Does this sound familiar?
You have realised your life is really stressful and more often than not you’re close to overwhelm. You know this level of stress is having a negative impact on your health. It feels like it has overtaken your life and sometimes, you can’t even remember what complete wellness feels like anymore. As you collapse into bed each night you feel resentful that you often feel too stressed and exhausted to have truly meaningful relationships with the ones you love the most.
But in spite of so much advice around about how to relieve the effects of stress you can’t even work out where to begin.
Sometimes there’s just too much advice available!
Usually when this happens, we just need to go back to basics.
Back To Centre
When you feel overwhelmed the key to bringing you back to centre is always to ground yourself. And the classic way to do this is to walk barefoot on the earth.
Luckily that’s not the only way to effectively ground yourself.
One of the simplest ways to bring yourself back to centre is through your five senses – sight, sound, smell, touch and taste. And the beauty of this method of grounding is that you can do it anywhere and anytime. Plus you can adjust and adapt it to suit your circumstances no matter what you are doing or where you are at the time. You don’t have to go outside or take your shoes off!
I like to introduce this technique in my workshops because it brings the group back to themselves and right into the present moment. When they’re grounded and in the moment, they get far more out of the program.
And the same applies to you in your life. When you are grounded in the present moment, you’ll find your awareness increases so you are able to perceive what’s around you with greater clarity. You stay calm and centred without being drawn into the drama. You become better at not spinning out when things overwhelm you.
Staying grounded like this helps you to make sharper judgements and decisions so you can plot a decisive course of action that optimises your time and energy. Plus, it leaves you feeling energised. But the best thing of all is that your ability to become grounded in the moment continues to increase as you incorporate this practice into your every day.
Sensory Grounding
Sensory Grounding is a simple technique that involves really tuning in deeply to your environment through each of your five senses in turn.
Most of us have one or two senses that we use more often than the others and we tend to rely on those. Unless they have an impairment to their vision, most people’s preferred sense is sight. But when we use all our senses to engage with the environment rather than just the preferred one or two, we shift into much deeper levels of perception. We also move deeper within to engage more coherently with our higher wisdom.
Develop Sensory Awareness for Stress Relief
In this exercise we develop our ability to notice our environment with a greater level of perception. We push our ability to perceive what we are aware of through each of our senses in turn. As we do this activity more our senses become more acute, and our awareness grows enormously.
To get the full power of this practice you need to do the Sensory Grounding Exercise right through in the prescribed way. Try out the full exercise and then try to introduce into your daily practice. To get the most out of the exercise and leave yourself feeling completely calm and grounded you need to dedicate about 5-8 minutes to each sense. However, you’ll still get some benefit if you only have 1-2 minutes to dedicate to each of the five senses.
Because we rely heavily on our sense of sight I like to leave it to last in this exercise. Once we have already started the process of grounding through our other senses, we can engage with our vision sense more easily and effectively.
Be aware of anything that is “triggered” though this exercise. For example, the sense of smell is the one most closely linked to memory and certain smells may give rise to particular emotions. Open yourself to new aromas as humans can distinguish 10,000 different smells so engaging with your sense of smell can really expand your sensory awareness.
Start with a sense which you rely on less often. Do the exercise and then, once you have engaged fully through that sense move on to a different one. The order doesn’t matter other than to eventually end with sight. Do the exercise with your eyes closed until you reach the sense of sight at the end.
The Sensory Grounding Exercise
Wherever you do this exercise, at home, at work, indoors, outside in nature, in a busy café or in bed at night you’ll be amazed at just how much more you notice when you really become aware of all that surrounds you.
You can do this exercise sitting, standing or lying, but it is best not to move around.
Find a place and get comfortable with your feet firmly on the floor. You don’t need to be alone or quiet.
Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths taking your attention to the out-breath.
Hearing
Let your breath find its own rhythm as you gently take in the sounds around you. Initially notice the most prominent sounds, voices, a dog bark, birds chirping, cars, maybe power tools or other noisy equipment. Notice sounds come and go, as objects or people move in and out of your hearing.
