What does it really mean to be rooted ? We hear so much about it in disciplines such as tai chi chuan or other internal or external martial arts, or yoga.
We hear about it even in the paths of spiritual growth, in effective communication courses. But what does it really mean to walk on your own legs?
Stand on your own feet: grounding
Let's use the words of Alexander Lowen, father of the bioenergetic approach :
"We human beings are like trees rooted to the ground with one end, reaching out towards the sky with the other, and the more we can reach out, the stronger our earthly roots are. If we uproot a tree, the leaves die; a person, his spirituality becomes a lifeless abstraction ".
Beyond posture, or rather, before and within the posture, there is staying within one's own inner truth, the acceptance of what has happened in one's existence. The point is: to understand where one is. In a word: place yourself.
This identity (which is not identification) is " rooted in the earth, identified with one's own body, aware of one's sexuality, aimed at pleasure. Qualities that are missing in the person who lives in the clouds or in the head instead of in the feet ”.
Discover the bio-energetic massage and its benefits
How to work on grounding
The starting point is to feel the contact with the ground, the feeling of contact with the ground . This allows you to turn on the perception and direct it to an excitation current that flows through the body, through the legs, to the feet and to the ground.
To root oneself means to find oneself in a balanced, right, balanced state; the energy flows freely and even the eyes are clearer and brighter and the view is better.
Lowen clearly explained that to find oneself rooted again one has to deal with the evolution of man: how much do we focus on the intellectual aspect rather than listening to ourselves? The ambition with the mind, the imagining, the seeing beyond, the worries have been affecting the upper levels of the body and, if carried to excess, uproot. And to observe what is being eradicated is the first point.
So it's about rediscovering one's animal nature ; in our functions of locomotion, defecation and sexuality we closely resemble the animal kingdom.
Lowen explains it well in Expansion and integration of the body in Bioenergetics, Handbook of practical exercises (Astrolabio, Rome 1979): working on grounding means returning to work on quality of rhythm and grace .
Even independently, one can feel the free flow of the lower part of the body, to observe again what happens when one pushes oneself upwards. The center is in the lower abdomen and that's where you can go to perform precise, strong actions.
In fact, bioenergetics is an extremely "young" discipline; if we reason in terms of oriental techniques, here is the immediate reference to the hara and the dantien of the martial arts, of yoga, of the energy practices of cultivation of subtle energy like qi gong .
In fact, when the work of body and mind is in synergy, concentrating on the vital center is something that man does not discover but rediscovers from time to time with ever-changing intensities. And all at the service of self-knowledge.
