Welcome to this episode of Aphantasia Experiments! In today's episode, we dive deep into the concept of grounding and its impact on our mental and physical well-being. Join us as we embark on a 30-day challenge to ground ourselves and explore the science behind it.

Throughout this episode, we discuss various techniques and exercises to help you stay connected to the Earth and tap into your intuition. We share personal experiences, including a powerful moment of realization during a yoga class and prophetic dreams in Cuba. We also explore the importance of the root chakra and its role in grounding ourselves.

But here's the twist – our host, Robin, faces a unique challenge due to aphantasia, a condition that affects their ability to visualize. They explore different grounding methods, including visualizations involving roots growing into the earth, but are searching for a way to best connect without relying on visualization techniques.

As we journey together, we invite you, our listeners, to join us in this 30-day grounding challenge. Stay tuned to the end of the episode to learn more about how you can participate and fill out a pre-challenge questionnaire to track your progress (link below). We'll also share the host's experimental findings and insights in a subsequent two-episode podcast.

So, whether you're someone who easily envisions grounding exercises or if visualization proves challenging for you, there's something here for everyone. Let's explore the power of grounding, improve our mental and physical well-being, and open up our intuition together.

Don't forget to subscribe to Aphantasia Experiments and join us on this exciting grounding journey. Together, let's discover new ways to stay connected to nature and enhance our daily lives.

LINK FOR FORM FOR GROUNDING CHALLENGE:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScniDBVQL4W_T9tZNaAvQBHIfL9_TEY7_5CunAxumD-XVacQQ/viewform

Transcript:

Robin [00:00:00]:

Hello and welcome to another episode of Aphantasia Experiments as well as the Psychic School podcast. I am really excited about this episode. It's been one of those subjects that's how can I describe it? It keeps coming up for me and I understand the importance of it, but I haven't fully been able to grasp how to do it. And today I feel like yesterday I had this AHA moment and today I'm just so energized by this idea and concept and I wanted to share it with you and I've decided to run a little experiment on myself. And if you also would like to join in on my experiment, I'm going to include a Google form pre questionnaire. It's just anyways, I'll explain more about the experiment at the end of the episode, but I just wanted to say that if you, like, experiment on yourself, well, I've got an experiment for you. Okay, so the subject today that we're going to be talking about is grounding. Okay, don't turn it off.

Robin [00:01:12]:

Okay? Because here's the thing. For me, it's one of those things that keeps coming up and I keep saying, yeah, it's important to ground. And I try to do this exercise in my head where I envision roots coming out of my feet into the earth. It's like the go to grounding exercise that a lot of meditation teachers instruct people to do. But I struggle with it and I know that it's important. Everyone talks about how important it is and how if your root chakra is misaligned, which your root chakra is what controls your sense of grounding. Like your root chakra is all about grounding, right? If that's misaligned or not working, all the other chakras don't work. So I know it's so important, but I have aphantasia.

Robin [00:02:05]:

So whenever there's like a meditation where you have to picture a beam of light going through you or picture yourself with roots coming out of your feet and all that kind of stuff, I do my best to conceptualize it, but there's a missing element to it. I can't visualize it's just not working for me as much as I try to make it work for me. Those exercises, I feel like, I still feel like there's benefit to them. But I've always kind of felt like there was something more I could be doing and I hadn't found it yet. And now I feel like I've discovered something and I'm excited to share it. And you might have heard it before and I don't even know if it's going to work on me yet. So this is my pre podcast. It's going to be a two episode podcast.

Robin [00:03:03]:

This is day one. In 30 days I'm going to post again and tell you about my findings and experiment. And if you want to try along with me, then yeah, I'll explain more about how to do that. So grounding. What the heck is grounding? Good question. Grounding is all about connecting with the Earth's energy, okay? And with meditation and like a lot of spiritual practices. You can do grounding practices with your mind, where you're connecting to the Earth by visualizing yourself being connected to the Earth. Basically, because I struggle with that.