And now tune in to the sounds underneath, the low hum of a refrigerator, tapping of a keyboard, noises outside or in another part of the building, sounds in the distance.
Notice your own sounds, the sound of your breath, the almost imperceptible rustle of your clothing, your hair brushing against your collar as you move your head.
Turn ninety degrees and notice how the sounds change. Turn again until you return to your starting position, noticing how different it sounds from each direction.
Now cover one ear. Hear the sounds coming through the other ear and notice how they are different to those you notice through both ears at once. Do this for your other ear.
Smell
When you have finished absorbing all you can through your sense of hearing turn your attention to your sense of smell. Take a deep breath in through your nose and notice what aromas are the strongest. Notice the pleasant and unpleasant smells without rejecting any, as this is all about awareness not judgement.
Now move to the more subtle smells, they may be further away, or softer, or fleeting. Notice what you notice.
Once you have absorbed all the aromas you can turn ninety degrees and notice whether you can perceive any new smells or whether any become stronger or fainter. Repeat until you return to your starting position.
As you did with your sense of hearing, close one nostril and notice any changes. Repeat for the other side.
When you feel you have exhausted this sense move on to the next one.
Taste
Run your tongue right around your mouth. What do you notice? Does it taste different in different parts of your mouth? Can you taste something you ate earlier? What about your salive, does it have a taste you recognise?
As you do this part of the exercise you will also be engaging your sense of touch, but try to focus on just the taste you experience rather than the feel on your tongue.
Now open your mouth a little. What can you taste in the air that flows in? What if you open your mouth wide?
Do you notice tastes coming in from your more distant surroundings? Your sense of taste and sense of smell are closely connected so you may ‘taste’ foods being cooked nearby.
Now lick the skin of your hand. What do you notice?
Stay with the sense of smell for another moment as you let yourself sink deeply into this sense.
Touch
Now move on to the sense of touch. We ‘feel’ both on the surface of our skin and within our body. In this exercise you want to become aware of both of these senses of touch.
Start by touching your hands together. Notice the feeling on your skin. You will feel both what the skin feels like and what it like to be touched.
Focus on what your skin feels like first. Do both hands feel the same or are they different? How do the back and palm feel different? Notice everything about the feel of your skin, is it dry or moist, warm or cold, smooth, cracked, rough, tight or loose and so on.
Now switch your attention to the internal feeling of what it feels like to be touched. Does it tickle, soothe, scratch? Does the feeling run up your arm or through your fingertips?
Try changing the pressure and notice what that feels like.
Now separate your hands and hold them up in the air? Notice what that feels like? Can you feel a breeze as someone walks past, coldness, warmth?
Notice the feel of any other external things like the warmth of the sun, or the wetness of the rain.
Shift your attention within your body. Do a quick scan starting at the toes and moving up through every part. What do you notice? Don’t forget to notice what the connection between your feet and the floor or ground feels like.
Take a moment to really cement that feeling of your feet solidly connecting with the ground beneath you.
Sight
And now we move onto the final sense, sight.
Half open your eyes and gaze gently in front of you. Try not to focus on any particular object, you want to get a ‘sense’ of what you see first.
Notice the tone of the light, a general sense of colours without focusing on any single one, whether there is movement or calm stillness.
Once you have a general sense for what is around you, open your eyes right up and begin to notice in more detail. Start with the bigger more dominant items and gradually take your focus closer and closer in to notice the small details.
Continue to notice what surrounds you. Turn to face different directions or look above your head or down to the ground if you wish.
Although sight is the sense you are normally most aware of, notice how much more you are noticing in your surroundings when you really connect with this sense in this exercise. Become aware of how much you must be missing in your normal life as you give just part of your awareness to your world.
Spend a few more moments enjoying your “new vision”. Take three deep breaths before moving your arms, feet and body.
Integration
Now that you have finished the sensory part of this exercise it’s important to integrate what you have experienced.
