What even is groundedness?

There’s a whole “new” language about groundedness and centering that has made its way into every-day use in the movement spaces I frequent. We have “grounding exercises” before we meet, and breathe deeply to center ourselves, together.

I put new in quotation marks because of course it isn’t all that new. The principles of yoga have existed for centuries and are all about grounding ourselves to be able to center and elevate.

But what does it mean?

The way I think about it, grounding is about presence. Knowing where you are and what you feel underneath the layers of conditioning and imposed hype. In yoga asana practice, we breathe rhythmically and in coordination with physical movement to tame and train the mind to do just that: ground and center.

Or sometimes I think about centering as being about finding myself: bringing together levels of self, the multiple arms of my mental octopus, to focus on one thing, the simplest of things, breath.

Almost like you have to locate yourself on a map before you can figure out the best route for the onward journey.

There is a saying: if you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up somewhere else. I find this same truth to be accurate about starting points. If you don’t know where you are, you won’t know how to move on from there.

For the upcoming month of September, I will focus my online classes on exploring this initial part of any journey: knowing where we are now. We’ll look at this physically: focusing on our feet and legs, truly feeling them, then rising out of that literal groundedness. And hopefully, we will start feeling it mentally and spiritually too: exploring with breath and presence where we truly are, right now.

Join me?