If you feel run down, tired, sad, anxious, or any other mood that you just want to shake, getting grounded outside for a few minutes — even a few seconds — is the quickest way I know how to do it.
Exercise can help, a really good night of sleep can help, even medications (when appropriate) can help, but if need support right this very minute, grounding can shift your mood by supporting brain function — literally in just seconds — as this study published in 2011, this study published in 2015, and this important study, published in 2018, show by looking at EEG measurements of the brain before, during and after grounding.
I think of grounding as hitting a reset button.
In fact, it’s so powerful I’ve recently published several additional medical journal articles on the power of grounding to support mental wellbeing and brain health, including these:
- Grounding To Treat Anxiety
- Grounding and The Gut-Brain Axis
- Grounding And Cognition
- Cerebrospinal Fluid and Brain Health: Optimized By Grounding
- Neurological Pathways Supported By Grounding
- Practical Applications Of Grounding To Support Health
You can reset any time of the day or night in just a few minutes. Grounding is good thing to know about (and share with others) because all day, every day, around the clock, we are bombarded with horrific world events, stressful local news, financial stress, relationship stressors and more, that reasonably leave us feeling discouraged or even defeated.
It’s now completely normal to feel stressed out, unsure, depressed and anxious as our baseline dial tone, instead of hopeful, amused, content or happy… but you can absolutely find relief and hit the reset button on your mood simply through grounding.
By connecting with the earth, we can release tension from our muscles, shift the brain from high strung beta waves to calming alpha wave patterns, decrease the stress signals in our body by supporting vagal nerve function (which helps loosen that knot you feel in the pit of your stomach pretty quickly) and boost your mood, all naturally.
And the best part is that the earth is free and always available to you. If you are feeling utterly overwhelmed, all you have to do is walk out your front door, step out of your office, or pull over your car at the nearest rest stop and touch the earth.
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Here are a few ideas strategic ways to work grounding into your day to support your mental health in the way that works best for you. I originally shared these tips with Maria Shriver in her Sunday Paper right here.
Let’s get started:
1. Stressed? Try this: Grounded Deep Breathing
It only takes three deep breaths to calm your heart rate, decrease muscle tension and feel more centered. Combine that with grounding outside and you’ll get exponential benefits.
Grounding has been medically shown to decrease stress, help release fight or flight mode, and even shift the brain into calmer brain wave patterns.
There is a reason why, when we come into this world, everyone waits for the baby to take that first breath of air. That’s the breath of life! That’s the sign that we are healthy, that we are strong, that we are alive! When the baby takes a deep breath, we all take a huge sigh of relief right alongside them.
You can leverage this life affirming, stress relieving power of taking a deep breath by doing it grounded, to exponentially boost the results. Breathing grounded can be as simple as sitting outside on the earth and just taking three deep breaths.
And using an auditory cue, like a chime, to focus on while you take three deep breaths, can allow you to reap similar benefits, any time and any place, even inside your home or office.
I love having the chime out on my desk to help visually remind me to take a few deep breaths throughout the day. Here is the chime I use, as well as the tuning forks I use for both auditory and vibrational sound healing:
The beauty of a grounded breathing practice is its simplicity. There is nothing to force and nothing to achieve. Simply ring the chime… and breathe as the sound disappears. That moment of listening becomes your healing meditation. And you can create beautiful rituals throughout your day:
- Morning Grounding Ritual: Step outside barefoot, ring the chime, and take three slow breaths while listening to the sound fade into silence.
- Meditation on Your Grounding Mat: Begin and end your meditation with the chime, allowing the sound to gently guide your attention inward.
- Grounded Bath Soak: Keep the chime beside the tub and ring it periodically during your bath to deepen relaxation and enhance the naturally grounded water of your bath.
- Breathwork Sessions: Use each chime as a breathing cue—inhale with the rising tone and exhale as it softly dissipates.
- Midday Reset: Keep it on your desk while your feet rest on an organic grounding mat under your workspace. Ring it between tasks to clear mental clutter and reset your focus.
- Mindful Eating Practice: Ring before meals (or even between bites!) to transition from busy mode into rest-and-digest mode. Encourages slower, more intentional eating.
- Evening Wind-Down: End your day with a few moments of grounding and sound meditation before sleep.
- Family Connection Ritual: Invite everyone to pause, listen, and take one collective breath together.
- Gratitude Practice: Ring the chime and think of one thing you’re grateful for before the final note disappears.
