Find Your Ground

Earlier this week, most of you chose grounding as the most helpful direction. In this edition: why grounding matters, how to return to your body when overwhelm spikes, and one small practice to remind you the floor is still under your feet.

Today’s Quick Overview:

🔬 Science Spotlight: How breathwork triggers natural psychedelic states in the brain…
🗣 Therapist Corner: Why grounding offers a stable center…
📰 Mental Health News: Repair latency, and why learning sticks when it's effortful...
🫂Community Voices: Meaning isn't a cosmic revelation…

Let's find what's grounding you and what's moving you forward today:

What’s anchoring you as the week closes: your ability to reflect or gratitude for what you’ve come through? And what’s your sail—the relief of finishing or simply the comfort of knowing you’ve earned this rest? Let your anchor hold the week’s lessons while your sail carries you gently into what comes next.

Our bodies often carry insights before our minds catch up. Which area of “body wisdom” would you most want us to explore in a future edition?

Trauma-Safe Grounding Poster

Ground yourself gently with our free 5-4-3-2-1 Trauma-Safe Grounding Poster. This supportive guide walks you through your senses and ends with a kind word to reconnect with safety. Print it out or keep it on your phone as a daily tool to calm your mind and body after trauma triggers.

Reply now with "September 12, 2025" to receive your free 5-4-3-2-1 Trauma-Safe Grounding guide. Our team will send your file within 24-30 hours.

Today’s Expert: Hayley Bilski (Accredited Mental Health Social Worker)

When everything feels scattered and overwhelming, grounding offers a way back to yourself. Whether you're navigating life changes like career shifts, parenthood, loss, or simply the daily chaos of modern life, grounding gives you something solid when everything else feels uncertain.

Grounding, also called earthing, involves connecting with the present moment through physical and sensory experiences. While some research suggests potential health benefits from direct contact with the earth, the broader concept extends to any practice that helps you feel anchored and present.

The concept of grounding extends well back into history, wherein many ancient cultures believed that all living creatures were connected to the energies of the earth and that those energies kept all that were connected to it in balance.

Why Grounding Is Important

Grounding is so important for all humans, whether one is going through life changes like adolescence, pregnancy, parenthood, career shifts, menopause, loss, caring for others, or identity transitions, because it offers a stable centre in the midst of inner and outer challenges, everyday life challenges, and transformation.

Every day life may bring about:

For some, these shifts are often layered with societal expectations, caregiving roles, and personal transformation happening all at once.

Grounding gives us something solid when everything else feels uncertain. When we pause and connect, we stop outsourcing validation and start trusting our own intuition, voice, and learning to say no.

Grounding in Practice

Tara Brach, Ph.D., a well-known American psychologist and author, extends grounding from simply being in contact with the earth to a "mindful return to the body and the physical sensations that connect us to the present moment". We can do this by tuning into:

Why does this matter? In moments of stress, busyness, fear, reactivity, or dissociation/disconnection, grounding offers a refuge, a place to rest our attention and reset into a more present state.

The Power of Rootedness

Connected to grounding is the concept of rootedness—an extension of grounding where we imagine ourselves like a tree with deep roots, having survived through all sorts of weather and change, and meditate on what it would feel like to have our own personal roots, deeply connected to the earth where we stand.

Rooting ourselves like a tree opens a portal to feeling calmer and more present. It helps us become aware of our living body—always working, breathing, and responding, even when we're not conscious of it. When we notice our body internally and how it feels in relation to the world around us, we start to feel more in control and awake in any given moment.

Rootedness helps cultivate inner stability, clarity, and self-trust in a world that often pulls us away from ourselves through roles, expectations, emotional labour, and constant change.

For those conditioned to put others' needs first, rootedness can help us come home to our values, intuition, and inner wisdom, so we can live from our own truth rather than external expectations. It helps us remember who we are beneath the roles we play, providing an internal anchor through all the changes.

