Finding Your Foundation: The Art of Trauma-Sensitive Grounding

Why grounding practices are essential for nervous system regulation and embodied presence

Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.
—James Joyce, Dubliners

We live in a world that can seem designed to lift us right out of our bodies. Between endless notifications, racing thoughts, and that general sense of "too much, too fast," many of us spend our days feeling like we're floating somewhere above ourselves— half present, and not quite here.

If this sounds familiar, there's nothing wrong with you. Your nervous system is actually being quite intelligent. It’s helping you cope with a pretty overwhelming world by doing what it does best—getting you out of harm's way. The only problem is that getting out of harm's way can mean getting out of your body entirely.

We miss a lot when we live disconnected from our bodies. Deeper contact with ourselves is what allows deeper contact with others and the world. When we can sense from the core of our Being, we unlock our creativity, authentic self-expression, and capacity for deep connection. All of our most beautiful qualities—our compassion, wisdom, joy, strength, and more—can be felt deeply in the core of our Being. And we need to actually be there to discover them.

Grounding practices are essential for all of that goodness that comes with embodiment. What I love about this work is how surprisingly natural, easy and effective it can be. The best grounding practices don't demand that you suddenly "drop into your body" or force yourself to try to feel something when you don't. Instead, they meet you exactly where you are right now—scattered, anxious, or perfectly fine—and offer a pathway home to yourself.

And it’s important to note that not all grounding approaches work for everyone. If you've tried meditation apps that tell you to "just breathe and relax" while your nervous system is screaming "absolutely not," you know what I mean. For those of us carrying trauma, developmental wounds, or anxiety, we need practices that honor the wisdom of our protective patterns while gently inviting us back into embodied Presence.

The Upward Movement of Stress and Anxiety

You know that feeling when anxiety hits and suddenly your "heart is in your throat"? That's not just poetic language—that's your nervous system literally lifting you upward, away from your foundation. It's like your whole Being is trying to levitate out of a situation it perceives as unsafe.

Stephen Porges' Polyvagal Theory gives us a beautiful framework for understanding this: when our nervous system detects a threat (real, imagined, or remembered), we move out of what he calls a ventral vagal state—that lovely place where we feel safe, connected, and genuinely present. Then we move into states of fight/flight or shutdown.

Skillful grounding practices can be a gentle invitation back to a place of safety. Not through force or willpower, but through the kind of Presence that says, "Hey, it's okay to be here. You belong in this body, in this moment."

And the more we can be deeply grounded in Presence, the less anxious we’ll feel when unconscious feelings emerge. The transformational work of developmental coaching can really accelerate when we deepen enough to allow something new to surface.

Starting Where You Are: The Presence Anchor

In my coaching practice, which draws from the Aletheia Coaching methodology, every session begins with establishing a Presence Anchor. I love this practice because it's so beautifully respectful of wherever your nervous system happens to be today. And people are often surprised that just a couple of minutes of grounding can make a significant shift towards a more calm and centered starting place.

1. First, orient to your outer environment. Take a few breaths and look around. Find something that brings a sense of groundedness, support, and safety in your body. This might be a favorite object in your room, a tree outside, or the sunlight streaming through a window.

2. Now turning inwards, take a few breaths and feel a sense of grounded support and safety. You might close your eyes, if that feels comfortable.

3. Where do you feel this sense of groundedness most strongly in your body?

4. What do you sense there?

5. Take a few breaths and feel what’s there. Notice the feeling of support. This is your internal Presence Anchor, and you can return to it whenever you’d like.

While some coaches and therapists frame a Presence Anchor as a place for their clients to come back to if they feel dysregulated, there’s another way to hold this practice that I learned from Richard Miller of iRest Yoga Nidra. We can continue to weave this feeling of groundedness in throughout a coaching session regardless of how we feel. We continue to practice grounding because we feel a sense of ease and well-being. We’re building resilience. This capability becomes more available anytime and anywhere. Sometimes for no reason at all other than it feels good.

