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When blown about by life’s movement and strong winds of change, mindfully grounding can have a calming, stabilizing effect. Sensing only downward energy, however, can sometimes have a heavy, depressive effect.
In this guided meditation, led by Sean Fargo, we are invited into a state of balance by sensing two opposing energies. We ground down into the earth’s stability and support while also rising up into a dignified, spacious presence.
Listen in a safe, quiet place where you can be relatively free from distraction. Practice with eyes opened or closed, in a posture that balances comfort with alertness. May this meditation be of benefit to you in your mindfulness journey.
Find hundreds more guided audio meditations or download 200 meditation scripts to expand your personal practice, or to share with others.
There is great benefit to grounding practices, such as sensing into the body, the earth, and the connection between the two. But when we focus exclusively on downward-moving energy, we risk inviting in a sense of heaviness, sluggishness, or even depression. As practitioners and as teachers, we can mitigate this risk by partnering our grounding practice with attention to the presence of rising energy.
Many of us do this intuitively, at the start of our meditation practice. We often begin by settling on a posture that balances comfort with alertness. We can do this whether lying down, seated in a chair, or practicing on the floor or a cushion.
Later, throughout our practice, we can return to this sense of embodied balance as needed. For example, if we are feeling agitated or too caught up in our heads, we can bring more awareness to the downward energy of grounding. If feeling tired, dull or lazy in meditation, we might bring more attention to the rising energy of sitting up tall or breathing in.
The key to successfully working with energy in this manner is to practice. In this particular guided meditation, we do just that: We sense into the energy of both grounding down and rising up, noting what each feels like in our body.
With practice, we can then carry this embodied energetic balance into our day. When we sense we need greater stability, we can ground down, bringing awareness to our body or the earth. If we feel too much heaviness in the body, we can rise up into greater dignity or alertness. Still embodied, but with an uplifting energy.
When we are mindful of the energies that are present, we have greater agency over how we might use the body to maintain this energetic balance - even through life’s potentially destabilizing moments.
Learn more about grounding down and rising up, including how to practice and teach it, with the following free mindfulness resources:
About Sean Fargo:
Sean Fargo is a former Buddhist monk and the founder of Mindfulness Exercises. The online platform, which has shared free and premium mindfulness resources with over 3 million people worldwide, has now certified over 500 Mindfulness Teachers.
Sean is the lead instructor for the teacher training program, a unique self-paced approach which invites world-renowned mindfulness teachers to share their insights and experiences. Sean has taught mindfulness and meditation for corporations including Facebook, Google and Tesla and for health and government organizations, prisons and hospitals around the world.
