#8: 3 Simple Ways to Reconnect and Embrace the Present Moment
Today's episode is all about simple ways that you can embrace the present moment. A lot of the times, life can feel chaotic and intense, and it can lead us to feel scattered and possibly all over the place. It's really important to remember and practice coming back to the present moment. That's where you can find your calm. That's where you can feel centered again and approach the next part of your day from a more grounded place.
I wanted to share three simple ways that you can reconnect to yourself and embrace the present moment. You can take what resonates and leave the rest, as always. Try them out and see what works for you. Maybe you're doing some of these, maybe you've never tried them. The thing that I like to always try to do on this podcast is provide you with simple, effective ways to do things in small moments. Easy ways to change something in your life, to make a little shift that will lead you down a different path. None of this has to be over the top. It doesn't have to be super complicated because, of course, the more we complicate it, the less likely we are to do it.
These three examples of how to embrace the present moment are meant to be things that you can simply and easily regardless of how much time you have. I also like to say quality over quantity. If you have a short amount of time, but you spend it really effectively trying to do one of these things, then that's great. It goes a much longer way to getting you to that calm and centered place than if you try to say, okay, I'm going to hurry up and try to do this 10 different times in my day. If you're not really connected to it, it's not going to work the same so keep that in mind. There's no right or wrong. You can approach it however you'd like. But I wanted to share some of that up front as a way to inform and set expectations.
The First Way to Embrace the Present Moment – Do a Body Scan
The first way that you can embrace the present moment is by taking a pause and doing a body scan. If you're not already familiar with doing body scans, basically what you can do is center yourself, take a few deep breaths, and then check in with all the different parts of your body from head to toe.
Put your attention, energy and awareness to the top of your head, the crown, and then go through all the different parts of your body. Visit your eyes, ears nose and your mouth. Check in with your chin, your throat. Move all the way down through your whole body, all the way to your toes, and really check in with each of those areas, see how they feel.
Does anything feel tight or sore?
Do you need to give it a little stretch?
Are you needing a little more movement?
Do you have pain or discomfort?
Do you feel strong and flexible?
Bring your awareness to each of those places. As you do that, that's bringing you back to right now and what's happening for you right now in the present moment. I find it's a very simple, effective way to check in with the self. Sometimes I'll even do it right before bed if I'm needing to relax. You can focus on each body part while you're laying there. It will bring you back into yourself. It really works. I'm telling you. You'll get really calm from it.
The first example of how to reconnect and embrace the present moment is inviting you to do a body scan and really take a look and pay attention to all the areas of your body. Because, of course, you may know this about me already. I really fully believe in the mind body connection and how important it is.
Performing a body scan is the first way to reconnect and embrace the present moment.
The Second Way to Embrace the Present Moment – Get Grounded
The second way to embrace the present moment is to ground yourself. This one is something that I learned and really started to embrace from my dear friend Elizabeth Gilbeault of Every Day Energy with Elizabeth. She was often a guest on my previous podcast, and she's a meditation teacher and practitioner.
Grounding is all about centering yourself and connecting yourself back to the earth. I'm going to give you two ways to embrace the present moment within this one. The first one I will say is a little more practical in a way. If you're not familiar with grounding and you kind of want to get your feet wet in a way and practice it, it might feel a little more relatable for you.
The first way to practice grounding:
The first way that you can do this is just standing wherever you are, quietly taking a few breaths again - always start with a few deep breaths. It's really supportive to your system. Then, really pay attention to your feet on the ground. Bring your awareness to your feet and feel your connection with the earth. You may have heard there's people that talk about grounding in terms of going outside and putting your bare feet on the earth, which is also fantastic. But if you're in your busy day and it's not feasible for you in that moment to go and put your feet outside. You can just stand anywhere where you're standing in your house or wherever, and just bring your awareness to your feet connecting with the ground. Spend a moment there with that and really feel yourself, feel your body, feel your feet connecting, the fact that they're touching the ground, and just bring an awareness to that connection. The Earth is grounding in itself. Paying attention to this will energetically also help you to ground there. That’s one way that you can ground and reconnect if you're not used to grounding.
If you want to do something pretty simple, just pay attention to your feet connecting to the Earth, and imagine that energy running through, connecting again between you and the Earth. It can be very powerful.
The second way to practice grounding:
Then the other way, if you want to do something a little more advanced, even though there is not a better or worse option, is to do make a grounding cord. A grounding cord is an energetic cord that connects your body to the center of the Earth. What you want to do is again, take deep breaths and then bring awareness to your spine all along your back until you get to the bottom of your spine, by your tailbone. Then picture an energetic cord. It can look like a rope, it can look like a string, it can be a slide, it can be whatever you want it to look like. This, this energy line that starts from the base of your spine and goes down, connects through the layers of the Earth.
When I’m in my house, I imagine this energetic cord is going through the floor and into the ground and through the layers of earth and rock. If you're outside, you can picture it going through the grass and then to the dirt, so on and so forth. Imagine this cord of energy going all the way down, deep down to the center of the Earth and wrapping around the core of the Earth, or it could even just be sticking directly into the core of the Earth.
