Here’s what happened – we’ve all been through a collective trauma and for some of us that trauma hit very close to home and became personal trauma. There has been little to no guidance for any of us though, on how to begin the healing process in order to transition back to our NEW normal. Because the truth is that nothing will ever be the same for any of us again. This experience has changed us and now it is so important to become grounded so we can process our feelings, integrate the experience so we can learn and grow from it and in doing so, boost our individual and collective resilience. 

What is grounding? Mindfulness is the practice of staying present to whatever is happening in the moment without judgement and grounding is the process of helping our bodies and mind stay in that present moment. Grounding helps us come back in to our bodies when we’ve lost touch with the here and now and our thoughts create fear and anxiety in us.  What does being ungrounded feel like? In her new book “Tending to the Sacred”, Ashley River Brant describes being ungrounded as when “we are unfocused, easily distracted, anxious, disconnected from feeling pleasure…” These states of being ungrounded can manifest in each of us in any number of ways including:

• Dizziness, feeling spaced out, light headed or a floaty feeling
• Having difficulty concentrating
• Forgetfulness, forgetting appointments or other important things
• Misplacing or losing things
• Feeling generally unwell, totally lacking energy, waking up feeling tired and drained
• Continually daydreaming
• Having increased sensitivity to light and noise
• Feeling over stimulated and jittery
• Bumping into things or other general feelings of clumsiness
• Getting lost while driving, even when you have a GPS, you just can’t seem to go the right way, even when the area is quite familiar to you.
• Having out of body experiences without meaning to and feeling that they are not within your control
• Being unable to carry on a normal conversation, including losing track of what you were saying

The antidote to all these uncomfortable experiences is to get grounded! “The practice of grounding is to bring our energy back down into our bodies and the Earth, creating roots that anchor us in this physical reality. When you are grounded, you are present and rooted in your being, as well as connected to the essence of who you are and how you are authentically aligned to show up in the world” explains Brant.  She recommends a daily grounding practice that she suggests “can strengthen intuition, maintain healthy boundaries, fortify the aura, balance emotional energy, promote clarity, build confidence, reduce stress and anxiety, help you sleep, boost motivation affirm your purpose and trust and even cultivate better posture as you stand more rooted in yourself”. 

There are many ways to practice grounding but the most fundamental is to breathe. Breathing, slowly, deeply, mindfully signals to our brains that we aren’t actually in danger and allows us to come back to our bodies in a way that feels safe. Using our five senses is a powerful and researched-supported way to foster this sense of safety and groundedness too.  Try this 5-4-3-2-1 grounding exercise: slowly and deliberately place your feet firmly on the ground and breathe; intentionally and steadily. Then, using your gift of sight, describe five things you see in the room you are in right now. (for example, “I see my dog snoozing and my house plants, etc.”). Next, name four things you can feel (“my feet on the floor” or “the air in my nose”). Now, name three things you hear (“traffic outside”). Name two things you can smell right now (or two smells you like) and finally, notice one thing you can taste in your mouth (remnants of the coffee you had earlier perhaps). Now, pause and get curious. What do you notice after this exercise? Do you feel more quiet, more centered, more you? If this feels good and you’d like more, try these calming and grounding activities too:

1. Get into nature. Feel the sun and the wind on your skin and smell the fresh aroma of the outdoors. 

2. Move your body in any way that feels good for you – walking, running, biking dancing, yoga – and focus on what your body feels like as it moves. 

3. Connect with animals or children, both of whom are skilled at being present and grounded. 

4. Rest… get more sleep and take a nap. 

Resources:

Brant, A.R. (2021). Tending to the Sacred: Rituals to Connect with Earth, Spirit and Self. Sounds True, Boulder Colorado.

