How To Use Grounding & Centering For Witchcraft

When this happens I know that it’s time to take a few deep breaths and get back to my grounding practices. Making my grounding ritual a daily routine always helps me calm my nervous system, reset my entire body, and drop into deep connection with myself, even when my life is at its most hectic. In this post, I’m going to teach you exactly how you can use different techniques for spiritual grounding to maintain your equilibrium as a modern witch.

Why Grounding Is So Important

Grounding is a vital part of learning to practice magic in a safe and healthy way. The term comes from the practice of grounding an electrical circuit. Essentially if an object is negatively charged, grounding allows excess electrons to flow from the object into the earth, and if an object is positively charged, electrons flow from the earth into the object. It’s a method of balancing and equalizing the flow of energy.

Similarly, in witchcraft, grounding is the practice of balancing personal energies. Many things can pull us out of balance, emotional turmoil (for empaths it doesn’t even have to be our own emotional turmoil, often we pick up other people’s emotions far too readily!), illness, performing rituals or spells, astral travel, even simple things from our day to day lives can create a state of too much personal energy or too little personal energy.

This can be an incredibly uncomfortable experience.

Symptoms of unbalanced energy:

• Dizziness, feeling spaced out, light-headed or a floaty feeling
• Headaches
• Forgetfulness
• Misplacing or losing things
• Feeling generally unwell or exhausted
• Daydreaming and an inability to focus
• Sensitivity to light and noise
• Feeling overstimulated and nervy
• Bumping into things or other general feelings of clumsiness
• An uncomfortable sensation of buzzing under the skin
• Nausea and vomiting
• Pain
• Irritability
• Insomnia

These symptoms typically become more severe the further out of alignment you are.

It is essential that you learn to ground properly before beginning to practice magic. Often I see newer witches who have yet to learn this skill experiencing unnecessarily strong backlash from their spell work.

Magic is energy! When you move and manipulate energy in such powerful ways it can and will pull your own energy out of balance. Grounding allows you to avoid the unpleasant side effects of spellcasting which means you’ll be a happier witch and have more time and space to practice your craft! You do not have to simply tolerate residual energy making you feel like crap after your spellwork!

How To Ground Yourself

There are many ways of grounding yourself, I suggest you try a variety of methods and find the one that is most effective for you.

Rooting Yourself

This method works best if you are barefoot and standing on grass or dirt. Imagine your energy extending down through your legs and sinking into the earth, becoming roots and burrowing into the soil to trade energy with the earth. Feel the earth’s energy flow up into your body, filling you all the way to your head and then back down and out through your roots. This energy will cycle through you and clear away any excess energy as well as solve any energy deficiencies you might have. Continue moving energy through this strong connection to the energy of the earth until you feel calm and comfortable. The physical connection to the earth’s surface does help, especially in the beginning, but as you become more proficient at this technique, you’ll be able to use it when wearing shoes, on concrete, or even several stories up. The energies of the earth are always available to us, it simple takes a bit of training to get proficient with energy work to access them.

Laugh

Laughter is an amazing way to release pent-up energy as well as build our personal energy from within! Give yourself time and space to have a good laugh, put on your favorite comedian and enjoy yourself. Laughter grounds you in the center of your being here in the physical world, it’s a deeply primal and instinctive reaction that creates an immediate cconnection between your temporal self and the spirit or soul. It sounds simple but the effects can be powerful!

Food

Nourishing your body can help to reconnect you to your physical self and refuel depleted energy. Sit down for a hearty meal and give it your full attention, this helps to pull you back into your body fully after astral work or other intense spiritual experiences and gives you a moment to rest and relax.

Water

Water is a wonderful conductor of energy, sitting with your feet in a stream, your hands under a running faucet, or drawing yourself a bath can equalize your energy very quickly. Playing in the rain can also equalize your energy but if it’s sunny out visualizing rain washing your energy clean will work just as well.

Go for a walk

Getting out into the natural world, especially if you can walk barefoot, will allow your body to trade energy with the earth and equalize your energy levels. Walking in nature also helps to build mindfulness and create a sense of ease in your life! Spending time in nature is useful on so many levels. It balances the root chakra, allows you to release unwanted energy in a gentle way, and is incredible for your mental health.

Wind Visualization

Sit comfortably and begin to visualize your energy body. When you have a solid image of it in your mind imagine a strong gust of wind blowing your energy around you, removing blockages, carrying away excesses, and refueling any energetic deficiencies.

Exercise

Exercise can help to release any excess energies. Very physical exercises that get you out of your head and into your body like running, swimming, or dancing bring you back into balance when you’ve got an excess of unwanted energies built up after your magical practice. However, you should not ground this way if you feel lethargic, exhausted, or are in any kind of pain. This method is ONLY to be used when you have an energy excess! If you are feeling depleted, stick to gentler movement. Something like restorative or Yin yoga can feel great when you’re low energy.

