The Balance of the Equinox: Grounding and Centering

The Fall Equinox, like its counterpart the Spring Equinox, is about balance; balance of light and shadow, equal day and night. At this time of the harvest, take time to reap the benefits of keeping yourself balanced through grounding and centering.

When grounding, you are physically and spiritually reinforcing your connection with Mother Earth and the forces of Nature; think of it as anchoring yourself to the earthly plane. When centering you are reinforcing your connection with the magick within you; think of it as drawing your consciousness, your center of power, into one place within you. You can accomplish both at the same time and I encourage you to experiment until you find the version that works bests for you.

Ideally, you will ground and center on a daily basis, along with your daily meditation. During meditation, you are naturally un-grounded, so grounding will help bring you back to the mundane. As you can see, these two practices go hand-in-hand. Daily meditation or grounding and centering may or may not happen for you based upon how busy your schedule is, so if you cannot commit to a daily practice, then make sure to devote some time once per week. Make sure to set the time aside and the results will be worth the work. Think of it like “muscle memory”; with regular practice you won’t need to “think about it”, you will be able to ground and center lickity-split when you don’t have the time to go through all the pomp and circumstance of ritual. Sometimes life throws you a curveball and you simply need to be able to react to it!

Prior to ritual, circle-casting, or a Pathworking, you need to take a few moments to rid yourself of the mundane and align your mind, body and soul for the task at hand. You’re connecting to the Divine and opening a channel to better listen to Them. Since ritual happens between the worlds, the mundane and the spiritual, your energies can feel scattered afterwards, so grounding and centering is just as important after ritual as it is beforehand.

Performing ritual can lead you to feel “spacey”, lightheaded or queasy because you may have too much energy in your body. There are many ways to “ground” the energy, just like with electrical systems, so that you can carry on with your day-to-day life safely. For those working in a group setting like a coven, grounding and centering can be a group activity as well as a bonding experience. The Priest or Priestess can hold a staff upright in the middle of the circle and each covener grabs a hold of it, imagining their excess energy flowing form them into the staff and into Mother Earth. You can eat or drink something, and this is why the “Cakes and Ale” portion of the evening always follows the closing of the ritual (note that for those that cannot or should not drink alcoholic beverages, you may simply substitute fruit juice and because it is a depressant, some practitioners restrict the use of alcohol to outside the magick circle). You may have noticed that when stressed, people tend to gravitate towards food, alcohol or cigarettes to “calm them down”. This is because as you are digesting the food or liquid; your body is concentrated on the process of digestion, helping to bring you back to the state of the physical. Please keep this in mind during your day-to-day mundane life so that you don’t overdo this form of grounding as it is all too easy to fall into bad habits that can lead to addictions. It is far better for you to take some deep breaths and ground and center so that you can calm down to make better decisions.

Becoming ungrounded can occur involuntarily during a traumatic experience and the spirit-energy of a person can partially leave the physical body. I can give you an excellent example of this from my personal life. This involved a man who after I broke off the romantic relationship, he became my stalker. One particular instance was terribly frightening to me and I became hysterical. I called my Goddess-son who told me to take some deep breaths and to calm down. At the moment, I thought that “calming down” was absolutely ridiculous, how could I possibly calm down in a situation like this? But, thanks to his help I did it, and thank the Gods I did, because after I stopped hyperventilating, I could actually make logical decisions again. I contacted the proper authorities, and in time I took my stalker to court where the judge instructed him to either leave me alone or to go to prison. Thankfully, my stalker was smart enough to not choose prison.

Grounding and centering isn’t just for ritual or emergency situations. You can also use grounding and centering when having a particularly stressful day at work. Simply take a “potty break” and while in the restroom you can employ one of the exercises given below of grounding and centering. Another option is that you could go outside and “get a breath of fresh air” to help calm your nerves and allow you to go on with the rest of your day. Perhaps while outside on a sunny day you could find a Dandelion, which aids in grounding and just as you did as a child, make a wish! And while your out there, you could also work in the garden, grounding and centering yourself while working the soil of Mother Earth. Copper, Smoky Quartz, Onyx, Magnetite, Black Tourmaline, Garnet and Hematite are items that are easily carried and an easy way to ground; carry a piece or two in your pocket or wear a bracelet so that you can tap into the grounding energies whenever you’re feeling scattered.

