(Music)
Hi, I'm Olivia. I'm the Witch of
Wonderlust here on YouTube and on Instagram
and today in this video I 'm
going to cover
what I can about centering, grounding, and
earthing.
These are three things that I feel like,
whether you're witchy or not,
you could definitely benefit from.
However if you are witchy
these practices are some very important
foundational practices that you should
definitely have in your craft,
no matter what. So,  grab a drink,
and let's get started.
So the first thing I'm going to cover is centering.
Centering is the act of gathering all of
the sporadic energy around you
and bringing it back into a unified
state - essentially it's
energetically "getting all of your ducks
in a row." For example: say that
you are walking into your job late. Your
mind
is racing right now you're thinking, "what
is my boss gonna say?"
"What are they gonna do?", "How many times have I been late before?"
"Am A justified in being late?",  "Do I have
my excuse ready?"
"How is this going to affect my job from
now on?",  "Is this going to affect the rest
of my day?"
You get the idea. Now, in this situation,
your thoughts, your emotions - they're just
everywhere. Think of it as buzzing
static energy all around you or like you've dumped marbles all
over the place and they're just
rolling around. Centering is
going to bring all of that into a
unified state so that it's no longer
just-
like this.
Centering helps you to unify
all of the unorganized energy it helps you
step back and analyze and just observe
all of the emotions, the thoughts, the impulses,
the urges,
so that you can sort through them
clearly rather than
them just clogging your mind.
This is NOT shutting off
emotions or thoughts that's not what
this is.
This is sorting through each one with an
objective perspective to see which one
is actually of value
and which one is just intrusive or
temporary.
It's kind of like having one person talk
to you at a time rather than the whole
room shout at you all at once.
So now, HOW to center: There are a few
different ways to do this. I'm going to
show you my method, but there are
plenty of different methods out there,
and at the end of the day you're just
going to have to find something that
works best for you.
This is my preferred method: 
first i'm going to take a few deep breaths.
I start to think of myself like I'm
sitting on a bench somewhere in a park,
and my thoughts and my emotions are just
people passing me by. I don't need to
stop these people
and chat to them. I don't need to laser
in and focus,
and see what they're wearing or obsess
about where they're going I'm just going
to allow them to come into my view,
and back out.
Then, I bring my attention to my
body.
I bring the attention to the weight of
my body
on the bench, or on the couch, or wherever
I'm sitting or standing or
laying, and then I bring the attention to
the feeling of support of whatever is
underneath me.
So, maybe that's the Earth. Maybe that's
the chair.
Maybe the bench or the bed.
Then I'll shift my attention to whatever
is happening just in my
environment. I don't have a deep focus
or a direct focus on any particular thing,
I'm just noticing things happen.
Maybe that's the cars
passing me. Maybe that's the sound of the
rustling of the trees.
If I hear any chatter around me whatever
that is.
Then to what I see: maybe the sunlight is
beaming through the window and it's just
really pretty.
Maybe I can smell the fresh cut grass
outside or there's
coffee freshly brewing in the kitchen.
Finally, I come back to how I feel. I may
not be
completely zen at this point and by all
means especially if you are
super upset or angry in this moment and
you're trying to center,
you're not going to be incredibly zen.
That's not the point
of this exercise. The point is to take
all of that sporadic energy
and unify it. It's not to make you zen. It
might make you a little more zen,
but that's not the point. But now,
I have all of my emotions and all of my
thoughts separated or organized and I can pick
which one is actually of value
and throw away all the ones that are not.
This is much easier to sift through and
process maybe a stressful situation,
process what I may or may not do to
react to something,
process my feelings on maybe why I'm
even feeling this way.
But I have a much better objective
approach to my situation or to my
emotions, compared to previously when all of my
emotions and my thoughts were scattered
everywhere.
Centering is always good done before
spell work.
Next is grounding.
Like centering, there are going to be
a plethora of ways to do this, but you're
just going to have to experiment and
find which one works
best for you. Grounding is usually done
after centering.
