Grounding & Centering 101

Written by Alexandra Aragon

"Now and again, it is necessary to seclude yourself among deep mountains and hidden valleys to restore your link to the source of life. Breathe in and let yourself soar to the ends of the universe; breathe out and bring the cosmos back inside. Next, breathe up all fecundity and vibrancy of the earth. Finally, blend the breath of heaven and the breath of earth with your own, becoming the Breath of Life itself." -- Morihei Ueshiba, founder of Aikido*

It is easy for anyone who is sensitive to get overloaded by excess or negative energy, or in the case of empaths, overwhelmed by energy that is highly charged with emotions that are not the empath's own emotions. Grounding is a basic technique used in most energy or magickal work that assists in shedding the negative or excess energy and allows you to stabilize your own energy levels. There are many techniques for doing so, and not all of them are visual in nature.

Many magickal methods consider grounding (and centering) to be a prerequisite, in order for your mind and thought patterns to be as stable and calm as possible before beginning any energy-based Work. Even psivamps need to ground occasionally (even if it's not as often), to prevent that "disassociated" or "floaty" feeling one can get from skimming energy off large groups of people.

WHY GROUND?

"Consider the ebb and flow of the tide. When waves come to strike the shore, they crest and fall, creating a sound. Your breath should follow the same pattern, absorbing the entire universe in your belly with each
inhalation. Know that we all have access to four treasures: the energy of the sun and moon, the breath of heaven, the breath of earth, and the ebb and flow of the tide." -- Morihei Ueshiba*

Some say that your energy is "cleaned" of the negativity before you get it back, others say that you swap outing) and others say to use your hands. I say, try whatever seems to work. Don't limit yourself to something that may not work for your energetic systems, feel free to experiment.

For the purposes of these steps, I will use the earth as a stable energy source. Feel free to substitute whatever you consider to be a more reachable stable source if "earth" doesn't feel right to you.

Step one:
Relax. Unclench your muscles, and bring your attention to the "here and now".

Step Two:
Connect to the earth. Whether you visualize a silver cord, roots from your feet or whatever is up to you, as long as you connect with it.

Step Three:

In an energy-based form of an "oil change", send the negative or excess energy into the earth and, if necessary, exchange it for clean energy that has no negativity to it. You can cycle this a few times, or you can just do it once, whatever you feel is necessary.

An example can be like flushing water through a hose - the good energy goes in one end, and the bad energy is flushed out the other end.

WHY CENTER?

"The key to good technique is to keep your hands, feet, and hips straight and centered. If you are centered, you can move freely. The physical center is your belly; if your mind is set there as well, you are assured of victory in any endeavor." -- Morihei Ueshiba*

Centering is a way to gain self-awareness and learning what parts of the energy surrounding you is yours. This allows you to pay attention to your personal energy center, sometimes called your spiritual center, and gather all of your energy in one place instead of leaving it scattered all over. This is an energy-based "pull yourself together" method. Think of it like finding the most defensible room in the castle, the place where, once you go there you can't be forced out.

Step One:
Sit in a comfortable position and just breath in and out until you're relaxed. This isn't exactly a meditative or Zen-like state, just relaxed.

Step Two:
Mentally go through your body and imagine yourself. What part reminds you most of you? What part feels most strongly like "YOU"? That inner self is your personal center. It's location in your body may vary - For a lot of people, it's somewhere around the heart or gut regions, but it's not always the case.

READY? GROUND...CENTER...SHIELD!

"Iron is full of impurities that weaken it; through forging, it becomes steel and is transformed into razor-sharp sword. Human beings develop in the same fashion."

-- Morihei Ueshiba*

Once you have grounding and centered mastered, you have a firm base on which you can build shields. Many people learn shielding without stopping to building their personal base - they may not notice a problem in day-to-day living, but if they do any esoteric Work, they may find that having a stronger base upon which to build shields is imperative.

Shields can also work to keep your personal energy "spikes" from affecting others. Think of it less like battle armor, heavy and martial, and more like, a polite social gesture - like brushing your teeth or wearing
deodorant. You may think your personal scent is nifty, but other people may not favor your morning breath or your stinky pit stench. It's the same thing with energy. Personal shields will prevent your energy from spiking out at people who may not want to interact with it.


Step one:
Ground yourself as described above.

Step two:
Center yourself as described above.

Step Three:
Now construct your shields. If you've done it right, you should feel shield and center-point lock together, with the grounding point like a spike or anchor from you to your stable energy source. This should NOT
feel like it's "draining" you in any way - you should feel recharged instead, and a proper shield should help reinforce your energy body, keep you healthy and well protected. Work on it until you've got it locked in;
then, barring accident, you shouldn't have to reinforce your shielding save when you need to take it down for whatever you're doing, or bulk it up if you're working in dangerous areas.

*Quotes are from “The Art of Peace”, by Morihei Ueshiba (1883-1969), founder of Aikido. Excerpts from “The Art of Peace” are published in a number of places as open source on the internet.

