The Ground Effect Is About Coming Back To Earth

I recently learned something interesting from a patient. We were talking about a phenomenon that occurs as an airplane is about to land and is barely hovering over the ground. At this moment, when the plane is close to the runway, something happens with the air between the bottom of the plane and the ground, causing increased lift and decreased drag, and the plane feels like it's floating. She said that pilots learn to feel this sensation just prior to landing to help them know that they're close to the ground. This phenomenon is called “ground effect”. But why am I talking about landing a plane?

I'm talking about the concept of grounding because it reminds me of our mind-body connection and using our awareness such that we can feel where we are in our bodies and ourselves in relation to everything around us. 

The airplane analogy is helpful in understanding how many of us are living our lives. Because our culture and society (not to mention social media) encourage us to be think and pay attention to outside expectations, we're stuck in our thoughts...and stuck in our heads. When we do this we're essentially floating in the top part of our body and, sometimes, unfortunately, we unconsciously even project ourselves outside of our bodies and it isn't good for us on many levels. 

What I’ve discovered in working with patients and helping them to feel their mind-body connection, is that when our attention and awareness is in our heads and in our thoughts, our body is in a sub optimal state. Our nervous system is essentially disconnected, our muscles feel tight and tense, our heart rate is higher, and we feel stressed, unbalanced, and sometimes even lost. Like an airplane we might be “flying” and disconnected from the earth. It can be disorienting. 

In medicine we have something called the “oculovestibulocephalic reflex”, which involves eye and head movement in relation to our spatial awareness and balance. This perceptual awareness is called proprioception and is an immensely intricate physiologic process that also involves our brainstem function and it's very important in basic function. It’s really important to know where we are in relation to everything around us and it has far reaching physiologic effects. 

It’s interesting to me how much we are like airplanes in this concept. When I teach someone how to put their attention in their body, especially the region of their “landing gear” such as their pelvis, feet, or legs, their nervous system calms immediately, and I feel everything relax and soften under my hands. Some reading this might say, “that’s just grounding”. True, but sometimes it's not so easy to stay grounded. 

Grounding used to be a new age concept but today it’s more commonly discussed. It's become so popular that one can buy products that plug into the wall such as grounding blankets or other devices that help us “ground”. They may in reality have a beneficial effect, but they're only going to work when we're connected to them. What about the rest of the time? Just fly around like airplanes?

In electricity, grounding means providing a low-resistance path for current to flow to the Earth. It often involves copper, due to its high conductivity. It's a safety measure, dissipating excess electrical energy from faults or surges into the ground instead of causing fires or electric shock to people.

In terms of human beings, grounding refers to the process of connecting to the earth. Grounding technically involves making direct contact with the Earth's surface, such as walking barefoot on grass. The concept of grounding goes back thousands of years and can be seen in various cultures. 

The theory is that grounding provides a connection to the Earth's electrical charge, which may have a positive impact on our bodies, health and mood. Making contact with the Earth's surface is said to neutralize free radicals, which are unstable atoms that can damage cells with electrons from the Earth. Some research suggests that grounding can have various kinds of beneficial effects. Some of these include balancing the autonomic nervous system which can lower blood pressure, decrease cortisol; decrease inflammation; and decrease stress, improve sleep and a sense of wellbeing.

In reality we have a whole body and our body is an instrument of grounding. When our feet connect to the earth, we're grounded. When we walk around without falling over our ocular vestibular reflex helps us to not fall over because our relationship of our eyes and the horizon, our feet on the ground and our body helps us to know where we are in space in relation to the ground beneath us.

So we're technically grounding all the time if we’re sitting or walking, we’re connected to something that is connected to the earth. But what seems to really make the difference is our awareness of the sensation, like the pilot has the sense of the bottom of the plane in relation to the ground. The thing that really makes the difference is the feeling. 

Real grounding is something that we can do all the time and it's a normal state of being when we're grounded in our body. We do this when we feel ourselves in our whole bodies, particularly in our center of gravity which is in our pelvis. This gives us a more balanced awareness, a kind of counterbalance to all that thinking we do. With our attention in the bottom of our body, the top of our body it feels more relaxed, more normal. And we’re more centered in ourselves. 

Take a moment now and try it. See if you can feel what happens when you put your attention in the lower part of your body. It might take a few seconds to really get your attention there. Often it's not easy to keep it there because we’re so used to being in our heads, thinking, instead of feeling. But when you do it, you're essentially grounded. Our nervous system can take a huge sigh of relief because we're connected to it.  We're back in our whole selves. In our whole bodies. This is in effect, the ground effect. 

I love this metaphor of landing a plane because we really do want to always know where we are in relation to the earth under our feet. In reality we really do benefit from having a sense of our bodies in relation to everything around us. When we do this we're in a more centered state.  Our heart rate calms. Our breathing slows. Our muscle tension softens. I know this because I feel it every time I teach someone how to do it in my office. I feel it under my hands. Their body becomes still and shifts into healing mode.

Maybe you’re wondering if we really need to put our bare feet on the ground or use a device to ground. I don’t think so. We can be and I believe it would be helpful to do it all the time, and it's a simple habit to change, just to pay a bit more attention to where we are in our body, where we are in ourselves. A kind of "felt" sense of our centered self. It feels good. And it's easier than so many mind-body methods make it. Just like riding a bike, it just takes a bit of a bit of awareness and practice to learn how to do it. 

In my online course, I use this example of a “weeble wobble”. They’re little egg shaped people toys from the 70s demonstrate the concept of centering well. They have a weight in the bottom of the egg so they stay upright. Some of you might remember the catch phrase, “weebles wobble but they don’t fall down”. This is because their center of gravity is low in the egg and it gives them stability when something bumps into them. This is another useful metaphor because when our awareness is closer to our center of gravity, it gives us a similar kind of stability, where we as humans can feel more centered, grounded, and balanced in our lives. Can you feel a similar kind of balance in yourself by dropping your attention into the lower part of your body? It feels good, calming, and stable to feel this centered place in oneself.

It's so simple, it almost seems hard to believe that it could really be helpful. But everyone that I’ve seen practice it, particularly, my patients and course participants, have benefitted and continued to transform and heal on many levels. In my opinion, this concept of living fully in our body in respect to everything around us is probably something we all should have learned in 3rd grade because it helps us to feel better when we need it. When we’re centered within our body, our nervous system can work the way it’s supposed to. It truly is a simple way that we can use anytime and anywhere to help ourselves to feel better when we need it. I’ve seen it calm anxiety, stop panic attacks, decrease muscle tension and take away pain, and slow heart palpitations. It can even help us to make better decisions. 

I don’t want to suggest that grounding is a quick fix. It isn’t. You can't just do it once and expect it to fix everything. On the other hand, as one of my course participants put it, “it's a simple shift”. The more we shift into this centered place within ourselves, the more we integrate our mind, body, and spirit and the better our incredible human design can work the way it was supposed to. But it only works if you do it. The more you do it, the easier it is to do, the better we feel, and the more profound the results. If you want a bit of help experiencing the ground effect, my Mini Course: Living In A Body teaches the exact concept with guided experiences and suggestions on how to bring it into your daily life.

It can be a good thing to have our head in the clouds but we need to keep our feet on the earth too. Sometimes we really need to come down to earth or come back into ourselves. It can be really helpful to have our feet under us…to get our land legs. This is the ground effect. It really does work. All you have to do is try it and practice it. So check out the ground effect and see what it does for you.