#39 Following Your Inner Authority and Grounding Yourself for Inner Balance

Have you ever ignored your gut feeling over something as simple as choosing a pizza? I'm learning that following my inner authority in even the smallest decisions count. (I'm a pure Generator in Human Design with Sacral Authority). Also, in this episode, we continue diving deeper into transformational practices and I introduce you to grounding techniques to restore inner balance. 

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About Tertia

I am a certified feminine embodiment coach and embodiment teacher.

In my private coaching and online programs, I teach you to drop from your head into your body so you can take your nervous system out of survive into thrive, clearing the way for you to live a life that fills you with joy and be guided by your inner knowing instead of outside influence.

I trust you found this episode helpful! It would mean the world to me if you could leave the show a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and share it with your friends. That will help me reach more people. If you have any questions about this episode, I'd love to hear from you, send me a message via the links above.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey everyone, and a very warm welcome to another episode of the Untamed and Embodied show. If this is the first episode in the series that you are listening to, then I would highly recommend you going back to the last episode, perhaps even the episode before that, to kind of orient yourself to where we are, the journey that I'm taking you on and this new series, the why behind this new series that I'm starting. So I wanted to kick off this week's episode, which is, incidentally, a continuation, about what are the practices and the tools that we can do to begin to transform our lives. What is it that you can do to start showing up as yourself, to heal those aspects of yourself which you have been told for so many years by so many people is wrong and that needs to be fixed? Once you heal that, you can start showing up as yourself, so that you can flourish, so that you can begin to create life on your terms, and, of course, this is what the whole series is about. So we're continuing with that. What I wanted to start off with is first of all say wow and thank you to the positive response that I've gotten so far on the series. It's reaffirming my belief that I am on the right track and that when we begin to live as our true selves, when we really allow ourselves to be seen, it makes a difference. It makes a difference in the impact that we create. It makes a difference in how we feel about ourselves. You know, when we go to bed at night, if we have allowed ourselves to be who we truly are, and so I'm experiencing that firsthand. So thank you very much for everyone who's given me that positive feedback.

Speaker 1: 1:55

Now, I had a very interesting experience over the past week that I thought I wanted to share with you, and it has to do with the decisions that we make, and I specifically want to share this with you because it got me thinking that even you know kind of the small decisions that we make. We think that it's insignificant, the small decisions that we make in life. But when we practice using our authority and our strategy and following our inner knowing on the smaller decisions in life, it makes it easier for us to use it when it comes to making those big decisions. And let me tell you what happened. I visited with a friend last week and we went for lunch to a pizzeria to have some pizza for lunch. And as I was looking through the menu, there was one pizza that jumped out. I just scanned through the list of pizzas and there was one specific pizza which I thought, oh yes, this sounds good.

Speaker 1: 2:55

But then I didn't stop there. No, I carried on reading and I saw what else they had on the menu and I started thinking about how these different things would taste. And then I decided on ordering a different kind of pizza. And while I was waiting for my pizza to be served, the lady at the table next door to us she had this original pizza which I wanted to order in the beginning, which I thought, oh, this is nice. And then I ignored my impulse. She ordered that and as the server brought this out to her table, when I looked at it I knew, okay, I did it again. I ignored that impulse, I ignored that. Yes, I'm a 3-5 sacral generator, by the way, pure generator. So my sacral gives me the response of a yes or a no. And then, of course, when my pizza came, it didn't taste nearly as satisfying, and I ate it and it tasted pretty good, but I was unsatisfied. It didn't hit that spot.

Speaker 1: 4:04

And, of course, a pizza is quite insignificant when you think about it. It doesn't really, you know, do much, but it's one of those small decisions that I'm talking about. So if we can begin to rely on that inner authority to guide our decisions and we practice on the small decisions that are safe and that won't, you know, land us into trouble or that won't risk us in any way that we don't want to be risked like ordering a pizza then of course it it sets you up and it allows you to hone that skill for when it comes to making the bigger decisions in life, and if we start making decisions on those small things in life, that, in the case of generators, that starts to fill us with satisfaction. It just lifts up your whole life experience to be one that is more satisfactory, right? So that was a very interesting lesson for me to learn. Is that, even in these small decisions was a very interesting lesson for me to learn? Is that, even in these small decisions, how impactful it is when, when we follow our authority in that, and also how easy it is to just dismiss it, how easy it is to just follow the mind when the mind starts talking. Because that's literally what happened with me is I had this physical like impulse, yes, and then my mind kicked in and I started reasoning with myself about why this was not a good option and why the other option was better. Okay, so that's enough about pizza.

