I Put My Feet in the Snow Last Week (And Other Unglamorous Grounding Practices)
Last week was a lot.
I couldn't even tell you exactly what set it off. It wasn't one thing - it was the accumulation of everything. Work, ideas piling up, the general weight of what's happening in the world. At some point my body just said: enough.
I know when I'm dysregulated before my brain catches up. My stomach goes swirly. My chest tightens. My thoughts start moving so fast I can't grab onto any of them.
And so I did what I teach.
First, I noticed.
This sounds simple but it's actually the hardest part. When we're overwhelmed, our instinct is to push through, distract ourselves, or just keep going. Stopping to notice what's happening in our bodies feels counterintuitive - like it will make things worse.
It doesn't. Naming what's happening - "something is going on for me right now and it matters" - is actually the first step in calming your nervous system down. When we're dysregulated, our nervous system is in survival mode. It's scanning for threat, trying to keep us safe. The simple act of acknowledging what's happening signals to your body that you're paying attention. That you're here.
Then I breathed.
Slowly, deliberately, like I meant it. Not a quick inhale and back to the chaos - actual breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth. A few times.
Here's why this works: your breath is the only part of your autonomic nervous system you can consciously control. When you slow your breathing down, you're literally sending a message to your brain that you're safe. It's not magic. It's physiology.
I tried to find the trigger - and couldn't.
Sometimes there's a clear answer. Sometimes there isn't. Last week it was just everything at once - the accumulated weight of a full life in an uncertain world. And that's okay. You don't always need to identify the exact cause to start feeling better.
So I kept going.
I meditated. Short, nothing fancy - just sat with myself for a few minutes and let things settle.
And then I went outside and put my bare feet in the snow.
I know. But hear me out.
Physical grounding - actually connecting your body to something tangible, cold, real - is one of the fastest ways to interrupt a spiral. The sensation pulls you out of your head and back into your body. The cold is impossible to ignore. And frankly, the sheer absurdity of standing in your backyard in February with no shoes on makes it very hard to stay in a catastrophic thought loop.
Then I called my husband Keith and talked it through.
Because sometimes the most grounding thing you can do is let someone who knows you remind you that you're not alone.
Did all of that fix everything? No. But it helped. And sometimes helping is enough.
This is what grounding actually looks like on a hard day. Not a candle and a bubble bath. Not a perfectly curated self-care routine. Just a series of small, unglamorous things that bring you back to yourself one breath at a time.
The tools exist. You just have to use them - and sometimes you need someone to teach you how.
That's exactly what we're going to do together in my upcoming online workshop, Grounding in Self-Trust When Life Feels Uncertain. On Saturday March 14th at 10 AM EST, we're going to slow down, make sense of what's happening in our bodies and minds, and build a toolkit you can actually draw on when life feels like too much.
It's 90 minutes, it's online, and it's $37 CAD plus applicable taxes.
I'd love to see you there.
