Stuck in your head? Anxious? Too mental?
You’re not alone. These are common issues.
It’s one of the reasons people turn to meditation. They hear about meditation benefits and so they turn to a practice.
The problem with that is that those benefits that people talk about so much come from research on a bunch of different meditation styles.
You’re not getting all those benefits when you practice one type of meditation. It’s why I recommend understanding your goals – what you want to achieve – before you put the time into a meditation practice.
Meditation on the breath, for example, can be quite a mental meditation. It may not be your best choice if you’re feeling anxious or stuck in your head.
What you want instead is something that brings you into your body. That grounds you.
Here are a couple of methods to help:
Getting Embodied
To get reconnected with your body, start with becoming aware of your body. Notice where your awareness is sitting (probably around your head or upper body somewhere).
Bring your awareness into your body as fully as you can. Feel your body, how it feels from the inside-out. You may want to move your body to really settle in. Experience your senses – notice what you see, feel, hear, taste and smell. Settle down into your body and allow your nervous system to relax and quiet.
This will reconnect you to yourself and your intuition. It will slow your brainwaves. You’ll get different kinds of answers when you ask questions from an embodied place.
Grounding Meditation
You can also do a grounding meditation. Feel your sit bones – the bones against the chair if you’re sitting or the soles of your feet if you’re standing.
Imagine a tube or cylinder that goes from the area around your hips, through the earth’s crust, deep into the earth. I like to use the image of a tree trunk growing deep into the earth and then putting down roots that anchor me. And a tap root that brings me sustenance.
Others like the image of a strong chain going down and anchored into the rock.
Whatever you use, send energy down into the earth, especially from the soles of your feet and the base of your spine.
I often send energy on the exhale. On the inhale, I relax and receive. Breathe it in deeply.
As the energy grows, you can imagine it flowing from your feet and the base of your spine all the way up to your heart center and all through your body. Feel what the energy feels like. Notice its qualities.
As you sit in grounding, you’ll feel your nervous system relaxing. You may hit a plateau for a while – and then experience another release, a feeling as though some part of you is unwinding.
It takes about 10 minutes for your nervous system to begin to relax and allow you to get more deeply into meditation, so try practicing for at least 15-20 minutes.
That said, any time spent grounding will help. If you only have a few minutes, it will be time well spent. Also, you can embody and ground throughout the day without closing your eyes. People around you don’t have to know what you’re doing.
Also, with practice, you’ll be able to relax and receive more quickly and you’ll move into deeper levels of grounding.
Let me know if you have any questions. Or experiences to share. Would love to hear them.