From the Summer 2008 Schedule

"I feel so grounded" 

Yesterday afternoon I worked with Louise, a client whom I have known for several years.  

Louise was just coming home from a business trip. For a week she had been driving constantly, calling on customers, some of them unhappy, eating unfamiliar food, and sleeping in unfamiliar beds. Her back was killing her. 

I asked Louise to walk back and forth a little so she could feel and I could see how walking was. She was bent forward and to the right because of the pain. Then she lay down on my padded table, and I worked with different parts of her looking for the clarifications and releases that would make her feel better. In particular I worked through her feet. Some big breaths let me know that all was going well! 

As we were drawing to a close, I asked Louise to stand and notice how she felt. As she stood, she was easily upright, enjoying her full natural height. And, besides that, there was something remarkable about her feet. I looked down at them. They were regular feet, but it was as though there was an atmosphere of heaviness around them. They looked like they had smoothed out. It was even as though they had grown roots. Louise looked down at them, too, and then at me and said, “I feel so grounded!” 

What happened?  

It’s the benevolence of tension antidoted. Tension uproots us. It draws our sense of self  UP  -- into thoughts and feelings, many of them worrisome. In being so absorbed, we lose attention for the rich sensations of physical life. The body goes on, functioning only at its lowest level, mechanically.  

The first fact of our physical life is that we live in a field of gravity. As tensions recede, there is room for that truth to come into awareness. And then, a lively feeling of connection and stability returns. The feeling is, in itself, wordless. But it can be expressed in the words, “I’m grounded.”