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In today’s episode we are continuing to work on back to basics for brain health and we are finishing this series by address grounding. What exactly is grounding? Grounding is a term we use to describe various activities that help people to feel anchored to present time, space and capacity. So often in the busy-ness of our lives, we get caught up in thinking about the past, or focused on the future. Thinking of that next place I need to be or reflecting on that time way back when… When we are spending time in past or future, ruminating about things that have happened or anxious about the next thing to happen, we activate our stress center. Our stress center's job is to help us manage significant stressors – but when we’re talking about past or future, there’s not a lot we can do about those stressors right now – so our body just sits in the distress of having our stress center running without anywhere to put that energy that meaningfully changes or supports the past or future scenario. The role of grounding is to help us anchor back to the present moment, in our present space, in our present day selves. 

When we engage in grounding activities, we help to quiet the stress center of our brain AND we help to resource it by strengthening connections to the best thinking parts of our brains (the pre-frontal cortex). The benefits of strengthening these connections between your stress center brain and your awesome thinking brain is that when stress comes, you will have enhanced capacities to navigate the stress from a place that utilizes some of your best thinking resources. If we don’t work to build these connections, we’ll be more likely to feel overwhelmed or shut down by stress, unable to find a way to navigate it, or being reactive to stressors rather than thoughtfully responsive to them. 

For today we’re going to focus on physical grounding activities, and in coming weeks we’ll talk about mental grounding and emotional grounding. Blending activities related to all three together will give you the most bang for your buck in supporting your brain, so it can give back to you in big ways. So do be sure to listen to all three episodes and pick out some action items that you are going to try out sometime during your week. 

Alright, Lindsay’s list of physical grounding activities:

1.      Interact with hot and cold. Using temperatures to help our bodies anchor can be really useful. One version of this is holding an ice cube, or putting an ice pack on your neck, or submerging your hands in cold water; and then if you want, try alternating this with a heating pad or submerging in warm water. The sensory feedback of more extreme hot and cold is something our brain will tend to focus in on and prioritize over other kinds of fleeting thoughts, so using temperature can be a great way to help your body connect to present and anchor here.

2.      Actually get grounded. A few weeks ago Dr. Catherine Multari, the naturopathic doctor who joined us for our episode on nutrition and supplementation and the brain shared a suggestion to go out into your yard, take your shoes off and spend some time with your feet in the grass. Plant yourself. Root yourself. There is something that ties us to the earth and connecting to nature is a part of who we are. Another version of this is putting bare feet into sand or digging with bare hands in the garden. It is the tactile connection between us and the earth.

3.      Use sensory objects. Have you seen those fidget spinners or those silicon poppers that they make for kids to manage ADHD or tendencies for stimulation? Having some kind of object that encourages tactile connection can be super helpful for adults too and can be extra useful in stressful situations. For example, I often suggest that clients going to court choose a tactile object – a particularly smooth rock that feels soft and calming to the touch, a pendant necklace or bracelet that has some bumps on it that they can touch, or similar kinds of things. This tactile feedback when practiced can help remind our brain to ground, calm and regulate even in more stressful situations. I have some stress balls I love the feel of, and a necklace that has some pointy parts that are helpful to ground me, and a rock I carry in my purse at all times that is a bit bumpy. They are objects that I can draw attention to, that give my brain sensory feedback and move it into interpreting that sensory information – when I use them regularly in calm moments, they build a connection to being calm – so when I use them in more stressful moments they prompt my brain to associate with calm and bridge me back to the part of my brain that has access to calm, logical, capable, and so on.

4.      Breathe. Obviously we are breathing all the time and that should be a no brainer, but most of the time, particularly in higher stress, we are breathing wrong. Most people, whether they know it or not, breathe relatively shallow a significant amount of the time, and hold their breath more often than they realize. Taking deep intentional breaths, and building breathing activities into your daily life can make a big difference to your general health and wellbeing, benefit your brain, and support more effective stress management. We’ve talked on the show before about box breathing as an easy example of a breathing technique you can try out – as a reminder in box breathing you breathe in for a count of 4, hold for a count of 4, exhale for a count of 4 and hold for a count of 4. Do this for a few rounds, and then resume normal breathing. 

5.      Savour something. Choose a flavour or a scent and savor it. Draw awareness to it and allow yourself to really soak it in. Find a mint you love, a gum you love, a small candy you really enjoy and focus on the flavour. Alternatively, find scents that make you feel calm or give you a big breath and find ways to access that scent wherever you can. I do this in all kinds of ways. I keep mints I like at my office, lip chaps I love the smell of in my purse, a roll on essential oil that helps me breathe more deeply and feel more energized, and other essential oils that I diffuse at my home, at my office and in my car that make me feel calm and connected to good things. Be in the moment with the smell or the flavour and really focus on enjoying it. What I love about this is that these pieces tend to be able to fit into small moments and be portable, so they can be easily accessible in a lot of workplaces or on quick breaks.

6.      Move your body. I think we’ve heard a lot between our episode on fitness and our episode on mind-body connection, about how movement is good for us. When we are moving our bodies we need to have some amount of connection to where we are and how we’re moving so we don’t bump into someone or knock something over. Being in movement means having some amount of present moment conscious awareness. You can also use moments of movement to build your grounding skills – for example, while you’re out for a walk, really focus on your breathing. Try breathing in for 3 steps, hold for 1, breathe out for 5 steps, hold for 1. Play around with the count, but use this as a time to focus. Another alternative is being out for a walk and really paying attention to what you hear around you. 

Keep in mind, the more you practice the better grounding works – don’t give up and do lots of repetition. Simple is better – don’t make it complicated. And last but not least, get creative and find ways to bring grounding into every part of your day – at home on your own, at the park with your kid...