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Center & Ground

This technique is called "center and ground" or "finding your center" or "running your energies" or something similar, you may have heard of it. What you're going to do is concentrate on the energies in your own body and monitor, then manipulate their flow. It's a really basic thing (you may even be consciously or unconsciously doing it already) and learning to do it on purpose and well will create a foundation for some of the stuff you'll need to learn later on.

Read through these instructions and then follow them, don't worry about following it verbatim, just go with the general ideas and hit all the steps. If at any time during this procedure you see strange colors or feel unexpected changes in temperature, it's okay, just note it and continue. If you get lightheaded, then you've breathing wrong, go back to a more normal breathing rhythm for you. If you get distracted or uncomfortable then find a better position (just so long as you're not lying down).

Get into position

Go outside, find a comfortable spot and sit down. On the ground, a bench or against a tree, it doesn't matter so long as you are able to sit without discomfort. Position yourself so that your spine is straight, with your head raised, shoulders back and carriage erect (no slouching). Be sure not to strain yourself or overdo the rigidity of your posture. The purpose of this is to align your body in the most comfortable, awake posture possible so that you'll be able to concentrate without being distracted by discomfort or by becoming drowsy.

Awareness

Now that you're in position, close your eyes and focus your thoughts on your body. Concentrate lightly on the feel of your body, sensing inside and out. Feel the ripple of your arm hairs in the wind, the moisture in your mouth and throat, the weight of your arms. Turn your awareness inward and sense the warmth in your groin, the expansion of your diaphragm as you breath, you may even be able to feel your heart beating. Don't "try" to feel these things, don't exert effort, just relax and open you perceptions and find out what your body feels like from the inside.

Breathing

Try breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth, or just through your nose if that's more comfortable. If you're having trouble concentrating, focusing like this on your breathing may help dispel distracting thoughts. (Just don't hyperventilate!) Focus on the changes that occur in your body as you breath, the movements, the sensations, listen and feel the rhythm of your breathing. As you breath in, feel the cool intake coming in and gathering in your center where it will swirl and eddy. As you breath out, feel the pushing outward or downward, away from your center. Continue this way until you can sense a "flow" of energy cycling through your body as you breath.

This may be enough to get you centered, but take it a step further.

Visualize the Cord of Light

(BTW - The "Cord of Light" is not some ancient universal mystery, it's just a cool name I thought of for something alot of people can sense and manipulate.)

While you're breathing and feeling the flow of energy, focus on the area of your spinal cord and see it as a cord of white light stretching from the crown of your head to the base of your spine. As you breath in, feel it swell with a cool brightness, as you breath out, feel any discoloration, warmth or darkness flow outward or downward. Continue and repeat until you feel comfortable with this visualization.

You should now be centered. Centering gives you an awareness of your own energies, it can tell you things about your body and mind that you might otherwise overlook. AND being centered is the basis for being able to manipulate other energies from a position of strength.

Grounding

By this time you may be slightly flush or feel a little "full". Next you'll want to ground the energies you've gathered within yourself. Continue breathing and paying attention to the movement of energies in your body. When you're ready to stop, inhale and imagine your cord of light swelling, filling and brightening with the energy around and within you, then, on the exhale, imagine the cord extending down from your tailbone into the ground. Visualize the excess energies flowing or pushing downward into the ground. You may want to pick a specific visualization to help you do this, two good ones are "the tree" and "the grounding cord". With the tree visualization, you imagine that you are a tree (I bet you never would have guessed that one ), with roots extending down into the earth. With the exhalation, feel your roots creeping down into the soil and the excess energies flowing down through them and dispersing in the earth. With the grounding cord visualization, you imagine a cord extends from your cord of light into the ground, deep to the fiery center of the earth. With the exhalation, feel the energy flowing down the cord and feeding the flames at the earth's core. If you come up with your own visualization, use it instead.

That's it! You've raised some energy, cleansed your body, and grounded it. It's a good idea afterwards to get up and more around, drink some water, swing your arms, etc., to bring your consciousness back into a normal state. This technique allows you to become more familiar with your body's energies, allows you to get rid of excess or bad energies when you've done "working", and will establish a foundation for more advanced techniques.

Practice this a few times over few days and see what kinds of results you get.

Spinning Wheel Coven
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Morgen Argante Dragonheart (argante@waterwitch.org) © 1997-2007
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