It's similar to centering but the
essential use of grounding is to
"come back down to earth." It's going to
bring you back from
being in your head and back down into
the physical realm and into
the moment. The way I usually do this is
by something super simple
eating something sweet or salty just one
of my favorite snacks,
drinking tea, maybe coffee, exercising, 
some kind of movement, dance, stretching,
something that really embodies the physical,
or something where you are interacting
physically.
So, gardening, knitting, crocheting,
sewing, there are also meditations to
ground yourself,
but I personally only ever use these if
I have either an
excess of energy that I need to get rid
of, or I do not have
enough energy. This is the most common
way that I have
read or found and my personal preferred
way of meditating to ground. 
So what you do,
is you take a few deep breaths, you
settle into your space,
you visualize roots from your body going
in
to the Earth like you're a plant or a
tree.
Then you can kind of feel that transfer
of energy so depending on what you're
grounding for.
Say I got all worked up earlier, and I
need to release some energy.
I'm going to do my grounding meditation:
put my roots into the ground
and visualize the energy that I no
longer need or that is not serving me
and sending it into the Earth. Or, the
other way around.
I have a small battery as an introvert,
and on certain days my battery just
starts out
lower than usual. So maybe I need that
extra energy.
I will do my meditation, plant my roots
into the Earth, and  have that
transfer of energy from the earth into
me.
This is a good way to recharge yourself.
Grounding is always done
after spell work. I have heard of some
friends who do grounding before spell
work,
but I've never done that and I guess it
depends on the intention of your spell,
but personally I just feel that
grounding is
just something that you just do to close
your ritual or close your spell work.
The reason it's always done after spell
work, is because when you're working with
energies, you're very much
not completely of this physical realm, so
once you're finished with that it can be
really tiring if you're just allowing
your energy
to kind of be radiating still.
You're still
releasing energy into that space, so you
want to bring yourself completely back
into the physical realm. You can't
pretend that you're not human and like,
run around with the spirits all day. That
is exhausting.
You need to be able to ground and
recharge. This one was not in my outline
but I feel like it's very important:
Shielding.
Shielding is very, very, very,
important and I feel like
this was a very big game changer for
me when I was a beginner.
Shielding is the act of putting up an
energetic shield -
that's exactly what it sounds like.
The reason you would do this
is maybe you know that you're going into
a stressful situation. 
Maybe your job drains you,
when I was a waitress I put up like
three shields,
because you know, some of the people that
come in...
You just need it sometimes. I usually do
this in the very beginning of my day,
I'll do my meditations,
I will cleanse myself - if you don't
cleanse yourself you are literally just
bubbling in
all of that gross energy and you don't
want to do that, so make sure if you have
any gross energy;
you had a nightmare, you had
a bad night, whatever cleanse yourself
before you
shield, okay? 
Okay.
So, a few deep breaths, center yourself
- that's a good idea -
and you're gonna visualize just a shield
of energy,
whatever that looks like to you. It's
going to be totally different for
different people.
You're going to visualize a shield of
energy maybe just like like arm's length
away
or even even like elbow length away if
you want to just come up
around you and completely surround you
shield that's almost kind of like an
egg around you.Meditate on this for a
little bit.
If you don't want it to be long then 30
seconds, something,
will do something, just something!
Two minutes, I usually try to go 10 15
depending on what it is I'm shielding for,
but you need to put up your shields
and really visualize these shields
protecting you from any negative
influences, any ill wishes from other
people,
any negative entities that you may cross
that day, etc.
Now shielding is very interesting, and I
think it's kind of fun to experiment
with especially if you're a beginner.
This is a very good type of spell to
experiment with, because
there are all different types of shields
that you can use you can put up multiple
shields you can put on:
Skin tight shields, you can do shields of
different types,
so first can be the energy type and you
can make it
thicker and denser so then nothing can
come in.
Be careful with that one though because
you can also block good things so
keep that in mind. You can do multiple
shields if you feel like you're really
gonna need that protection.
Change the shields up. Maybe you can make
the shield a different color one day.
Maybe you can make it multiple colors.
Maybe it's swirling wind,
the next day maybe it is a ring of fire,
the day after that maybe it's these
spiky giant rocks around you, maybe
their vines enclosing you, change
up the type of energy that you feel that
you need and see
how that interacts with your day-to-day
life.
