An Excerpt from Becoming an Empowered Empath by Wendy De Rosa

While empathy is a wonderful trait to have, it’s also possible to have too much of a good thing. Unless they have strong boundaries, extremely empathic individuals, or empaths, often end up feeling overwhelmed, disconnected from self, and overly emotional as a result of taking on the negative energy of others.

In Becoming an Empowered Empath: How to Clear Energy, Set Boundaries & Embody Your Intuition (New World Library, March 30, 2021), Wendy DeRosa, a preeminent and pioneering expert on this subject, helps readers understand their empathic nature and offers the practical tools they need to restore their energetic boundaries, honor their intuitive gifts, and fully express their personal power. We hope you’ll enjoy this excerpt from the book.

We all know how revitalizing it is to be in nature: connecting with the natural world, stimulating your senses, and filling your lungs with oxygen lifts your mood and spirit. Grounding is simply the process of connecting your body with the earth. You can do this effortlessly by walking barefoot on the earth, digging your toes into the sand, or resting your body on soft grass and rich soil.

Grounding is critical for intuitives and empaths and is an essential aspect of one’s daily practice. Especially when energy is scattered or out of balance, it is important to direct the energy flowing in and around your body into the earth. You can also draw up the earth’s energy to help you ground your entire energy body.

The earth’s surface carries biocurrents that defuse the electric charges that build up in the physical body. If allowed to accumulate, these charges can affect the nervous system, your health, and your wellbeing, leaving you feeling ungrounded. Historically, human beings have been more connected to the earth than we are today. Western civilization has paved over and built upon much of the earth’s surface. As a result, our connection to this vital life-force energy has greatly diminished, affecting our physical and mental health. However, there are many effective ways to restore our grounding. From the perspective of our energetic anatomy, we ground through an energetic root system that extends from our hips, our sitz bones, and our feet into the earth. Like the meridians in Traditional Chinese Medicine, these are not anatomical systems; rather, they are energetic systems that channel energy throughout the body, through the energy field around the physical body, and into the earth. We call this energetic root a grounding cord, which is an energetic line that connects our root chakra to the vibration of the center of the earth. This grounding cord supplies vital life-force energy to our physical body to nourish our organs, calm our nervous system, and support our energetic anatomy. When this line of energy is intact, it instills in us a feeling of safety and trust and a strong sense of self. When we are ungrounded or the grounding cord is not fully intact, we can feel scattered, confused, overly emotional, anxious, unsafe; we experience racing thoughts, irrational fears, codependency, insecurity, and the loss of a sense of self.

I like to think of the grounding cord as a wide pillar that is secured around the hips, the low belly, and the low spine. This pillar extends deep into the earth’s core and grounding vibration. Sometimes the grounding cord is perceived as a skinny cord from the tailbone to the center of the earth, but I like to widen the image in order to provide a greater sense of stability and a secure attachment to the base of our bodies. Other times the grounding cord is compared to a tree trunk, an image that evokes a connection with the earth element and an extensive root system. Similar to the root chakra, the grounding cord also carries the bond to our familial and cultural history that subconsciously informs how we are going to operate in the world.

It’s especially important for empaths to replenish or fuel the base of our body with vital earth energy through our grounding cord. If not enough earth energy is supporting the base of the body, energy from the lower body is pushed upward. When this happens, our upper chakras expand and open to support the amount of energy that is moving through them. We lose the balance between the upper and lower body, essentially becoming more high functioning in the upper chakras and more closed down in the lower chakras.

If we have not developed grounding tools or techniques to reconnect to nature and settle our nervous system, it’s possible to live chronically ungrounded. This means that over many years, the body has acquired a pattern that makes it feel safer for you to live high up in your head or your heart and to be disconnected from the power in your lower body. On an energetic level, we start to accumulate wounds and unprocessed energy in the lower chakras. When we do try to ground, it can cause fatigue; it can feel emotional or fearful. Grounding isn’t always comfortable, especially if we have been trained to mirror an ungrounded society that emphasizes rational processing instead of truth, peace, calm, and connection.

Why Grounding Is Important to Support Healthy Intuition

Our thoughts are influenced by the life experiences and imprints that we store in our energy body. If our thoughts relate to an experience that felt fearful or threatening, our body is going to react in a way to protect us from experiencing fear or threat again. These responses become wired into our thinking and our unconscious beliefs.

Intuition is divine consciousness communicating through our body. Whether we experience our intuition as an inner voice, a higher Self, a sense of knowing, or a kinesthetic response in the body, it is clearest when we are grounded, calm, and connected to the present moment. When we are in a triggered state, we are not grounded in the present moment. Our thoughts are racing, taking us back to the time and place of the initial wounding. In this temporary regressed state, we are cut off from our intuition, inner knowing, and higher guidance.

People often ask, “Is this my fear talking, or is it my intuition?” In some cases it could be both. If the fear is meant to keep us out of danger, it is our intuition. However, when the “monkey mind” — the unsettled, restless mind — is racing, your thoughts can create more anxiety. You become disconnected from yourself and must ground your body before you can access clear guidance. When the mind settles, a new current of consciousness awakens in the body — your intuition!

These days, with all that is happening on the planet, you might wonder, “Should I really be grounding into the earth when there is such chaos right now?” Some spiritual teachers advise against it in such times. From my experience, however, birth, death, and rebirth are elements in the cycle of life. We are part of a rising consciousness that is evolving through a process of destruction, the evolution of consciousness, and subsequent re-creation. As structures dismantle, new ways are revealed. In times of collective trauma, such as a pandemic, racial injustice, or natural disaster, the most important thing you can do is to notice what issues arise for you, process them, and then deepen your grounding. We incarnated at this time to be part of what is unfolding, and we need to stay grounded in order to live from our deeper truth and fulfill our rightful purpose. As consciously evolving beings, it is critical that we not give in to spiritual bypassing, transcending what is happening rather than experiencing it fully. We are here to be part of the solution through our own inner work.

So, to go back to the question about whether we should ground while the world is in this state, the short answer is: yes — and ground ever more deeply.

Wendy De Rosa is the author of Becoming an Empowered Empath. The founder of The School of Intuitive Studies, she has been helping people develop intuition and experience personal transformation for over two decades. Visit her online at http://www.SchoolOfIntuitiveStudies.com.

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