Grounding as a Daily Practice

In magical and spiritual work, we often use the term "personal practice" to describe our daily discipline of meditation or exercises. "Practice" means just that--repeating something over and over again until it becomes easy and automatic, just as we might practice a piece on the piano. To become adept at magic, at what occultist Dion Fortune termed "the art of changing consciousness at will," practice is required.

As the basis of a magical practice, grounding is the single most important thing you can do. In reclaiming tradition, we begin every ritual or magical activity with a grounding. But in traveling and teaching, I often find that even experienced Witches sometimes don't really understand what grounding means.

I teach grounding both to Pagans preparing for rituals and to activists preparing to face potential police violence, and the skill is the same.

If I ask for a volunteer to lead a grounding, I might get a song or a 45-minute meditation--which may be beautiful, but may or may not accomplish the purpose. Grounding means making an energetic connection to the earth. It's more than a metaphor--it's as real as that third prong on your electrical plug. It means being present in a given situation, with all your senses awakened, aware of what is going on around you, relaxed and calm but able to access power.

I teach grounding both to Pagans preparing for rituals and to activists preparing to face potential police violence, and the skill is the same--even though the language I use might be somewhat different. It's a tool that can help you keep calm, whether you're speaking to the great powers of the universe or to your City Council, whether your coven-mate's sanity is teetering on the brink or your 3-year-old is precariously balanced on top of the slide. Whatever you're doing or confronting, you'll come through it best if you don't panic and remain clear, centered, and able to make a conscious choice about your actions.

Grounding begins in the body. Try this: Tighten up your chest, clench your muscles, and think about a situation that scares you. Notice what fear and panic feel like. Then relax. Loosen your muscles, take some deep breaths that flow down into your belly. Pay special attention to your jaw and the base of your spine. Notice what feels different. Already you are starting to ground.

Keep your eyes open. We often lead closed-eye meditations for grounding, but when the altar catches on fire at the Brigid ritual, you don't want to close your eyes--you want to be able to quickly center and react calmly and intelligently.

Notice the soles of your feet, how they make contact with the ground. In a tense situation, just focusing on that contact may be enough to bring you back to a more grounded state.

Feel roots of energy push down from your feet through the earth below you. Like a tree, you can send things down through those roots and draw things up. With a breath, release any energies you don't want to carry--like panic! With another breath, feel how you can draw on the immensely powerful nurturing energies of the earth.

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