We all face challenges from time to time that move us out of being grounded and centered. Often it’s something unexpected – such as receiving bad news, an offhand comment an acquaintance makes, or seeing a dead animal along the road.

When we first get a sense we’re leaving our center, we have two choices:

1) to continue being in the moment and allow ourselves to face and fully experience  what we’re feeling, knowing that it may (temporarily) take us further out of our center. But trusting in the experience and allowing it to teach us about ourselves – maybe pointing to an unhealed wound or a fear we didn’t know we had. Knowing that sometimes when we allow an experience to be, it leads to healing in surprising ways.

2) to use tools in the moment to help us stay in our center, then later work with the issue that arose to bring long-term healing.

Your inner wisdom will guide you to which option is appropriate for the situation you’re facing. But for our purposes here, let’s work with option #2, which might be described like this:

tools to help immediately  +  working with the trigger  =  long-term healing

Let’s look at it piece by piece.

Some possible tools to support you in the moment:

·      Breathe! Often when we find ourselves feeling tense, our chests tighten and we forget to breathe. We can sometimes recover our center through nothing more than just taking a few conscious, deep breaths.

·      Use grounding techniques to help you reestablish your connection to Mother Earth. Send your grounding cord down to the center of the Earth and pull up grounded Mother Earth energy, or invite Mother Earth to come and hold your feet on the ground.

·      Say a quick prayer to one of the divine compassionate beings for assistance.

·      Breathe out and release the heavy energy of what you are feeling.

·      If any part of you has left, call yourself to come back: “_____(your name)_____, come home. _____(your name)_____, come home.”

·      Use The Question Method or The Line techniques if you are being swayed by another person’s emotion.

·      Remind yourself of the concept of seniority – that we are meant to be the center of our lives. No matter what happens, we are bigger than our creations, our emotions and our drama. Visualize yourself and your emotion as they feel at the moment, then see yourself getting bigger and your emotion shrinking until you have the ability to be in your center again.

·      Remind yourself that you’re an adult with all of your life experience, wisdom and skills available to support you.

And the most important thing to do in the moment:

·      Make a date with what’s coming up for later. Promise yourself to set aside time later in the day to look at this and to feel it.

Later that day:

·      Fulfill the promise you made to yourself by working with the issue that arose. Allow yourself to feel the emotion. What’s it about? Track to the source of the unease. It’s trying to teach you something about yourself. It’s pointing to an unhealed wound. What is it? And, if you’re not clear, what triggered it? Allow yourself to sit with this.

·      Replay the scene to let go of the energy and find healing and forgiveness.

·      Enter into meditation and call back any power you lost as a result of the situation.

In the next weeks and months:

·      Pursue healing for the wound pointed by your tracking. Once the wound is healed, you will no longer be available to the energies that otherwise might pull you out of your center. Some suggestions for ways to heal: doing a ceremony, working through the energy with a shamanic healer or other energy worker, practicing techniques that have been helpful at shifting energy for you in the past, working with a therapist, breaking any outdated beliefs or agreements that may have held the wound in place.

·      Set a new, positive intention to support you.

·      Build a temporary altar for additional support if necessary.

·      Continue to sit with the experience to gain further clarity. Continue asking the questions.