You're attaching your energetic cord from your body all the way into the core of the Earth. What this does is this gives you grounding connection to the Earth and the energies of that. Once you create the cord, you can release any tension that you're feeling, or anything that you want to let go of and send it down your grounding cord. You can imagine that energy leaving from you and being released down this grounding cord and clearing your energy from it.
Grounding is a very simple yet powerful way that you can also come to embrace the present moment. As a bonus, you're also releasing some things by sending it away at the same time.
I use both of these techniques regularly. Sometimes I just connect with my feet on the ground and feel into the moment. I remind myself I'm in this moment and bring the awareness there. Now that I do more with my meditation practices, I do things around giving myself a grounding cord, and I teach my girls to also do that. It's a way to feel centered and connected with yourself. At the end of the day, we are all energy in some form.
It sounded weird to me at first to do things like making a grounding cord. Then, when you think about all the energy that's moving around us, no matter what, it's kind of like, why wouldn't we work with it a little bit and make it work for us, right? We can clear the air and clear our energy, so that we can reset and then continue on with the day. Grounding yourself, whether with your feet or with a grounding cord, is the second way to reconnect and embrace the present moment.
The Third Way to Embrace the Present Moment – Body Tapping
The third way that you can reconnect with yourself and embrace the present moment is by doing body tapping. This one is all about moving the energy around in your body.
With body tapping, you put your hands into fists, and you find the spot on your body about two fingers below your belly button called the Dahn Jon area. You begin with a repetitive tap of one hand and then the other hand, and you tap that part of your body. After a while, depending how hard you tap (you shouldn't be hurting yourself by any means) and as you do that and create a rhythm around, it will start to shift the energy in your body.
There's a whole concept by Ilchi Lee that's around water up, fire down. We typically have hot heads where we have all these thoughts and all these things spinning around in our heads while our belly area is cool. What he says is that energetically, you want your belly to be warm. You want to be operating from a centered, grounded place with your belly as a power center and for your head to be cool. When you do this tapping, it warms up your belly area and it empties out your mind.
This technique may seem to be the quirkiest of the three. I've been doing body tapping for a few years now, and it is very simple and very, very effective.
Here is a link to an example of body tapping on YouTube.
It's something that I usually share with my clients as a way to reactivate their mind-body connection. Body tapping gets you to warm up your belly and releases all of the stuff that's happening in your head. You may need a little more time for this one versus the body scan or the grounding cord, just because if you want to really warm up your belly.
If you start it and get experience with it, I found over time that I don't need to tap for as long and I'll like lock into that place. I find that place in me and I can get there quicker to find that calm and find that grounded spot. Especially if I feel like I've been taking on a lot of emotions or there's been a lot of things going on and I'm feeling a little heavy with stuff. Body tapping really helps because it's more physical in a way, being that you're actually tapping yourself.
While you're tapping, as an energetic bonus, you can also consciously set the intention that you're releasing whatever energy or emotions that need to be released. It can really go a long way towards it actually happening when you set the intention. Body Tapping is the third way to reconnect and embrace the present moment.
Conclusion on 3 Ways to Reconnect and Embrace the Present Moment
These are the three simple techniques that you can use to reconnect and embrace the present moment. The homework for this week is to pick one of these, whichever one you want, whichever feels best to you right now, and get curious about it. Start experimenting with it and see how it feels to you.
With anything new, you have to give it a few tries. You can't just do it once and then say, oh, that was really crap. I mean, you can, but it’s not ideal. Give it a few tries for sure before you move on to the next one. You might find if you practice all three of them, certain ones in certain moments in certain parts of your day, or depending on what you're feeling.
What I'd really like you to be able to do over time from listening to this podcast is build up a library of different tools and practices and things that you can test out and try for yourself and then see which ones work best for you. Not everything is going to work the same way for everybody. I completely understand that. There's no expectation of that. So just remember that going into this and really pay attention to what works best for you.
You matter the most in that scenario, so give it a try. Let me know what you think. If you ever want to go deeper with any of this work or any of the things that I share on this podcast, tips definitely reach out. I do offer some one on one sessions and I also have human design readings. Depending where you're at and what kind of support you're looking for, I'd be honored to be there with you.
Resources mentioned:
Body tapping video can be found here.
Get your free Human Design chart here.
If you’d like to connect further about unlocking the next step in your personal development journey, please feel free to reach out. I'm on LinkedIn and Instagram. I'm also on Voxer at @MaryClavieres.
If you want support with where you are right now, I'd be honored to work with you. You’re invited to check out my Human Design readings so that you can learn more about your own energy and how you operate. This tool is a powerful building block that will allow you to live life with less stress and more peace.
If you found this episode helpful, please feel free to share with a friend or a loved one, anyone that you may think about that would benefit from it. If you're looking for support on your journey in any way please don't hesitate to reach out. I am here for you, and I'd love to support you. Thank you so much for being here today. I so appreciate you, and I wish you a wonderful rest of your day.
Previous Podcast Episodes to Listen to:
How Small Steps Lead to Big Changes
How to Overcome the Fear of Making Decisions
The Easiest Way to Practice Gratitude in One Minute a Day
