By Tetra
Look at any well-written training manual, and you will always see “Grounding and Centering” as two basic skills. The reasons for this are simple; grounding and centering, together, form a framework that will support any further psionic undertakings. The successful learning and application of these two skills will act as a very strong stepping stone for any other skill you choose to take up, psionic or not. For the sake of this article, as well as for standardization, I define grounding as “releasing excess energy in order to obtain an optimal functioning amount,” and centering as “bringing ones awareness into themselves, and discarding that which is not them”.
Grounding can be done in many ways, no one more correct than any other. Due to this fact, the methods that I mention are not the only ones around, so, try a bunch, and stick with what works for you. Optimally, grounding should be done both before, and after any large energetic undertaking, although, with practice, you will soon learn to feel when you need to. Grounding may well sound counterintuitive; after all, who doesn’t want to hold on to all of their precious energy, just in case? Well, grounding promotes a healthy field state, a healthier emotional state, and even goes so far as to help increase psi production. Feeling jittery before a test, or public performance? Ground out the nervousness. Have a buzz after too much construct practice? Ground. Feeling icky after a day at the Mall? Ground. If you’re constantly walking around with a slightly overloaded field, your body simply does not see the need to up production any. Walk around in a minor deficit, however, and you train production.
The actual methods of grounding are very simplistic. For the scope of this article, it is assumed that you have a functional grasp on how to feel, control, and utilize energy. As grounding is simply externalizing the energy, all of the methods revolve around such. For ease, I tend to ground through either my hands, or feet. One popular method is to firmly plant your feet, and visualize tree roots sprouting from your feet into the ground, and releasing the excess energy out through those. I, personally, prefer to just plant my feet, and work my awareness up, from the bottom of my field to the top of my field, before finally bouncing it down, and releasing it. Done correctly, it should feel, not like a push, but more of an exhale.
Centering is the other cornerstone to this framework. Psionics work tends to involve a lot of external applications: scanning, pinging, and the like. Oft-times, these activities involve splitting attention away from your physical locale, and as such, centering helps to return focus. For those skilled in telepathy, or empathy, centering is especially invaluable. The added focus centering brings can be used in most any activity. To begin, determine what you deem to be one point that defines you. For myself, I tend to define me as a point roughly behind my eyes, between my ears; makes logical sense to me as it is the center-point for several of my senses. To center, one focuses their awareness on the point of which they define as them. From this maintained focus, you can then sort through the various thoughts and feelings that are experienced, and if necessary, discard those which are not yours.
With practice, and the functional knowledge that comes with, grounding and centering will act as a stepping stone to further your goals, whether they are to learn new skills, or gain control over current ones. Hopefully, this information will help to give you a functional knowledge base from which to work.