The Importance of Grounding: Coming Home to Yourself
Grounding is the practice of intentionally reconnecting with the present moment, through the body, the breath, the senses, or the environment around you. It’s a simple but powerful life skill that helps restore balance, calm, and clarity.
For many people, grounding becomes the first step towards emotional healing, stress recovery, and personal growth. But what does it actually mean to be grounded? And how can it change the way we live, think, and relate to others?
It this weeks blog I’m exploring what grounding is, why it matters, and how to practise it meaningfully in daily life and therapy.
What Does It Mean to Be Grounded?
To be grounded means to feel connected and steady, physically, emotionally, and mentally. You’re aware of your body, your breath, your surroundings. You feel stable, present, and regulated.
You’re not carried away by anxious thoughts, reactive emotions, or stress spirals.
You’re in your window of tolerance, the optimal zone for thinking clearly, feeling safely, and responding consciously.
This concept is also tied closely to the polyvagal theory, which explains how our nervous system shifts between states of safety, mobilisation, and shutdown. Grounding activates the ventral vagal state, a regulated, calm place where connection, presence, and curiosity live.
What Being Ungrounded Feels Like
We often don’t realise we’re ungrounded until it shows up in our body or behaviour. It might feel like:
• Scattered, racing thoughts
• Tension or tightness in the chest
• Trouble focusing or retaining information
• Emotional reactivity: snapping, withdrawing, or people-pleasing
• Dissociation or feeling “floaty,” disconnected from your body
• Restlessness, panic, or shutdown
You might feel like you’re moving too fast, but can’t catch up with yourself. Or like the world is going on around you and you’re watching from the outside.
These are signs that your nervous system is out of its window of tolerance. Grounding helps you come back.
Why Grounding Matters
Grounding helps regulate the nervous system so you can respond instead of react. This simple shift can make a profound difference in areas such as Mental Wellbeing
Grounding reduces anxiety, stress, and overwhelm by helping your body feel safe. It creates space between stimulus and response, breaking the autopilot loop of anxious thinking.
Communication & Relationships
When grounded, you can listen more fully, speak more clearly, and handle conflict with less defensiveness. You’re less likely to misread tone, overreact, or shut down emotionally.
Productivity & Focus
Being present enhances concentration and helps with decision-making. When you’re grounded, you’re not stuck in overthinking or perfectionism, you can take steady action.
Emotional Regulation
Grounding builds capacity to sit with uncomfortable feelings without being overtaken by them. Over time, this builds resilience and inner trust.
Mindfulness & Growth
Staying grounded anchors mindfulness in the body. It’s the foundation for deeper work, whether that’s therapy, spiritual growth, or mindset change.
Common Situations Grounding Can Help With
• Anxiety or panic attacks
• Overstimulation (especially in neurodivergent individuals)
• Conflict with others or emotional overwhelm
• Public speaking, social anxiety, or interviews
• Dissociation or shutdown
• Grief, trauma triggers, or chronic stress
• Big transitions or decision-making
Easy Grounding Practices to Try at Home or Work
These tools can be used discreetly and effectively in everyday settings:
5-4-3-2-1 Technique
Name 5 things you can see, 4 you can touch, 3 you can hear, 2 you can smell, and 1 you can taste.
This engages your senses and reorients your awareness to the here and now.
Barefoot Grounding
Stand or walk barefoot on grass, sand, or earth. Feel the temperature and texture. Visualise the ground supporting you.
Cold Water or Object
Hold an ice cube, splash cold water on your face, or hold a chilled object. The shock redirects focus and helps reset your nervous system.
Breath Anchoring
Inhale deeply for 4 counts, hold for 2, exhale for 6. Focus fully on the rhythm of your breath and how it feels in the body.
In-Depth Grounding in Therapy
In a therapeutic space, grounding becomes deeper and more personalised. Phiona might guide clients through:
Somatic Tracking
Paying attention to bodily sensations in a safe, non-judgemental way. This helps release trauma held in the body and build a sense of internal safety.
Weighted Touch or Props
Using therapeutic tools like weighted blankets, textured objects, or grounding stones to enhance sensory awareness and regulation.
Guided Visualisation
Therapist-led exercises that bring the client into a calming internal landscape (e.g., a forest walk, a safe space, or grounding through roots).