Speaker 1: 5:35

The second thing that I wanted to speak to you about today in this journey of transformation, is about the practice of grounding. So last week we spoke about the practice of starting to keep a journal, and I wanted to just give you a little bit of a report back on that. Last week, I mentioned to you that this is one of the ways in which we illuminate some of our beliefs that we don't necessarily know are clanging around in our insights, and I also happen to land on a very interesting belief which I am now busy working with, and as we progress through the series, I'm also going to share with you how to start working with your beliefs. So practice number one is to start getting this journal to write. Now on to practice number two.

Speaker 1: 6:23

Practice number two is to practice the art of grounding. Now, this is something that I have been doing myself for many, many years, and it is a very powerful practice. So there are two types of grounding. The first type of grounding is earthing, where you literally go and connect yourself to the earth physically. You lie down on the earth, you sit on the earth, you walk barefoot on the grass, and there are some initial research being done about this. But if you really want to know the truth, there isn't so much empirical evidence that shows that grounding is useful or that it's beneficial, or that it heals your your immune system, or that it's good for your nervous system, even though I believe all of these things is what it does, and my, my perspective on these things is there are so many practices that we can do that there aren't necessarily empirical evidence that says this is a good practice. But you go do it in your own life. You go and try it out for yourself and you see if it works. To me, that is the only empirical evidence that you need. Go and try it, and if you see a positive result, then you know it works. Okay, so the grounding that I want to talk about is not necessarily the earthing grounding, but this is grounding that can happen through visualization, and it's also grounding that can happen through maybe drinking water or touching yourself. So we'll get into that a little bit deeper.

Speaker 1: 8:09

Now, what grounding does? The idea behind grounding is that it rebalances your body's energy centers and it rebalances your body's electrical charge. Okay, so if you think of the earth and this is how I imagine it you think of the earth. The earth has got a mostly negative charge and our bodies build up through our thoughts, through our lifestyle, through our just the modern way that we are being. Our bodies build up an excess of positive charge and this is not positive, negative, as in happy or sad, or good or bad, it's just the energy right. So our body builds up an excess of positive charge and by grounding ourselves, we can then use the energy of the earth and the healing ability of the earth to rebalance out our own energy. So it it's. It neutralizes our excessive positive charge in our bodies. Now the benefits that you can expect from grounding and this is what I experienced myself firsthand.

Speaker 1: 9:28

It also happens a lot when I'm working with my clients that you know, especially when we've done, when there's been like a big energy shift in their nervous system or there's a big belief that has shifted and kind of their bodies are and their whole system and their whole perspective is a little bit out of the way that it's used to being, then you can end up feeling a little bit lightheaded, you can feel a little bit disconnected, you can feel a little bit out of touch and almost like you're floating. So in these instances I always advise them to ground. We even do grounding in the session, and the way that I usually do that is by just letting them feel their bodies, because this is what grounding does right it brings us back into our bodies and it brings us back into the present moment. Because when we feel ungrounded typically, as I said, what happens sometimes with my clients and this doesn't only happen when healing happens, but it just happens as we go through life when you are ungrounded, when you're not grounded, you may feel a little bit floaty. You may end up like bumping yourself against things, you may feel a little bit disconnected from yourself and almost like you're not quite here, and so we want to come back into the body.

