Grounding is a (noun)

And to finish I wrote an article for Feldenkrais.com . May it bring you some bodily comfort :)

Grounding is a (noun)

“I feel grounded." 
The words spontaneously tumble out from the mouths of many as they stand following a Feldenkrais session.
For some it sounds as if they are connecting with a warm familiar feeling, for others it’s seems a reuniting with something precious they’d forgotten they’d lost, and for a few it’s tinged with forlorn musings as they follow up with the question, “Is this what I’m meant to feel like?!”
Feeling grounded is something Feldenkrais students, clients and practitioners know intimately and for me this sensorial embodiment remains one of the most delightful gifts I have been given from this method. 
However, over my years of teaching I've found that many use the word grounding as if it is a verb, as if it is something they need to actively do - and for some it’s a long to do list!; “Soften the knees, press the big toes into the ground, feel your feet like tree roots sinking deep into the earth, tilt the pubic bone up, engage the abdominals, shoulders down, put a hand on your heart and say the words ‘I am open. I am receptive.’” 

But grounding need not be a to-do list, it need not be a series of precisely controlled actions, and it definitely need not be a prefrontal cortical activity. 
Because grounding is simply the truth of being human on planet earth. 
Grounding is a noun. It simply is. Because whether we want it or not, we are grounded, it is an undeniable truth.

However I would be fool to not acknowledge that there is a quality of being grounded that is very unique to Feldenkrais. That there is something we do in our method that is special and incredibly supportive in developing our groundedness. And it still feels magical to me that in doing small, gentle, attentive movements - aka Feldenkrais - that when I stand I feel my feet solidly on the ground, I feel genuinely present in my body and I feel connected to the world with a human fleshiness that is both comforting and delicious. 

So what is going on?! 
How is it that this feeling of embodiment was not my normal state prior to discovering the Feldenkrais Method – particularly given it truly is just what is? 
And how is it that in increasing my sense of feeling grounded I feel more relaxed and more comfortable in my skin?

Let’s go adventuring together, and ramble through some of the scientific and the poetic…
In a 2018 study conducted by Matthias Brummer, Harald Walach and Stefan Schmidt, participants were given a private hands-on session, known as Functional Integration® sessions, to measure if this kinaesthetic experience of feeling more contact with the ground could be objectively confirmed. Amazingly what they found was that it is “visible through a larger area covered by the body and higher pressure, objectively measur(able)” meaning “this subjective feeling can be objectively confirmed(!!)”
One of the main premises of this study is “that the gentle movements of Functional Integration in fact relax muscle groups and the body over time” resulting in a quantifiable increase in the resting pressure of the person’s body on the bed. And what they concluded was that “Feldenkrais Functional Integration indeed relaxes the body.” 
Now, this study focused on Functional Integration but the experience we have in group classes is almost identical. While we don’t tend to use the word relaxation as Feldenkrais teachers, it is what our students say and it is how I feel, physically and mentally.

But it's often not clear that this relaxing feeling comes because as habitual muscular tension decreases we also find ourself more supported by the ground. And serendipitously the physiological experience generates a psychological sense of relaxation and groundedness too, for coupled with a more relaxed nervous system, we now inhabit our bodies more simply, with less conflict, less muscles activation meaning we need less glucose and brain activation to balance. This leads to us to feeling calm, steady, quiet and comfortable in our own skin.

And that's a good feeling!

People come to Feldenkrais with complaints of stress and tension but what they don’t always recognise is that this increased tension is linked with being less rested on the ground. Muscles work ‘against’ gravity to provide lift and erectness to our body but for many this lift is an effortful experience. Sometimes we are simply busy rushing from one thing to the next, sometimes we are holding ourselves together even when we’d rather just flop in a couch, or we are keeping our chins up in the face of conflict and smiling an effortful smile. When we reduce tension, when we can relinquish the effort of holding ourselves up, we are able to give our weight to the earth. This in turn allows us to relax even more as we feel the support of earth's dependability. It becomes a cycle in the best way! 

I work with ballet dancers, stage actors and soloist singers and finding their effortless centre is essential to their ease, execution and artistry. But like many, their sense of the vertical is very often compromised as they attempt to bolster their anxiety or to give an air of levity to their performance. But it is, as Moshe would call it, a ‘false vertical’ - and a tiring one at that.

