(Music)
Hi, I'm Olivia. I'm the Witch of Wonderlust here on YouTube and on Instagram
and today in this video I 'm going to cover
what I can about centering, grounding, and earthing.
These are three things that I feel like, whether you're witchy or not,
you could definitely benefit from. However if you are witchy
these practices are some very important foundational practices that you should
definitely have in your craft, no matter what. So, grab a drink,
and let's get started.
So the first thing I'm going to cover is centering.
Centering is the act of gathering all of the sporadic energy around you
and bringing it back into a unified state - essentially it's
energetically "getting all of your ducks in a row." For example: say that
you are walking into your job late. Your mind
is racing right now you're thinking, "what is my boss gonna say?"
"What are they gonna do?", "How many times have I been late before?"
"Am A justified in being late?", "Do I have my excuse ready?"
"How is this going to affect my job from now on?", "Is this going to affect the rest
of my day?" You get the idea. Now, in this situation,
your thoughts, your emotions - they're just everywhere. Think of it as buzzing
static energy all around you or like you've dumped marbles all
over the place and they're just rolling around. Centering is
going to bring all of that into a unified state so that it's no longer
just- like this.
Centering helps you to unify
all of the unorganized energy it helps you step back and analyze and just observe
all of the emotions, the thoughts, the impulses,
the urges, so that you can sort through them
clearly rather than them just clogging your mind.
This is NOT shutting off emotions or thoughts that's not what
this is. This is sorting through each one with an
objective perspective to see which one is actually of value
and which one is just intrusive or temporary.
It's kind of like having one person talk to you at a time rather than the whole
room shout at you all at once. So now, HOW to center: There are a few
different ways to do this. I'm going to show you my method, but there are
plenty of different methods out there, and at the end of the day you're just
going to have to find something that works best for you.
This is my preferred method: first i'm going to take a few deep breaths.
I start to think of myself like I'm
sitting on a bench somewhere in a park, and my thoughts and my emotions are just
people passing me by. I don't need to stop these people
and chat to them. I don't need to laser in and focus,
and see what they're wearing or obsess about where they're going I'm just going
to allow them to come into my view, and back out.
Then, I bring my attention to my body.
I bring the attention to the weight of my body
on the bench, or on the couch, or wherever I'm sitting or standing or
laying, and then I bring the attention to the feeling of support of whatever is
underneath me. So, maybe that's the Earth. Maybe that's
the chair. Maybe the bench or the bed.
Then I'll shift my attention to whatever is happening just in my
environment. I don't have a deep focus or a direct focus on any particular thing,
I'm just noticing things happen. Maybe that's the cars
passing me. Maybe that's the sound of the
rustling of the trees. If I hear any chatter around me whatever
that is. Then to what I see: maybe the sunlight is
beaming through the window and it's just really pretty.
Maybe I can smell the fresh cut grass outside or there's
coffee freshly brewing in the kitchen.
Finally, I come back to how I feel. I may not be
completely zen at this point and by all means especially if you are
super upset or angry in this moment and you're trying to center,
you're not going to be incredibly zen. That's not the point
of this exercise. The point is to take all of that sporadic energy
and unify it. It's not to make you zen. It might make you a little more zen,
but that's not the point. But now, I have all of my emotions and all of my
thoughts separated or organized and I can pick
which one is actually of value and throw away all the ones that are not.
This is much easier to sift through and process maybe a stressful situation,
process what I may or may not do to react to something,
process my feelings on maybe why I'm even feeling this way.
But I have a much better objective approach to my situation or to my
emotions, compared to previously when all of my
emotions and my thoughts were scattered everywhere.
Centering is always good done before spell work.
Next is grounding.
Like centering, there are going to be a plethora of ways to do this, but you're
just going to have to experiment and find which one works
best for you. Grounding is usually done after centering.