Body Awareness

Simply giving your body attention can encourage your energy to equalize on its own. Take a few minutes to consciously take stock of every inch of your body. In a comfortable seated position, begin at your head and feel your scalp, then move to focusing on each part of your face. Move downward and feel your neck, your chest, then your arms, your elbows, your wrists, and your fingertips. Focus on your torso again, now placing your energy on your stomach, and feel it move with your breath, move down toward the base of your spine and continue this all the way down to your toes. Try to remain relaxed throughout this process. This process brings you into the present moment and deeper connection with your own personal energy.

Let Yourself Cry

Crying or screaming will release excess emotional energy very quickly. If you’re the sort of person who loves a good cleansing cry then this one is for you.

Stones and Crystals

Certain stones and crystals can be grounding. Hematite is particularly good for this purpose.

Play in the dirt

Getting in contact with the earth through gardening or rolling around in the dirt like you did when you were a kid allows your body to exchange energy with the earth. So let go of your adulthood for a few minutes and get in the dirt!

When To Use Grounding

Grounding is a wonderful tool to use but it isn’t a cure-all. It’s also not always desirable to be completely grounded! There are certain types of magic that can be hindered by grounding and other types of magic that are simply not energy based and won’t require grounding to be effective.

• When working with spirits being too grounded can make it more difficult to connect to the entity
• If you’re fueling magic with emotions or excitement grounding beforehand will not help. You want your emotions and energy high in order to perform that sort of magic.
• Sigils generally do not require grounding
• Any kind of astral or out-of-body practice will be made much more difficult if you’re grounded beforehand. Ground after this sort of practice, not before
• Dreamwork will be hindered by grounding

Grounding is most often used for post-spell backlash but it can also be utilized in your day-to-day life to enhance focus and happiness, lessen anxiety, and protect you from emotional runoff.

If you struggle with any of the symptoms of being ungrounded regularly you might benefit from adding a few minutes of grounding into your daily practice! 

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Are there quick grounding techniques I can use when I’m short on time or in public?

The quickest and most discreet grounding method is the one that you are the most comfortable with. And I’m not saying this to sound trite. The more you practice your grounding methods, the easier they will be able to use discreetly and quickly. I can connect my energy to the earth for a quick grounding in a high rise in Manhattan. And the only reason I can do this is because I have strengthened this skill for myself so that it is something I am always able to access.

It does not matter what method you prefer, the more you use it, the more comfortable you get with it, the more familiar you get with it, the faster and more discreetly it will become. Obviously there are some methods like going through a full meditation that will not work. But like I said, I can connect my energy to the earth without even breaking stride or having a hitch in my conversation. As you practice these skills, they become easier and easier. So if you want to be able to use these on the fly, practice, practice, practice.

2. Is it necessary to ground myself before and after every magical practice or ritual?

No, it is not completely necessary for you to ground yourself before and after every spell or ritual. Some people will ground in this way on a very frequent basis, but there are a lot of practices that are actually hampered by grounding. For example, you wouldn’t want to do dream work or astral traveling in an overly grounded state. Because the point is to become, at least in some sense, untethered from the physical body and able to move through the ethereal realms with ease. If you are fully grounded in your body prior to trying those practices, you’re going to have a much, much more difficult time.

On top of this, some people simply stay grounded more than others. If you find yourself becoming ungrounded frequently, then yes, you should practice grounding a lot more often and may be included either before or after your magical practices. But if you are finding that you are not getting ungrounded on a regular basis, if you stay relatively grounded, then you can use this practice on an as-needed basis. It is not a mandatory part of spell work or ritual.

3. What are the best grounding methods for witches who live in apartments or urban areas without access to nature?

My suggestion would be to stop seeing yourself as disconnected from nature. I understand you may not have access to large swaths of wilderness, but that does not mean that you don’t have access to nature. Nature is all around you, even in the most urban areas.

Now as for actually grounding when you find yourself in an urban area, my recommendation is to get really good at grounding meditations. They do not require you to be in any specific environment. And perhaps carry and use grounding stones like black tourmaline, hematite, and obsidian, and red garnet. Using these stones helps you to bring some of the earth’s grounding energy into your space, even if you live on the fifth story of your building and have no actual contact with the physical ground. There are many, many ways you can go about grounding in an urban environment, in a skyscraper, pretty much anywhere you might find yourself. You don’t immediately assume that you are not going to be able to stay grounded in these environments.

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Updated on May 12, 2025 by Avery Hart