Grounding When the Energy Is Strong

When it is too much

Not every awakening is gentle. Sometimes the energy moves faster than the body, the nervous system or daily life can comfortably hold. People describe heat running up the spine at night, trembling they can’t stop, a racing mind, waves of emotion with no obvious cause, or a strange feeling of floating a few centimetres above their own life.

The old texts know about this. Abhinavagupta lists trembling and leaping among the signs of the rising. The Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā says that in the first stage of breath practice there is sweating, in the middle stage there is quivering, and only in the last stage does steadiness come. It even advises rubbing the sweat back into the skin rather than wiping it away. None of this is new.

But knowing it is old doesn’t help much at three in the morning. What helps is grounding.

By grounding we mean something simple: bringing your attention, your weight and your life back down into the body, the day and the earth. It is not a lesser practice for people who cannot handle the real thing. For many people in a strong phase, it is the real thing.

Why the body comes first

In the classical picture, Kuṇḍalinī lies coiled in the root lotus, Mūlādhāra, around the Svayambhū-liṅga, covering the door of the central channel. Mūlādhāra is the seat of earth. It is no accident that the tradition places the Goddess, before her rising, in the element of solidity, smell and weight. Her journey begins in the ground of the body, and it keeps needing that ground.

When she moves strongly, the upper centres tend to light up first in experience: visions, insight, rushing thoughts, a feeling of expansion around the head. That can be beautiful. It can also leave the lower body, the digestion and the ordinary routines of life underfed. Grounding is the work of sending nourishment back down, so that the whole of you can carry what is happening.

A strong current needs a strong riverbed. That image has guided our work for a long time.

The basics, which are not basic

Feet on the earth. Literally. Walk barefoot on grass, sand or soil for ten minutes, when it is safe and warm enough to do so. Stand and feel the weight of your body going down through your heels.

Warm, heavy food. Soups, root vegetables, rice, stews, a little ghee or butter. Regular meals at regular times. Many people in a strong phase forget to eat, and it makes everything worse. Ayurveda would say that this kind of food calms vāta, the cold, dry, light and moving quality that tends to run high when the energy is restless. That is a traditional view rather than a tested one, but it matches what many practitioners find.

Gopi Krishna, whose account of his own crisis in the late 1930s is still one of the most vivid we have, wrote that his appetite failed him at the worst point. He remembered advice to take a light meal every three hours and not to leave the stomach empty, and he credited that simple rule with saving his life and his sanity. We have never found a better piece of advice for the acute phase.

Sleep before midnight when you can, in a dark, cool room. Keep screens out of the last hour. If you wake in the night with the energy running, get up briefly, drink something warm, put your feet on the floor, then go back to bed.

Move. Gardening, slow walks, cleaning the house, carrying things, kneading bread. Simple physical work tells the body it is here.

Cut the stimulants. Too much caffeine, roughly more than 400 mg a day, is linked to anxiety and poor sleep. Alcohol disturbs sleep and judgement. Cannabis, especially daily high-potency use, is associated with a much higher risk of psychosis. Psychedelics and extreme fasting have no place in an intense phase.

Less practice, not more. This is the one people resist. When the energy is strong, pause the intense breath work, Breath of Fire, kapālabhāti and bhastrikā, the retentions and the locks. Keep only gentle practices, such as easy breathing, short sitting and listening. You can return to the rest later.

The Bhagavad Gītā says that yoga is not for the one who eats too much or too little, or who sleeps too much or too little. Moderation is not a compromise on the path. It is part of the path.

A five-minute grounding

Sit on a chair with both feet flat on the floor. Put one hand on your belly and one on your heart.

Breathe in gently through the nose for a count of four, and out for a count of seven or eight, slowly, as if through a straw. Never strain. If the counts feel too long, shorten both, but keep the out-breath clearly longer than the in-breath. A long out-breath is one of the simplest ways to tell the body it is safe.

On each out-breath, imagine the breath going down, through your seat and your feet, into the earth. Let your shoulders drop a little more each time.

After a few rounds, name silently five things you can see, four you can hear and three you can touch. This brings the senses back to the room.

Finish by pressing your feet into the floor and saying, quietly, “I am here.”

There is a walking version too. Walk slowly outdoors, breathing in over four steps and out over seven or eight, and feel each heel meet the ground. If you lose count, simply begin again. The counting is only there to keep the mind company.

