Grounding refers to a series of techniques that can help to reorient us back into the ‘green zone’ of our ‘window of tolerance’ when we have become triggered out of it into the ‘amber zone’ of fight and flight or the ‘red zone’ of freeze.
Very often when triggered we experience ourselves as being disconnected from our bodies – and this poster gives us three ways of becoming reconnected again.
This is a free downloadable PDF.
Page 1 is a full-colour poster.
Page 2 is a low-ink, print-friendly version.
We talk a lot about grounding, which refers to a series of techniques designed to help re-regulate the nervous system, to bring our ‘hyperarousal’ down from the amber zone into green, or to bring our ‘hypoarousal’ up from the red zone also into green.
This poster gives a few ideas of how we can do this based on which way we have fallen out of window of tolerance – because if our nervous system has become ‘more’ (hyper), in amber, then we need to slow it down. If it’s become ‘less’ (hypo), in red, then we need to speed it up.
Grounding is not a cure-all but it can at least help a little – giving us a tiny bit of breathing space, by getting back into our body, so that we can bring our front brain online and then get the bigger help we need to really deal with our distress.
Also check out my article ‘What grounding is and isn’t‘.