Spiritual Chakra Meditations

Your current aim as you start to meditate is to learn how to slow the physical vibration or frequency deep within your body. Many people do not realise that their chakra centres are far too exposed, and they are accepting or collecting vibrational patterns in conflict, these vibrations are both high and low. So often times these patterns are disorganised and untidy, and so frequently the seven layers of the physical emotional intellectual astral etheric celestial and the ketheric are abnormally increased, especially in intensity for their physical parallel. Therefore, the outcome is that they lure slow frequency forces, energy if you will that remain within their personal sphere. If you hurl yourself headlong into meditation, you will speed the whole process up. Directly rendering special stress on your organs that are too slow to cope. This then places too much stress on the chakras already in a place of conflict, which then raises the internal discord of your body. By slowing your physical vibration to a slow-paced more natural frequency than you typically use, you ease the tension and pressure that you put on your muscles.

Anxiety stops being manufactured by your biochemical processes, so you relieve the burden of any stress or mental suffering. You can now get rid of the dark sultry energy forces right away that hang on in the various chakra centres of your body. Therefore, staying within your auric field as a whole, and removing the subliminal fragments of the act of thought interference from your auric space.

Slowing your frequency or vibration?

When you start to slow your vibration, you need to sit with your back in alignment, so that your weight is balanced centrally. In order for your chakra centres to be well aligned you, need to settle any issues of bad posture.

Focusing on your breathing

Focus on you're breathing; starting with inhaling and exhaling in a balanced rhythm. It doesn't matter if you inhale for a beat of three and exhale for a beat of three, or you inhale for beat of five and exhale for a beat of five. It all depends on your own lung capacity, and what makes you pleasurably comfortable when you to breathe in a balanced rhythm. One of the most important factors now is to achieve an awareness and appreciation of a balanced breathing rhythm. Use your visualisation technique to take your awareness, all the way down to your base chakra, slowing your vibration down even further.

Now transfer yourself into the main part of this meditation exercise your vibration will intuitively arise again. Only now, your chakra centres are resonating in harmony, instead of being in discord.

In place of one individual chakra taking up all the slack for the idle one's you now have a team effort.

Breathing rhythmically should become natural to you, to slow your vibration at the beginning of all the principle meditations.

Drawing down the white Light

The stronger your visualisation the greater the significance when you bring down white light. Now start by visualising white light that courses freely like a liquid down through each of the seven main chakra centres mentioned below: The Chakra's are the centre of spiritual power in body, they are the vibrational centres of our bodies.

* The Crown Chakra: This is the ketheric layer
* The Brow Chakra: The "Third Eye" is the celestial layer.
* The Throat Chakra: This is the etheric layer.
* The Heart Chakra: This is the astral layer.
* The Solar Plexus Chakra: This is the mental or intellectual layer.
* The Spleen Chakra: This is the emotional layer.
* The Root Chakra: This is the physical layer

Now that you've found a cosy position and now that you've found you're natural balanced breathing rhythm, and you're slowing down your vibration. You can now visualise the white light flowing down like a mountain waterfall through your crown chakra. Your crown chakra is the highest vibrational point within your body. White light should always be brought into your body through your crown chakra.

Visualise pure white light coursing freely like a liquid down through each of the seven main spiritual chakra centres:

Visualise the white light

Visualise the white light coursing like a liquid through the crown chakra. Visualise white light coursing like a liquid through the third eye. Visualise white light coursing like a liquid through the throat chakra. Visualise white light coursing like a liquid through the heart chakra. Visualise white light coursing like a liquid through the solar plexus chakra. Visualise white light coursing like a liquid through the spleen chakra the sexual centre. Visualise white light coursing like a liquid through the root chakra. Visualise your spiritual chakra centres as being a hollow infrastructure, then as each one fills up with liquid white light. The liquid white light coursing into that chakra and as it does use your awakening perception to inhale breath into that chakra. As you perform this visualisation the chakra centre will become warm and in due time hot.

Now that it is hot you will now know that the chakra centre is completely full with white light, and it's time to move on to the following chakra centre.

Most people haven't done this before, so take time to practise this feel and become intuitively aware of the vibration. The white light has a smooth languid sensation as it courses freely through each chakra centre. By now all your chakra centres are full and they should all be coupled into each other, with an influx of white light.

Anchoring yourself into the earth

The roots of a large tree spread deep underground, anchoring the tree into the earth, use your creative visualisation to imagine roots, going down from your body plunging into the depths of the planet and spreading out, just like the roots of that tree. Envision the prominent bulky roots extending downwards below the surface, broadening from the base of your spine. These roots are the essence that will, enable you to draw into your body the positive frequency of the mother earth. You are now beginning to feel the awareness of a reaction from the planet deep below the surface coursing into your space. As this occurs, you visualise the bulky roots that are beginning to entwine with the waters inside the planet's core, these waters represent the unconditional love, healing the rarefied energy of the Earth.