Robin [00:03:54]:

It's been like a disconnect where I feel like I need to ground, but I don't really know how to ground. But then I have these experiences where I know I feel grounded and I don't really understand why. But yesterday I watched a movie, a documentary on Gaia. I'm sure it's available other places, but I watched it on Gaia. It was called the Earthing Movie. And it was about basically how if you go without shoes and you walk around on grass or dirt or whatever, you'll feel more connected to the Earth and in turn be happier. And your inflammation goes down in your body. All this stuff, all this great stuff happens when you take your shoes off.

Robin [00:04:42]:

Basically in the movie, they're talking about how the synthetic soul is like, what has ruined us as human beings? And it goes really into it. And everything they were saying in this documentary, I was like, this is what I have to do to ground myself. This is it. It's not about visualizing myself being grounded. It's about me being actually grounded and going out there and stepping into the grass and feeling the dirt and gardening more and just being in nature. For me, it's not a visual thing. I have to actually connect with the Earth. And so maybe you're hearing this, maybe you have aphantasia to and you feel like these grounding exercises aren't working for you.

Robin [00:05:25]:

Or they are, but you want, like, it to up level a bit, try an actual grounding practice. So what I've decided to do okay, I'll keep telling you when I have so many different directions for this podcast, I'm sorry. So what I'm going to do, what I've decided to do is I've set an alarm on my phone that's going to go off three times a day. And those three times are convenient times for me. I work from home. I know this doesn't work for everyone, but I work from home. So I just made it times when my kids weren't home and nobody's going to bug me. It's spaced out a couple of hours and stuff to so it gives me a break throughout my day.

Robin [00:06:08]:

But the purpose of this notification that goes off on my phone is for me to go outside and ground. And all I'm going to be doing is walking through my garden or watering my plants. I'm hoping this makes me a better gardener, too. Standing on my grass, walking on my grass. I don't have a ton of grass in my backyard because we have turf now. I'm regretting that. That's probably terrible for grounding, right? Like walking on synthetic grass terrible. Anyways, and this morning I went for a walk with my dog and there's a patch of forest.

Robin [00:06:36]:

I took my sandals off. Might look crazy, but I don't care. I took my sandals off and I walked through the forest. I felt great. And I'm going to continue doing this for 30 days and then record my findings. So I actually made a questionnaire, a Google form, and I filled it out myself. But I'm hoping that other people might want to participate as well. So I'm going to include that Google form in this podcast description.

Robin [00:07:01]:

If you feel like participating in the 30 day challenge to ground yourself and do the exact same thing I did, I include some instructions on how to do it. I have no idea if it's going to help, but the science that backs up this movement is pretty legit. So I am down for trying anything and just the way it was explained to me. I highly recommend watching this movie too. It made so many things click in my mind. And also I had a meditation class on Saturday that I went to at my gym, and the woman running it was it was a chakra meditation. And each chakra she went through when she talked about the importance of each one and she mentioned something when she was talking about the root chakra, which is about feeling grounded. That really resonated with me that I hadn't really heard before.

Robin [00:07:55]:

It was about the root chakra is about feeling secure and safe, which is what I always connect with. But it's also about feeling like you have purpose in this life and that you feel connected to more than just yourself. Okay? And this is like a huge thing for me because I feel like one of my purposes in life is to help people feel more connected and feel like they have purpose and seeing the magic that the world has to offer. So I feel really like I'm supposed to connect to my root chakra. I'm supposed to be doing these grounding exercises. I feel like I had that moment with the yoga instructor. She mentioned that, and it was like a light bulb went off, like, oh, and backing up further to that, I had a meditation where I was told that my spiritual name was Rojas Salvador, which means the Red Savior translated, which I think has to do with the root chakra. I think that part of my purpose is to help people realign or make their root chakra function properly.

Robin [00:09:19]:

So I watched this video on Gaia yesterday, and I was like, ding, ding, ding, ding. This is it for you. You can't just ground by visualizing a root coming out of my foot, because I can't visualize. There's this part of it that just doesn't work for me. And I continuously try to tell myself that it's working. And I have really great experiences when I meditation, but I just had this feeling in my gut that there was something missing about my grounding exercises. So I think that this is it, that I need to do some Earthing, which is like walking, feeling the Earth, all that good stuff. Walking in sand, I think going for a swim, too, like all those things.

