How does your body feel when you are spending time in the natural world? What do you find nurturing about being outside and connecting with nature?

You may remember from previous emails that I have been dealing with some serious, ongoing low back pain issues for some months now. I’m still working with my health care practitioners to find effective treatments.

Meanwhile, I find that sitting still to try to meditate or pray only makes the pain worse. Have you ever found that to be true?

Instead, I’ve been relying on technique called the 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Exercise to help calm my mind and body and nervous system and to help manage pain.

Grounding Exercise

This is an exercise I use with all my clients during their self-compassion mini-retreat I guide them through as part of their coaching program with me.

As often as I can I’ve been hauling my red reclining lawn chair off the deck into a patch of warm sunshine on my lawn and practicing this exercise.

The exercise is a countdown from 5 to 1 allowing yourself to fully be in the moment.

You can do this exercise inside, but I find it’s especially delightful to do outside in nature.

Take a few deep breaths to get settled then you can start:

• Find 5 things you can SEE around you.
• Find 4 things you can FEEL around you.
• Find 3 things you can HEAR around you.
• Find 2 things you can SMELL around you.
• Find 1 thing you can TASTE.

I invite you to take a few minutes to do this exercise.

What did you notice? Did you feel more present? Did you feel a calming sensation?

Recently after doing this exercise I took notes and wrote this little poem for you.

deep satisfaction

from my red chair
warm healing sunrays caressing my skin
deeply saturated azure blue sky above, lush kelly green carpet below
breeze gently blowing across my cheek
earthy smell of recently cut grass
tart scent of apples ripening on the tree
calling of the birds, scampering of the squirrels
distant sound of cars and traffic
back door neighbors practicing soccer kicks
“that was a good one!”
second time the ball comes over the fence
I retreat inside with a smile.

The beauty of this exercise is that you can do it nearly everywhere or anytime you feel a need to regroup and recalibrate your body in response to whatever is going on in your world at that moment.

This grounding technique cultivates mindfulness which is a proven strategy for managing difficult sensations and situations.

And, the purpose of grounding strategies is to give you tools to step away from spiraling negative thoughts or to detach from an obsessive focus on physical symptoms.

There are many types of grounding techniques you can use to nurture your nervous system. So, it’s a very useful tool for your tool box!