Being Here Now – Frantic Shanti

Grounding Through Mental Tracing

I’ve written before many times about different “grounding” techniques. Grounding is what helps move us out of the chatter in our heads and brings us into the present moment, where we can pause and realize that we are safe. It helps put space between our ourselves and both fears about the future and regrets about the past that may unnecessarily cloud our minds.

On days like those, I need to fine-tune my focus. This calls for a grounding technique that won’t be as easy to derail.

Body scans are some of my favorite grounding and calming go-tos. But recently, I was introduced to tracing the outline of the hand with your mind, a focus on just one part of the body. I tried this and found that it worked brilliantly!

As kids, we traced our hands to help us draw; now, it can help us stay present.

Just like when, as a child, you started a drawing using the outline of your hand by placing it on a piece of paper and tracing the around your fingers with a pencil, you can do the same thing mentally. Imagine the sensation of a point of pressure (say, an invisible crayon) moving up your wrist to the outside of your pinkie, around the fingertip, and down the other side into the hollow between the fingers…and doing the same as it moves up and down each finger until it ends up on the outside of the thumb and travels back down the wrist.

What makes this so effective for me is that it is a simple visualization that requires a bit more concentration, and yet it is still uncomplicated. That means that it gives my monkey mind a little extra to focus on, but not so much that it becomes a struggle.

Try it next time you need grounding and want to trying something different.

Grounding though Contact Points

Lately I’ve been speaking with people who are having a hard time dealing with anxiety, so I thought it would be worthwhile to dive deeper into grounding methods.

For me, hands down, strong neutral physical sensations (with “neutral” being the operative term here) are by far the best ways to pull my head out of swirling thoughts and get back to where I am now on the Earth.

Buttocks and feet are great focal points for drawing attention away from rapid breathing or heartrate.

Currently, I’m focusing on touch points: those places on your body where you are making contact with any surface. This is highly effective because it is well-suited for any situation. You don’t necessarily need to be in a particular position, nor do you need a quiet space. So if you’re in the middle of an exam, sitting in your boss’ office, standing at a podium or walking down the hallway of a hospital, this grounding method can shift you back to the present moment.

The idea is to focus on the sensation of pressure. My suggestion would be to bring your attention to whereever on your body you can sense that contact with a surface, giving preference to places further from areas that might be reinforcing anxiety, such as the chest region and a rapidly beating heart. So, hands, feet and buttocks would be good candidates. If you’re walking, then pay attention to the change in pressure of your steps as you put your foot down and lift it again.

Feel into these body parts, sensing how the pressure feels against them. You can also bring in sensations such as tingling and temperature. Like an investigator, experiencing these sensations as if for the first time, get curious about their quality. If needed, squeeze the muscles, but then make sure to relax them too, so that you’re not clenching. Then see if you notice a difference in sensation.

Try it right now. Go ahead, I’ll wait…

You don’t need a special place to practice grounding yourself. Where you are right now is perfect.

Did you try it? And did you feel anything? The type of sensation doesn’t matter here. The main goal is to get out of your head, which may be in overdrive. Paying attention to what your body is doing RIGHT NOW helps move you away from thoughts of dread and gives you a handle on your reactions.

Important: as with all calming techniques, this takes practice. It is not a one-time thing that you try, nor is it a pill that you pop and everything settles down. The more you practice this, especially when you’re in a peaceful surroundings, the better you will get at shifting your focus during times of anxiety. Just as with a formal meditation practice, it is consistency that will improve your focus and thereby your abilities.

The added benefit to practice is that you will realize you *can* do it, that it *does* work, and you will build confidence in yourself that you can handle it. So in an anxious moment, you’ll be able to say, “I got this” and bring yourself to a more manageable place.

Making It Through “Now”

My recent post, Just Show Up, about releasing the need to fight through breast cancer treatment, left out an important concept.

My cancer diagnosis was what I deemed the “worst-case scenario” from the viewpoint of everything that came before. The overwhelm was a tidal wave that caught me and spun me around. Disoriented, I struggled to breathe and find my footing, but it was too much and I was poorly equipped to deal with the news.

Taking on everything at once doesn’t help you keep it together, it tears you apart.

I went through the motions, stumbling through the appointments that now multiplied in number. There was so much information to wade through, decisions to make, upcoming treatments to fear.

Then a co-worker whose wife had been diagnosed with cancer some years before sat down with me and gently offered a valuable piece of advice.

I didn’t have to handle everything at once. Some the decisions could be made later. Each day would bring answers and more clarity. There was no need to load up on all the information. It didn’t help anyone get through these days, all it did was weigh them down.

The path through this entailed focusing on what needed to be done now, and then working on doing that and only that. Just taking that one easy step forward.

All that stuff in the past and the things to come, you can release them. Don’t carry that extra burden with you. Just focus on what’s happening now. And now.

Could you get through the last moment? Good.

Now just get through the next.