Grounding? Centering? Balancing?
I’m fascinated by the commonalities and differences in various pagan and magical practices, and also in the terminology we use for them. A perfect example is the first thing that pretty much every “how to do magic” or “how to do ritual” guide covers, the topic of “Grounding and Centering.” It seems like a simple topic, but there’s still a ton of diversity, and to some extent confusion, in how we talk about it. Today, I want to go a bit into the theory behind those things, to try to figure out just what we mean when we use those words, and share the approach that I’ve landed on, which seems to be a bit different from a lot of others I see.
So what do we even mean when we talk about “ground and centering?” The most common thing I hear is that it’s something about normalizing our ‘energy,’ and that itself leads into a terminological topic that I could (and probably will) write a whole other topic about; what even is spiritual or magical energy? For now, let’s just talk about it in an experiential sense; that feeling of being spiritually active or focussed. Someone can be low-energy (feeling disconnected or lethargic) or high-energy (jittery or overwhelmed). The energy can also be ‘off’ (focussing on things that are distressing or distracting), or even improperly distributed (especially for those of us who have a sense-of-self that doesn’t match our physical body) The goal of grounding and centering then is to get the energy to a state that’s ‘just right’; the right amount of the right sort.
Right there, that shows that grounding and centering might need to involve up to four different operations. You might need to let go of energy if you have too much, pull in energy if you have too little, clean the energy if it’s the wrong sort, or get it all back in the right places in your spiritual body. And there’s another aspect that’s implied here but often overlooked: How do you know which of those you need to do? Don’t you need to do some sort of assessment as well, to understand what needs work, and when the work is done?
Some methods of grounding and centering break this apart into different steps, others trust that connecting to the right source in the right way will just do all that’s needed. Whether that’s effective probably varies a lot from person to person. Some folks might have a better intuitive sense of their inner state than others. (For my own part, I’m autistic and have what’s called ‘poor interoception’, it takes focus and intent for me to know what my internal state is like even to the point of basic physical needs, so that applies very much for the spiritual as well). Other methods focus more on one than the other; I have certainly seen guides that talk about “grounding” almost exclusively in terms of “letting go of energy,” There’s nothing wrong with that as such… except maybe if someone is used to that method, and then ends up in a situation where they’re in a ritual led by someone with a different definition, that guides them to “ground” as part of the ritual opening… which could lead to letting go of all the energy that might otherwise have been important for the actual experience they’re going into.
Then there’s the order of the parts of the operation itself. Is it grounding and then centering? If grounding is letting go, and centering is equalizing, don’t you need to get some back? If centering is “feeling your own energy” and grounding is setting up how much you need, shouldn’t you do centering first? And where does shielding fit into all this? One of my traditions suggests a pretty structured daily practice that involves (what it calls) centering, shielding, and grounding, specifically in that order. There’s ways in which that has always struck me as odd; if ‘shielding’ is supposed to keep things out, why do ‘grounding’ after that? But still, in practice it seems to work fine for me, based on some sublty-different understandings of what ‘shielding’ and ‘grounding’ (can) mean.
There’s surely no one right way to do this, of course. And speaking personally, even though learning different ways leads me to ask all these questions, it also has led me to think more deeply about what works for me. I like to think that’s one of the benefits of diverse magical practice; finding new facets and being able to adopt the ones that work for us. So, in the interest of providing another facet, I think I’ll share my own methods of getting my energies all at the right level and in the right place.
- I start by standing in a neutral pose, and box-breathing: Breathing in for a count of four, holding for a count of four, then exhaling and holding again for the same count. For me this syncs up pretty easily with my heartbeat, and I also have a sort of (internal) chant that helps keep time, with four syllables per line: “Lights above me / Ways around me / Pulse below me / You are with me.”
- This helps me turn inward and get a sense of my own internal state, or energy flows, or whatever you want to call them. Again, thanks to the poor interoception thing, it takes me some extra focus to do this right and sometimes I’m surprised at what I find. (In fact, there have been times when I’ve needed to stop at this point, go to the bathroom, and then restart, because I hadn’t noticed it until I took some time out)
- Once I’m all settled and properly aware of my state, I’ll start taking in energy. For me, this involves drawing from both the Lights above me and the Pulse below me (the details of that cosmology also belong in a whole other post!). This usually starts off in time with breathing in, but I try to expand it past that; if I can feel myself drawing in during all parts of the breathing-cycle and chant, I feel like I’m doing well. This does end up with me taking on what might otherwise be ‘too much’ energy, but that’s actually part of the point of this step.
- With all that built up, I will next start to let go of it, at first on the out-breaths, but then expanding so that it’s a full flow of in-and-out at each step. Unlike the drawing-in, I usually experience this as just going downward, to the Pulse. Put together, this ends up feeling a lot like ‘rinsing myself out,’ letting what I don’t need go back down to be transformed and redistributed.
- In keeping with the ‘rinsing’ metaphor, I’ll usually try to keep that going until it ‘flows clear’; for myself I get a sense of color, moving from dull and muddy to high-saturation glow. If things feel particularly blocked up, I might sometimes pull in some extra energy at this point to help up the power; a friend of mine once called this the ‘self-cleaning oven’ method of cleansing.
- In all cases, all this flowing and focusing will still tend to leave me in a state that doesn’t feel very “grounded”, so next I’ll turn my focus more to the breathing out, to actively helping the energy find its own level.
- In this case though, there’s more than just ‘rooting it in the earth’. I have a non-human spiritual body, so I will take this extra energy to make sure it’s filled out, ears, and muzzle and tail and glow.
- Occasionally, I need to cycle through all the above again, to make sure everything’s feeling balanced and vibrant. In this state, I generally have a good feeling of when it’s done.
- I focus downward one more time to make sure I’m not holding onto anything that’ll keep me too-energized. If I need to, stomping the ground really helps me finish off the last little bit.
This sounds really complicated now that i’ve written it out, but when it’s kept up day-to-day, this ends up being a pretty short operation that I can do in the space of just a few cycles of breath.
When I sit here and look at that in terms of ‘grounding and centering’ I’m still hard pressed to point to which part is which; certainly there’s some very “grounding” aspects to it, but they’re definitely not the first thing I do. Part of me really wishes for a better term, but I know that comes at the cost of having to explain that term to others. Still, I’m glad I’ve found what works for me, and I always want to encourage everyone else to do the same, unbound by external expectations and terminology.