Movement and Rhythm
Gentle, repetitive movement like rocking, tapping, or breath-coordinated movement to regulate the nervous system and return to the body.
From Fixed to Growth: How Grounding Builds Resilience
When you’re grounded, you can respond with curiosity rather than fear. This is the root of a growth mindset, the belief that challenges are workable, emotions are manageable, and you can adapt and learn.
Grounding is not a quick fix. It’s a life skill. It builds the bridge between emotional chaos and conscious living. It creates enough inner stillness to choose how you want to think, feel, and act, rather than simply survive.
Grounding is not only for crisis moments. It’s a practice of returning, to your breath, to your body, to your life.
It’s the doorway to clarity, connection, and calm.
Whether you’re learning to manage anxiety, rebuild from burnout, or simply slow down, grounding is one of the most practical and transformative tools you can learn.
Grounding prompts to support your thought process when grounding is needed. When was the last time you felt truly present in your body?
• What helps you feel steady when life feels unsteady?
• How do you know when you’re overwhelmed or “outside your window”?
• What would it mean for your life if you felt more grounded, more often?
What if grounding wasn’t something you had to “get right”?
What if it didn’t have to be still, quiet, or traditional to work?
What if grounding was already happening, in the rhythm of your steps, the fidget in your hand, the texture of your blanket, the way you repeat a phrase when things feel uncertain?
What if:
• You didn’t need to force yourself into calm, but instead found what feels steady enough
• You could feel more anchored in your body without needing to fully “connect” all the time
• You could meet yourself where you are, not where you’re told you “should” be
For neurodivergent minds, especially those with ADHD, autism, sensory processing differences, or trauma. Grounding doesn’t always look like sitting still with eyes closed. And it shouldn’t have to.
So what if grounding looked like:
• Repetitive movement like rocking, pacing, or bouncing
• Wearing noise-cancelling headphones to reduce input
• Playing with a sensory object while thinking through your next task
• Listening to the same song on repeat to regulate your system
• Naming your sensory needs without apology
• Allowing stimming to be seen as sacred, not strange
What if we stopped asking your body to conform to stillness, and instead allowed it to move toward safety in the way it knows how?
What if grounding became:
• A tool to reduce shutdowns, not a trigger for them
• A way to prepare for overstimulation or transition , not just to recover afterward
• A shared language in your home, workplace, or classroom
• A doorway into self-trust, rather than more self-criticism
What if, instead of coping through control, you began to regulate through connection, to your body, to your needs, to your pace, to your voice?
You don’t have to do it alone.
Grounding can be flexible. It can be sensory. It can be fidgety. It can be soft. It can be what you need it to be.
At Mindful Moments Therapies, Phiona supports children, adults, and families, neurodivergent or not, to discover grounding techniques that genuinely work for your nervous system and your life.
It’s Normal to Struggle with Grounding
Many people feel shame or discouragement when grounding doesn’t “work” immediately.
Why shame shows up, and why it doesn’t belong here.
For something that seems so simple “just come back to the present moment”. Grounding can feel surprisingly difficult. Many people come to grounding feeling overwhelmed, disconnected, or desperate for relief, and when it doesn’t “work,” they blame themselves.
You might think:
“Why can’t I do this?”
“Everyone else seems to find it helpful.”
“If I can’t even breathe properly, how will I ever cope?”
If that sounds familiar, you are not alone. And you are not failing.
Why Grounding can Feel Hard for So Many
Grounding invites us to return to the body and the present moment, but for many people, that is precisely where discomfort, pain, or trauma lives.
The body may not feel like a safe place to return to.
This is especially true if you’ve experienced:
• Trauma (developmental, relational, medical, or acute)
• Chronic anxiety or hypervigilance
• Neurodivergence or sensory processing challenges
• Dissociation or shutdown
• Performance pressure or perfectionism
Your nervous system may have learned to leave the body to survive. That’s not a weakness, it’s a brilliant adaptation. And trying to re-enter that space can feel scary, confusing, or even impossible at times.
The Shame Behind “I’m Doing It Wrong”
Shame shows up when we think we should be able to manage something that feels hard.
But grounding is not a test of control or calm. It’s a practice and one that can be messy, inconsistent, and deeply personal.