Robin [00:10:09]:

The other connection I made with this movie, going back to my trip to Cuba, I had all these prophetic, or really guided, kind of astral travely type dreams, lucid dreams when I was in Cuba. And I felt very connected. And I know we're on vacation, so you feel like, I don't know, more relaxed. I was with my children, though, so I mean, how relaxing is that? It wasn't as relaxing as you'd think, but I still felt connected. And I really believe that's from now, like, after watching that movie and understanding it, understanding that we need to feel connected to the Earth. And that if you feel the Earth and feel your environment, you almost feel, like, the pulse of the universe. You feel connected to something more than just your body. And that helps you experience life in a different way.

Robin [00:11:17]:

And it makes your dreams more profound. It makes you have more intuitive insight. It makes you feel happier. It makes the pain in your body go away. There's like so many things that it does. And yeah, I just feel like I'm learning about all this and I'm supposed to share it. So that's what I'm doing on this podcast episode. Highly recommend that movie.

Robin [00:11:45]:

I'm going to go into just like a couple so they did these experiment on people to this Earthing movement where they would walk around with no shoes on and stuff. And here are some of the health benefits that people associated with Earthing or grounding. So this is pretty cool. So if you're struggling with any of these things, hey, take your shoes off, go outside a couple of minutes. Just connect to the earth. I'm telling you. And if you struggle with meditation, grounding exercises, maybe just try doing it in real life. Okay, so here are some potential health benefits.

Robin [00:12:28]:

Reduction in inflammation, which is big because inflammation is one of those things that causes so many other things, right? So many chronic diseases are caused by inflammation. So they're saying that the grounding helps promote a balanced immune response, improve sleep. This oh, man. I got to add this to my questionnaire, actually, because I didn't put this some people report better sleep quality and reduced insomnia. This would be nice for me. I'm always up at 03:00 in the morning. I do feel like at that time, the universe is trying to talk to me. So I try to just meditate and keep a journal and write about it.

Robin [00:13:10]:

But it would be nice to sleep through the night and have more time to connect to the universe during waking hours. Stress reduction. This makes complete sense if I miss my morning walk. And this is before I learned about this grounding, earthing stuff. If I missed my morning walk, and I often walk through the forest, I don't feel completely myself. And I think that's because I start my morning off with connecting to nature, and now it's going to be even amplified because I'm taking my shoes off in the forest. So I completely understand why grounding would help promote a calming effect on the nervous system. Because you can't say you spent some time in nature and felt worse off.

Robin [00:14:04]:

I think unless you got attacked by bees or mosquitoes, I guess that would be stressful. Pain relief. There are reports of grounding helping with pain management, including chronic pain conditions. It apparently can help improve the circulation in your body and metabolism. So if you have some extra weight that you can't figure out what the hell is going on, it's like your body forgot what to do. I think that we've all experienced this. Where your body? You're like, oh, my body's great. And then all of a sudden you're like, what? I feel like my body forgot how to digest things or whatever.

Robin [00:14:47]:

Trust me, so many people go through this, and I swear, from what I've learned, it might have to do with us being disconnected in our body naturally forgetting how to act. So try to ground yourself. This is saying I think the report said it was like 70% to 80% of people reported weight loss and reduction in stress and pain. So this is literally the easiest thing possible, I think. I mean, in terms of a it costs no money. If you have a patch of grass or a garden or a forest or whatever, it's free and very easy. It's not as easy if you live in an apartment building and you don't have a lot of nature near you. So I totally understand if it doesn't seem that easy to you, but if you live in a neighborhood where you can access grass or garden, this is very easy and much cheaper than medicating yourself and a lot better for your body other benefits.

Robin [00:16:05]:

I'm not even done. People listen to this. Enhanced immune function. It can support overall immune system function by reducing chronic inflammation. Again, chronic inflammation and promoting a state of balance in the body. Don't we want to feel balanced? Emotionally, physically, everything? We want to be balanced. That's the secret to life. Once you feel balanced, you feel good.

