This post is specifically written with empaths and highly sensitive people in mind, but anyone can use these grounding methods at any time as they are practical and can be ingrained into everyday life. In later posts, I'll talk about more spiritual and meditative / visualisation-based approaches to protect yourself and your boundaries, but in this post, I'm listing very "normal" things that you can do (that won't raise eyebrows!), daily, and quite easily, to help balance and ground your emotions, and ease any feelings of overwhelm. All of these things work for me - I use at least one method a day. Physical exercise . This is going to apply mostly to those of you who  like  working out to some degree (if you don't, see number 2 below). Try and fit in half an hour of stretching, and or stepping, rowing, cycling, spinning, weights ... whatever floats your boat. The act of movement shifts your mind away from feelings and emotions, and into the present and the phys...

First, the difference between having empathy, and being an empath. In simple terms: Having empathy is the ability to resonate with another's feelings; to be in tune with someone's emotions. Being an empath is to feel what someone else feels as if the feelings are your own, and I mean this literally. (Empaths are seen as fictional by most  –  not real.) I know a lot about the Otherworld - I've been journeying there ever since I can remember and in many ways, it feels more like home than here. (I will be writing about those journeys and my experiences in the Otherworld  –  please bear with me  –  it takes time to fill a blog, and there's a lot to write about.) But, it should be noted to anyone reading this post, that I've only very recently admitted to myself that I'm an empath. I'm an empath. I don't remember that word (or term) really existing when I was researching spiritual things in my late teens. I remember reading about emotional vampires and psych...

(Recommended reading at the bottom of this article.) When I was a child, I used to sit on the floor, cross-legged, and, unintentionally, rock back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth. I would always wander off into a daydream whilst doing this, and I never knew I was rocking until I came back from the daydream and caught myself rocking. My mum would hate it. I remember her walking into my bedroom more than once, because I did not respond to her calling my name (I didn’t hear her – I was off dreaming), and she’d find me rocking. She’d exhale sharply, and say, “For goodness sake, stop rocking like that – you look like one of those neglected orphan children!” I suppose I had a sad look on my face? I never really knew what she meant, but it obviously pressed her buttons (more than once). For some reason she associated rocking with trauma. I never felt sad or lost (or traumatised) while rocking, or daydreaming. I felt calm and balanced. I rocked a lot, right up until my teena...

When I was around twenty-one, I paid rent to live in a self-contained room in a house. The bathroom was separate, but all the kitchen equipment was in the room. The room was on the second floor and had a beautiful view across a green hill and a couple of fields. I had a wooden, carved snake. A cobra I think. I bought it from an ethnic African store on the High Street of some town in London – it could have been Richmond. It was a couple of feet tall. I’ve always loved snakes – they’re one of my totem animals (a guardian one in fact, but that’s a post for another day). I placed this snake beside my door, inside my room. It was, to my mind, the guardian of the door – I often told myself this jokingly, and I would usually give it a pat on the head when I left the room before locking the door behind me. I’m sure we all have small, slightly daft things like this we do, that don’t really mean a lot at face value, but we do them anyway for whatever reason that might be. Sports people are well ...