Why this actually matters
If you’ve ever felt scattered, drained by midday for no clear reason, or like you have no control when life throws something at you, all three of those come from the exact same root: your attention living somewhere other than your actual body, in your actual life, right now.
Learn to physically pull it back, and here’s what actually changes:
- Calmer decisions, because you’re not reacting from three other timelines at once
- More energy left at the end of the day, because it’s not quietly leaking out toward your past and future
- The ability to actually see everything you’ve already built, instead of feeling like you’re starting from zero every time you set a new goal
I taught the practice live on our most recent Awaken Academy Q+A Coaching Call, and I want to get it in front of more of you, because it’s one of the few techniques that’s ever actually worked for me... and it’s deceptively simple.
Why “present” and “grounded” don’t actually tell you what to expect
Here’s the problem with those two words: they don’t come with an experience attached. You can say “I’m present” all day and still be doing your makeup in the mirror while your mind is two hours ahead at a work meeting, three weeks into a conversation you’re dreading, or five years back in something you haven’t finished processing. Your mind is almost always everywhere except where your body actually is. That’s not a flaw. That’s just how it’s been trained.
So instead of “present” or “grounded,” I use two phrases that actually carry weight:
Being in the presence of my existence.
Making reality real.
Once you attach an actual experience to those words, they stop being vague and start being something you can do.
The practice itself
Eyes open for this one.
Take a breath, and look at your hands. Both of them. Really look... the color, the shapes, the lines, whatever’s happening with your nails. Say it to yourself: these are my hands. Then follow them up. Your wrists, your forearms, your elbows, noticing anything you’d normally skip right past. Keep going: your shoulders, your neck, your face if you’ve got a mirror or a screen to see it in. Then work your way back down, through your chest, your stomach, your hips, your legs, all the way to your feet. Hi, feet. Hi, toes.
Now widen out. What are your feet touching? What’s that floor made of, and whose is it? Even if you rent it, even if you’re just sitting in a parked car, it’s yours right now, in some real way. Keep expanding: the room, the colors, the object you love and the one you can’t stand, the mug you picked because you liked it. Notice it like you’re seeing it for the first time, instead of the ten-thousandth.
Then try the harder version: hold your body and the thing in front of you at the same time. I do this on calls with clients constantly, my attention wants to go entirely into the screen, so I deliberately hold my own point of view too... I can see my glasses, I can feel the chair, I can feel my feet on my little foot stool, and I keep the screen in view without disappearing into it. That’s the whole practice: both at once.
Why this works (and why it’s not just a nice idea)
Your mind runs on a pattern most of us never chose: it’s either managing your past, or it’s managing your future, but it almost never lets you fully inhabit your present while it does either of those things. So the moment you achieve something, you’ve usually already set the next target before you’ve let the first one land, which means your own consciousness never actually registers the win. That’s why it’s possible to have a whole list of real accomplishments on paper and still feel, somewhere underneath, like you haven’t done anything.
This practice interrupts that. When you physically look at your body and your space and claim it, this is mine, I made this, your consciousness gets proof. Not a thought about proof, actual sensory proof, and it responds accordingly: it starts trusting that you can create things, because you’re showing it evidence you already have. And where your attention goes, your energy goes too, so every minute you spend mentally somewhere other than your actual life is energy quietly leaving the one place you could use it.
Why right now especially
This isn’t a seasonal practice, it’s one you can reach for in a drained moment any day of the year. But right now, with the Wheel of the Year sitting in the stretch between the first and second harvest, it lands with extra weight. This is the exact window where a lot of us feel like nothing’s gotten done, even though plenty has, because we’ve been too busy chasing the next thing to actually look at what’s already ours. Slowing down enough to physically see your own hands, your own space, your own life, and call it yours, is how you find out you did, in fact, get somewhere.
Want more like this?
I teach practices like this one live, every week, on our Awaken Academy Q+A Coaching Calls, so members can ask questions and work through exactly what’s coming up for them in real time. If this is the kind of thing that helps you, that’s what’s waiting inside.
Want in on the next one? Join Awaken Academy →