After ritual, you can employ a simple yet effective technique of grounding that involves either kneeling or sitting and placing the hands and feet upon the floor or ground. If sitting or kneeling on the floor is difficult for you, then simply kick off your shoes, place your feet flat on the floor and breathe out the excess energy through your feet and into Mother Earth. Either way, mentally connect yourself with Mother Earth and “pour” the excess energy out of your body into Her. You can also visualize the energy of Mother Earth entering your body and flowing through you just like electricity surges through wires and as it exits your body, it takes the excess energy along with it back into Mother Earth. If you are having trouble with the “electrical” visualization, try “breathing” the green energy of the Earth into yourself and exhaling the red energy of activity into the Earth, repeating your breathing as many times as needed until you feel relaxed. Either way, you are ridding yourself of any tiredness or negative energy along with neutralizing the excess energy.

Here are a few versions of grounding and centering, and I encourage you to try each one at least three times before moving on to the next one. Then, find which one that you like the best and perform that version for the next Moon (28 days). After that, construct your very own version that is a custom-fit for you and make it a part of your daily/weekly practice. Some people are naturally un-grounded; perhaps you can think of someone that you could describe as “flighty”, so they may benefit from these techniques as well.

Tree of Life Version

When performing this form of Grounding and Centering, you will visualize yourself as a tree with your branches reaching way up to the Sky and your roots reaching deep down into Mother Earth. Your torso forms the trunk of the tree which bridges the gap between the worlds, the physical (manifest) and the spiritual (unseen). Stand in a comfortable position, preferably a wide stance with your arms making the shape of a “V”. Your legs form the trunk of a tree and your toes elongate and transform into roots. Breathe in and out and with each exhale, “push” those roots deeper and deeper to the center of the earth itself. Now, with each inhalation, bring the energy of Mother Earth up into your very core. Then, shoot the energy up through your body out through your limbs and branches. Like the gentle breezes that rustle the leaves, breathe the energy back into yourself, again to your very core. You have essentially formed an Infinity Symbol or a Figure 8, and at the very center (hence the name Centering), the energy converges and coalesces into a magickal ball or unlimited possibilities. At this time you can “pull in” your roots and branches, becoming less of a tree and more of a human being by using your breath; inhaling the energy in and in until it is all within your body. When your awareness is no longer that of a tree and you are aware of your body and the room that you stand in, open your eyes.

Try this version at least three times before moving on to the next. Be sure to record your results!

Planting the Seed Version

Try lying on the floor and closing your eyes. Get comfortable and imagine that you are seed that has been planted within Mother Earth. Visualize your self going through the germination process; your roots form and dig deep within the Mother and your branches and leaves reach up higher and higher towards the Sun. When done, wiggle your fingers and toes, stretch and open your eyes.

Wheel of Light (Chakra) Version

Grounding and centering can also be done by cleansing, energizing and opening the Chakra centers. The Chakras are the seven major energy centers or colored spheres discovered in ancient India that are aligned along the spinal column of the body. Either sit in on the edge of a chair or standing the Goddess Position (making a “star” with the body, legs and arms in a “V”), keeping your spine as straight as possible while keeping your body both relaxed and comfortable. See a ball of white light above your head and one below your feet. Visualize the one above your head entering your Crown Chakra (just above the head, color violet) and the one below you entering your Root Chakra (at the base of the tailbone, color red). Continue to send the balls of light simultaneously down and up the spine, awakening the chakras and connecting them to the energies of the Universe; the Third-Eye Chakra (between and just above the eyes, color Indigo), the Navel Chakra (just below the navel, color orange), the Throat Chakra (the hollow of the throat, color blue), the Solar Plexus Chakra (at the Solar Plexus, color yellow), and finally meeting at the center at the Heart Chakra (the middle of the breastbone, color green). As the balls of light enter each Chakra, see the pure, white light burning away all negativity or blockages. Once clean, see each Chakra pulsing its color brightly. Once the two balls of light converge into one at the Heart Chakra, allow them to engulf the entire body with a brilliant bright white light to help keep the energies of the whole system in balance. To center, focus that energy into a condensed marble at one of the Chakras, the one that you feel is your personal power center where you will send out any raised energy. If in doubt, place the energy into the Heart Chakra so that any energy sent form there will be imbibed with the unconditional love of the Universe.