- Nature Meditation: Take your chime outdoors and use it as a focal point while grounding: sitting beneath a tree, watching the sunset, or looking up at the moon and stars.
As a huge advocate for grounding therapy, you know I am a big fan of free therapies that allow patients to take control over their own health. So knowing that you can take a few mindful breaths, or repeat a healing mantra, or ring a chime, or even head outside for some grounded breath work as you do a walking meditation… is such an awesome thing.
Each one of these suggestions will measurably reduce stress in the body and give your health a boost, and breath work is very private and very powerful. For a deeper dive into using breathwork to support your health, read this free article I wrote for you:
2. Depressed? Try this: Grounding In Morning Daylight
Medical studies on grounding have shown that being grounded can significantly boost our mood. Combining that with morning light exposure helps to take that even further, reducing feelings of depression and boosting outlook.
As I blog about here, light therapy has been actually shown to naturally treat depression better than a prescription anti-depressant! And yes, you can do all three at the same time (take an anti-depressant and use light therapy and grounding, together) for additional benefit.
So try your best to go outside and get as much natural light as possible in the morning hours, ideally at some point between 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. Try to get into a daily routine of taking just a few minutes every morning when you wake up to step outside — you can even take your coffee with you — to greet the day grounded, and feel your mood brighten.
@laurakonivermd Go outside to come back to yourself #laurakonivermd #intuitionphysician #grounding #earthing
Here is a TikTok I made for you explaining why you should go outside before you assess how you feel — our mood indoors is not real.
3. Overwhelmed? Try this: Grounding On A Sidewalk
Being inside making you claustrophobic or irritable? Go outside and get grounded.
Stand with a foot touching resting on the sidewalk or sit down and let your hand touch the curb to allow grounding go immediately to work, stabilizing your autonomic nervous system, decreasing muscle tension, calming your racing heart and deepening your breathing. You’ll return back to your task at hand feeling much more centered.
More surfaces than you think will ground you — you can get grounded on a city sidewalk just as easily as at the beach. You get just as grounded by touching a metal signpost anchored in the earth as you do by touching a living tree. So if you are at work, or traveling, or live in an urban setting and just need to take a breather, head outside and find your favorite sidewalk square.
@laurakonivermd There is something that can ground you on every city block #grounding #earthing #groundingtechique #holistichealth #laurakonivermd #intuitionphysician #conductivehealth #urbanlandscape #citylife
Didn’t know that sidewalks will ground you? Here is a TikTok I made to show you exactly how to get grounded in an urban environment — even on a city sidewalk — so that no matter where you live, you can go outside right now and get grounded with me:
4. Anxious? Try this: Touch A Tree Outside
I’ve been anxious my entire life. I can’t remember a day when I did not wake up with a huge knot in my stomach that felt like death was gripping my solar plexus and sneering up at me.
Unfortunately the medical literature is pretty clear — anxiety has major health effects, but it’s equally clear that those deleterious health effects are actually reversible. Meaning, if you suffer from anxiety, it’s very worth addressing, not just for the relief on a daily basis but also for the longevity benefits.
Today, as someone who very much knows the felt sense of existential anxiety haunting me day in and day out, and someone who reaches for grounding to effectively help cope with this, I’d like to encourage you to include grounding in your anxiety treatment plan.
Grounding to the earth to help regulate the body’s fight or flight, panic state, and bring balance back to your autonomic nervous system is easy to do, readily available to you at all times, and works to alleviate anxiety immediately (loosening the grip of that impending panic attack within milliseconds) as well as with incredible long term anxiolytic benefits too.
Because it’s so helpful, and because I have both professional and personal experience using grounding to decrease anxiety, I wrote a medical literature review article on this so that other health care professionals can start to incorporate this free healing treatment into their patient recommendations as well. Grounding can work adjunctively with all other treatment plans for anxiety, so it is a ground add-on therapy for anyone who feels like their anxiety is not adequately controlled even if they are already one a good treatment plan.
Published in the European Society of Medicine, I have it here as a printable PDF for you, so that you can have it, share it, and even send it to any physicians, nurses, PAs, NPs, chiropractors, social workers, therapists, counsellors and other health care professionals you know that might be open to using the healing properties of grounding to help their patients and clients get deeper relief, faster and for free.
Also consider forwarding this info to any loved ones you have that deal with anxiety — and that’s most of us, right?
