11 Signs You're Not Grounded — 8 Ways to Re-Ground Yourself
I fucking hate being grounded.
I love—LOVE, I tell you—being all up in my head. Embodying Vata’s air energy and meditating all night is a low-key fave pastime. Whenever I’m feeling shitty I lean hard into my watery natal chart (Pisces-Scorpio-Cancer sun-moon-ascendant pew pew pew!) and spend the night in the bathtub. Huge fan of burning palo santo or incense or these little guys in order to get into some kinda mood. Feeling light, heady, intuitive—it’s just so comfortable. Gimme dat ~open third-eye~ life.
But, it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. Enter grounding.
I hate to use that term, because when I say it, I immediately feel boring and unimaginative. When someone I don’t know is described to me as grounded, I instantly assume they’re about as interesting as a tree trunk—dense, dull, and one-note, but grounded AF. Also, seems like people are ‘earthing’ or grounding everywhere, and I feel fucking dumb walking around barefoot in the park by my house in the middle of Los Angeles in the name of recalibrating my energy to the earth’s.
I mean, obviously, I’m wrong. Being grounded and centered is a really good thing. (So is walking around in nature. Duh. Planet Earth is bae.) Because when we’re not, those other elements—the fire, the air, the water—take over. And you’ll feel it.
Signs that you’re ungrounded
Symptoms of having a little too much air, water, or fire? They range from the ‘that seems normal-ish’ to ‘that’s preeeeeeeetty weird.’
You have a hard time focusing
You’re constantly multi-tasking
You’re late, a lot, because you delude yourself into thinking tasks won’t take as long as they actually do—not because you’re actually an insensitive asshole
You’re extra emotional, or sensitive to the emotions of the people around you
You’re lacking energy or drained, or wake up feeling exhausted
You fall asleep in meditation
You feel nervy or anxious or overwhelmed
You’re easily overwhelmed
You’re forgetful about meetings, appointments, deadlines
You find it hard to have a normal conversation because you lose your train of thought
You feel like you’re slightly out of your body—you knock into things or have accidents a lot. Cuidado!
You see dead people. Kidding! Kinda, maybe not tho.
Personally, this ungrounded quality almost always manifests itself in my life as tardiness. I hate being late; for most of my life, if I wasn’t 15 minutes early for an appointment, meeting, or date I would work myself up to the near verge of a panic attack. Not cute! Don’t do that! I was a little too grounded. A bit caught up in the physical, what people thought of me, blah blah blah. So I started doing things like meditation and getting monthly Reiki sessions and burning palo santo to counteract that anxiety and, yah know, be a more normal chill person. [Sound familiar, anybody?]
As a recovering Type A perfectionist, I notice I sometimes lean in a little too hard to the Type B persona—so much so that it actually causes me more anxiety, which sort of defeats the purpose. I once was so grounded, physical, and present in the tangible world that I ignored my intuition and mind. I’m sometimes hesitant to let the pendulum swing back into that ‘grounded’ place, for fear that I’ll lose all the lovely, airy parts that I’ve discovered.
But the key, it seems, is just being aware. And then doing what you need to do to get back on track. How annoyingly simple, right?
How to get re-grounded
If you ran through the above list and it resonated a little *too* much, but you’re not that into walking around in dirt everyday, here are some ways to realign yourself that could help:
These grounding shoes.
These grounding patches if you’re on a budget.
This grounding mat if you’re not.
This grounding exercise.
This grounding scent.
This grounding mushroom adaptogen.
This grounding group activity.
This grounding meal (technically, eating anything will get you back into your body by making your more aware of your physicality, and that re-grounds you).
And pretty much anything that reminds you that you’re a human being on this planet in a body that feels things will get you grounded. Including getting laid.