4 Simple Ways To Stay Grounded, Present & In The Moment
ON BEING PRESENT
Since we’re here let’s take a deep breath in, holding at the top and then exhaling fully.
Take another deep breath in, filling your lungs and noticing where that breath is moving in your body. In your nose or chest. Maybe it’s your stomach or lungs. Take some time to breathe and notice the breath.
Focus your thoughts on your breathing, letting go of thoughts and expectations. Let your breathing be regular and just breathe. If you lose your focus, simply bring it back to this moment without judgement. Take a moment to settle into this moment. I’ll wait, go ahead.
“When we let go of our battles and open our heart to things as they are, then we become present in moment…Only in this moment can we discover that which is timeless. Only here can we find the love that we seek. Love in the past is simply memory and love in the future is fantasy. Only in the reality of the present can we love, can we awaken, can we find peace and understanding and connection with ourselves and the world…”
— Jack Kornfield, A Path With Heart
I recently heard someone say, “anxiety is living in the future and regret is living in the past.” For me these two quotes come together quite nicely. Sometimes I feel like I am the queen of anxiety and overthinking. Regret is a big one. Often (operative word here) while I’m driving I will remember something dumb I did five years ago, clinch my butt in embarrassment and yell, out-loud, at myself in the car, “Oh nooooo. Whyyyyyyy.” But in reality I know I am likely the only person in the world that remembers that it even happened. (Maybe. One time during some stupid game at a bar I forgot the name of the friend I came with and said the wrong one on accident in front of all her people. Pretty sure she remembers that — we haven’t spoken since.) I’ve never related to anything more than when I ran across this Instagram post the other day from author Adam J Kurts:
So I know I‘m not alone. It’s incredibly common, especially in our modern, connected age when we literally get hey look what stupid thing you were doing on this day 5 years ago reminders from Facebook every day, to have difficulty staying grounded and present.
But I keep coming back to this quote “Only in this moment can we discover that which is timeless. Only here can we find the love that we seek.” Whether through mediation or finding tasks that absorb you fully or just choosing to say no to the embarrassing memories of the post or worries about the future, we have to consciously choose this moment. This is not easy. We are programmed in a million ways not to do this. But consciously training the mind, and sometimes simply being aware that we are doing it, can make a huge difference. Nothing exists outside of this moment. The moment we are in is always the present. By choosing to keep our minds in the same space as our body we can actively increase our levels of contentment and even joy.
4 Ways to Stay Connected To The Present
It’s certainly not going to happen overnight, but there are a few things we can do every day to stay grounded. (None of these should come as a surprise or sounds unfamiliar.)
*I’m not even including this as one of the steps because it’s so obvious it literally hurts to even say it but, y’all, we gotta put our phones down. You want to disconnect from the present, increase anxiety, open yourself up to myriad crimes by people ready to take advantage of your inability to sense your surroundings and rot your eyeballs out of your head? Just stay on that thing all the time.
1. Get Grounded In The Physical Body With Exercise
Okay, dude. We get it. EXERCISE IS GOOD FOR US. But it’s so hard to create a habit out of. Why?! In his Master Class series entitled, “Rethinking Depression” for the app Calm (have you downloaded that app yet? … How about now?), Dr. Steve Ilardi talks about how we are biologically predisposed to want to conserve energy. Exercise is literally “unnatural.” We may have evolved as a species in many ways, but the body is slow to keep up. We’re basically still cavemen. Exercise for the sake of exercise is an insane concept to our old ass body brains — I just made up the term body brains but you know what I mean. But here’s the thing. Exercise is probably the easiest way to stay grounded. Have you ever done a bunch of burpees and during the 20th (2nd?) one literally EVER been thinking about anything other than how badly you want to not be doing burpees anymore? I’ll answer that for you. No. You have not. It grounds us to the very second we are in. It elevates happy hormones. It makes us strong. So what’s Ilardi’s suggestion? It’s a wild one. You ready? Find exercise you like. Have you tried rock climbing lately? Yoga? Hiking? Primal movement (prepare to sweat just watching that one)?? Competitive laundry folding? Good lord forbid you try dance 😱. Find what works for you, be brave and try something new.
2. Connect To Your Breath
If you’ve ever been to a yoga class or downloaded a meditation app (you’ve all downloaded Calm now right?) you’ve probably heard someone say, “connect to the breath” or “focus on your breathing.” It’s a great way to stay anchored. B.K.S. Iyengar (yoga god and stretchy-person-extraordinaire) said, “Regulate the breathing, and thereby control the mind.” When we actively choose to focus intently on the breath we can shut out the world around us. Inhale. Exhale. Lose focus, bring it back. Inhale, exhale. Lose focus, bring it back. Inhale exhale lose focus bring it back. If you’re uncomfortable leading your own meditation session find a local restorative yoga class (I teach four a week at different YMCA’s in Nashville) and go flop around on a mat for an hour while someone leads you through it.
3. Eat Grounding Foods
Yup. You heard me right. You get to eat. Grounding foods according to Ayurveda (the healing science closely tied to Yoga and basically the older, Indian version of traditional Chinese medicine) can help us find center, bring us back to Earth and keep us focused. So think literally: rooted. Potatoes, parsnips, carrots, garlic and onion are all great foods for promoting a present, focused mindset. Also all of those things sound amazing together as a soup, so, there you go. You’re welcome.
4. Find Gratitude
When that spiral of anxiety and regret begins drop to your knees, find the closest scrap of paper or gently used paper towel and that pen that barely works and gets all over your hands and start writing frantically. Gratitude improves physical and psychological health, promotes better sleep and can make us feel better about ourselves. It’s true, Forbes said so. It’s hard to be grounded when all we can think about is that jerk that did that bad thing three years ago. It’s easier to be present when you’re listing out all the incredible things about your life (even if it’s just that “burritos are real and I can eat them whenever I want”). Gratitude journaling is the best and you can find tons of them with prompts for those days when you just literally cannot. The one I use is called, “The Grass Is Green Enough” and was gifted to me by a friend one Christmas with the disclaimer that “it was something she thought I would like, not a suggestion that I needed to calm the f* down and show a little gratitude…”. You decide. Thanks, MORGAN! Seriously though, it’s one of my favorite journals ever.
Does this connect with you? What are you holding on to that you could let go of. What battles are you fighting internally that are keeping you from the present moment? Are you more of an embarrassing moment dweller or future anxiety worrier?
Staying present means we can let go of that which no longer serves us. If you want to take it even further you could try something crazy like deleting your Instagram. Show yourself some grace on this journey. Crafting awareness is half the battle.
Elizabeth Moore is a health coach, yoga teacher, home cook and co-founder of MooreNutritious a health and wellness company located in Nashville, TN.