Grounding To Treat Anxiety — free printable PDF
Grounding outside through a plant makes you feel supported by another living thing, and that’s because you are. Similar to having a pet, plants can keep us company, support our mental health, and reduce stress. Multiple studies have found that having access to a garden or other green space — even simply viewing plants — decreases depression rates, anxiety rates, and dramatically reduces stress. We have such an innate need to be submersed in a world with foliage and plants around us that one study found that patients who simply had a view of plants through a window while recovering from surgery had better moods, used less pain medications, had less surgical post-op complications, and even decreased their length of stay in the hospital.
You can get all of those benefits by seeking out a favorite tree, and taking it one step further by touching it. In fact, all plants that are growing in the ground — including trees, bushes, flowers, even a single blade of grass — are grounded and will ground you instantly when you touch it. So reach out and hold on to your favorite tree, and visit it often, through all the seasons, to add the healing benefits of grounding for a powerful energy boost and mood lift.
@laurakonivermd Do you know what to look for and what to avoid? #grounding #earthing #laurakonivermd #intuitionphysician #holistichealth
Here is a TikTok where I show you 8 Tips On Grounding Through Trees so you can go outside and do it right now:
5. Tired? Try this: Eat Lunch Outside
A few weeks ago I released a free video inviting you to eat grounded with me together and notice all the improvements in your digestion when you use grounding to support gut health.
If you want to eat a meal or a snack together with me today to give it a try, you can find that blog post here:
But the support you get from grounding goes way beyond just your digestive tract directly working better… it actually helps support the entire gut-brain axis.
To share why grounding is so helpful in protecting the connection between our digestive tract and our central nervous system, including our mindframe, I wrote a medical review on this topic and just published it in The Journal of Medical Clinical Research & Reviews.
You can read the original article right here and share it with others as well as print it out and take it to your in person physician:
One of the best habits you can get into is taking your lunch outside and eating it grounded, to help you power through the afternoon. EEG studies of brain activity show that connecting to the soothing energy of the earth instantaneously shifts our brain wave patterns and reduces ambient stress levels. Another study on participants who grounded while at work showed that this significantly boosted mood and energy levels while decreasing feelings of depression, pain, and fatigue.
Head outside with your lunch and sit at a bench, slipping your shoes off and resting feet on the ground while you eat, or sit on a sidewalk or cement steps, or even simply touch a metal railing while outside on your lunch break, all of these will ground you. If you are lucky enough to have a park within walking distance, sit at a picnic table and slip a shoe off to touch the ground while you eat, and don’t forget that the cement floor of picnic shelters are also grounded.
As an added bonus, grounding actually boosts digestion by supporting your vagal tone, and allows you to process the nutrients you are eating even better. For more details on that, plus a free printable poster I created for you to remind you to take one meal a day outside, hop over here:
6. Unmotivated? Try this: Go On A Grounded Walk
Movement gives your body a natural opioid fix, and other neurotransmitters get a boost too. Endorphins decrease pain and boost a feeling of wellness, serotonin improves mood and decreases anxiety, anandamides decrease stress, and dopamine makes you feel more motivated.
Move your body while grounding and you will be adding an even deeper level of support from the earth that will help you feel more centered and naturally boost motivation. If you have never done a walking meditation, you are in for the biggest treat.
In the video below, I sneak you into my favorite walking meditation — using a labyrinth! I also share with you some super easy ways you can create your own labyrinth, so even if you don’t have access to a labyrinth (and even if you don’t have any of your own yard space to create one) you can still do a walking meditation.
Literally drawing a spiral with a piece of chalk on a sidewalk square, or simply walking up and down a line on your driveway, or using tape to create a line or spiral in your garage, all of these ideas can create a grounded walking meditation path that will literally transform your day:
- Any cement, sidewalk, concrete surface outside is grounded, so anywhere you can kick your shoes off and walk a line or a spiral on a sidewalk or concrete will get you grounded without ever getting your feet dirty! For example. Walk up and down a sidewalk slowly. Walk back and forth across your driveway slowly. Draw a chalk spiral on your cement basement garage or basement floor to walk on. Or get fancy and use tape to create a labyrinth in your garage or basement on the concrete floor that you can use forevermore! This video shows how you can create a labyrinth out of masking tape, in just minutes.
- Of course, any dirt path outside would make a fabulous grounded meditation path, just slowly walk it up and back.