So that is shielding, and remember to
take your shields down
at the end of the day energy gets
stagnant and stagnant energy is not
good so take your shield down. It's
basically going to be the same way that
you put them up except you're
visualizing them
dispersing. So that can either just be
dissolving in a thin air,
or it can be coming down it can be going
up, however
you naturally visualize that. So, that is
shielding.
Very, very, very ,important very important
you need to be shielding!
And if you're not of the spiritual
lifestyle, this is still something that I
have
taught some of my friends and they have
said that they've had better days at
work
and things don't tend to affect them
emotionally or
mentally as they used to. Obviously
this is not just going to
block all of those things, but it does
help.
And lastly, this is not something that I
think
gets recommended very often on
like forums or in books by this word,
however, it it does get recommended but
like...
subtly. What this is, is "Earthing."
Earthing is similar to grounding, and is
sometimes referred to as grounding
but I separate these two things for a
reason.
Grounding is purely an energy thing
whereas earthing
is a physical thing, and while grounding
is bringing your mind bringing your
energy back from
wherever and into the physical human
realm
into your body, earthing is literally
just
putting bare skin mainly your feet
straight on the earth. Due to wearing
shoes,
living in homes that have wi-fi, and all
these electrical
fields around us, it's believed that that
messes with our natural electrical field.
Everything on this Earth on this magical,
beautiful, wonderful Earth
has a natural electric field to it.
So what earthing does, and it's
technically still in research, but all of
the research has
had some very interesting results is
it basically recharges our bodies. So
running bodies of water
you may notice that you seem "zen" and
calm and just you feel good around them.
Things like rivers, creeks, waterfalls,
oceans,
and the surface of the earth itself, all
emits
negative ions. Negative ions are very
beneficial for us, because they lower our
cortisol levels, which is our natural
stress hormone,
they also reduce inflammation, and they
increase blood flow.
So negative ions - they're pretty good.
How do you "earth?"
Super simple: take off your shoes.
Put your feet on the ground.
It's recommended that you do it for
about 45 minutes a day or
up to two hours if you can. So this is
literally as long as you have
physical skin contact with the earth, 
you're earthing. You can do this in your
front yard, on a beach,
on a trail in a park - PLEASE,
please, be mindful if you are doing this
on a trail or in a park
where you're stepping, because I'm not
going to be walking around
Griffith Park with no shoes unless I
want a shard of glass in my foot.
So please, please be careful where you're
doing this.
I'm told that cement is fine also, if you
want to earth on top of cement as long
as
the cement has earth directly under it
and nothing else,
however that's up for you to decide.
I will leave a free documentary and a very
interesting documentary down below that
is here on youtube 
if you want to check out.
More also here,
if you want to check out more about
earthing. It's super interesting.
So, when to use these methods?
Centering: to be used when you are feeling
overwhelmed and when your energy is all
dispersed or feeling like any of your
thoughts are unclear.
Energetically "getting all of your ducks
in a row." This is best used when you need
an objective stance on something.
Grounding: use after spells or rituals to
bring your energy
your mindset back to the physical realm
and into your body
or to release excess energy or to
recharge your battery.
Shielding: shielding is used to protect
yourself from daily influences,
negative entities, or negative or
unwanted energies.
Just remember to take it down at the end of the day.
Earthing: a good daily
practice
where you are physically interacting
with the earth helping to balance
hormones
reduce inflammation and increase blood flow.
So, as I said before,
all of these practices are very helpful
whether you are practicing or not.
However, these are NOT solve all methods.
Centering is not going to make you
magically no longer upset or angry.
Grounding is not going to completely rid
you of anxiety,
or be a fallback if you've had too much
coffee or not enough sleep.
Shielding will not completely stop people from
being assholes to you.
Sorry. 
It's also not going to completely
stop bad luck.
However, it does help. These are
precautions.
Preventative magic is the best kind of
magic. 
These will be staples in your
craft.
Learning to direct and control energy
around you, starting with your own. 
I hope this video
helped any of those who are just
starting out or maybe you just have
never heard of any of these methods
before.
That is all for this video, and as always
i will see you next week.
Best of luck, be kind to each other, and
may your gods treat you
as you've treated others.
Bye~
