How to Practice Grounding Your Energy to Reduce Anxiety

Our ancestors didn’t have to learn how to regulate their nervous systems the way we do now. While they had different stressors, they weren’t constantly bombarded with them the way we are today. For the most part, everything in their day to day lives was very quiet and routine. They tended to the fields and the animals, baked the bread, made the butter and spent their days getting whatever work needed done in the slow paced yet consistent way that supported our biology in a calm way.

While our ancestors faced different challenges, the constant activation of our nervous system is a distinctly modern problem. When their stressors arose, such as predators, enemy threats, food security, illness or harsh weather, the fight or flight response served it’s functioning well. Turning on for a short period of time (sometimes days, weeks or months for sure), it had more opportunity to self regulate back to stability unassisted.

Now, our nervous system’s protective measures are becoming activated nearly constantly. No longer just by threats to our survival, but also by a bombardment of noises, screens and the endless influx of news stories around the world. With our ever increasingly reliance (and addiction) to tech, we’ve taken our brain’s natural tendency to look for threats and overloaded it with more than we can process.