Rootedness is both psychological and spiritual. It reconnects us to the earth, the cycles of life, and the natural rhythms of being rather than doing. This can help us feel held by something greater than ourselves, honoring our body as wise and living from intuition, not just intellect.

Try This

Grounding and rootedness are interconnected. Grounding involves being in the here and now, physical and sensory experiences, calming the nervous system bit by bit, and putting our feet on the ground.

Rootedness involves remembering who we are, connecting with our emotional and spiritual parts, encouraging long-term stability, and recognising the body/soul connection. In time, practising both of these will bring us greater inner peace, a deeper understanding of our emotions, and better ways to react and respond in stressful situations.

Some ideas for every day grounding and rootedness opportunities: Breathing, body scan, meditation, imaginative journalling, holding a stone and doing a mindfulness exercise, putting feet and hands on the earth or on a tree, watching the clouds, spending time in nature (for example, the Japanese practice of shinrin yoku – forest bathing), music, dancing and exercise.

Some reflections to consider that may surface whilst practising grounding and rootedness:

Hayley Bilski is the founder of Mindspace Therapy Practice in Sydney, Australia, working in person and online with Nature Focused, Compassion-Based, Acceptance and Commitment, and Cognitive Behavioural therapeutic approaches. She has been a social worker for over 20 years and is passionate about guiding people towards being the best version of themselves and working through challenges with greater self-compassion.

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Scientists Map How Breathwork Triggers Natural Psychedelic States in Your Brain

Research finding: In a small imaging study (42 people), 20–30 minutes of rapid, continuous breathing paired with music reliably produced deep, psychedelic-like experiences. Scans suggested reduced activity in areas that track internal body state and increased activity in regions tied to emotion and memory (amygdala, hippocampus).

Many participants reported oceanic boundlessness: feelings of unity, insight, and calm. Some stress markers changed during the practice, yet fear and negative mood decreased, and no adverse events were reported in-session.

Why it matters: This adds early evidence that breathwork can access therapeutic, non-drug altered states. The pattern resembles effects seen with psychedelics, which may explain reports of emotional release and perspective shifts. It is not proof of treatment, but it strengthens the case for careful clinical use.

Try it today: Curious about exploring breathwork? Start gently. Even short sessions can shift awareness. Pairing rhythmic breathing with music often amplifies the effect. But because high-ventilation breathing can be intense, it’s best practiced in a safe space and, if possible, with trained guidance, especially if you have heart or lung conditions.

The aim isn’t escape but access: letting your body’s natural rhythms open pathways to insight, calm, or emotional release.

Today’s Visualization Journey: Evening Pottery Studio Open House

Step into a warm, clay-scented studio during an open house. Shelves of bowls and vases catch the light. A potter centers a lump of clay, hands steady, explaining how each piece is a lesson in patience and letting go.

People wander quietly, lifting a mug, tracing a rim, choosing something made to be used. At a small table, tea is poured into handmade cups. The pace is unhurried; the week loosens its grip.

You leave feeling unhurried and grounded, reminded that useful things can also be beautiful, and that beauty often asks for time.

Make it yours: What handmade, honest experience are you ready to slow down for as the week ends? Where can you choose quality over speed and let your hands or senses lead?

Today’s Affirmations

Friday doesn’t need flawless execution to feel worthwhile. The real win is that you kept showing up. Steady effort builds more than perfection ever could.

Try this: Before the weekend begins, pause and say: “I kept showing up this week, even when it was hard. That steadiness matters more than getting everything perfect.”

Gratitude Spotlight

Today's Invitation: "What's one way you plan to be kind to yourself this weekend that doesn't involve spending money or achieving anything?"

Why It Matters: Friday plans often chase price tags or big goals. The most restorative weekends are simple and gentle. They cost nothing and protect your well-being.

Try This: Picture your planned kindness and say, “I deserve to be kind to myself.” Feel grateful for knowing what actually restores you and for choosing what nourishes rather than exhausts.

