Earth Energy

I put it that strongly on purpose. People come to this work wanting the exciting parts, the abilities, the readings, the spirit contact, and they skip the earth because it seems ordinary. Then they wonder why they feel scattered, why they cannot sleep, why every busy shopping centre leaves them wrung out. The earth is where you plug in. Nothing else works properly unplugged.

Two halves of one teaching

Grounding and earth energy are the same lesson from two directions.

Your house has an electrical earth so that any dangerous current has somewhere safe to go. Your body runs on the same principle. Everything you pick up during a day, other people's moods, the noise, the worry, builds up in you like a charge, and when your skin touches the ground the ground takes what you do not need. That is grounding, and it drains you of what is not yours.

Earth energy is the other direction. The earth does not only take. It gives, and what it gives is clean, steady and very old. Grounding empties out the rubbish. Earth energy fills the space with something better. You need both, and the good news is that the same act, standing on the ground with your attention on it, does both at once.

Make a day of it

Here is the exercise, and it is the most enjoyable one I teach.

Pick a place out of the city that you love, or ask around for one if you do not have one yet. Ideally somewhere with water in its natural state, a river, a lake, the sea. Take a picnic. Take a whole day if you can. Then do almost nothing.

That is the whole instruction. Be there. Sit. Walk slowly. Lie on the ground and look up. Meditate if you feel like it and do not if you do not. Let the place soak into you.

Hug a tree, and I mean that literally. Put your arms around it, your chest against the bark, and stay there for a minute or two with your eyes closed. You can feel the live energy of a tree through your chest, a slow steady hum that is nothing like your own, and it is not as strange as it sounds once you have done it. Nobody who has done it laughs at it afterwards.

If there is water, paddle in it. Sit on a rock in the middle of it and let it run past you. Swim if it is warm enough. Then lie in the sun and dry off and do nothing some more.

You will drive home more energised than when you left, and it is so addictive that you will find yourself doing it again the following month without anybody telling you to.

My place

Mine is Walyunga, out past Bullsbrook, where the Avon comes down through the hills and turns into the Swan. There is a bend in the river there with rocks you can sit on in the water and bush on both banks and nothing else.

I have been going there for decades. I have taken students there. I have gone there on days when I could not have told you what was wrong, and come back knowing. I still return from it different from how I went, every single time, and I have never been able to explain to anyone exactly what changes. It is the kind of thing that has to be experienced.

Find your own version. It does not have to be famous. It has to be yours.

Sunrise

There is a particular earth energy that only exists for about twenty minutes a day, and most people sleep through it.

Get yourself to the beach, or the hills, or anywhere with a clear view of the east, while it is still dark. Sit still. Do not look at your phone. Then be there as the sun comes up.

The energy at that moment is very gentle and very strong at the same time, and it puts a smile on your face that lasts most of the day. I have encouraged every group I have ever taught to do this at least once, and the ones who did it once mostly did it again. I can describe it but I cannot explain it. It has to be done.

The everyday version

You do not need a national park for the daily dose.

Take your shoes off and stand on the grass for ten minutes. Sand is good too. Bare earth is best of all. Stand with your feet a little apart, let your knees soften, and put your attention in the soles of your feet, the same way the body energy page taught you to put it in your big toes. Feel the ground pressing back. Let anything heavy in you run down and out, and let whatever the ground offers come up and in.

Ten minutes barefoot a day will change how you feel by the end of the first week. If you cannot get outside, a pot plant with your fingers in the soil is better than nothing, and I have used that in an office more than once.

The mistakes people make

Doing it once and calling it done. Earth energy is a relationship, and like any relationship it needs regular contact.

Treating it as a background to something else. Sitting in the bush with your headphones in and your phone in your hand is sitting in the bush without being there. Put it all away.

Choosing spectacular over quiet. A dramatic lookout with a car park full of people is less use to you than a dull patch of creek with nobody in it. You are after the energy of the place, and crowds bring their own.

Going only when you feel bad. Go when you feel good too. That is how you learn what full feels like, so you notice sooner when you are running low.

Why it matters for everything else

Every ability you develop and every healing you do runs through your body, and your body is made of the same stuff as the ground you are standing on. Stay connected to it and the work is steady, and you are steady. Lose the connection and you float, and floating people pick up everything and hold onto none of it.

Go outside.