Grounding, Illustrated

Welcome to the second week of AND THE SUN, a newsletter about creative, artistic, and inventive approaches to meditation. Thanks for tuning in again.

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Last week I mentioned I’m working on a meditation book about authenticity. That needs a little more explanation.

Authenticity is a complicated idea, because it refers vaguely to many possible ways of feeling and many possible ways of behaving, circumscribed by the fuzzy criteria of “being authentic”. But what does that even mean?

A big part of growing to understand our own authenticity is noticing when certain motivations feel tense or tight, versus open and easeful. Throughout the writing process for both the book and the newsletter, I’ve been doing an authenticity practice where I ask myself: am I coming from an open place?

Over the course of the newsletter, this is a question that will crop up time and time again. We’ll explore various perspectives and approaches to authenticity, including this week’s focus on embodiment. If you want to jump head first into an authenticity practice, you’ll find a workshop below where you can do just that. Otherwise, read on for a fun drawing-based exploration of embodiment.

Want to try a workshop with Avery?

Avery is co-hosting a two-hour online workshop on September 28th with meditation teacher and attachment coach, Evan Leed. Avery and Evan will guide four short meditations to bring you into secure attachment, and to explore the sense of authenticity that naturally emerges when we feel secure.

We have discount codes for newsletter subscribers! Just reply to this email if you want to participate. 😁 

In my own embodiment explorations, I’ve had moments where I suddenly perceive that a certain emotion is “connected” to specific sensations in my body. One of the most prominent of these is the feeling of groundedness, which is connected to sensations in the lower belly, and the relationship between those sensations and our perception of the physical ground beneath us.

For the authenticity book, which spends a lot of time exploring embodiment, I’ve been experimenting with ways of introducing readers to grounding. Check out three experiments below! And at the bottom, a guided audio meditation for grounding.

I’ve noticed that sometimes I’ll feel my own body reflecting the bodies of people around me, and likewise with images and videos. For instance, if I watch a video of a martial artist, I will likely feel a sense of rootedness in my lower belly, down through my legs, and into the ground. This is probably an instance of mirror neurons doing their thing. These experiences inspired me to use sequences of images to convey grounding – and other embodiment ideas – through this same mirror mechanism. 

Below, I’ll show you three examples of this. Grounding has much to do with the lower portion of the belly, as well as the posture and tension of the body with respect to the ground. When you explore embodied grounding approaches, you’ll often come to notice that “resting into” the lower belly will enable you to feel “rooted” into the ground. The sensations really do make sense, eventually; even if the words can seem abstract.

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Example: The ground is staying right here

Suggested instruction: Compare the experiences of gazing at the figures in the first image and second images. I’d suggest spending 10-20 seconds on the first, then 10-20 seconds on the second, then back to the first. Is there any difference in what you experience in your body as you look at the different images?

Suggested instruction: Try the same with the second and third images. With the third image, try to allow yourself to really experience the ground as an entity offering assurance. In the third image, how does ascribing a sense of trust and reliability to the ground affect sensation in your body, or your emotions in general?

Example 2: Lower belly awareness

Suggested instruction: Glance through the images quickly (1-2 seconds total), noticing if the sensations in your lower belly pulse as your eyes move over the six images. Try this several times, maybe 10 or so. Does sensation in the lower belly region pulse as the orange orb gets bigger and smaller?

Example 3: Testing the connection to the ground

Suggested instruction: Spend 10 seconds observing each of the three images above. Pay attention to the relationship between the figure’s lower belly, the tendrils, and the ground. Notice how when the figure steps forward, the connection to the ground gains more tension and pulls on the figure’s lower belly.

Suggested instruction: Take it all in at once by gazing at the fourth image for 10-20 seconds. What’s happening in your lower belly as you take this in? Notice whether there’s a sense of being connected to the ground, from your lower belly, and how that feeling changes with the different images. 

In this exercise, we use “physics mirroring” to help cue sensation in the lower body. Physics mirroring is similar to body mirroring, except that instead of the sensations in our body forming a mirror to another person, the sensations mirror some physical event. In this case, our body sensations mirror the tension in the tendrils as they connect the figure’s lower belly to the ground. You can feel the belly sensations, but you might also feel sensations of the tension in the tendrils, the tug of the tendrils on the ground, and even the ground itself.

What’s cool about physics mirroring is we don’t even need anthropomorphic stimuli like stick figures to produce body sensations – we can use a wide range of media, such as the fantastic Lumus Instruments audiovisual installation I saw recently at NXT Museum, which employs sound and speed to create the feeling of force between two light pulses.

nxtmuseum

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I’ll leave you with a video of a talented dancer I follow on Instagram, James Olivo. I’m leaving it for two reasons. First, watching James move, you can feel the fluidity in his body. Nothing gets stuck when he moves; it all works together. This can help point us to similar experiences in our own body. The second reason I’m leaving the video is because the poem in the caption is quite relevant.

jameywamey

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This week’s guided meditation is a grounding meditation. It’s inspired by a grounding exercise I learned in a class with inimitable movement teacher, Julia Crockett. If you live in Los Angeles, do yourself a favor and take her class. (She’s occasionally in New York, too.)