Three Ways to Stay Grounded When Everything is Spinning Out of Control
published April 15. 2025
Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash
by Catharine Hannay, founder of MindfulTeachers.org
This morning a little blue bird (blue bird of happiness, perhaps?) was floating merrily along, until…
WHUMP!
It flew straight into our living room window, bounced off, and landed flat on its back heaving for breath.
I don’t know about you, but I can relate.
Just when I think my path is clear and I know exactly where to go and what to do…
SMACK!
I hit a wall, or the rug gets pulled out from under me, or life just slaps me in the face for no apparent reason.
For the past couple of weeks, I kept catching myself thinking,
“I need to find my feet.”
and
“I need to get some ground beneath my feet.”
But when I stopped and thought about this, I realized:
“I know exactly where my feet are at all times. They’re attached to my ankles. And where else would the ground be except beneath my feet?”
I know a lot of other people are feeling anxious and confused these days. So I’d like to share the grounding strategies I’ve been finding particularly helpful lately.
Focus on Your Feet
A classic mindfulness practice is to focus on the sensations in your feet. You can try this while you’re sitting, standing, or walking. Are your toes hot or cold? What does your skin feel like where it makes contact with the ground? (Or the floor, or your socks or sandals: You get the picture.)
As Jan Chozen Bays explains,
“Moving awareness from the head to the feet [has] the effect of settling the mind. This probably occurs because the bottoms of the feet are as far as we can get away from the head. […]
When we become anxious, the mind becomes more active, like a hamster in an exercise wheel, spinning around, trying to figure out how to escape mental or physical discomfort.
People discover that when they bring awareness to all the tiny sensations on the bottoms of the feet, the flow of ever-changing physical sensations fills the mind completely and there is no room at all for thinking. They feel less top-heavy, more anchored.” (How to Train a Wild Elephant, p. 99)
Engage Your Five Senses
Another very useful grounding practice is to bring your attention to one or more of the five senses. There are a lot of ways you can do this. Personally, I tend to focus on colors, and my favorite is a practice I call Rainbow Walk.
I go for a stroll in my neighborhood and look for each color in turn. (As in, first red, then orange, then yellow, blue, green, and purple.) I keep cycling through the rainbow of colors again and again until I get back home. Whenever my mind starts spinning off again, I bring my attention back to focusing on colors.
Sometimes I’ll see the next color immediately; other times it might take a few minutes of conscious searching to find the next color. Either way, it keeps me focused on the physical details of my surroundings, which helps me to stay in the present moment rather than ruminating about the past or feeling anxious about the future.
Trust in Gravity
If you’re in, say, Queensland and you’re right-side up, does that mean I’m upside down here in New York?
Yet somehow I manage to keep sitting here on my sofa rather than floating around the room or bonking my head on the ceiling.
I find this oddly comforting.
When I’m having an anxiety attack, everything feels scary and out of control. It’s hard to have faith in anyone or anything.
I calm myself down by focusing on the strong, invisible force keeping me connected to the Earth.
I can’t see it. It doesn’t entirely make sense. But I know that it’s present, keeping me physically grounded—and that helps me to be emotionally grounded, as well.
Conclusion
The next time you feel overwhelmed by stress and anxiety, try one of these strategies to help yourself feel like you’re on solid ground.
Instead of focusing on your feet, you might prefer to focus on the sensations in your hands.
Instead of focusing on colors during your walk, you might prefer to focus on sounds.
Instead of focusing on the force of gravity, you might prefer to focus on your religious faith, or a person who’s a source of strength and comfort to you. It’s not really gravity per se that’s the point here, but having something that feels stable when everything else feels like it’s spinning out of control.
About the Author
Catharine Hannay, M.A., is the founder of MindfulTeachers.org and the author of Being You: A Girl’s Guide to Mindfulness, a workbook for teen girls on mindfulness, compassion, and self-acceptance. CatharineHannay.com
Related Posts
Here at MindfulTeachers.org there are many more mindfulness and self-care resources, as well as tips on resilience and coping with stress and anxiety, including the following posts: