Last Updated on December 7, 2024 by Olivia K.
Physical Grounding Techniques or Physical Grounding term is used to describe grounding activities that involve your 5 senses: Sight, Hearing, Smell, Taste and Touch. While the other 2 types – Mental and Soothing include mental and emotional activities. Physical Grounding is considered to be more common because you can actually physically “ground” yourself with the present moment.
Table of Contents
What is a physical Grounding Technique?
Physical grounding techniques are tasks or exercises that use your 5 senses and objects to help you regain control and relieve distress. The purpose of grounding techniques is to distance you from an emotional condition such as anxiety or anger and to reconnect you with the present moment.
How does Physical Grounding Work?
Unlike mental and soothing grounding techniques, physical grounding should involve a human’s 5 senses and some objects that can be recognized by those 5 senses. When you think of grounding, you might immediately think of stepping on the ground like actions.
Another explanation – when a person is experiencing uncomfortable emotional symptoms such as PTSD, anxiety, panic attack, dissociation, and others they get overwhelmed with emotions, start drawing negative images in their mind, fearing for the worst, having bad thoughts or start spiraling. All this takes that person away from their present moment that is safe at that time. Imagine that grounding would take that person back on the ground to the current reality, where the bad event that caused trauma is no longer there.
Not all the bad events are in the past. Sometimes we have to deal with stress continuously. It is very difficult to work on solving problems when being interrupted by anxiety, ADHD and other symptoms. But even here grounding exercises can help. During stressful moments grounding exercises help to refocus on the problems, cool down, take a break.
How to use 5 senses for grounding?
Let’s get more into the 5 senses: it is important to get the basic knowledge of 5 senses. It will help you to figure out what grounding techniques work best for you and create your own grounding methods. Let’s say you are googling for some grounding techniques but they are not suitable to do at some certain circumstances or you can not use some of the senses such as hearing or vision due to your health condition. Knowing how all the five senses work with grounding you can create your own ways to bring yourself to the present moment.
The senses that can be used for grounding
The main 5 senses are:
- Sight
- Hearing
- Smell
- Taste
- Touch
Additionally, there are some senses such as proprioception, equilibrioception, thermoception, nociception and others. I will not dive into their detailed description but will just mention that when your body feels something, it can also be used for grounding. For example it is widely used during meditation. When you are performing your body scan and analyze how your body feels – where your body parts are located, balancing when standing, feeling of being warm, cold, intense, relaxed or experiencing pain from physical exercises, injury or illness.
Interesting to read: Nociception versus Pain
Examples of physical grounding sorted by senses
I decided to break down physical grounding tasks and exercises by sense. It will be useful for those who prefer to use certain senses or able to use only certain senses. Please note, that one of the most popular and well known grounding exercises is called 54321 Grounding Technique, which involves all the 5 senses. I dedicated a separate page for it:
If you need help with figuring out the best grounding exercises, please contact me.
Sight
Look around
Hearing
Listen to birds singing
Smell
Smells in the kitchen
Taste
Taste something
Touch
Put your hands in water
I will be updating this page with more examples whenever I come up with more ideas. If you have great ideas for physical grounding exercises that worked for you, feel free to contact me and I will add them to this page or create a new page if needed (Let me know if you would like your name to be added as an author or you would like it to be added anonymously).
Attention! Please remember that grounding exercises can not replace medications or a doctor visit. If you think that you or someone you know is at risk please call 911, contact local emergency services, therapist or your doctor.
Frequently Asked Questions
References:
Medical Reviewer