How to Ground Your Nervous System Without Overriding It
🍂 Anchoring Through the Body
As the autumn days darken and routines stretch thin, the pull to “get grounded” grows stronger.
But here’s what many people don’t realize: not all grounding practices are regulating.
You might try box breathing, a cold plunge, or a motivational mantra and come out feeling more anxious or disconnected.
That’s not a failure or a sign of something wrong. It’s often your system saying, “I need something else.” And most of us were never taught to ask it first.
✨ Somatic Insight: Bottom-Up Before Top-Down
When stress builds, it’s tempting to manage it from the top down. Meaning with thinking, planning, fixing or brain work. But somatic therapy reminds us: the nervous system doesn’t respond well to being managed. It responds to being heard.
As Peter Levine teaches, regulation begins in the body’s own rhythm. Through sensation, sequence, and safety. Instead of doing things to the body, we start by asking:
“What do you need right now?”
“Can I follow your lead instead of overriding you?”
This can feel weird and unnatural at first but the more we practice or tend to it, the more we hear from our body instead of thinking our way to calm.
✨ Somatic Practice: Grounding That Listens
🧰 For Beginners
Try this mini practice to ask the body what it needs, instead of assuming:
Sit or stand somewhere stable and supported, with your feel on the ground.
1. Notice the places your body makes contact with the ground, chair, or wall.
2. Say quietly (inside or out loud):
👉 “Hey body… what’s one small thing you need right now?”
3. Let your attention drift. You might notice a sigh, a stretch, a yawn, a sudden urge to move.
4. Try following it. Gently. No need to know, just sensation as your guide.
🧭 For Those Already Practicing
Try beginning your daily grounding without a fixed tool or routine.
· Spend 90 seconds orienting: turn your head slowly, scan your space, pause wherever your eyes feel drawn.
· Then ask:
👉 “Is my system needing stillness or movement? Inwardness or connection?”
Build your ritual from what emerges. Maybe a walk, a breath, a hand on your heart. Let it come from the inside.
🛋️ Tend to It in Therapy
These kinds of moments are worth bringing into session:
· “I’m using the tools, but they just don’t land.”
· “How do I know if I’m overriding my body or working with it?”
· “Can we build something that fits me, not a list?”
Therapy isn’t just about gaining insight; it’s about experimentation, curiosity, and co-creating what works.
📣 Prepared for Action?
Want to explore what your body wants, not just in theory?
Let’s meet your nervous system where it is.