Journalling your thoughts and insights can help you gain more clarity about what you experienced. However if you cannot journal, pause for a few minutes and consider how you feel right now? Do you feel calm, solid and grounded? Do you feel more at peace? More focus? Greater clarity?
Awareness is a potent tool that helps us find balance when we feel confused, frustrated or overwhelmed. When we become efficient at maintaining this detached awareness. we can ride the waves of turmoil and keep ourselves out of the drama.
When you practice this exercise regularly you grow your ability to harness focus, calm and clarity. As this exercise becomes more and more familiar you are able to draw on all its benefits through even short bursts of sensory awareness, for just a minute or two.
60 Ways To Engage With Your Senses
Here are 60 ways to engage with your senses as you go about your day. Some of these suggestions are ones you can have going on in the background of your daily life. They will all help ground you to varying degrees.
However, to continue developing your sensory awareness you need to dive deeper than simply enjoying these practices. In order to reap the stress reducing benefits you need to become consciously aware of how they stimulate your senses, and allow the sense that’s stimulated to engage FULLY, just as you did in the Sensory Grounding Exercise.
Introduce any or all of them into your life to help stimulate your senses. Select any which resonate with you, and also include those that don’t, as they may well be the ones that lead to the greatest growth.
Notice when multiple senses are stimulated at the same time and maintain your awareness of each individual sensory response.
- Sing
- Laugh
- Chat with someone who listens
- Chew gum
- Eat quality chocolate/ ‘rough’ feeling food/ or sour
- Read a story aloud creating different voices for each character
- Breathe deeply
- Exercise. Move with measured slowness with tai chi. Dance
- Stroke a pet, especially cats, dogs and rabbits
- Wear really soft clothing, or silky clothing, or very rough clothing
- Bake, and breathe in the smells
- Cleanse your palate with lukewarm water between different foods
- Cook and enjoy the repetitive motions of chopping or stirring
- Walk through a scented garden
- Sit by a gurgling brook and notice the scents, the sound, the feel on your skin
- Dangle your feet in the water
- Grind coffee beans and then brew coffee
- Walk by the ocean, notice the smell, the taste and the feel
- Burn essential oils
- Go outside after rainfall
- Cook a curry, breathe in the aroma, taste the spices
- Paint. Focus on the colour and texture
- Create a collage from many different materials
- Try photography using different settings (not filters) to create different effects
- Daydream
- Read an actual book, notice how it feels, smells, or the sound of the pages turning
- Do a visualisation
- Sit outside with your eyes closed
- Listen to music with your eyes closed
- Run some water over your hands
- Cut a bunch of different herbs; run your fingers through the bushes, crush the leaves
- Listen to classical music and follow the sound of just one single instrument through the entire piece
- Take off your shoes and wriggle your toes in the sand
- Knead dough
- Go out in the garden and pull some weeds, get your hands dirty
- Close your eyes and listen to an old wind-up clock
- Sit or walk amongst farm animals
- Lean over the cooking pot and breathe the aroma in deeply
- Hang some wind chimes outside an open window
- Put down your phone and use your hands
- Knit or crotchet
- Work with clay, do pottery
- Doodle, or colour mandalas
- Have a massage
- Stroke your forearm
- Rub your feet gently
- Soak in scented bathwater
- Colour your plate with a rainbow of vegetables
- Stimulate your bitter taste buds with fresh endive, rocket (arugula), dandelion leaves, grapefruit, apple cider vinegar, Brussels sprouts, cranberries, chicory and others
- Hold hands
- Explore your world through a magnifying glass
- Smell your food or drink before you eat it
- Eavesdrop on a conversation in a foreign language
- Visit an art gallery and notice the detail in each work
- Sit around a campfire
- Whittle
- Squeeze a stress ball
- Notice the shifts in light and colour as a breeze gently moves the leaves
- Join a wine tasting class and discover what you smell
- Next time you’re a car passenger close your eyes and become aware of all the different sensory experiences
Discover about how your senses can indicate your psychic strengths in The 8 Clair Senses…Your Intuitive Psychic Senses.