A strong current needs a strong riverbed. Grounding is not a step back. It is how the river learns to carry more.Golden Sight Institute

Try it: Choose “Grounding” in the practice builder for a guided session. Practice Builder →

Other anchors through the day

A few more supports that people tell us make a difference:

• Weight and warmth. A heavy blanket, a hot water bottle on the belly, a warm bath with your feet in last.
• Hands in something. Soil, dough, clay, washing-up water. The hands are very good at calling the mind home.
• Rhythm. Get up, eat and go to bed at the same times. A predictable day is a gift to a nervous system that feels unpredictable.
• Fewer inputs. Less news, less scrolling, fewer intense conversations about awakening. The system is already processing a great deal.
• Company. Time with people who love you and who are not especially interested in your inner experience. They will talk about the weather and the shopping, and that is exactly what you need.

Emotions need grounding as much as the body does. When old grief or anger rises without a story attached, as it often does in strong phases, give it somewhere to go. Cry if you need to. Write a page without reading it back. Shake out your arms and legs like an animal after a fright. Then return to something ordinary: a cup of tea, a short walk, a meal. Feelings move more easily through a body that feels safe, and they tend to stick in a body that is braced against them.

Nature is perhaps the oldest anchor of all. Sit with your back against a tree. Watch water move. Lie on the ground and feel it hold your whole weight. These are not techniques so much as reminders that you belong to something larger and slower than your own nervous system.

Keep a short note of what you did each day and how you slept. In a few weeks you will see what steadies you and what stirs things up, and you will trust your own judgement more.

Try it: Use the practice log to track sleep, food and practice through a strong phase. Practice Log →

Spiritual, medical, or both

For a long time, Western medicine had no category for any of this. That has changed somewhat. In 1980 Stanislav and Christina Grof founded the Spiritual Emergence Network, and their book Spiritual Emergency (1989) named Kuṇḍalinī awakening as one form of what they called a spiritual emergency. In 1994 the American psychiatric manual, DSM-IV, added “Religious or Spiritual Problem” as something that may be the focus of clinical attention, explicitly not a mental disorder in itself. It remains in DSM-5.

Researchers have tried to describe what distinguishes a difficult but healthy spiritual process from illness. One set of criteria, from Menezes and Moreira-Almeida in Brazil, includes things like little distress, no lasting impairment of daily life, a critical attitude towards one’s own experience, some degree of control, and an orientation towards others. These are useful pointers. They are not a home diagnostic kit.

The honest truth is that a spiritual crisis and a psychiatric or medical illness can happen at the same time. Misdiagnosis cuts both ways. A real awakening can be wrongly labelled as illness, and a real illness can be wrongly labelled as awakening. That is why we never ask anyone to choose between their teacher and their doctor.

When to get help

Please take this section seriously. See a doctor, psychiatrist or mental-health professional, urgently and as well as an experienced teacher, if any of the following is true:

• You have thoughts of suicide or of harming yourself or anyone else.
• You have gone several nights with little or no sleep, or feel driven, high and unable to slow down.
• Your speech or thinking has become confused or disorganised, or you are unsure what is real.
• You cannot look after yourself: eating, washing, keeping safe.
• You have new physical symptoms such as chest pain, palpitations, fainting, severe headache, numbness or weakness. These need a medical check, whatever else is going on.

If you are in immediate danger, call your local emergency number. Loss of sleep deserves special mention, because it is one of the commonest early warning signs of mania, and it feeds on itself.

A word on contraindications too. If you are pregnant, or have epilepsy, a heart condition, high blood pressure, or a history of psychosis or bipolar disorder, speak to your doctor before any strong breath or energy practice, and in a strong phase keep to the gentlest practices only. If you take medication, do not stop or change it because of a spiritual experience without your doctor’s advice. And if you are thinking of taking any supplement, check with a doctor or pharmacist first, as some interact with common medicines.

Getting support is not a failure of the path. It is part of walking it well.

When it settles

Strong phases do pass, or at least they change shape. Many people find that, after weeks or months of steady grounding, the same energy that once felt overwhelming becomes a warm background presence. Practice can then return, slowly and one piece at a time. Try a little, wait a few days, and notice how you sleep. If things flare, step back again. There is no shame in that rhythm.

It also helps to remember that the tradition never imagined this happening in isolation. The yogis of the old texts lived near a teacher, in a quiet place, with simple food and fewer demands. Most of us are trying to hold the same process alongside jobs, children, bills and screens. Be generous with yourself about that difference.

Looking back, most people are glad of what the hard months taught them: how to listen to the body, how to ask for help, how to slow down when every part of them wanted to rush. That is grounding too.

And if you simply want someone who understands this territory to talk to, you are always welcome to reach out to Hermes.