Speaker 1: 10:47

There are different things that can make us feel ungrounded. The first is, as I said, you know, when some shifts or some healing happens, that can make us feel ungrounded. Also, when we're triggered and our nervous system goes into fight, flight or freeze, that can make us feel ungrounded. And even if you are in a perpetual freeze state, let's say that there's like some long-term stuff that you're holding in your in your nervous system, in your emotions. You've got a lot of frozen tension stored there and as a way to like get on and to survive which is, incidentally, one of the things that that are so helpful about our nervous systems is, when things get a little bit hectic, of course we go into survival mode so that we can get through to whatever it is that needs doing. But if we stay in that state, of course it leaves us unresourceful in the long term and it might be that because of some experiences, some trauma, some things that you've gone through in your life, that you are in a perpetual free state.

Speaker 1: 11:52

And if that's the case, then grounding is also going to be a kind of practice that you want to get started with. One of the other things that grounding does is it reduces stress and it calms down your nervous system. I know for myself if I have had like, if the kids come home and they overwhelm me a little bit because they are feeling stressed out, I find that when I ground myself, then I transfer that energy over to them because I feel more resourced, because my stress levels reduce as I'm grounding myself. I'm also now sending out that energy to them and they pick it up from me so I can let us, all you know, calm down a little bit. So this is also very good if you are, if you're a parent or even in any, if you have any kind of relationship. If you are, if you know how to ground yourself, it's not only beneficial to yourself but it also gets expressed and flown out into the people that you are with, because, remember, our energies are always in contact with each other. Our energies are responding to each other. This is now different to the, the generator response. This is like the energetic response that we have.

Speaker 1: 13:17

I spoke about the nervous system already. So what it does is it when we ground ourselves. It allows that nervous system just to go out of survive mode and, of course, grinding on its own as a practice is not the only practice that you can use to calm your nervous system, to begin to regulate your nervous system, but it is a very powerful practice and, specifically, the way that I see how this works is, as we ground ourselves, we're connecting into the safety of the earth ourselves, we're connecting into the safety of the earth. Your nervous system goes, and this is my, my theory. Again, this is my experience, my empirical evidence, as our nervous systems go into fight or flight when that process doesn't get time to complete itself and we end up with this frozen tension inside of us. Tapping into safety is key, and so the earth provides. Mother Earth provides for us that sense of safety and stability that we can tap into, and this helps to calm down, bring down our nervous system so that you can be in a more resourceful state. That's why we want to do all of this, so to increase our own resourcefulness.

Speaker 1: 14:38

So I'm going to share with you now. I've spoken about it already, I've touched on some, but I want to just share with you some ways in which you can now practice grounding, seeing that you now know the benefits and why you want to do it. So I've spoken about earthing. This is the most obvious thing. I think that comes into mind when we speak about grounding is when you actually physically go outside. This, of course, is not always possible. You might not have access to that for whatever reason, but but if you ever have that access, this is great.

Speaker 1: 15:13

To walk barefoot on the grass. Just don't do that. If you are allergic to bees, then you have to wear shoes. So always make sure that you do this in a way that you still say stay safe, but being outside, sitting on the grass or just touching and touching the earth. The other type of grounding is more of the visualization type of grounding, and this is where you visualize roots coming out of your feet. So for that you can have your feet flat on the ground, you close your eyes, you just take a few breaths without changing your breath, but take a few breaths without changing your breath, but take a few breaths just to kind of bring yourself back to your breath, which serves as the anchor, and then you can imagine that there are roots coming out of your feet and you can send these roots down into the core of the earth. And then, once you get to the core of the earth, and then once you get to the core of the earth, you can just lock them in place there, click them in place there, and what you can even do is you can start to draw up some like visualize how you're drawing up healing energy from the earth's core into your body. Another visualization technique that you can use, apart from sending the roots out of your feet, is if you imagine that out of your, the base of your spine, like where your root chakra is located, you can imagine that there is a like a rope that comes out of there and you can even make it bigger. So imagine that this rope or root is coming down out of your base chakra and then you can make it bigger. You can even make it as wide as your hips, and that will really anchor you in as well.

