Get Grounded

But not too grounded...

In Comfortably Adrift and Shake it up! I talked about the role of the body in our experience. This topic can be enormous in itself. But, for this article, I want to invite us to consider that the body is a gateway to a relationship with the Earth element, a concept introduced in It’s easy because it’s complicated. One beauty of elemental metaphor is that once there is a sense of the element in its primary domain, we can explore its qualities in all worlds: body, emotion, intellect, and will.

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Earth-I-ness

The Earth element is one of the four building blocks of our regular experience. It represents all that which is solid, receptive, stable, and enduring. It is the ecosystem on every level and the unfolding processes of nature — of life itself. Our physical experiences, especially taste, smell, and touch, are the most immediate ways to feel the Earth element.

Body

Harmonized Earth feels like strength, health, and renewal. It can look like stillness born of ease and contentment, like quietly enjoying a warm beverage while gazing at nature.

Imbalanced Earth feels like stiffness and sleepiness. It can look like stillness as a need to accumulate, like sitting on the couch all day eating junk food and binge-watching daytime TV.

Emotion

Harmonized Earth is a sense of grounded acceptance and patient resolve. It balances independence with community. It is generous and non-judgmental. It generates actions that consider the whole due to being deeply content. We can feel mighty, open, and so vast that we become fearless.

Imbalanced Earth feels lethargic, depressed, or apathetic. It can be a real struggle to get started with anything. Earth imbalances generate emotions that inspire us to over-indulge in things we find pleasurable, accumulate a lot of stuff, and avoid things that make us uncomfortable. We may sense that, in the grand scheme of things, it’s all so inconsequential and lose our connection to compassion and joy.

Intellect

Harmonized Earth is methodical and procedural. It recognizes the healthy patterns of balance, creation, duration, and destruction. We balance preparation and planning with the knowledge that we are well-resourced to face challenges. In this mode, we are open to many truths, curious, and interested in taking in all the details.

Imbalanced Earth is stubborn, rigid, and arrogant. It gets lost in the details, planning, and procedures and loses its flexibility and ability to take action. It can also become so passive and accepting that it no longer values intellectual rigor and becomes inactive.

Will

Harmonized Earth brings a quality of appropriateness, adjusting the cycles and rhythms of activity with the resources available.

Imbalanced Earth overcommits and underdelivers. It can look like a glut of activity in one direction, neglecting another. Some areas of life are fertilized and abundant, while others rot and decay, all without purpose.

You have, hopefully, developed a sense of what Earth is pointing to by the above descriptions. Perhaps even seeing places where Earth is a positive, harmonious element in your life and noticing other areas where Earth is out of balance.

Touching Earth

Here are some activities to get a feel for Earth-i-ness in your direct experience. Notice the quality and texture of the experience. Pay particular attention to whether or not these things feel natural to you. Do any of them create discomfort or an unsettled feeling? Or, conversely, does all of this feel so natural that you can’t imagine not doing it? Spending time with these activities can harmonize Earth in our system and highlight imbalances.

1. Dress in the colors of the season. Please pay attention to your accessories and adornments to notice the richness they add to your experience.

2. Select a task you usually do without thinking and pay attention to the steps involved. Methodically move through each part, savor the detail, and revel in the contentment that arises from a job well done.

3. Spend extra time making a nice meal; if possible, have a connecting experience over fine food with dear ones. Alternatively, linger over some small delight.

4. Get a massage or haircut. If that’s impossible, take some extra time to pamper and groom.

5. Spend time in nature, gardening, or walking through a greenhouse/botanical center.

Increasing Earth

If you’ve noticed that the Earth element is not particularly present in your experience, you can use the descriptions of harmonized Earth to create a little practice to act/feel/think/be more Earth-ly. Over time, this will have an impact.

As an essential support, lay down with your legs up a wall, preferably between 6 and 10 (AM or PM or Both). You may find it deeply uncomfortable, in which case, start with just one minute. If your hamstrings are very tight, move away from the wall or use a couch/chair to support your legs so the knees can be bent.

Give yourself at least 2 minutes to settle in and shoot for about 10 minutes. You’ll know when it’s time to get up if:

• After 2 minutes, you don’t feel some settling effect.

• Before 10 minutes is up, you become unsettled, and your mind is starting to spin.

Do not sit there for 10 minutes spinning, anxious, depressed, or running over the same trains of thoughts repeatedly.

If you can sit there for more than 10 minutes, settled and content, you are likely ready for other Earth-oriented practices.

Balancing Earth

This is a tricky topic because balancing Earth requires work in the other elements. As far as I can tell, we can not directly reduce any element; we can only engage in practices that bring harmony by adding other elements or, in some cases, releasing the excess.

That said, Earth is most directly balanced with Air. Air is directly explored in Float On: But not too high (available after 5:30 PM US Eastern on Nov. 3, 2023). By engaging in free-wheeling intellectual curiosity and expanding our perspectives, we lighten the solidity, passivity, and detached vastness of Earth-y qualities.

If you’re tracking in real-time, here is a simple Air exercise you can try until then.

1. Search for a topic on Wikipedia that you know almost nothing about.

2. Read the main article.

3. Drop into the rabbit hole by following at least three links and reading those articles.

4. Write down a summary of all that you learned.

5. Identify one new perspective or creative idea that emerged from your exploration.