Alternative Medicine 4:
Grounding, a Key to Preventative Medicine

Continued from the previous page

Being grounded and staying grounded is a particular challenge to us in this day and age where we have moved so far from a more basic or agrarian life style, where the rising and setting of the sun and the changes in the seasons were once critical aspects of our existence. Now with artificial lighting, high-speed transportation, highly processed and artificial foods, and exercise being just an option versus an essential part of life, we find that we have been removed from a lifestyle that once necessitated our grounding and connection to the rhythms of our planet.

So being grounded, like exercise, has been reduced to an option that we must choose to actively seek versus simply being automatic from our way of life. In fact, there are many environmental factors (from our man-made environment) that actually keep us from being grounded. These include our computers, televisions, various modes of transportation, food additives and the "fall-out" or "pollution" that comes from each, as well as many more modern day factors besides these. Our lifestyle has been so condensed or sped-up that we no longer have the opportunity to breath, relax and just be unless we actively seek to do so, meaning that we have to actively seek to be grounded.

The following is a fun exercise that clearly demonstrates aspects of being grounded. Stand with your eyes closed and picture yourself being a feather in the breeze gently floating through the sky (like the image with which the movie Forrest Gump started and ended). Then have a friend or family member give you a gentle push or shove and notice how easily you loose your balance. Then close your eyes again and picture yourself being a stout tree with strong roots going deep into the earth that wrap around rocks and cling tightly to the soil. And again have the same person give you a gentle push with the exact same force as before and notice how difficult it is to loose your balance. In both cases have this person push you after ten or twenty seconds so you donât know when it is coming, as you are simply focusing on your image (feather or tree). You could choose either image without saying which one until you have been pushed (as a sort of "double blind test").

Obviously in the above exercise the feeling of being a well-rooted tree is your example of feeling grounded, and the feather in the breeze is your example of feeling ungrounded. And in either case (feather or tree) the results only lasts as long as one is concentrating on that image. With all the patients I see in my practice, I teach a technique that uses one's own healing life-force to ground to each of the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels of one's being. For this aspect of being grounded on all these levels can actually be palpated or felt by well-trained hands or seen in the aura (if one has clairvoyant abilities). And unlike visualizing oneself as a tree, this method will last or continue on well after you have done this visualization, as it will integrate with aspects of our own energetic anatomy.

Being grounded is the very first step in self-healing, for when we are grounded we are more aware, and we need this awareness to know where we need healing and to see more clearly our issues. This allows us to be more specific in our self-healing, as the more specific we are the more effective we can be in our healing process. If we are going to spend the time and energy to work on ourselves, we might as well be as effective as possible and thus most efficient with our time. Being grounded in such a way tremendously helps so that a given treatment is much better "absorbed" by the body, "as water is by roots" (i.e. the treatment is much more effective). And we are also then less susceptible to disease process. Thus we begin to understand the importance of being grounded as part of good preventative health care.

David Malin, DD, PT resides in Telluride, Colorado and has been practicing various forms of Alternative Medicine since 1977. He is the creator of Body Math™ which is a Multidimensional Approach To Healing for the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual bodies ; and developed ESR-Inner Opening Technique™, a profound procedure for catalyzing multidimensional change (ESR stands for Endo-nasal Sphenoid Release - an internal manipulation of the sphenoid bone in the center of the head). He currently spends most of his time consulting and teaching around the world.