People often feel discouraged because:
• They expect an immediate sense of peace
• They believe they need to feel totally focused for it to count
• They compare their experience to others
• They think struggling means they’re not healing or “strong enough”
But healing doesn’t look like sitting still and getting it perfect.
It looks like trying, noticing, starting again, and letting the practice meet you as you are.
Reframing Grounding with Self-Compassion
Let’s gently reframe some of the most common worries around grounding:
“I can’t focus — it’s not working.”
Focus isn’t the goal. Noticing your distraction is awareness. You already succeeded.
“I tried and nothing changed.”
Sometimes, grounding doesn’t feel dramatic. It may simply soften the intensity of what you’re feeling. That is progress.
“I felt worse when I tried to be present.”
That’s a valuable piece of information. It means your nervous system needs time, safety, and support, not judgment.
Grounding Is Not About Getting It Perfect
There is no gold star for perfect breathwork. No test you need to pass to be “mindful enough.”
Your worth is not measured by how still or peaceful you appear.
What matters is the intention to return, even just for a breath, a second, a sigh.
That moment of trying to come back? That is the practice. That is the healing.
Each time you return, you’re creating a pathway in your nervous system: This is what coming home feels like.
It might be shaky. It might be short. But it counts. It all counts.
A More Flexible Approach
Grounding doesn’t need to be done alone, in silence, or in a dark room.
It can be:
• Walking and naming things you see
• Breathing while squeezing a soft object
• Listening to music while rocking gently
• Journalling one word at a time
• Holding a mug of tea and feeling the warmth
• Tapping your hands on your lap in rhythm
All of it counts.
All of it is valid.
None of it needs to be perfect.
A Note from Phiona
At Mindful Moments Therapies, grounding is never treated as a task to master. It’s a language we help you rediscover, one small, safe moment at a time.
Whether you’re a child struggling to feel calm at school, or an adult who’s never felt connected to your body, grounding can be gently built into your world in a way that fits you.
You are not doing it wrong.
You are learning what works.
And you are allowed to take your time.
Grounding and Trauma: Why It May Not Feel Safe (And Why That’s Okay)
For many people living with trauma, the concept of “coming back to the body” or “being in the present moment” may not feel like a relief. It may feel confusing, distressing, or even frightening.
This is because trauma doesn’t live in the thinking mind, it lives in the nervous system.
The Nervous System on High Alert
When someone has experienced trauma, whether acute or long-term. Their body may remain in a chronic state of survival. This includes:
• Fight or flight (hyperarousal): feeling on edge, anxious, jumpy, panicked
• Freeze or shutdown (hypoarousal): feeling numb, foggy, dissociated, collapsed
In these states, the nervous system is not available for connection, curiosity, or present-moment awareness.
It is scanning for danger, even when there isn’t any. Grounding, paradoxically, may actually trigger more activation.
For example:
• Focusing on the breath may heighten anxiety if breath has been used to suppress or control emotion.
• Sensory awareness may feel too intense or disorienting.
• Stillness may feel unsafe if the body associates stillness with powerlessness.
When Grounding Feels Unsafe
Trauma survivors often say:
“I tried grounding and I felt worse.”
“Focusing on my body makes me panic.”
“I can’t feel anything, it’s just blank.”
These are not signs of failure. They are signs of a brilliant nervous system doing its job, protecting you from what it once experienced as overwhelming, unmanageable, or unsafe.
In trauma-informed care, we don’t push people into their bodies before their body is ready. We honour the pace of the nervous system.
Creating Safety in the Therapeutic Relationship
As a therapist, one of my core responsibilities is to create a safe and attuned container, where grounding isn’t rushed, forced, or expected to “work” immediately.
Instead, we move gently, using your cues to guide the process.
Here’s what that might look like:
Step 1: Co-Regulation First
We begin by co-regulating, using our relational connection to create a felt sense of safety. That might mean slowing our voice, offering rhythm or predictability, or simply allowing silence.
Step 2: Pacing with Consent
Grounding is introduced with choice and invitation. We might explore, “Would you like to try noticing your feet on the floor?”, with full permission to say no, stop, or pause.