It's similar to centering but the essential use of grounding is to
"come back down to earth." It's going to bring you back from
being in your head and back down into the physical realm and into
the moment. The way I usually do this is by something super simple
eating something sweet or salty just one of my favorite snacks,
drinking tea, maybe coffee, exercising, some kind of movement, dance, stretching,
something that really embodies the physical,
or something where you are interacting physically.
So, gardening, knitting, crocheting, sewing, there are also meditations to
ground yourself, but I personally only ever use these if
I have either an excess of energy that I need to get rid
of, or I do not have enough energy. This is the most common
way that I have read or found and my personal preferred
way of meditating to ground. So what you do,
is you take a few deep breaths, you settle into your space,
you visualize roots from your body going in
to the Earth like you're a plant or a tree.
Then you can kind of feel that transfer of energy so depending on what you're
grounding for. Say I got all worked up earlier, and I
need to release some energy. I'm going to do my grounding meditation:
put my roots into the ground and visualize the energy that I no
longer need or that is not serving me and sending it into the Earth. Or, the
other way around. I have a small battery as an introvert,
and on certain days my battery just starts out
lower than usual. So maybe I need that extra energy.
I will do my meditation, plant my roots into the Earth, and have that
transfer of energy from the earth into me.
This is a good way to recharge yourself. Grounding is always done
after spell work. I have heard of some friends who do grounding before spell
work, but I've never done that and I guess it
depends on the intention of your spell, but personally I just feel that
grounding is just something that you just do to close
your ritual or close your spell work. The reason it's always done after spell
work, is because when you're working with energies, you're very much
not completely of this physical realm, so once you're finished with that it can be
really tiring if you're just allowing your energy
to kind of be radiating still. You're still
releasing energy into that space, so you want to bring yourself completely back
into the physical realm. You can't pretend that you're not human and like,
run around with the spirits all day. That is exhausting.
You need to be able to ground and recharge. This one was not in my outline
but I feel like it's very important:
Shielding. Shielding is very, very, very,
important and I feel like this was a very big game changer for
me when I was a beginner. Shielding is the act of putting up an
energetic shield - that's exactly what it sounds like.
The reason you would do this is maybe you know that you're going into
a stressful situation. Maybe your job drains you,
when I was a waitress I put up like three shields,
because you know, some of the people that come in...
You just need it sometimes. I usually do this in the very beginning of my day,
I'll do my meditations, I will cleanse myself - if you don't
cleanse yourself you are literally just bubbling in
all of that gross energy and you don't want to do that, so make sure if you have
any gross energy; you had a nightmare, you had
a bad night, whatever cleanse yourself before you
shield, okay? Okay.
So, a few deep breaths, center yourself
- that's a good idea - and you're gonna visualize just a shield
of energy, whatever that looks like to you. It's
going to be totally different for different people.
You're going to visualize a shield of energy maybe just like like arm's length
away or even even like elbow length away if
you want to just come up around you and completely surround you
shield that's almost kind of like an egg around you.Meditate on this for a
little bit. If you don't want it to be long then 30
seconds, something, will do something, just something!
Two minutes, I usually try to go 10 15 depending on what it is I'm shielding for,
but you need to put up your shields and really visualize these shields
protecting you from any negative influences, any ill wishes from other
people, any negative entities that you may cross
that day, etc. Now shielding is very interesting, and I
think it's kind of fun to experiment with especially if you're a beginner.
This is a very good type of spell to experiment with, because
there are all different types of shields that you can use you can put up multiple
shields you can put on: Skin tight shields, you can do shields of
different types, so first can be the energy type and you
can make it thicker and denser so then nothing can
come in. Be careful with that one though because
you can also block good things so keep that in mind. You can do multiple
shields if you feel like you're really gonna need that protection.
Change the shields up. Maybe you can make the shield a different color one day.
Maybe you can make it multiple colors. Maybe it's swirling wind,
the next day maybe it is a ring of fire, the day after that maybe it's these
spiky giant rocks around you, maybe their vines enclosing you, change
up the type of energy that you feel that you need and see
how that interacts with your day-to-day life.