Why it matters today: We often approach our days looking for what's wrong, what's missing, or what we need to fix, but every day arrives with something valuable wrapped inside it. The gifts might not be obvious; they could be disguised as challenges, hidden in ordinary moments, or buried under routine tasks.

Bring it into your day: Start with curiosity instead of triage. Ask, “What is today offering me?” Move through the day as if unwrapping a gift. Notice one unexpected pleasure, one small win, and one point of connection. The gifts are there if you look.

I Stopped Waiting For My Life to Feel Meaningful"

Shared by River, 32

I spent most of my twenties convinced I was broken because I didn’t have a “calling.” Everyone else seemed to know exactly why they were here. Meanwhile, I was working an admin job, waiting for the universe to send me a memo about my purpose.

I tried everything: volunteering, meditating, even googling how to find your purpose more times than I’d like to admit. Nothing stuck.

Then last month, I was dog-sitting for my neighbor while she recovered from surgery. Walking her elderly golden retriever, Buster, around the block twice a day didn’t feel like much, but his slow pace made me notice things. Mr. Philips, waving from his window. The teenage girl next door, on her front porch, bent over her math homework, looking stressed.

One day, I asked if she needed help. Fifteen minutes later, she’d solved her algebra problems and had a huge smile on her face. Walking Buster home, I realized I felt more useful than I had in months. Not because I’d discovered a grand mission, but because I’d noticed what was right in front of me and showed up for it.

Maybe meaning isn’t a cosmic revelation. Maybe it’s paying attention. Helping when you can. Doing your everyday work intentionally, even if it’s not your dream job. I’m still in the same admin role. I still don’t have a mission statement for my life. But I’ve stopped feeling like I’m failing at being human just because I don’t have a calling.

Share Your Story

Have a mental health journey you'd like to share with our community? Reply back to this email. All submissions are anonymized and edited for length with your approval before publication. Each published story receives a $10 donation to the mental health charity of your choice.

Your 3-Minute Writing Invitation: "What's one moment this week when I felt proud of how I handled something, and what specifically did I do well?"

Why Today's Prompt Matters: Friday reflection is perfect for recognizing moments when you responded to a situation in a way that aligned with your values or showed growth in how you handle challenges. These moments of personal integrity and skill deserve acknowledgment, especially since we often focus more on what we could have done better.

Permission to Feel Disconnected from Your Future Self

You're allowed to have trouble imagining where you'll be in five years, what you'll want next, or how current decisions will affect the future you, without feeling like you're being irresponsible or short-sighted.

Why it matters: Life can change fast. Long-range planning is useful, but it’s not the only wise way to decide. You can make good choices by caring for the person you are now.

If you need the reminder: It’s okay to choose what fits today and trust that future-you will meet tomorrow with more information and the same grit you’ve shown so far.

Tonight's Gentle Review

Invite the day to exhale with three quiet questions:

Release ritual: Stand. Inhale with your arms wide; exhale into a gentle self-hug. Stay for three slow breaths and tell yourself, “Thank you for getting me here.”

Book: The Comfort Book by Matt Haig

Read: The Comfort Book by Matt Haig

Matt Haig offers a collection of bite-sized reflections designed to provide solace during life's difficult moments, drawing from his own struggles with depression and anxiety. Haig's insights range from practical (like mindfully making peanut butter toast) to philosophical (embracing uncertainty as a source of both anxiety and hope), but they all circle back to the same idea: comfort often comes from accepting rather than fixing yourself.

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Coming Monday: Sleep doesn't just rest your brain, it actively rewires it to learn new languages, and why timing your study sessions before sleep could revolutionize how you master complex skills.

Researched and edited by Natasha. Designed with love by Kaye.

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*The Daily Wellness shares educational content only and is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice and diagnosis. Please consult a licensed provider for personalized care.