Speaker 1: 17:04

So something that happens to me sometimes and if you have ever tried to ground yourself, you might even have this experience is I've noticed that sometimes it feels as if there is resistance, like my roots don't want to go into the earth. Sometimes I experience like even pain, I almost want to say pain. It's like painful to to send my roots into the earth for whatever reason. It might be like the top layer of the earth that I'm going through, or it might be something with within myself. And when this happens, what I've found to be very, very helpful you can do this if you've ever experienced anything similar to this is I breathe and I feel into the safety. I even have a little mantra that says it's safe for me to connect, it's safe for me to go in. There is safety here and I just breathe and I slow it down, like I slow it right down, allowing my energy cord to drop into the earth. And just as you with a with the roots out of your feet, just as you can pull the energy up through your feet, you can do the same through the root that's coming through your sacral or through your, your root chakra, I beg your pardon. So you can pull this in and at the same time you can even also send negative. If you feel that there's anything negative, if you feel that's anything that needs to be released, you can also release that into the earth. You can allow the earth to take that away for you and you can just send it out with gratitude towards the earth for taking that. So those are really two of the biggest ones walking outside and then using your own active visualization.

Speaker 1: 18:57

Now, I like to use this visualization technique usually in the mornings after I've done my yoga, and often, you know, when I'm sitting at my computer and I'm starting to feel, when I'm busy doing work and I'm starting to feel like a little bit disconnected, then I just root and ground myself again into the present moment Something else that you can do this is also advice that I give to my clients is to drink water. Especially after some of the healing sessions that we've done, or some of the embodiment sessions that we've done is again you might feel a little bit disconnected or lightheaded. So drinking water is again taking in the water of the earth. So that's another way in which we can ground ourselves of the earth. So that's another way in which we can ground ourselves and, incidentally, lying in a bath of water, it does wonders for your nervous system. So if you have a bath, then I will highly, highly, highly recommend shower as well. Of course showering is it also calms down the nervous system. Anything that we do with water calms down your nervous system. But in my experience I find a bath particularly relaxing because I can just submerge myself and I find that it really soothes me. And in fact, if I have had quite a tough day or if I feel completely, you know, all over the place, I find that every time when I have a bath I come back to myself. So that's a little side tip there for you to if you have a bath, to use it, but otherwise a shower works as well.

Speaker 1: 20:35

Then the final technique that I wanna leave you with and I'm just gonna explain what it is that I'm doing and that is to lightly tap your hands all over your body. So my hands are, I've got my palms open and I'm just lightly tapping, so you're not smacking yourself, I'm just lightly, lightly tapping myself. You can tap yourself here on the front of your chest. You can tap yourself like fold your arms, like you're holding a hug, hugging yourself holding yourself in a hug is actually what I wanted to say and just tap yourself, tap yourself on the back of your neck, and just light, light tapping motions. And what this also does is it just brings you into your body. Right, it's anchoring you back into the present moment, when you are in your body. When you are in the present moment, assuming that there's no danger, immediate danger in your outside world, you are always going to be safe. So that's the tapping.

Speaker 1: 21:32

Another tip that I can leave you with is to know if grounding works for you, to go and do your own empirical research.

Speaker 1: 21:42

This is something that I learned in my EFT tapping training and that is to like rate your the sensations, rate your disposition, rate your perspective, rate how you are feeling now and then do whatever grounding technique it is that you decide to use, and then rate how you feel afterwards and you'll begin to notice which of these techniques work better for you and which ones don't really make a difference.

Speaker 1: 22:11

So getting a before and after score is always very helpful with any of these kind of processes and tools, to see what really works for you, because, as we go along on this journey, what I'm basically what I'm sharing with you is all the things that I know work, all the things that I personally use, and within that there are different variants, and you can then see for yourself what works better for you.

Speaker 1: 22:37

Maybe some of the things that I share don't resonate with you, and maybe some of the things that I don't feel is as powerful for me, for example, but I still talk about them that might just be the medicine that you need. So I trust that you got what you needed from this episode and that this second life skill of knowing how to ground yourself is going to support you all the more in this journey that we are on in terms of unlocking your life force and living as your true self. I would love to hear how what I shared with you landed or any other insights that you have, or even questions that you have as a generator. I love it when I'm asked questions because that gives me something to respond to so you can connect with me. I'll put links for you in the description where you can connect with me. I really loved hanging out with you and I will see you in the next episode. Bye.