So that is shielding, and remember to take your shields down
at the end of the day energy gets stagnant and stagnant energy is not
good so take your shield down. It's basically going to be the same way that
you put them up except you're visualizing them
dispersing. So that can either just be dissolving in a thin air,
or it can be coming down it can be going up, however
you naturally visualize that. So, that is shielding.
Very, very, very ,important very important you need to be shielding!
And if you're not of the spiritual lifestyle, this is still something that I
have taught some of my friends and they have
said that they've had better days at work
and things don't tend to affect them emotionally or
mentally as they used to. Obviously this is not just going to
block all of those things, but it does help.
And lastly, this is not something that I think
gets recommended very often on like forums or in books by this word,
however, it it does get recommended but like...
subtly. What this is, is "Earthing." Earthing is similar to grounding, and is
sometimes referred to as grounding but I separate these two things for a
reason. Grounding is purely an energy thing
whereas earthing is a physical thing, and while grounding
is bringing your mind bringing your energy back from
wherever and into the physical human realm
into your body, earthing is literally just
putting bare skin mainly your feet straight on the earth. Due to wearing
shoes, living in homes that have wi-fi, and all
these electrical fields around us, it's believed that that
messes with our natural electrical field. Everything on this Earth on this magical,
beautiful, wonderful Earth has a natural electric field to it.
So what earthing does, and it's technically still in research, but all of
the research has had some very interesting results is
it basically recharges our bodies. So running bodies of water
you may notice that you seem "zen" and calm and just you feel good around them.
Things like rivers, creeks, waterfalls, oceans,
and the surface of the earth itself, all emits
negative ions. Negative ions are very beneficial for us, because they lower our
cortisol levels, which is our natural stress hormone,
they also reduce inflammation, and they increase blood flow.
So negative ions - they're pretty good.
How do you "earth?"
Super simple: take off your shoes. Put your feet on the ground.
It's recommended that you do it for about 45 minutes a day or
up to two hours if you can. So this is literally as long as you have
physical skin contact with the earth, you're earthing. You can do this in your
front yard, on a beach, on a trail in a park - PLEASE,
please, be mindful if you are doing this on a trail or in a park
where you're stepping, because I'm not going to be walking around
Griffith Park with no shoes unless I want a shard of glass in my foot.
So please, please be careful where you're doing this.
I'm told that cement is fine also, if you want to earth on top of cement as long
as the cement has earth directly under it
and nothing else, however that's up for you to decide.
I will leave a free documentary and a very interesting documentary down below that
is here on youtube if you want to check out.
More also here, if you want to check out more about
earthing. It's super interesting. So, when to use these methods?
Centering: to be used when you are feeling overwhelmed and when your energy is all
dispersed or feeling like any of your thoughts are unclear.
Energetically "getting all of your ducks in a row." This is best used when you need
an objective stance on something.
Grounding: use after spells or rituals to
bring your energy your mindset back to the physical realm
and into your body or to release excess energy or to
recharge your battery.
Shielding: shielding is used to protect
yourself from daily influences, negative entities, or negative or
unwanted energies. Just remember to take it down at the end of the day.
Earthing: a good daily practice
where you are physically interacting with the earth helping to balance
hormones reduce inflammation and increase blood flow.
So, as I said before, all of these practices are very helpful
whether you are practicing or not. However, these are NOT solve all methods.
Centering is not going to make you magically no longer upset or angry.
Grounding is not going to completely rid you of anxiety,
or be a fallback if you've had too much coffee or not enough sleep.
Shielding will not completely stop people from being assholes to you.
Sorry. It's also not going to completely stop bad luck.
However, it does help. These are precautions.
Preventative magic is the best kind of magic. These will be staples in your
craft. Learning to direct and control energy
around you, starting with your own. I hope this video
helped any of those who are just starting out or maybe you just have
never heard of any of these methods before.
That is all for this video, and as always i will see you next week.
Best of luck, be kind to each other, and may your gods treat you
as you've treated others.
Bye~