Grounding Exercises, Do They Work?

Short answer regarding grounding exercises and whether or not they work is “yes, but.” I’ve learned that boiler plate, one size fits all grounding exercises do not work. Customized grounding exercises are extremely effective. The purpose of a grounding exercise is to help you get out of your head and back into your body and in the present moment. They also act as an emotional reset and distraction. They are also time limited. Something I help my clients with is understanding how the brain works and why all of the tools in the tool kit are time limited. The human brain loves sameness and works really hard to stay the same. The long you struggle with intrusive thoughts or an inability to move on from an event, the more your brain will fight against changing those thought patterns.

The human brain is amazing, and once you understand your brain and what works for you, the easier it becomes to build a tool chest for mastering your mind in a real way. The two biggest reasons grounding exercises don’t work are choosing an exercise that doesn’t fit your personality or using a specific tool too often. Finding a grounding technique that works for you is trial and error. For the first five grounding exercises, like with self-care, I start with the five senses. We all attach differently to our senses, and so grounding exercises that focus on each of the five senses can give us insights into which senses provide the powerful path for redirection and grounding. Choosing an activity that engages a single sense in isolation lets us rank the senses in order of most impactful to least impactful.

To learn which sense you attach most powerfully to, start with five different activities for each. For isolating a sense, you will need to block or limit activation of the other four. For example, visual sensory stimulus should not have any noise or touch associated with the activity. Looking at a variety of visual stimulus and asking yourself if any of them draw you in will help. Once we have the senses ranked in effectiveness and attachment, we can craft exercises and activities that focus on each sense and find the most powerful combinations of activities. The goal is to first derail any negative or unwanted thought process and then ground you in the present moment of safety. Once you have your strongest sense, selecting activities that engage that sense will work for you until it doesn’t. That’s why I advise having a variety of exercises. Our mind is as smart as we are, and we are trying to change its pattern. Having a variety of single and multiple sensory activities will increase the effectiveness of the grounding work.