Grounding meditation: the feet and tadasana (mountain pose)
June 29th, 2008 by Kavi
One of the most important mind yoga meditations is learning to ground yourself. If you are properly grounded the other meditations will be more safe and balanced. Grounding yourself is simple: feel the bottoms of your feet with your mind. What this does is it connects you to planet Earth.
The human spirit body is much like a tree. It has roots that go deep into the Earth and branches that reach high up into Heaven. If a tree does not have good deep roots it will fall right over. Grounding in meditation is just as important: not only does it keep things balanced energetically, but it helps you to integrate higher energies into your daily life.
Start by simply feeling the bottoms of your feet with your mind. If you are doing it right they will start to tingle, but don’t worry if you don’t feel anything right away. It can take a while until your feet “wake up”, and if you are new to mind yoga, until you are proficient at focusing your awareness. Eventually they will wake up enough that they will continuously be grounding you into the Earth.
If you are sitting down while reading this, plant your feet flat on the ground or floor. Now feel the bottoms of your feet with your mind where they are contacting the ground. Breathe deeply into your abdomen while holding your awareness on your feet and relax.
You may notice a subtle flowing of energy in and out of your feet that flows with the breath. Energy flows in the bottoms of your feet as you breathe in, and out the bottoms of your feet as you breathe out. If you cannot feel this don’t worry, it just means your feet are a bit “asleep”. Not your physical feet but the area of your spiritual body that coincides with the feet. If you continue to meditate upon your feet they will wake up.
If you are feeling the bottoms of your feet, you are grounding yourself, basically whether or not you feel the above mentioned tingling and energy movement. It is that simple. Depending on the type of person you are this might be something that you naturally already do on a subconscious level. More “spacey” people (like me) who tend to drift into the upper chakras will have to pay particular attention to grounding.
Some traditions advocate stomping the feet as a means for helping ground yourself, and that is because it makes you feel the bottoms of your feet. And it does work, but please don’t hurt yourself. :) It is easier to simply allow your awareness to focus on your feet. No straining or effort is necessary, just simply allow your awareness to light upon the bottoms of your feet.
The feeling of a strong grounded connection to the Earth through the feet is very relaxing and pleasurable. We are designed to be connected to Mother Earth, and really we are not separate from her.
Tadasana
Now I am going to introduce to you a simple yoga asana (pose) that compliments this grounding meditation in a powerful way. It is called tadasana. Tada means mountain in sanskrit, which is very appropriate as it helps you to build a strong grounding foundation. Feeling the bottoms of your feet is the key to tadasana.
1. Stand up and place your feet together with the sides touching and then turn your heels outwards slightly so that only the sides of your big toes are touching eachother.
2. Tighten your quadriceps so that your knee caps rise up, but don’t hold them there with all your might. It should feel easy and natural.
3. Turn your thighs inwards slightly.
4. Tone your abdominal muscles a little bit to compensate for the arching of the lower back.
5. Widen your shoulders and allow your shoulder blades to slide back.
6. Elongate the neck and balance your head easily over the alignment of your body.
Now balance the weight of your body on your feet slightly in front of the heels. When your are doing this asana properly it will feel as if there is a straight line pulling through your body to the center of the Earth. It is hard to describe this feeling but you will know it when you feel it. Now feel the bottoms of your feet and breathe deeply.
How To Stand - Incorporating Grounding Into Day to Day Life
Have you ever payed attention to the way you simply stand in your day to day life? It is very easy to incorporate grounding into your daily life by consciously standing and grounding yourself while doing so.
The next time you are just standing around pay attention to your posture and where you are centering your body weight on your feet. Are you leaning forwards slightly onto the balls of your feet? This is not optimal, especially in terms of grounding.
With your feet apart and roughly parallel to one another, shift your weight onto the area a bit in front of your heels. Bend your knees slightly and allow your upper body to balance easily over your lower body. Now feel the bottoms of your feet. When you do this correctly you will feel the same as when performing tadasana: as if there is a line running straight through your body and pulling you into the center of the Earth.
4 Responses to “Grounding meditation: the feet and tadasana (mountain pose)”
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earl.spartan Says:
July 3rd, 2008 at 5:32 pmNice site. Very informative. May we exchange links? Mine is http://www.taichiphil.blogspot.com (Philippine Tai Chi Network)
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Kavi Says:
July 3rd, 2008 at 9:00 pmHi earl.spartan, thanks for your kind words.
I’ve been interested in studying tai chi lately and have been researching it a bit, so your comment is a bit synchronistic. :)
I haven’t decided yet whether or not I’ll be putting up a blogroll, but thank you for the link.
~ Namaste
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erythrina Says:
July 12th, 2008 at 12:14 pmhi! talk about synchronicity… been practicing grounding myself the past few days… been looking for tai chi instructor so i stumbled upon taichi blogspot by earl which led me to you page and the circle is complete hehe… thanks to the 2 of you for the infos… blessed be! =)
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Kavi Says:
July 16th, 2008 at 11:04 pmYou are most welcome erythrina, thanks for stopping by.
~ Kavi