About Michelle

Michelle is a mother, a partner, a friend, a spiritual seeker, a psychotherapist and someone who enjoys connecting with herself within a mindfulness meditation practice. She has a BA in Communications and Humanities from the University of Colorado and an MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling with a concentration in Mindfulness-based Transpersonal Psychology from Naropa University. Michelle’s practice, Soul Care Counseling, offers mindfulness-based practices that support clients seeking to become less anxious, less stressed, less reactive and more grounded, present and connected with their own inner ally. As a result of their work together, clients are able to communicate with themselves and others with greater clarity, care and compassion.  https://soulcaredenver.com/

At one point, you both experienced and expressed love for each other, and felt, on some level, satisfaction with your romance and relationship. Something about it worked. Maybe you liked how he was with the children. Maybe you liked how she was always there for you when you were down and feeling needy. 

There are often things outside of us that draw us together; needs we need to be met, like laughter, companionship, staving off boredom, parenting help, financial partnership, being connected, and feeling loved. 

Now, maybe your children have grown up, maybe you are both financially successful, you have close friends who make you feel connected and understood, you’ve worked through past traumas, and feel secure with who you are in the world. Maybe the relationship you once needed to work, doesn’t really need to work anymore in order for you to function highly. 

Not all breakups have to be messy, disastrous, intensely emotional, disruptive, financially draining, or even difficult. This post is for the amicably uncoupling couple, two people that are ready to dissolve a unit that once met their needs, in order to move on to the next stage of their lives and cater to new and evolving needs, needs that you may be just becoming aware of. 

Separateness is not the enemy. Separateness breeds independence, and independence fosters the subtle strengths of resilience and knowing one’s true self. Separateness is not loneliness.

Here are my questions for you and your partner.

Amicable uncoupling occurs most naturally when certain conditions are met, which include open & honest communication, transparent intentions, resentment mitigation, clear guidelines about the process, and a “do no harm” model of thinking and action. 

Are both of you ready to do this? 

Have you communicated thoroughly and decided that uncoupling is the best course of action for both of you? 

Has there been honesty in your interactions and intentions about moving forward?

What does it mean to uncouple amicably?

What do you want your separation to look like?

How can you do the least harm to one another during this separation?

What are the guidelines for communication between the two of you going forward?

What are your fears regarding uncoupling?

What are your hopes?

How can you make this easier on each other? On yourselves?

What are your non-negotiables in terms of the process of uncoupling?

What is this relationship dissolution based on? 

Is there any lingering anger and/or resentment that resides between the two of you? 

How do you plan to work on your anger/resentment before you uncouple?

What are your individual priorities regarding this process?

Do you think a therapist could help you work through these issues effectively?

While a majority of couples arrive at therapy during the last phase of their relationship in an attempt to mend what feels broken, many couples nowadays are coming to therapy for help with the facilitation of the uncoupling process. Therapy can prove to be an effective means to streamlining an often confusing, overwhelming, and lengthy process. 

You don’t have to go through this alone.

Sonya Som, MA, MFTC, LPCC: Life is about the choices we make and the relationships we foster, both with ourselves and others. I would be honored to walk alongside you in your journey, and form an alliance through which you can honor your own decision making process and understand where your choices truly come from. I would like to help you move meaningfully through life, with awareness, compassion, and empathy. I am a couples and family therapist in training, and use an integrative and collaborative approach to problem solving and goal reaching. I provide services to individuals, couples, teens, and families, all in the hopes of getting you to where you want to be.

Contact Sonya: 303-416-6542; sonyasomtherapy@gmail.com; SonyaSomTherapy.com

A presidential inauguration is just one type of ritual among many. This post invites readers to consider making ritual a regular part of our everyday lives, wrapping the small, quiet moments of life in sacred meaning and creating a space where the soul waits. “Ritual maintains the world’s holiness. Knowing that everything we do, no matter how simple, has a halo of imagination around it and can serve the soul enriches life and makes the things around us more precious, more worthy of our protection and care.” These are the words of Thomas Moore, from his book Care of the Soul: A Guide to Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life, which inspires us to consider that the soul has requirements for thriving, one of which is ritual. Making ritual accessible is the invitation here, which begs the question; what are the basic ingredients for creating and honoring the sacredness of our daily lives through the practice of ritual?