Step 3: Finding a Tolerable Anchor
We experiment gently to find a grounding tool that your nervous system can tolerate. That could be an external object, a repeated word, a rhythmic movement, or focusing on something visually neutral in the room.
Step 4: Observing Without Forcing
If grounding begins to trigger distress, we pause. The goal is never to “push through” but to honour the signs of overwhelm. We notice what’s happening together, with no judgment and no rush.
Why Grounding Needs to Be Trauma-Informed
When grounding is offered without understanding the polyvagal hierarchy, the body’s system of safety and survival, it can unintentionally backfire. A person may:
• Feel more triggered
• Shut down or dissociate
• Believe they are broken or “beyond help”
This is why trauma-informed grounding is relational, not just technical. It’s about connection before technique. It’s about trust before presence.
For some, it may take weeks or months before grounding feels even slightly accessible. That is not a delay, it’s the work.
Rebuilding Safety, One Moment at a Time
Grounding for trauma is not about learning a tool, it’s about rewiring what safety feels like in the body.
That takes time, gentleness, and patience. It means moving slowly, celebrating small shifts, and holding space when things feel stuck. It means remembering that for many people, presence has not always been safe, so we do not demand it. We offer it. Kindly. Repeatedly.
At Mindful Moments Therapies
Phiona offers trauma-informed support for adults and children, helping them gently rebuild a relationship with their bodies, their breath, and their sense of safety.
Whether you’ve felt disconnected for years or are just beginning to notice what regulation feels like, your nervous system’s story is welcome here.
There is no rush. No “right” way.
Just a path back home, one grounded moment at a time.
Grounding in Everyday Life
What it can look like, even when life is busy, messy, or unpredictable
Grounding isn’t just something you do on a yoga mat or in a therapy room. It can happen in the chaos, in the commute, in the overwhelm. It’s not about stopping life, it’s about gently returning to yourself while life keeps moving. Below are some scenarios and outcomes utilising grounding for a positive outcome.
In the Middle of a Workday
A primary school teacher, feels her heart racing before a difficult staff meeting. Before stepping into the room, she presses her feet into the floor and takes a slow breath, imagining her breath moving down her spine like water. She quietly names five things she sees in the corridor: a display board, a scuff on the floor, a window, her colleague’s lanyard, the fire exit sign. She softens her jaw and walks in steadier.
“That moment gave me back my sense of choice. I didn’t spiral — I anchored.”
At Home With Children
A parent of two young children, notices she’s starting to raise her voice during the after-school rush.
She pauses, lowers herself to the floor, places a hand on her chest, and counts out loud:
“One, two, three.” Then she picks up a textured stone from her windowsill, something she keeps there for this very reason and holds it while continuing the bedtime routine.
“I didn’t feel instantly calm. But I didn’t explode. I stayed present. That felt like a win.”
Out and About With Social Anxiety
A person, who finds crowded spaces overwhelming, grounds himself at the local supermarket.
While waiting in the queue, he rubs a small piece of soft cord between his fingers, a sensory object he keeps in his pocket. He tunes into the feeling of his shoes on the tile floor and counts his breaths, quietly mouthing, “In… two, three. Out… two, three.”
“It wasn’t about making the anxiety go away. It was about not letting it carry me off.”
When Trying to Sleep
A CPTSD person, often lies awake at night with racing thoughts.
Instead of forcing herself to “relax,” she grounds herself by pressing her palms against her mattress and naming things she can feel: the softness of the sheet, the warmth of the duvet, the cool air on her face. She silently repeats, “I am here. It is now. I am safe enough to rest.”
“My body didn’t let go right away. But I felt held. That was enough for that night.”
For a Neurodivergent Child at School
A student age 9, often becomes dysregulated during noisy lunchtimes. His teaching assistant helps him carry a small grounding kit: a chewy necklace, a visual card showing five grounding steps, and a strip of velcro under the table. Finley is learning to notice when he feels “wobbly” and press the velcro strip to help anchor his focus.
“He’s starting to name what he needs — that’s the real regulation happening.”
In the Middle of a Flashback
A person, who’s healing from trauma, experiences dissociation during therapy when a memory is triggered. Her therapist gently invites her to look around the room and describe what she sees. She notices a teal cushion, a candle on the shelf, the texture of the rug. Slowly, she begins to reconnect with the here and now, not by forcing the memory away, but by reminding her nervous system she’s no longer in the past.