As your roots entwine with the Earth energy use your senses to experience the awareness of unconditional love. Drawing the Earth energy into your roots, visualising the rainbow of colours spreading upwards flowing languidly into your physical body. The colours black and white are what is needed if you consider that both black and white are a continuous distribution of coloured light.

Every colour vibrates at its own aural and visual frequency, whichever colour rises into your physical counterpart, is the healing colour that you need at this time.

Progression in your meditations

As you become more adept at your meditations colours will change as your vibration changes. Working with meditation exercises that entwine us with the Mother Earth gives us strength, entwining with Mother Earth promotes our healing energies that are beneficial for you. This exercise of embedding yourself creates an anchor to Mother Earth before you begin any meditation work.

Anchoring yourself and learning to access white light at the same time

Envision a budding rose still waiting for the impetus of food from Mother Earth. The rose waits patiently for the sun to help it germinate. When you bring down white light through your crown chakra, you entwine with the higher principle that also resonates with the sun. So in essence you become the most central and material part, you become that rose.

Bringing white light down through your crown chakra through the top of your head and you anchor yourself at the same time as you entwine with the essence of the Father's energy of Heaven that is represented by the white light, and the essence of the Energy of Mother Earth.

When you do this you merge the essence of Mother and Father, integrating these energies you are neither male nor female, neither father nor mother. You now consist of two integrated parts of the aspects that are best for you at this particular time.

The meditation used here is to obtain a positive focus to transmute and free any unwanted slow frequency energy forces. That collect within your inner and outer auric space, the auric space which most people call the aura, encompasses the body in the shape of an oval. The oval that surrounds your body should be even in shape, and it should spread out to about one metre equidistantly. The outer auric space that is the buffer zone, lies beyond that. This zone usually prevents negative energies and energy interference entering your auric space, unless you are in good health.

This zone spreads out to about five metres around your aura and the zone make up the entirety of you auric space. The average persons auric space would be six metres in all directions. However, there are a lot of people out there with an auric zone of less than thirty centimetres. If they are ill there may be no protective zone at all!

There may be distortion so when astral entities contact or touch the outer sheath of your auric wall, entities move in with relative ease. It is then that entities are capable of causing harm. The colour black as used here in this meditation is the sum total contains all the colours of the wavelength and stands for balance, wholeness and power.

It's unfortunate that the general feeling about the colour black is negative, people think black is cheap it appeals to the mass taste and is regarded as being of lower in quality. People have been taught that black implies disgrace, it's wicked and sinister and is something that causes great agitation and anxiety, by the expectation or the realisation of danger. The fears about blackness have been exaggerated by minds that should know better.

The fact is that black as a colour is warm and is restorative in nature, its vibration is also slow compared to that of white light.

So if you use black constructively, the structure of any atoms can be rearranged. Therefore, by using black in a constructive way, you can actually rearrange any atoms that might be carrying a negative charge.
How To Do A Spectroscopic Healing Meditation
Align all of your chakras by sitting with your back straight. Slow down your vibration by taking a few deep breaths, then bring white light down through your crown chakra, let it flow like a mountain waterfall into your heart chakra, then anchor yourself into the Earth.

This meditation carries the white light into your heart chakra at this point, at this point white light enters your heart chakra a major signal, is released which will circulate around the body. This creates a stabilising energy from the heart centre, if there are any problems in any of the lower chakra centres, the energy from the heart centre the full vibrational sequence of your body can be raised.

Drawing the black restorative energy up from the feminine essence of the mother Earth and into your roots, the roots of a large tree spreading deep underground, anchoring the tree into the earth, use your creative visualisation to imagine the roots, going down from your body plunging into the depths of the planet and spreading out, just like the roots of that tree. Envision the prominent bulky roots extending downwards below the surface, broadening from the base of your spine.

Even if the energy does not flow freely upwards, use your in-breath technique to carry the black vibration up through the prominent bulky roots that you have visualised, through your feet. Your awareness of the harmony and the restorative powers of which black represents are now coursing into your body. Visualise your the black energy flowing into the lower part of your body, visualise the restorative powers flow into all the major organs.

As the black restorative powers flow though you body, symbolise the nature of any irregularities of any aches and pains, problems of a physical or an emotional nature as a piece of ice, all the warm black energy to wash over it like the rise and fall of a tidal current across a sandy beach. Visualise the restorative black energy high up in your body.

Now move back to the white light coming through your crown chakra and increase the white light by indicating to your higher self that you are ready now to receive more energy.

Identifying that you have a profusion of white Light energy materialising, and swelling above your head. As the white Light increases, feel it coursing through the crown chakra and down through your body like sea waves coming into an estuary. This washes all the black energy out of your body and out of your auric space.

This entire exercise sequence of bringing black energy up, filling your body, absorbing any irregularities, and washing it out with white Light should be done three times to be safe. You may feel an accumulation of intense warmth in your heart centre, as the white light increases. You might feel the intense warmth in your hands as they rest over, or close to your heart chakra. You may also feel a sensation of gentle warmth gradually develop through your body, beginning at the base chakra centre and moving up into heart chakra and your body might become intensely warm.