When you need to be healthy in your mind and your body, you need to try the practice of grounding. Grounding can help you to get rid of negative emotions, bad memories and other things that are distracting you in your life.

If you are experiencing a lot of distraction, chances are that you need to focus on your life and other things and use these techniques to help you to feel better. If you are dealing with these things, you will find grounding to be helpful for you:

• Stress
• PTSD
• Self-harm
• Traumatic experiences
• Substance abuse

Physical Techniques

There are some physical techniques that you can do that you can actually touch or use your other senses to help you deal with problems in your life.

Water

One thing that you can do is to put your hands in water. Focus on how hot or cold the water is and let it flow over your hands, palms, fingers, and the other side of your hand. Does this feel different on the different parts of your hands?

Use cold water and then try warm. Does this feel different on your hands when it hits the different parts? What makes it feel different?

Touch Things

Find things around you that you can touch. Find something hard and soft and something fuzzy or of different texture. You can challenge yourself to find things of different colors.

Breathing

Inhale and exhale deeply. This can help you to relax and to meditate and be calm. See how your breathing feels as it goes in and out.

Eating and Drinking

Take some food and take small drinks and bites. You can see how you can enjoy how the foods taste and smell.

Walking

Go out and take small steps. See how many steps you can take in a minute. Step on different grounds and see how different they feel.

Ice

Hold ice in your hands and see how long it takes before it begins to melt. Does it feel different as it starts melting?

Smelling

Find a fragrance that you like to spell. This can be coffee, tea, perfume, spices or whatever you want. Let the fragrance go inside and outside of your body.

Move

Do some yoga or exercises. You can even do stretches to make your body feel better. Do jumping jacks or pushups and see how you feel and how each muscle is used.

Notice how your body feels after you move. Let the air and the world around you have feelings on your body and see how it feels and sounds.

Listen

Listen to the noises that you hear around you and then go outside and listen again. Do you hear birds or animals? What do you hear going on inside of your house that isn’t going on outside?

Feeling

Focus on how your body is feeling as you sit still. Do you feel your head? How does it feel? Do you wear glasses? How do they feel on your face? If you move your arms how does that feel? Notice how your legs are crossed or your arms and how that feels.

Move your fingers and toes and put your hands and feet on the floor and see how this feels to you.

5-4-3-2-1

You can start counting from 5 and list all the things that you notice around you. You might notice 5 pieces of fruit and then 4 pieces of mail laying around. Can you find 3 things that are the same in your home? Are there 2 things that you can smell? Can you taste one thing?

Notice how different everything feels to you and how your senses move.

Mental Techniques

There are also some exercises that you can do to ground yourself that you can use to distract your mind such as:

Games

Find some memory games to play that help you to work your memory. Can you match 5 things without messing up? If not, go lower until you can do it over and over again. You can even go more if you are a master at 5.

You can also look at a picture and turn it over and try to remember everything about it that you can.

Thinking

Find different categories such as flavors of ice cream or baseball teams and name as many as you can off the top of your head.

Math

Even if you are not good at math, you can do simple things with numbers that can help to increase your mental powers. Here are some things to try:

• Say your multiplication tables.
• Count from 100 to 0.
• Pick a number and think of 3 ways you can use it.

Recite It

Find a book or a paragraph that you can memorize. Say it out loud and focus on how you are talking and the words coming out of your mouth.

Laugh

Find things that make you feel happy such as a movie or listen to jokes. Do something that can give you a good laugh and make you feel good.

Phrases

Say something like, “I am (name) and I am (age) years old. I live in (city) and (state).” Try other things such as, “Today is Monday, October 3, 2021, and I am sitting in my room typing.”

Make the phrase as long or as short as you want it to be.

Visualize

Imagine something that you love to do and do it. For example, if you like to do dishes, imagine how it feels to do the dishes and to see the result afterwards. Imagine that you are seeing the bubbles coming up and feeling the warm water on y our skin.

Talk About a Task

Think of things that you do on a daily basis and think about it. Think about something that you love to do such as a hobby that you have. Go into as much detail as you can go into.

Leaving the Feelings Behind

Imagine yourself doing these things:

• Put your emotions in a ball and throw them away.
• Go walking or jogging and take the feelings with you and leave them there.
• Imagine a song or show that you do not like and imagine that you are changing the channel.

See What You See

Talk about what you see around you. Use all of your senses to describe what you are feeling. Imagine how it feels such as if it is cold or hot, soft, or hard. Imagine if you are in the sun how warm it feels or if you are building a snowman how cold the snow feels. Go into as much detail as you can.

Comforting Techniques

You can use some of these kinds of techniques when you are feeling emotional or upset about something. These things can help you to feel better in your life:

Imagine Someone You Love

If you are missing someone or if you are feeling upset, imagine someone that you love sitting by you. Notice their eyes, nose, ears and how they look. Imagine what their face looks like. Listen to their voice and smell the smell of their cologne or perfume. Be as detailed as you can.

Be Kind to You

You can be kind and compassionate to yourself and here are some things you can say to yourself to build up your self-esteem:

• I am strong.
• When I am going through something hard, I can pull through.
• I am trying my best.
• I can get past my pain.

Say this as much as you need to.

Sit with a Pet

If you have a pet, then you need to take a few moments to sit with them. Sitting with your pet and focusing on how they look and how they feel can make you feel good. If you have a small pet, hold it in your lap and pet it.

If you don’t have a pet, you can even volunteer at a shelter and hold those pets or imagine that you have one and what you would do with it.

Listing

Find things that you love and list them such as your favorite colors, movies, or songs.

Imagine Your Favorite Place

Think of a place that you love to go. This can be close to where you live or in another country. Use all of your mind to imagine it in deep detail. Think of all the sounds, colors, smells and sensations that you feel.

Do an Activity

Find something that you love to do by yourself or with your friends. Do that activity. If you love to bowl, go bowling and have fun. Do things you will look forward to.

Touching

Find something that you love to touch and hold it. Maybe you love to feel something soft like a piece of carpet. If so, rub it and feel it and see how it feels in your hands and on your fingers.

You can hold a sweater, a stuffed animal or anything you love to hold.

Positive Things

List some of the best things about your life.

Music

Find some of your favorite music and listen to it. Dance around your home. Focus on how the music sounds and how it makes you feel.

Other Ideas

When you want to ground yourself, it is not always easy to have the time or to get things done but you need to take time to do these things so that you can feel better in your life.

Here are some other tips that you can try:

Practice

You can practice grounding no matter where you are. You don’t have to be sad or upset to ground yourself. Do these things even when you feel good to be stronger.

Do it Early

Do your grounding exercises right when you get up so that you can start your day good. This can help you to avoid feeling bad.

Values

Do not use values but use words to talk about what you are doing and where you are at. Describe your surroundings and what you see and feel.

Look at Yourself

Before you do your grounding, figure out how you are feeling. If you are feeling bad, why? What caused this? Did it help after you grounded yourself?

Don’t Close Your Eyes

Keep your eyes closing because when you keep your eyes open it is easier to connect with the world around you.

Grounding can help you to get rid of negative thinking and it can help you to feel better. This might be a temporary fix that you need but you can do it anytime that you need to.

If you are feeling down and you cannot pull out of it, talk to someone that you love and trust or see a counselor or therapist to help you.