“I didn’t need to disappear. I had a way to stay with myself.”
The Common Thread: Choice
These examples look different, but they all come down to this:
The moment you realise you’re drifting or overwhelmed, and choose to return, even for a second, that is grounding.
Noticing, choosing, trying. That is the practice.
Whether you’re folding laundry, sitting in traffic, answering emails, navigating burnout, or parenting through exhaustion, you can always come back.
Even if only for a breath.
Even if you forget and come back hours later.
Each return matters.
If you’re curious about how grounding could support you, or how to build it into daily life, you’re not alone. Grounding isn’t something you have to master before reaching out. It’s something we can explore together. Your body already holds the wisdom. Sometimes, you just need someone to walk with you while you listen.
An Invitation: Grounding as Everyday Connection
This isn’t about being perfect. It’s about coming home to yourself.
Grounding isn’t some luxury reserved for the calm, the well-resourced, or the emotionally fluent. It isn’t something only “spiritual” people do. It isn’t fluffy or indulgent or woo woo.
It’s foundational. Vital. Human.
To be grounded is to remember that you have a body.
That you are here, now.
That you are allowed to exist in the moment, not just survive it.
A Practice for Real Life, Not Just Calm Moments
Grounding is not about becoming peaceful all the time. It’s about learning to come back to yourself, again and again, especially when things feel too much.
It’s not a performance of mindfulness. It’s the pause between panic and presence.
The breath that keeps you from yelling at someone you love.
The grounding of your feet before a big decision. The grip on the steering wheel that reminds you: I’m okay right now.
Grounding isn’t a miracle cure. But it is a reliable guide.
It builds awareness. And awareness creates choice.
And choice, even in small moments, is how we change our lives.
Grounding Is Everyday Self-Care
We talk a lot about self-care as candles, bubble baths, or “treat yourself” moments.
But what if self-care is also about meeting yourself where you are, in the middle of the overwhelm, the to-do list, the heartache?
Grounding is self-care that doesn’t require anything but you.
• No special equipment.
• No perfect mindset.
• No need to fix anything.
Just the courage to return, even if only for a breath.
For Individuals, and Society
In a world that pulls us out of ourselves every day, through stress, screens, pressure, fear, grounding becomes an act of resistance. A way to reclaim your right to be fully human.
And when people learn to ground, it ripples outward:
• Parents respond instead of react
• Teachers co-regulate instead of control
• Leaders pause instead of push
• Communities hold rather than fracture
Grounding helps us become more present, more compassionate, more stable, not just with ourselves, but with each other.
Grounding Is a Birthright
You were born with the ability to ground. To regulate. To come back to yourself.
If trauma, pace, pressure, or disconnection has taken that from you, you are allowed to reclaim it.
Grounding is not a niche wellness trend. It is a basic human right to feel safe enough in your body to be present in your life.
You don’t have to earn that right.
You don’t need to be good at it.
You just need to know it’s available, and to let yourself begin, one moment at a time.
A Gentle Beginning
If you’re curious, if you’re cautious, if you’re unsure, that’s okay.
You’re invited to explore grounding gently, with kindness, and at your pace.
And if you need someone to walk with you, to co-create safety, to practise together, to honour what you carry , that support is here, too.
Phiona at Mindful Moments Therapies offers gentle, bespoke grounding and mindfulness work for both adults and children, online or in person in Havant.
You don’t have to walk through it alone. Start with your breath. Come home to your body. Let support meet you where you are.
Phiona | Mindful Moments Therapies
Clinical Hypnotherapy | Breathwork | EFT | IEMT
Working with adults and children | Online or in Havant, Hampshire
www.mindfulmomentstherapies.co.uk
Whether you're dealing with stress, anxiety, trauma, bereavement or looking to break habits, reframe fears, or phobias. Phiona can help you develop approaches to overcome these barriers that prevent you from living life to the fullest. Helping you navigate life’s challenges and take the next step towards a brighter, calmer future.
If you feel you would like support, and you feel therapy may be the answer. I offer 15 minute complimentary consultations, for you to have the chance to discover how therapy might support you. Visit my website for more information.
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