Often however we are all over performing, going beyond true vertical and over-correcting our posture to the point of being off balance. As we become used to our version of upright we attune to this shape of 'where we are meant to be' and we experience the tension as normal. But it's tiring and conversely we are not letting ourselves be supported by the very parts of us so perfectly designed to take our load - the bones. 
Bones cost little to use. They demand virtually no glucose to do their job and they are organised perfectly in opposition to gravity. When we give our weight to our bones, which act as a conduit to the earth, we can be sure we are over our base of support, on our axis, centered and resting in our true vertical, and we can be sure we are using less glucose to do it!
When we were young we surrender to the pull of gravity while being held in a loving embrace by family and earth. This meeting, this bonding with the earth’s surface is something that supports us through our entire lives. Our infantile experience is one of being with gravity, being with earth, of simply being earth and gravity (for in our beginnings we make no distinction from it – we are our environment). 

As we grow we gain command of our muscles and begin to push against the earth slowly learning to apply force along the bones so we can move away from it, across it, into it, and in concert with it. We develop our muscular coordination through instinct, necessity and curiosity. But unlike animals who use more evolutionarily instinctive movements and who have a more ‘pure’ conversation with gravity, ground, bones, joints and muscles, we find over time our posture, gait and locomotion no longer simply respond to earth, and the biological and biomechanical laws of our planet but to the social constraints, demands and necessities of culture. 

Rather than being in a dynamic intimate conversation with gravity, ground and body we make a puppet of ourselves, dancing to the rules from a hundred, or a thousand years of orders. This puppeteering, this tugging is the very thing that makes us forget our ground. 
From what I sense in myself and what I see in my practice some people are bound with so many ‘strings', added slowly over years of obligation and conformity, exponentially following more and more directives, slowly giving up resting with and communing with earth, with nature, with true simple ordinary self, and our playfulness, whimsy, love and frolicking. 
In the story of Pinocchio we see him relinquishes his struggle against his puppeteer, and against his strings as he embarks on his journey toward maturation, albeit with the necessary wobbles of true learning. But through his own learning and as he connects with earthly feelings of tenderness, conflict, companionship, and love Pinocchio gets his wish to feel the delight of flesh, weight and earth, and he becomes real.
Perhaps we need to remember we are real. We are on this earth. We are living breathing beings. And with that give ourselves permission to be our ordinary selves. We are doing out best and at this tender age of adulthood perhaps we can give up being ordered around by thoughts from another time.
Cut those strings, remember you are grounded and learn how to move through life your way. 

And so to finish... I offer a simple awareness task. Try it daily. Maybe even put up a post it or set a reminder in your phone. 

Can you sense as you sit, lie or stand here the many strings that are tugging at you? The thoughts, the to do’s, the obligations, the should's, the tensions that pull you off your centre. 

Sense, locate, the tensions. 

Sense, locate, the thoughts that create the tensions.

What struggles, yearnings, orders, anxieties, obligations, tensions, strings you are willing to slacken, to give up, to snip, to fold away and let go of?

And then… can sense, locate, imagine, and remember your bones. Beautiful solid quite-achieving bones. And feel how you can adjust your body so you can give your weight to them? Can you find yourself balanced over your base, on your pelvis, on your feet? Not forward, not back, not left, not right, not up. Just here. Giving the weight of you to your trusty bones. Resting upon the earth. 

Maybe this feels like you are doing something, like I'm turning grounding into a verb. But if it is an action it is the action of giving up action, it is the action of pausing and resting.

And when you do this….. when you find your effortless centre, who do you find sitting here?
Who is the quite fleshy you that remains?

When I ask my clients what they give up they answer “Seriousness,” “Pushing myself," “Being everyones helper," “Being critical,” “Mrs Do!”
When I ask them “Who sits here?" they say “A more hopeful me,” “Someone who is relaxed,” "I feel more myself” “Someone I think I've forgotten.”

Grounding is not something you have to do, it's simply a truth to remember. 

But if there is anything worth doing it's simply noticing the tensions, the thoughts, the invisible obligatory strings that are keeping you suspended. And it's choosing to giving them up and instead giving your weight rightfully back to bones and earth. And it's being present to a human truth - you are always resting upon this earth. Ahhh what a relief.
 

Grounding is communing with the earth. Grounding is being here. 
Grounding is yielding to this ordinary beautiful life. 

*Brummer, Matthias & Walach, Harald & Schmidt, Stefan. (2018). Feldenkrais "functional integration" increases body pressure: a randomised-controlled experimental study.