I spoke with Boulder psychotherapist Merryl Rothaus, MA, LPC (see bio below) about this idea of the basic ingredients for creating ritual. She’s an artist and a believer in the healing potential of ritual and has been practicing the art of ritual with clients and in her personal life for years. In our recent phone conversation, Merryl shared with me what she believes the basic ingredients for ritual might be… remembering that there is so much freedom in it for each of us to explore for ourselves too. 

Intention

Merryl suggests that the first ingredient is to have an intention to make something in your life sacred or special. This could be as simple as intentionally setting a beautiful table for yourself for dinner each night or lighting a candle in the morning to illuminate your day. The options are endless… allowing intention to imbue our daily activities with focus and meaning is the point. Intention also helps us bypass the psyche and move out of the mind. Ask yourself… what do I want to welcome in to honor this moment or this activity? And how do I want to show up in it?

Witnessing

The next ingredient is to bring a spirit of collaboration to the space we intend to create. This means having an understanding of an I-Thou relationship, or as Merryl says “to invoke something outside ourselves… a Thou such as Mother Earth, the land, our ancestors, Spirit, God… there’s a witnessing component that is important here, because we are not alone. It’s important to remember and connect with the unseen realm”. Get quiet and ask yourself who or what would feel helpful to ask to join you in this ritual? 

Action

The third basic ingredient is to take an action. This can be, as suggested earlier, as simple as lighting a candle. Doing so creates a threshold or a bridge, beckoning us to cross from who we’ve been or who we are into a quiet space of not-knowing. In the language of mindfulness study, taking action signals a time to be still and step into presence. Merryl points out that “Ritual, brings presence, it is absolutely not necessary to be present already before engaging in ritual…  the ritual itself can infuse us with presence and connect us with life energy”. With this in mind, what action would feel meaningful to you in order to signal the start of your ritual and offers the possibility of stepping into the Now? Traditional options include burning incense, reading something meaningful, spending time in prayer, honoring a keepsake and connecting to the energy of it or simply sitting in silence. 

Author David Richo says that “a ritual enacts a newfound consciousness, making its deepest reality proximate and palpable. It sanctifies the place we are in and the things we feel by consecrating them to something higher than the transitory”. Try it yourself… explore how incorporating daily rituals opens up possibility and “newfound consciousness” in your life. 

Resources:

Moore, T. (1994). Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life. New York, New York: HarperPerennial.

Richo, D. (2002). How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving (1st ed.). Shambhala.

Merryl E. Rothaus, LPC, LMHC, ATR-BC, CHT, is a licensed psychotherapist, a registered and board-certified art therapist, a certified Hakomi therapist, and a Somatic Experiencing and Brainspotting practitioner. She is also a dedicated Meditation Practitioner and a Shamanic Practitioner. She is currently working on a book about her journey and attempts toward motherhood and what it is like to be a “Mother Without Children”. You can learn more by visiting her website https://www.merrylrothaus.com/ or by following her on Instagram @merrylrothaus.

Michelle is a mother, a partner, a friend, a spiritual seeker, a psychotherapist and someone who enjoys connecting with herself within a mindfulness meditation practice. She has a BA in Communications and Humanities from the University of Colorado and an MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling with a concentration in Mindfulness-based Transpersonal Psychology from Naropa University. Michelle’s practice, Soul Care Counseling, offers mindfulness-based practices that support clients seeking to become less anxious, less stressed, less reactive and more grounded, present and connected with their own inner ally. As a result of their work together, clients are able to communicate with themselves and others with greater clarity, care and compassion.  https://soulcaredenver.com/

~ Mark Nepo

For years I attended a church that offered an annual end of year ritual, a burning bowl ceremony. The event invited participants to release anything that felt important to let go of – unhealthy thought patterns, limiting beliefs, ego stories of limitation and lack – from the previous year. Each of us would release our stories by writing them out onto small pieces of paper and one by one we would give them over to a flame that would burn away our individual, perceived limitations as part of a collective experience. As we left the burning bowl, while witnessing the flame and smoke carry our words toward the heavens, we were handed new words… an affirmation for the new year. It was astonishing how appropriate, personal and powerful those seemingly random words could be. The ceremony always left me with a feeling of lightness and hopefulness for a fresh start.

