September has started again. And one of those things I always aim for when I come back from my holidays (which are always in nature, preferably mountains), is to keep my connection to that feeling of presence, aliveness, and calm that comes from being aware of my feet walking the ground. When I enter back into modern society and the demands and stressors that come with that, I need a practice to ground myself in order not to enter a state of permanent jitteryness. So. This blog, is about grounding.
Grounding: Finding Your Foundations in Burnout Recovery
I have to admit: grounding was always one of those words that made me cringe. It landed in the same category as spirituality: vague, airy, something non-rational people would say. I can imagine the 10 years younger version of me rolling my eyes thinking “grounding? Right, sounds like everything is energy.”
But when you strip the word of the mystical wrapping (and perhaps any judgemental ideas you have around that), grounding is very simple and quite a rational thing to do (and for the record, so is feeling your feelings). Grounding is the practice of paying attention to your foundations, physically, mentally, emotionally, and, if you dare to spiritually.
Imagine being an architect. Before you design a building, you first have to make sure the foundations are stable. Otherwise, the structure won’t hold. The same is true for your life, your body, your emotional balance, and your mental health. If your foundations are shaky, everything else is shaky too. And moreover, the more complex you wish the upper structure to be, the more steady your foundation should be. You can build a habit plan for the healthiest habits, but if you do that from an ungrounded place, you might end up with a bunch of habits that make you stressed out and completely overloaded.
So grounding is not some airy idea. It’s the practical act of reconnecting with your base: feeling your body’s contact with the earth, paying attention to the points that hold you steady, thinking about what you need in your life to feel supported, safe, and true to your values, and building from there. When we approach it this way: not as a mystical trick but as an architectural principle for living sustainably, grounding makes sense beyond the intuitive feeling you have about the word. And it turns out to be one of the most overlooked yet essential tools in recovering from stress and burnout.
The Stress Cycle, and Why it Matters
To understand why grounding helps, we need to talk about how stress works in the body. Emily and Amelia Nagoski describe this beautifully in their book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle.
Here’s the key idea: stress is a cycle, not just a response. Imagine you’re walking in the woods and a bear appears. Your body reacts instantly. Heart pounding, muscles tense, adrenaline rushing. All these responses are meant to make you MOVE. Maybe you fight, maybe you run. End then, once the danger is over, your body needs a way to return to safety. Animals instinctively complete this cycle: they run like hell, they shake, they breathe, they rest.
But what happens in modern life? First, the bears we face are emails, deadlines, arguments, financial worries. We have many more tiny little stressors that keep coming at us 24/7 so it's more like being surrounded by racoons that might not kill us but may or may not bite. Our bodies are constantly anticipating (how to avoid) the next bite.
Second, while our stress response is meant to make us move, we rarely move, because we do work sitting. So physically, we don’t do what we are supposed to do. Third, we remove stressors (the thing that makes us stressed), but we hold on to the stress (the bodies repsonse to the stressor). We don’t let our bodies finish the process of running/fighting, but we also do not calm down and 'come home' after the fight. We do not shqke, breathe, and rest.
When we don’t finish the cycle with movement and cues of safety, we get stuck in the stress cycle, and our bodies are constantly flooded with stress hormones. Living in that cycles chronically, is what burns us out.
Grounding is one of the simplest ways to complete the cycle and cue your body into safety. By feeling your feet, connecting with the earth, slowing your breath, and allowing your body to register safety again, you tell your nervous system: the danger has passed. You can rest now. These feet are walking slowly, they do not need to run. Its okay. In case you are done reading now and want to practice:
Grounding Across the Four Types of Stress
Mo Gawdat and Alice Law, in their book Unstressable, describe stress as showing up in four domains: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. I’ve found this framework so helpful, because it reflects what I see in burnout recovery. And grounding (and Yoga) touches each of these layers directly.
- Physical: Stress lives in the body. Tension in your muscles, shallow breathing, a racing heart. Grounding brings attention back to physical sensation: the literal foundation of your body pressing into the ground, which begins to release that tension.
- Mental: Our minds spin when we’re stressed. We replay the past, anticipate the future, overthink the present. Grounding interrupts that cycle by giving the mind a single, simple focus: feet on floor, breath in body. It’s like a reset switch.
- Emotional: This is one people often miss. Grounding doesn’t just create “space” for emotions: it creates a feeling of safety and support. Think of a child learning to explore: they need a nurturing and calm parent nearby to feel safe enough to wander or lose control. When you ground yourself, you give your nervous system that same sense of steady support. From that feeling of safety, you can freely explore emotions without fear of being overwhelmed.
- Spiritual: And then there’s the bigger picture. Grounding reminds us we’re connected to something beyond ourselves: whether you think of that as the earth, nature, humanity, or simply the reality of standing on the same ground as everyone else. This humbles us, softens the edges of isolation, dampens the importance of our individual ambitions, and brings a quiet kind of relief.
When you see it this way, grounding isn’t just a trick for calming down. It’s a whole-body practice that stabilizes every layer of stress.
The wisdom of foundations
This focus on foundations isn’t new. Traditions have been pointing us here for millennia.
In yoga philosophy, the Muladhara chakra ( the root chakra ) literally translates as “root support” or “foundation.” It sits at the base of the spine and is associated with the earth element, stability, and survival. The teaching is simple: before you rise upward, before you reach for growth or expansion, you must first root downward.
That idea speaks just as powerfully to modern burnout recovery as it did in ancient times. We live in a culture that tells us to grow endlessly upward: more productivity, more success, more output. But without roots, without grounding, the structure collapses.Grounding asks us to slow down, to remember our base, to reconnect to the very thing we stand on.
There’s also a deeper gift in grounding: humility. When you place your attention on the earth beneath your feet, you realize you’re not holding yourself up alone. The ground is pulling you down. You walk on the same earth as billions of others. You breathe the same air.
In Stoic philosophy, Marcus Aurelius often reminded himself to return to nature as a source of grounding. In his Meditations, he wrote: “Constantly regard the universe as one living being, having one substance and one soul.” For him, grounding meant remembering that he was not separate, not an isolated achiever, but part of a larger whole. That perspective is surprisingly practical: when you’re caught up in deadlines or perfectionism, zooming out to see yourself as part of nature: as one small strand in a vast web, immediately softens the grip of stress. It’s another way of saying: find your footing in something bigger than yourself.
In burnout, we often feel overwhelmed with responsibility, lonely, and isolated, like the entire weight of life rests on our shoulders. But grounding shifts that perspective. It reminds us that we belong: to nature, to humanity, to something larger than our individual striving.
And that belonging is not just comforting, it’s regulating. Just like a child calms down when held by a steady parent, we calm down when we remember we are held by the ground, by connection, by others. From that place of safety, we can begin to rebuild.
Closing reflection
If you are in burnout or on the edge of it, I invite you to pause and ask yourself: when was the last time you truly felt the ground beneath your feet? Not just noticed it for a second, but actually let yourself be supported by it?
Stress convinces us we must keep moving, keep achieving, keep managing. But sometimes the first step toward recovery isn’t forward. It’s downward. Into the feet. Into the body. Into the earth that has been holding you all along.
Want to practice Grounding?
With love,
Inge