Some days you might not be able to find as much of a sense of safety and ground. That's important information! When this happens, it often signals that your nervous system is in a protective state that needs some extra care. Rather than pushing through, we might shift to another nervous system regulation practice like breathwork, or simply acknowledge that right now is not the time for deep somatic explorations.

Trauma-sensitive grounding means knowing when to gently invite our feelings to be deeply felt, and when to honor the intelligence of protection. Both are valid. Both are exactly what's needed. Listening deeply to the body and practicing self-compassion will give us the wisdom to proceed in a skillful way.

Foundations All the Way Down

While there are countless beautiful grounding practices out there, there's one that I return to again and again with clients: Judith Blackstone's "Foundational Grounding" from The Realization Process. What I love about this practice is how it recognizes that we have multiple foundations in our body—not just our feet, but our pelvic floor, the bottom of our chest, neck, and even our head.

What a beautiful idea from Judith’s grounding practice: every part of your body has a bottom, a foundation, that you can settle into and rest. Try this out using the video below. You might close your eyes at first, and practicing grounding with your eyes open can help you bring this into your daily life. At the end of the practice, you might try inhabiting your whole body, and resting in all of these foundations at once. Sometimes it can feel like the areas of the body that aren’t as grounded can actually learn from the areas that are already stable and present.

Listen to the guided Foundational Grounding practice:

This meditation takes about 5 minutes, and clients can have significant shifts in how they relate to their bodies by practicing regularly. There's something about feeling your foundations that creates space for qualities like ease, steadiness, and a deeper sense of well-being to arise. If you try the practice out, I’d love to know how you like it!

Living This Work (Not Just Practicing It)

The real transformation happens when grounding begins to weave itself into the rest of your life. I encourage clients to do a practice like Foundational Grounding or establishing a Presence Anchor before important conversations or meetings. They do this because they feel the difference—everything becomes easier. Once you start to feel the difference, you may look forward to integrating grounding practices into your daily routine.

When you're grounded, decisions become clearer. Connection is deeper. Conversations are more authentic. That overwhelming project at work becomes manageable. Grounding is a superpower!

The Paradox of Feeling Everything

This might seem counterintuitive: grounding practices aren't about avoiding difficult emotions or achieving a state of permanent calm. Actually, it's quite the opposite. When we're truly grounded, we develop the capacity to feel more—more joy, yes, and also more sadness, fear, anger, and everything in between.

There's a principle I learned in Aletheia somatic work that I love: feelings are meant to be felt. Our emotions carry profound wisdom. When we can actually feel our feelings fully, that's a portal to where our truth, beauty, and goodness lives. This is also how we develop genuine steadiness and resilience—not by avoiding what's difficult, but by learning we can be with it. The more we can let go and ground, the more easily feelings flow all the way through and are released.

When you're anchored in your body, you can let that wave of sadness wash through you without drowning. You can feel anger without being consumed by it. You can experience joy without needing to grasp onto it. When we expand our capacity to be with what’s arising right now through grounding, we’re creating more space for the full spectrum of human experience.

An Invitation to Come Home

Here’s something to ponder: What if the journey toward embodied Presence isn't about getting somewhere else, but about learning to be with what's already here from the ground of our Being? One of the most wonderful questions from Aletheia Coaching that invites grounded Presence is, What if nothing is missing?

When we can truly let go and let things be as they are, without trying to fix or change them, there’s space for something new to unfold. Not through effort or improvement, but through a kind of relaxing into what wants to emerge. What a delightful paradox!

The ground is always here, waiting to support you. Your body is here, breathing. And Presence? Well—you don't have to earn it or perfect it or do it right. Feeling grounded allows you to let go and remember that Presence is always already here.

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If this resonates and you're curious about exploring the benefits of somatic coaching, I'd love to connect. I offer a trauma-sensitive approach that honors your nervous system's wisdom, and that creates space for the next beautiful step to unfold. When we feel truly safe to be ourselves, the remarkable becomes possible.✨