Robin [00:16:28]:

So take your shoes off balance blood pressure. It helps reduce the sympathetic. Sympathetic. That's a fun word. Sympathetic nervous system's overactivity. So if you feel like you're on overdrive and you're like if every noise drives you crazy or you feel like frazzled every time something shocks you or whatever interesting, you should probably ground yourself. Get out there and walk in the grass. Okay.

Robin [00:17:06]:

Better cardiovascular health. Did I say that? Improves circulation, increased energy levels, avi. Some people experienced increased vitality and energy after grounding practices. Yes, I get that literally this morning when I walked through the forest, it was like not even dry. It was kind of wet the forest. And I just did it. I did it and I felt very buzzy after. Like I felt good.

Robin [00:17:29]:

So increased energy levels and then when you have increased energy levels, that can be linked to improve sleep and stress reduction. So boo. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of repeating the same thing. But this is an interesting one. Faster wound healing. This says there's limited research on this, but apparently grounding can accelerate wound healing, possibly due to anti inflammatory effects. And that makes me think and I watched this documentary years ago because my son, who's nine now, and my daughter actually, who is five, they both have pretty severe food allergies. My son has tree nut allergy and he used to be allergic to egg and milk.

Robin [00:18:15]:

And my daughter is peanut, sesame and egg. And I was really into trying to figure out why they had that. Was it something I ate? Was it because I had gestational diabetes with my daughter and probably had it with my son and it was undiagnosed? I wonder all these things, right? Was it because I didn't eat properly? Was it because I didn't sleep properly? Was it whatever, I don't know. Anyways, I was watching this documentary and one of their hypothesis hypothesis. Anyways, one of their ideas, one of their thoughts, one of their I don't know why this is such a hard sentence for me to get out, but they thought that it might have to do with the fact that we are overly clean and that we don't expose ourselves to germs and stuff. So in countries where the kids are playing out in the garden and doing more dirt, being around dirt and stuff, their immune systems are different and they don't have allergies. We have way more allergies in North America than any other place in the world. And that was one of the things they were saying that might contribute, is that we live in a society where we don't get dirty and stuff.

Robin [00:19:37]:

I'm all good. I'll get dirty. I don't wear my sandals to put my garbage out. Sometimes I'm disgusting, so I'm not really disgusting, but it does feel strange. I don't feel gross walking through the forest or walking through the grass without shoes on. But I do feel like other people might think I'm gross and I'm trying to get over that, not caring what other people think. Once I've been grounded for a month, I will not give a flying fuck. I don't think so.

Robin [00:20:09]:

Maybe that'll be another benefit to grounding myself daily. I don't know. Oh, reduce jet lag symptoms. Grounding after long flights may help reduce the symptoms of jet lag by helping reset the body's internal clock. That makes sense. Totally makes sense. Because you're like aligning to the Earth's energy in that current state, right? Grounding boom. And I think I wonder if grounding in different types of surfaces is beneficial, like sand and grass and whatever.

Robin [00:20:45]:

Who knows? Okay, antioxidant effects grounding may increase the body's supply of electrons, which act as antioxidants, helping to neutralize harmful free radicals. And you know what? We got a lot of free radicals in this house, in this house, in this world, including this house. Think about all the things that make us ungrounded. Our cell phones, our computers, our devices. Like the buzzing. If you wake up in the middle of the night and just sit in silence, you will probably be able to name like five sounds in your house. Like a computer that's on silent or whatever. Oh, sorry.

Robin [00:21:29]:

See, there's a sound going off. You know what that sound is? That is my notification that I put on my phone today to ground myself. So as soon as I'm done doing this podcast, I'm going to go walk outside of my garden and I'm going to pull out any weeds that I have in the garden. This is my thing. I've decided I'm going to do this grounding exercise three times a day, and it's going to look different every time. I'm sure like what I do, but I have to at least be on the grass or dirt for at least two minutes. That's my thing. I'm hoping to go longer.

Robin [00:22:01]:

I'm hoping to extend those periods, but I have often a lot of work to do and kids and a life and whatever. So that's only six minutes a day. But I am going to try to extend those periods for much longer. But that's my kind of like starting off point because I think that's really accessible for people. So if you want to try to do this grounding exercise with me for a month, please check out the Google link and then I will email you in another month to get your answers. So you do a pre questionnaire and then a post questionnaire. And I made it like, super easy. You just fill out what you want to fill out.

