really connect with. 

Using information from the Jing Massage Fusion book written by the wonderful teachers Rachel Fairweather and Meghan S Mari here is a way to ground yourself:

  • Sit or stand in a comfortable position and feel your feet connecting to the floor.
  • Feel that connection and imagine roots growing from the bottom of your feet and going down into the earth. Take time, don’t rush just feel those feelings.
  • On the in-breath imagine you are drawing up light, warmth and energy into your belly.
  • On the out-breath imagine that energy is shooting up our spine, down your arms and out of your hands.
  • Focus on your breathe and be still for a moment.

Other ways to stay in the present moment are looking around you and notice what you can see, try to name 3 things that you see around you.

Listen to what you can hear and feel around you, and really focus on what they are.

Wiggle your fingers and toes or really focus on a part of your body and describe how it feels at that moment.

I hope that the above techniques can be of assistance to you and if you start to feel overwhelmed or anxious at any time, please try one of these techniques to see if this can help you relax.

Take care everyone, Emma xx

(Fairweather, R. and Mari. MS., 2015. Massage Fusion The Jing Method for the treatment of chronic pain)

No comments :


Follow me on social media for well-being tips, information, and special offers!