This exercise uses your senses to bring your focus back to the present moment. If you're up to it, I think we should do this now! Even if yo
New article on my website! This touches on the 54321 grounding method
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Grounding isn’t just for panic attacks. It can help with almost any overwhelming emotion, from anxiety to anger to deep sadness and it can also simply help you center yourself on a calm day.
Practicing grounding when you’re not in distress makes it easier to use when you are stressed. If you’ve never tried it before, I recommend practicing now, while you’re feeling okay, rather than waiting until you’re already overwhelmed.
One of the most popular grounding techniques is the 5-4-3-2-1 Method. This exercise uses your senses to bring your focus back to the present moment. If you're up to it, I think we should do this now! Even if you feel calm or at ease. I also personally don't realize how much I needed to do this and let some stress out of my body until I do it.
You can do this silently in your head, write it down somewhere private, or share your answers with others if you feel comfortable. If you're up to it, I recommend putting some items you can use for this in a self-care box, especially for things like texture and scent.
Step 1 – Start with Your Breath
Breathe in to the count of five, hold your breath for five seconds, and breathe out to the count of five.(If five feels too long, try four instead.)
Step 2 – Five Things You Can See
Look around and name five things you can see. Focus on what you notice about them. What colour are they? Are they large? Small?
Examples:
The clock on the wall
A plant on the windowsill
The mug on your desk
Step 3 – Four Things You Can Touch
Notice four things you can touch. If possible, physically touch them and think about the texture whether it is soft, hard, smooth, rough, etc.
Examples:
The blanket on your bed
The fabric of your shirt
The keys in your hand
Step 4 – Three Things You Can Hear
Listen carefully and name three things you can hear. Think about what those sounds sound like. Are they loud? Quiet? Hard to hear?
Examples:
Your cat purring
The fridge humming
Birds outside
Step 5 – Two Things You Can Smell
Identify two scents in your environment. If you can’t smell anything where you are, try moving to a spot where you can or bring a scent to you (such as lotion, tea, or essential oils). What does it smell like? Do you like the scent?
Step 6 – One Thing You Can Taste
Notice one taste. If you don’t currently taste anything, think of something you enjoy tasting. What does it taste like? Sweet? Minty? Spicy?
Examples:
Mint toothpaste
Your favourite tea
Fresh fruit
Step 7 – End with Your Breath
Take one final deep breath. In for five seconds, hold for five seconds, out for five seconds.
Step 8 – Acknowledge Your Effort
Take a moment to be proud of yourself for completing this. Grounding takes practice, and every time you do it, you’re helping your mind and body build the skill. If you can, try making this a daily habit so it comes more naturally when you need it most.
I thought I’d share some things that personally help us ground ourselves a bit when dissociating, feel free to add more in reblogs and such!! (Once again these are just things we do that help, they may not work for everyone.) (semi-long post ahead..)
Listening to an easy to sing song; for us this means listening to theme song/song that is short and easy to sing along too, focusing our mind on doing something that is short and fun (as we enjoy singing) helps us focus more on the present moment which ultimately helps with our dissociation
Easy puzzles or word games. Things that require just enough focus that it grounds us, but are not so hard they stress us out. For this we enjoy sometimes putting together those puzzles that have the jumbo pieces, puzzles made for kids, or things like crosswords or even suduko. (I think that’s how you spell it..)
Rewatching shows, a show that we still currently enjoy so we still feel the need to focus and engage with it rather than letting it play in the background, but we also don’t feel too stressed out about focusing completely on it. This one is a bit hit or miss, as when we are extremely dissociated we can struggle to focus on it, but it has helped us before.
Talking with friends, just easy conversation, this sometimes grounds us and helps us focus.
Occasionally writing can help, but this one is hard to do when you’re extremely dissociated or stressed.
Sometimes finding a texture we enjoy and just rubbing it over and over can help, we have gems one the back of our phone case for this purpose as the kind of rough texture of them helps grounds us, and we normally always have our phone. 
