The experience of food and eating is satisfyingly sensory and the taste and smell of food in the mouth is an easy, quick way to reawaken your mind’s connection to your physical body. The pace and high stress of modern life means choosing what to eat is often a reactionary rather than a conscious choice. How much healthier and happier would you be if your food choices were more often made with awareness?

Acknowledging your energy and emotions contributes to a grounded state of being. A lack of conscious awareness of yourself as an energetic and emotional being compounds the emotional eating paradox. You are not a robot, yet often the choices and expectations you place on yourself reflect an unconscious belief that you can function productively regardless of your feelings or mood. Honouring and naming your feelings change your energy and create a shift in need, from food as comfort to food as nourishment.

Hippocrates said, “Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food.” This applies as much to your energetic and mental selves as it does to your physical body. Food can fuel your body and your mind if you choose nourishment from a place of feeling and consciousness rather than as an emotional response to a stressor or to placate an inner worry. In times of high anxiety, you seek food for comfort rather than medicine.

Modern life is high energy. The daily grind of morning routines, organising partners, kids and selves out the door and into the day, then work or other tasks until the evening routine can leave you with little time to think of yourself let alone how you might be feeling or responding to life. Many days, or big parts of them, are spent on auto pilot and food choices become as much a habit as anything else you do.

Modern life: disconnected from the heart

How often do you plug into electronic devices and information sources throughout the day? In the life of those who are grounded, less is more in both cases. Having every piece of social or global news as it breaks only serves to heighten anxiety. Being constantly on call makes for no peaceful moments of quiet solitude. Hearing music blaring from shops, TVs or iPods can create adrenalin and inner pressure. (Music and chanting can be soothing, so be selective about what enters your ears.) I was at my most calm when, during my 20s, I couldn’t afford a TV so lived for nearly 18 months without one. Home life really was a sanctuary.

Some of the most successful people have found ways to opt out, at least mentally, of the daily grind, not necessarily to slow down but rather to check in. It’s often the case that shifting your mindset from achievement to experience necessarily brings about a change in pace, allowing you to introduce one that’s manageable and user-friendly for mind and body over the longer term.

The fastest way to increase your awareness of yourself, your moods and those around you is to switch off electronically and from information sources. Doing so allows your senses to reconnect with the natural world and your physical body. In high stimulation situations, choices, especially about food and lifestyle, are often made from places of guilt and peer, social or professional pressure.

It’s easy to think life is about function, tasks and achievement — these are the messages our culture sends us, which are then reinforced by family, career or financial pressure. Considering life from a perspective of experience changes the focus back to the self and helps you stay in touch with your own responses. It doesn’t mean completely eradicating stressors but it does allow you to maintain or create awareness of you in the world, physically, emotionally and energetically. Most times, we are only aware of ourselves in the world physically. What am I doing? What should I be doing? What will I be doing next? Never or rarely do we ask, how am I being? What is my mood?

Groundedness

Without even realising it, most of your life is lived moving between a state of conscious awareness, which often manifests in feeling “grounded”, and a state of conscious disconnect, which is often referred to as feeling “ungrounded”.

Being grounded can refer to a sense of inner stillness or calm. It can mean feeling or thinking in a measured, steady way about life or current concerns. A quick poll of friends provided the following individual definitions of what being grounded means:

“Being stable and balanced.”

“Knowing how things will work out practically.”

“Being in control of my emotions.”

“Having mind and body working together.”

Sometimes the awareness of being grounded has to do with knowing when you are not. Feelings of anxiety, drama, hysteria, high sensitivity or being overwhelmed are indications you are not grounded. Being grounded might be considered a sense of feeling anchored in the world in a way that makes you feel in control without being controlling.

Being grounded can also mean feeling capable of dealing with whatever life brings your way, like trusting you can cope or manage regardless of circumstance. A grounded inner space makes it easier to make authentic choices — at the table, regarding work and in relationships. When you’re not grounded, a small problem can quickly escalate into an all-consuming drama.

When thinking of someone who might be described as ungrounded, words such as spacey, vague, impractical, unrealistic, idealistic and dreamy come to mind. On their own, these are not “bad” qualities, but to channel them effectively you need to blend them with some sense of being anchored.

Being ungrounded can be a sign of spiritual disconnection. One belief is that being ungrounded has to do with the soul being absent from the body for a period, perhaps through trauma or intense stress. Regardless of your spiritual beliefs, it’s easy to agree that when you feel connected to yourself, inside and out, focus, happiness and nourishing food choices seem more natural.

You might like to think of being grounded as an awareness of your physical body and its place in space. When you’re distracted or ungrounded, accidents are more likely. Using imagination or fantasy to escape the present can also be a sign of a lack of grounding. Other signs of being ungrounded include racing thoughts, shallow breathing, fast speech or difficulties with focusing on routine or simple tasks.

Those who’ve explored spiritual, mystical or energy practices may be familiar with the concept of grounding yourself before working with people or energy. This is commonly done through a visualisation or style of meditation that involves breath and bringing awareness to different body parts. It’s a way of ensuring you, the practitioner or seeker, are connected within your own being before exploring the energy or emotions of another, often as a means of protection. How different might your life be if you adopted some such strategy before meeting the day, as a preventative, “beginning from the right place” approach?