Staying Grounded

Feeling overwhelmed? Stressed? Too much on your plate?

Get Grounded, Come to Center

I'm old enough to remember a time when people usually answered "good" when you asked them the standard, "How are you doing?" These days the answer is commonly "busy."

In the last few weeks, while planning my move to Austin, I've been very busy myself and starting to feel dispersed: juggling a dozen priorities at any moment, attention skittering from one thing to another, body revved up, feeling stretched thin and spread out like an octopus squished between two sheets of glass.

You know the feeling? Besides being both unpleasant and a spigot of stress hormones, it's weirdly contagious. Spreading from one person to another and fueled in part by the underlying economics of consumerism, we now have a Western and especially American culture of busyness, stress, and hyperactivity.

If you're not busy, you must not be important. If you don't have a lot on your mind, you must be under-performing. If your kids aren't busy with homework and after school activities, they won't get ahead. If you aren't keeping busy, then you're seen as being lazy. If you don't look busy, someone will ask you to work harder. Etc. Does this sound familiar to you? I know this is true and familiar for me.

However, ever since I began following the Buddhist practices of meditation, contemplative thinking, deep introspection and mindfulness, I have learned how to stay in the moment, center myself, and get grounded when I lose my sense of self and peace when I get overly busy and stressed.

Enough already! Instead of being scattered to the four winds, collect and concentrate your mind and energy. Besides feeling a lot better, it's more effective in the long run. For example, what does an Olympic gymnast do before launching a tumbling run or a rocket before heading into space? Come to center - get grounded.

Getting Grounded

>> Savor Pleasurer
As the brain evolved, pleasure and its underlying endorphins and other natural opioids developed to pull our ancestors out of disturbed fight-flight-freeze bursts of stress and return them and keep them in a sustainable equilibrium of recover-replenish-repair. Let physical or mental pleasure really land; give yourself over to it fully rather than looking for the next thing.

>> Mover
Dance, exercise, yoga, walks, lovemaking, play, and athletics reset the body-mind. For me personally, movement at either end of the intensity spectrum - very subtle or very vigorous - has the most impact. I find flying, martial arts, hiking, meditation, prayer, and biking all help me get centered and grounded.

>> Get Wildr
We evolved in nature, and multiple studies are showing that natural settings - the beach, wilde
ess, sitting under a tree in your back yard - are restorative.

>> Enjoy Artr
By this I mean making or experiencing anything aesthetic, such as doing crafts, listening to music, watching a play, trying a new recipe, playing your guitar, building a fence, or taking a pottery class.

>> Feel the Corer
Most of the inputs into your brain originate within your own body, and most if not all of those signals are like night watchmen calling, "All is well. All is well. All is well . . ." Feeling into your breathing, sensing into your innards, and noticing that you are alright right now are endlessly renewing opportunities to settle into the physical center of your being.

>> Be Nowr
The center of time is always this moment. A primary difference between humans and other species (with the possible exception of cetaceans) is our capacity for "mental time travel."

But this blessing is also in some ways a curse in that the mind keeps dispersing itself into the past and the future; it proliferates worries, plans, rehashings, and fantasies like manic vines in a speeded-up jungle. Instead, right now be now. And again.

>> Get Disenchantedr
This means waking up from the spell, from the enchantments woven by the wanting mind in concert with culture and commerce. We normally pursue hundreds of little goals each day - return this call, organize that event, produce these emails, get across those points - associated with presumed rewards produced by ancient brain centers to motivate our reptilian and mammalian ancestors.

Let the truth land that these rewards are rarely as good as promised. Again and again I've had to remind myself to quit chasing the brass ring. While staying engaged with life, return to the reliable rewards of feeling already full - the undoing of the craving, broadly defined, that creates suffering and harm. Try a little practice on first waking or at other times in which you take a few seconds or longer to feel already peaceful, already contented, and already loved. This is the home base of body, brain, and mind.

Come home to center. Feel how good it feels when you are grounded.

"Keep your feet grounded on earth. Keep your mind high in the sky."