Boudicca’s Version

You will find that my version is an amalgamation of the above “traditional” versions, bits and pieces that I strung together into one that works best for me. This also involves me gathering energy that I will later use to cast a magick circle, so you may wish to also include this in your magickal workings.

I begin by facing East, standing with my feet lightly apart and my eyes closed. I breathe in and raise my arms over my head and touch my fingertips together. With my thumbs touching, I make the shape of a triangle, and inside that triangle, I form a ball of white light. Now separating my hands from each other, I pull the ball of light like taffy into a laser-beam of white light, glowing like a light-saber.

I hold each end of the “laser-beam” with my hands as if I were holding the grips of a bicycle’s handlebars. With each exhale, I pull the laser-bean through my Chakras, cutting through the meridian of my body, cleansing each Chakra, and “burning” it clean. Using the laser-beam like a cat uses its whiskers, I mentally “check-in” with each Chakra to see how they feel and if they need any extra attention. If one does, I spend extra time on it, giving it a good “scrubbing” like a frying pan that has stubborn residue.

Once I get down to my root Chakra, I “let go” of the handlebars, flatten my hands and “push” with my palms the laser-beam into Mother Earth, taking all the negativity and “dirt” with it. I then take my power-hand and draw a Banishing Pentagram upon the ground and “push” the star-shape through to the realm of the unseen as if I had just used a star-shaped cookie-cutter. I mentally sweep away any remaining negative energy from my body and “dispose” of it in my newly-made trash receptacle and when it’s all gone, I seal the passage up tight.

At this point I draw an Invoking Pentagram, another doorway to the astral, but this one is exploding with white light that comes bursting forth from it. Using my hands, I “grab” it and direct this “laser-beam” up through my Chakras, starting wit my Root Chakra and working my way up, one by one, activating them. Each one “explodes” open, and I see them as a colored flower that blooms awakened and its tendrils reach out to the Universe around me. Through the rainbow of colors I go; red (Root), orange (Navel), yellow (Solar-Plexus), green (Heart), blue (Throat), purple-blue/indigo (Third-Eye) and purple (Crown).

At the top and above my head, I see the white light shooting up and out like a fountain. This “fountain-water” of light shoots up, out and around me, enveloping me like an eggshell as I bring my hands up, out and back down to my sides. I now hold my hands out to either side of me, palms up, and I hold in each hand the base of a rainbow, holding all of the colors of the Chakras, and this rainbow arcs over my head.

At this point, I let go of the rainbow visualization, but I still hold my palms up. Now is when I gather all of the white-light energy and begin to condense it into a ball that begins like an enormous beach-ball and ends like a cantaloupe. Each time in inhale, the ball of light gets smaller and denser and I literally feel Goosebumps prickle my arms as I do this. As my center of power is my Heart Chakra, I breathe the energy ball of white-light in and out of it three times, changing the energy to pink and green. I mentally “tell” the ball of energy that it will later become my magick circle, but for now I will hold it in my Heart until it is needed. I “breathe” it in into my Heart Chakra once last time, open my eyes, and go about my magickal working.

Now its your turn

Now that you have all of these “seeds” that you have planted, choose which one(s) to harvest. Construct your very own method of grounding and centering and perform it on a regular basis. Bring this sense of balance into your everyday (mundane) life so you can fully reap the benefits!

Sources:

author: Boudicca Andarta