What the f**k is grounding? How I learned to connect to the always-here without pushing, pulling or taking energy

The Element of EARTH in relation to Art & Life, part 2

I am exploring each of the elements in turn as part of Nothing IS Immediate.
Earth, the direction on the medicine wheel, and earth the soil — all these I associate with the colour black. When it comes to the human body, however, and the energy centre known as the root chakra, the colour is red. Red for me was always the colour of life, of blood, of passion. I came to associate the colour red with the union of fire and water regardless of whether they are engaged in creating, or releasing. But sometimes you have to go back to the beginning, the roots, the ground, the earth on which you stand. There came a time this summer when Christine Dodd encouraged me to surround myself in all things red. This is the story of how my relationship with the element earth has changed during the project.

There came a time this summer when I was struggling to process my emotions, mainly because I wasn't allowing myself to feel them. I was desperate to 'go deeper' but I was too much in my head to be able to feel. Feeling is an embodied state. And there was something that was bugging me. "What do you mean grounded?" I started calling it out, asking the question: have you noticed how many people talk about being grounded, rooted, and centred? I find they don't actually explain what they mean as if everyone knows, and everyone accesses that state of being in the same way.

Ok then. I had identified I was not grounded and gone a step further.

I didn't even have a frame of reference for what being grounded meant.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no stranger to guided meditations and the very popular visualisation of extending roots down into the centre of the earth.... but guess what. I tried that, and I felt even more untethered.

That was where my irritation was coming from. This works for people?! 

​It's time to find my own imagery I decided. But in truth, I just needed to come back into my body. The mind, the imagination can't do that for you, just like it has nothing to do with being grounded (even if it can usually assist you in getting there). The mind after all has more in common with the element of air.

So I followed Christine's guidance, after all she has been working with energy in her art practice all her life, drawing on the language of the chakra system to be able to explain it to people in a generally familiar way.

I chose to a drawing art-therapy style. I set out to express the feeling of not being grounded without thought only colours and marks. So I could take a look at the situation. I traced around my feet first and when I felt finished with my drawing I noticed all the marks took place on the outside as if I wasn't even standing in my own footprints.

I proceeded to paint my way through two more drawings, and pampered myself with a red rose petal bath and dressed up as 'The Red Queen' pictured above and I danced. All this took three days and three nights. After that period of focus, I did have knew knowledge of what it felt to be grounded (connected to the earth of the planet and the earth of my body, to me and to nature). But I also had insight into something more:

In the last six months I have noticed that instead of trying to push, pull or take energy and attention from one place to another I am simply opening to what is, the connection is always there if you notice it.

It’s not that I was disconnected from the earth but that I wasn’t spending enough time in relationship with my/her earthiness to feel connected.

I have a new favourite saying, partly inspired by Amanda Palmer's book 'The Art of Asking' which is:

Never mind give and take,
What’s wrong with offer and ask?

Now I know what so called grounding feels like for me I have realised that sinking into my body until I feel held by the earth and this moment in time is something that I don’t need to DO with my mind but simply OPEN to, physically and energetically. I am recognising AND honouring more the connection I do have with nature that is evident to other people and just relaxing a little bit more into the idea I am collaborating with nature, the weather, the elements within and without and I don’t have to force things, especially not myself.