I hope some of these help at least one person, once again though these are just things that work for us. Feel free to add on what works for you! :)
- Object: some people use an object to rub, connect and ground to
- Spend more time in nature
- Air: ideal for driving away negative energy. Sit outside and feel the wind around you. Feel the wind dance around you and pull out the energy excess
- Fire: Use fire, a candle flame to stare into and center, grounding your energy into the flame
- Water: A universal cleanser. Take a bath or shower and feel the excess energy washed away from you
- Meditate: breathing techniques, especially for centering
- Yoga: Ground yourself with deep breathing and meditative yoga
- Tree/Cord: Visualize a cord extending from the center of the earth to the base of your spine, breath from your diaphragm and stomach, feeling the energy flowing from the earth to warmly fill you. Now let the cord become a trunk of a tree, roots reaching into the center of the earth, allowing you to draw energy. When you finished ground yourself. Sink to the floor and imagine all the energy falling back to the earth
- Sinking: Sit and allow your body to sink, plant and feel yourself
- Laugh: an amazing way to release pent up energy and bring rejuvenation
- Met lots of natural items like crystals or oil
- Garden
- Do a cleansing
- Do things you enjoy
Bonus: centering your energy
Your physical center is your center of gravity, your place of balance. To center yourself relax your body into a comfortable position and then rest your mental, emotional and physical awareness on that spot
masterpost about grounding
join us in our discord server: All Things Spiritual
I wanted to share with you all something my therapist and I work on whenever I have really bad anxiety (aka today). There may have been a post done on this before so I apologize if I’m stealing.
Start off (if you can) with a quick one to two minute meditation. just get yourself settled and comfortable. Sometimes I can’t do this, such as when I’m in the car. If you can’t, just dive right in to the five senses.
Take in your surroundings and start listing:
-5 things that you see
-4 things that you hear
-3 things that you smell
-2 things that you feel
-1 thing that you taste
I’ve found this really helps me focus on my environment rather than my anxiety, but it can also be really useful for grounding and being present in the moment. You can shift around the senses as well, so if you hear more things than you see, count 5 of those. the trick is just to count down from one to the next and keep your mind focused on something specific.
It is recommended to ground yourself before and after every practice you do in witchcraft
To ground yourself and release energy sit in a comfortable position and flatten the palms of your hands on the ground of the floor, you can also lie down placing your body flat on the ground. Take deep breaths and visualize the energy flowing through your hands or your body and into the earth. Visualize it flowing up from the earth into your body. Maintain the visualization until you begin to feel the desired result
• Benefits
• How to know when you’re not grounded
• Ways of grounding yourself
• Crystals for grounding
• How to ground if you have aphantasia
Core 5 master post
Join us in our discord server: All things spiritual
We had a rough morning with severe dissociation so I thought i'd make a post on grounding methods we have tried or used
* Colouring In (but beware of littles potentially fronting if you had colouring books as a kid)
* Hold/Feel a Smooth Stone. You can buy stones for this purpose called grounding stones, they are often sold for anxiety but they're good for dissociation too.
* Rest a Weighted stuffed animal on your lap and feel it's fur, you can buy weighted stuff animals for autisim/sensory needs. If you have a pet you could also do this with him or her. In our experiences cats seem to understand that you're not OK and will come and sit on you.
* Look around your room at different personal belongings and try to remember where you bought it or who gave it to you. Try to remember the whole history of the item with you
* 5-4-3-2-1 as taught in DBT this one usually doesn't work, but it's the first one we try.
* Look around your room from left to right and back again very slowly while telling yourself out loud the body's name, where you are, the date and that you're safe right now. The trick with this one is to do it slowly enough. You need to be slowly looking around for 3 minutes or so as if it's the first time you've ever been in this space. This is called orrientation and only works for lesser levels of dissociation. If you are a system be sure to have the part that is dissociating doing it.
* Paint your nails if that's something you enjoy
* Draw, even if you are not artistic. Don't judge what you draw, just put a pencil to paper or stylus to screen and see what happens.
* You could try listening to music with caution, if you are system make sure that the music you play is positive for the part fronting. Don't use music that you listened to during traumatic events as even if you feel OK, it might be triggering to another part. Ambient music with no lyrics is a good choice for us, but you will need to experiment to find out what works for you.
* Count the number of red things, the number of green things, the number of blue things you can see in your space.
* If you're really stuck you could try dunking your face in cold water (eg in a bathroom basin). You will need to immediately follow this up with another grounding strategy or you will just dissociate again. This is adapted from TIPP from DBT.
* you can use multiple grounding stragies one after another, this is called chaining skills and it is something that is worth learning.
How does anyone remember the things in the 54321 method? I’m always like, “5 things you see… is it 4 things you hear? Maybe touch, could be smell. Maybe 3 things is smell. That’s a lot of things to smell.” That shit cannot be calming😭😭
Day Twenty: When something feels wrong/off when casting a spell, what do you do? Are there any other methods of grounding/gaining control that you have heard of?
While I haven’t gotten to the stage where something could go wrong / feels off in spells I haven’t started, I do have a grounding method that my Dad taught me to help with my panic attacks that I may have if I get overwhelmed by public places or in other similar situations. Let me see if I can explain this coherently;
The trick is to focus on your energy. Imagine that your energy, and in extension you, are a tree and to send your energy down your legs and into the earth to form ‘roots’. Imagine that the roots stretch down and connect with the earth’s energy, making you strong and stand firm like a tree.
