When life feels overwhelming, the mind races and the body tightens. You might find yourself lost in thought, replaying conversations, or worrying about the future. This is when grounding techniques become essential.
Grounding brings you back to the present moment, helping your nervous system reset and your body remember safety.
At The Somatic Psychotherapy Center, we often teach grounding as a first step in anxiety therapy. It helps clients regulate the body before diving into deeper emotional work, creating a foundation of safety from which healing can unfold.
What Are Grounding Techniques?
Grounding techniques are simple practices that help you reconnect with your body and the present moment. When stress or anxiety take over, the body can move into fight, flight, or freeze states. These automatic responses are the nervous system’s way of protecting you.
But when those responses linger, they can leave you feeling scattered, numb, or detached from yourself.
Grounding is a way to gently bring yourself home to your body – to slow down, breathe, and notice that you are here, now.
Why Grounding Works: A Somatic Perspective
From a somatic therapy lens, grounding isn’t just a mental exercise. It’s a physiological reset.
When you bring awareness to your body, breath, or environment, you are sending signals to your brain that you are safe. Over time, this builds capacity in your nervous system to handle more sensation, more emotion, and more life.
This process is deeply connected to embodiment – the experience of being fully present in your body. In somatic therapy, we often begin with grounding to regulate the nervous system before exploring deeper material. Clients often notice that with practice, their baseline of calm expands, and moments of overwhelm become easier to navigate.
To learn more about how this works in therapy, see our page on Somatic Experiencing, a modality that helps the body complete stress cycles and return to regulation.
Common Grounding Techniques You Can Try
1. Feel Your Feet
Stand or sit and bring your attention to your feet. Notice the contact between your feet and the floor. Feel the weight of your body supported by gravity. This simple awareness can instantly help you come back to your body.
2. Orient to Your Environment
Look around the room. Let your eyes land on objects, colors, and shapes. Name what you see. This signals to your brain that you’re in a safe space.
3. Use Breath to Reset Your Nervous System
Take a slow breath in through your nose and a longer exhale through your mouth. A long exhale activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps calm stress responses.
If you’re in a session with your therapist, you might notice how your breath changes as you feel safer. This awareness is part of individual somatic psychotherapy.
4. Use Touch or Temperature
Holding a warm mug of tea, washing your hands with cool water, or wrapping yourself in a blanket can bring you back into the present through sensation. The body feels safety through the senses.
When Grounding Becomes Difficult
Sometimes, especially after trauma or long periods of anxiety, being in the body can feel unsafe. In these cases, grounding may need to happen slowly, with the support of a therapist who understands the body’s survival responses.
In somatic therapy, we often work in micro-moments – noticing a breath, a shift of weight, or a single muscle releasing. Safety is built over time, not forced all at once.
If grounding feels challenging for you, it may be a sign that your nervous system needs support, not that you’re doing it wrong. Working with a therapist who is trained in trauma and body-based approaches can help make grounding accessible again.
The Long-Term Benefits of Grounding
Grounding is not just a quick fix. Practiced consistently, it strengthens your ability to regulate emotions, improves focus, and deepens your connection to yourself. Many clients describe feeling “more at home” in their bodies and more resilient in stressful situations.
Grounding also helps integrate the insights from therapy into daily life. Over time, it transforms from a tool you use occasionally to a way of being – a natural state of embodied awareness that supports every aspect of your wellbeing.
Bringing Grounding Into Everyday Life
You don’t need to set aside special time to ground. You can weave it into your day.
Notice your breath while walking to work. Feel the warmth of water as you wash dishes. Let yourself slow down before answering an email. Each small act of coming back to your body tells your nervous system, “I am safe.”
For many of our clients, learning to ground becomes a quiet daily ritual – a way to build resilience, presence, and inner calm.
FAQs About Grounding Techniques
How can grounding techniques help with anxiety?
Grounding helps interrupt anxious thoughts and brings your attention back to the present. In anxiety therapy, we often pair grounding with breathwork and somatic awareness to calm the body’s alarm system.
What if I can’t feel my body when I try to ground?
It’s common to feel disconnected at first. In somatic psychotherapy, we start slowly, focusing on small sensations or movements until safety and awareness grow.
Are grounding techniques the same as mindfulness?
They’re related, but not identical. Mindfulness involves observing thoughts and sensations without judgment. Grounding focuses more on reconnecting with physical sensations to anchor you in the present.
Can grounding help with trauma?
Yes. Grounding is a core part of trauma therapy. In modalities like Somatic Experiencing, grounding helps clients re-establish safety and reconnect with the body after overwhelming experiences.
How can I learn grounding with a therapist?
You can begin by exploring individual somatic psychotherapy with one of our experienced clinicians. Together, we’ll help you discover grounding practices that fit your unique nervous system.
Ready to Feel More Grounded?
If you’re longing to feel calmer, more present, and more connected to your body, somatic therapy can help.
We offer individual sessions in Brooklyn and Manhattan and online therapy across NYC. Reach out today to begin your process of coming home to yourself.