With all that we’ve all been through this particular year, and as 2020 comes to an end, I invite you, dear reader, to engage in your own burning bowl ceremony (safely, of course).

And I’d like to suggest including an additional step to the letting go process I described above. Before writing anything down, take some time in private to sit quietly and center yourself. Become present and open, and cultivate a spirit of kind heartedness and compassion for yourself as you begin to reflect on the last twelve months. What was your unique journey over the course of 2020 like for you? What did you lose, what did you gain, what did you learn, what surprised you, what challenged you, what felt easy and okay, what felt impossible, what made you laugh and what made you cry? Allow yourself to grieve the disappointments, frustrations, uncertainties and sadness that you might be carrying as a part of the unprecedented events of the last year.

Grieving is a process and grief rituals have been relied on throughout human history to help us manage and navigate the weight of loss in our lives. Author David Richo, in his book How to Be an Adult in Relationships, recommends these four steps as part of creating a grief ritual; acknowledging, abolishing, renewing and giving back. We might incorporate these steps in our end of year mindful grieving ritual like this:

1. Acknowledge what happened this past year, pandemic and all, and allow yourself, with the same kindness and compassion you would offer a friend in pain, the opportunity to write about your experience and how you were impacted by the past year. Without judgment, use your own words to describe what the year was like for you.

2. When you’re ready and feel complete, abolish your words by burning the pages that you’ve written, perhaps even gathering the ashes and sprinkling them into the wind or onto your garden. Do this mindfully, by being fully present to what you are letting go of and why and how it no longer serves you. 

3. Renew your commitment to the now by being present to any expanding awareness or healing release you notice in this process. Notice anything positive that emerges too. Is there something you learned or a strength that surfaced that you want to carry forward with you into the new year? If so, have an intention to tend to it and build on it. 

4. Look ahead and decide how you want to give back and make your own healing a part of our collective healing. For me, the energy of a new year feels like a blank canvas or a box of brand-new crayons or even a tiny seed… all filled with potential and creative possibilities. What seeds will you plant in this newly tilled garden? What do you want to grow and expand in you? What do you want to come alive in your life? What will you choose for yourself and offer with love to the world?

Words have power… Don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements teaches us that “the word is a force, it is the power you have to communicate, to think, and thereby to create the events in your life”.  Working with your words, with the stories that you tell yourself about the things that have happened to you actually gives your brain and body instructions on how to operate physiologically. Current research in the field of self-compassion shows us that the brain does not know the difference between our negative internal dialogue and a triggering conversation with another person. BOTH elicit our threat response and release stress hormones. Letting go of words that limit and embracing words that empower and inspire is part of the science AND magic of the grieving process and the burning bowl ceremony. These practices offer us the chance to choose how we want to move forward into a new year… what we can release and let go of and what we want to carry with us. 

Resources:

Nepo, M. (2000). The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have. San Francisco: Conari Press. 

Richo, D. (2002). How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving (1st ed.). Shambhala.

Ruiz, D. M. (2018). The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book). Amber-Allen Publishing, Incorporated.

Michelle is a mother, a partner, a friend, a spiritual seeker, a psychotherapist and someone who enjoys connecting with herself within a mindfulness meditation practice. She has a BA in Communications and Humanities from the University of Colorado and an MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling with a concentration in Mindfulness-based Transpersonal Psychology from Naropa University. Michelle’s practice, Soul Care Counseling, offers mindfulness-based practices that support clients seeking to become less anxious, less stressed, less reactive and more grounded, present and connected with their own inner ally. As a result of their work together, clients are able to communicate with themselves and others with greater clarity, care and compassion.  https://soulcaredenver.com/