Robin [00:22:43]:

If you don't want to include any information, don't, but I tried to make it as simple as possible. But I really want to know if people have any sort of improved health or mental health statuses. I feel like it could be a game changer. And also the other thing I wanted to talk about was if this is a game changer for me, which I really believe it is, like, I feel it in my body. Like, this is going to be big for me and you if you try it. What happens when the weather changes here? So, I live in Ontario, Canada. It is currently September eigth, maybe I don't know what day it is. I should know that September something.

Robin [00:23:37]:

And I'm sure I have another good month of being able to go outside without shoes on. But come November, we're going to start getting cold weather. We're going to start getting snow, we're going to get ice. And I feel like my grounding practices will be going out the window. So maybe you're listening to this and you're like, I've been grounding for years, girl. I got you. Email me and let me know what I'm supposed to do come December, come November, how am I supposed to stay grounded? What are some other exercises that I can do just to help me feel connected to nature? Do I have to just stand in the snow without shoes on? Is that what I have to do? Is that what I have to do? Tell me. And if there's something else that I can be doing, tell me too, because I'm going to report back in a month.

Robin [00:24:30]:

And if you have any recommendations for me about this, I would like to hear from you. My email address is rofocreative@gmail.com. That's R-O-F-O creative. Hopefully you can spell that creative@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you, especially if you have any recommendations on how I can continuously ground myself. I think that the way I typically ground myself now without knowing it is a shower like shower is grounding for me because the water helps me ground myself. But I'm not doing it three times a day. I am spending a good chunk of time in the shower, but if I was doing it three times a day, my water bill would be pretty high, probably.

Robin [00:25:18]:

And yeah, maybe come winter I'm just showering more. I don't know. But if you have recommendations, let me know. Yeah, I feel like that might be it. I feel like if we all kind of listened to Mother Nature a bit more and paid attention and got out there and just connected to it, I think that we could solve a lot of problems in our lives and the world. So that was the feeling I got after watching that documentary, and I still feel that. And I just feel that I needed to get this podcast out as soon as possible and help someone else feel connected and grounded. So I hope you enjoyed today's episode.

Robin [00:26:21]:

I hope you have some time to connect to nature today and ground yourself in a physical way, not just a mental way. And if you're able to do grounding exercise mentally, that's amazing. Keep doing that. But adding that extra component of physically grounding, I think that that could be a true game changer, especially if you're trying to feel better in your life mentally, physically, but also if you're trying to open up your intuition. I can see this being something that helps me tremendously. As I was saying before about the shower, my biggest downloads come in the shower. I problem solve all the time in the shower. And I think that because it's my grounding time, I think that I already feel like today I've started the day off grounding and I've gone out a few times today already.

Robin [00:27:15]:

Every time I get a voice note from my friend. This is what I've been doing, too. I've been listening to it while standing in my garden. So it's like, okay, I got a voice note. I'm going to go out. It's two minutes long. I'm just going to stand in the garden and listen to it. So trying to make new habits, I guess, to help ground myself.

Robin [00:27:36]:

But I feel really good today. My energy feels really good and hormonally not to be TMI. This is my worst time for me, typically, so I already feel like that's a win. It's day one, and I'm usually in my dark night of the soul time right now, and I'm not, so I feel really great and I feel full of ideas and full of excitement for the future. So I hope that if you start this practice as well, you have similar results and I will check in with you on a second episode about grounding in a month's time. I hope you enjoyed this episode and please join in. Go to the Google form link in the podcast description and I will be chatting with you in a month. I'm not selling you anything, by the way.

Robin [00:28:39]:

This is purely for me to learn about this because I feel like this is important. And again, I feel like my purpose in this life is to make people feel more connected to themselves and to the universe, and to make people feel like they have purpose and to see the magic of the universe. So anyways, I'm stopping to talk. Stopping to talk. I'm stopping talking now. Um, if you like this podcast, please rate and review and follow or subscribe, I guess. Subscribe and have a great, wonderful, amazing, grounded day. Bye.