Grounding

Grounding is the plain name for anything that brings attention back to the present: contact with the floor, the temperature of the air, slow breathing, naming what you can see and hear, holding something with a definite texture.

None of it is sophisticated, and that is the point. Grounding has to be usable at the moment when complicated things are out of reach.

Between sessions, grounding earns its place as the thing you reach for on the difficult days. Practices work better when they are already familiar, so the time to rehearse one is a calm afternoon, not the first hard evening.

It is a way of steadying yourself rather than a way of resolving whatever caused the distress. Grounding buys the room in which the rest of the work can happen.