- If you love the feeling of grass on your bare feet like I do, you can always walk on any safe green space in a grounded walking meditation.
- Most garden paths and patio walkways are grounded, because slate, tile, brick, even gravel is all grounded when they are lying on the earth. So almost any outdoor walkway is an instant grounded meditation spot when you walk it barefoot. In this video I show you 15 different outdoor surfaces that will ground you, beyond just grass.
- And if you are lucky enough to have your own yard, you can even spray paint a little spiral on your grass to use it for several days in a row. If you love it you may be inspired to create your very own labyrinth path by laying stones or brick to create a personal labyrinth in your yard or garden. I know this is on my bucket list to do one day!
If you can take ten minutes to do this walking meditation — grounded — every day for the next week, I believe with my whole heart it can change your perspective on your entire life, fill you with a sense of hope and fresh positivity, and help you feel physically better too.
Join me as I do a walking meditation for you and then let’s plan out a way for you to do it too:
Want to keep your shoes on?
You can get grounded right through your shoes by simply adding these grounding shoe stickers onto any shoes you like.
Or you can also ground through your hands directly, by using this grounding walking stick.
If you have mobility issues, you can also simply sit grounded outside and move your body in other ways, like giving yourself a foot or neck massage, or doing a few yoga stretches.
And here is an article I wrote for you going more deeply into the mechanism of action behind the benefits of grounding, for a deeper dive into exactly what neurotransmitters grounding will boost and how it will not only improve your mood, but it will actually help you feel more motivated over time:
7. Trouble Sleeping? Try this: Look Up At The Night Sky
One of my favorite ways to ground — especially when I’ve been too busy to ground all day long — is to ground on my way up to bed, standing outside looking up at the stars and moon. Turning my gaze upwards, reconnecting with the wonder of being a human being standing on a rock that spirals through space and seeing the earth for the vast support network it is, feeling your place in this mysterious beautiful alive universe, can’t help but lift your spirits for the better. Doing it while grounded helps even more, as grounding helps deepen sleep and allows the sleep you do get to be even more restorative, letting you get deep recovery from stress.
So if realize you are carrying the stress of the day into bed with you, stop. Go outside and look up. When the rest of the world is shut up tight at bedtime, taking a few minutes to ground outside under the night sky is wonderful for clearing the mind, grabbing a few minutes of beautiful fresh air, and preparing your body for sleep.
Here is a free article I wrote for you on how to use grounding to fix your sleep and get your circadian rhythm back into a healthy pattern:
Grounding is an instantly accessible healing tool that can provide immediate support during periods of stress no matter where you are or what you are doing. Whether it’s just a few deep breaths as you sit on a patch of grass, taking a walk through a local park, or standing outside at night looking up at the stars… grounding supports your outlook and stabilizes the body. The earth is waiting out there to center and support you.
So the next time you are having a panic attack, or a pounding tension headache from stress, or a knot of worry grow in your stomach, just go outside. Get out there. Don’t force anything, just touch the earth and let nature work its magic. The earth can hold even your worst of days and remain an immovable source of strength.
The effects of grounding the human body start instantly, so there is no time too short for getting grounded — if it can only be 30 seconds, so be it. If it can be 15 min, or 30 minutes, all the better.
If you have one rock outside you can touch, one blade of grass (even a weed!) you can touch, one leaf on a tree or bush outside, one corner of a cement driveway or garage or one square inch of sidewalk you can stand on, you can be instantly grounded. Even in an urban location, or in the winter, or when you travel… you can and should get grounded outside.
Want more inspiration to make grounding into a daily health routine?
Just like brushing your teeth or wearing a seatbelt, grounding is another one of those non-negotiable health care practices. So I’ve got you.
I wrote The Earth Prescription to tell you about how to get outside not matter what the season, no matter what the weather, no matter what the location, no matter if you have green spaces outside or not, no matter if you have 5 minutes or 5 hours to ground, urban settings, winter temperatures, no matter what the circumstance.
It’s an easy, uplifting read filled with tons of easily actionable ways to stay connected to our planet and boost your health any time, any where.
Order signed copies directly from me right here, or find it anywhere books are sold.
Or, if you’d prefer me to directly teach you all about grounding instead of reading a book, you will get so much value out of taking my Grounding Masterclass, right here.
It will forever change how you view your own health and give you so many free health solutions, ones that you can use for the rest of your life… by joining me here:
To your resilient mind and body…
xoxox, Laura Koniver MD
