It is possible that you are suffering from some stress due to information overloading, an infoxication. With these gestures and routines, you will recover the connection with your body and with the earth, to be able to slow down and face stress. Touch the ground again!

The information we receive in a week is apparently equivalent to what a human being received in his lifetime sixty years ago. Frequently, that vertiginous flow, instead of playing in our favor, helping us to work fast and well, plays against us.
During these days the amount of information we receive is even greater and we may be suffering stress due to information overload, a certain infoxication. This excess of information causes us anxiety for fear of losing our position, our health or that of others, or for the simple fact of facing an unforeseeable future.
This opens the floodgates to the spiral of stress: the comfortable becomes arduous and we begin to feel discomfort, a discomfort presided over by nerves, uncontrollable impulses, pressure, urgency, imposition, threat, demand …
All this endangers our health. Let’s see below how it is possible to relax when stress overflows, either for a concrete and surprising cause or for an accumulation of reasons that grows little by little every day.
FROM MIND TO BODY
The loss of tranquility entails a change in the relationship with the body. The body is always there, present, stuck to the earth, with which it shares a wide series of virtues: it is generous, welcoming, solid, calm, slow, with a memory difficult to erase, and allows us relaxation.
But when we lose serenity, it seems to disintegrate from the mind. It is fast, light, aerial, useful for manufacturing ideas and communicating them. Live comfortably in the past or the future and is an essential tool to mobilize the body in our favor.
The separation of body and mind manifests itself in many ways, but here we are going to concentrate on one: the one that causes the loss of contact with the earth and with the force of gravity that allows us to be who we are.
When attention is directed to restore contact with the weight of the body, relaxation, tranquility and serenity are recovered. And body memory is also stimulated, which will be helpful in any situation of everyday life.
HOW TO RECONNECT MIND AND BODY
When stress takes hold of a person, he stops touching with his feet on the ground. It is said then: it is that it climbs the walls, or has climbed the vine. These popular expressions indicate the state of disagreement with the land.
At any moment we are interacting with the air and the ground. Thanks to the exchange with the air, we breathe. While the relationship with the earth is evidenced because we always organize our body to be able to support the weight on an external surface.
However, when we feel tense or nervous, we tend to separate ourselves from the support surface: we lift our shoulders, we stiff… If for some reason we collapse or feel dejected, then we drop into parts of the body and on the support surfaces, be it a chair, a bed or the floor.
These stiff or heavy parts end up hurting, which reduces productivity, comfort and well-being. Being aware of how we transmit weight to the earth opens the door to relaxed vitality.
AN EXERCISE TO REGAIN CONTACT WITH THE GROUND
1. FEELING YOUR OWN WEIGHT
Lying face up, we notice the surfaces of the body that touch the ground.
- We feel where the ground interacts with the right leg, then with the left.
- One after another, we perceive as clearly as possible how the left shoulder blade, arm and hand are supported, to move to the right shoulder blade, arm, elbow and hand.
- How is the contact of the back with the ground? Where is it discontinued?
- We feel the weight of the head and where we brush the ground with it.
- Finally, we observe the breath and the movement of the body to its rhythm, noticing the places where the breath reaches without effort. Wherever the breath arrives, it’s fine.
We attend to the breathing rhythm and to which moment it is longer – the inspiration, the expiration or the pauses – without wishing to modify it, with an attentive and friendly attitude.
2. DIALOGUE WITH THE EARTH
- We imagine that the earth does not support us, that the body tenses and we hardly touch the ground. But when we exhale, we let the weight of the body be supported by the earth. It is not a question of lifting the body, but of tensing it a little to then loosen it and abandon it suddenly.
- Next, we raise the right arm and hand two centimeters from the ground, let them fall to lead and repeat it several times. Same with the left arm and hand. Then, with the right leg and with the left. We rest and notice the changes in contact with the earth.
- We repeat this sequence of movements feeling what happens in the background, that is, how the back and support surfaces are organized to lift a leg or an arm. We will observe that to raise any part of the body other parts must give it support and sink more towards the ground.
- So now we proceed in another way: we press first those surfaces and then lift the member or part of the body that needs them. The raised body part will become light. We do it with the limbs and the head. We rested and perceived the changes that occurred in contact with the ground.
- Finally, we slowly and gradually press the ground with one leg and release the pressure in the same way. Then we repeat this procedure with the other leg, with one heel, with the other, with one arm and the other, with the head, with the hip and with the shoulder blades. We notice how to press one part of the body; other parts are slightly raised.
- We rest and perceive the changes: how the breath is released and the contact with the earth is greater and sharper. Let’s look at the vital signs offered to the senses.
- We repeat the previous process lying face down, from the beginning, in a comfortable position. We rest and notice the breathing in the back and how the supports have changed.
Perhaps we will feel as if we have been ironed on the floor. The earth welcomes us gently and firmly.
Then we imagine that with breathing the body is filled with light. From this position we move slowly until we sit, trying to perceive the succession of movements and supports necessary for that: how the former need the latter and vice versa.
3. A RENEWED PERCEPTION
With the same rhythm as before, we stand up. We walk slowly, we perceive the movement and the supports we need for it.
We noticed the difference between how we feel now and how we felt before. New spaces open up. The uneasiness fades. Something inside us has changed, and even if the outside hasn’t, that inner change can give us another point of view about what was the cause of our unhappiness.
We let that space and that attention paid to the body accompany us throughout the day. Body memory will remember it and we can recover it without having to lie on the floor, in any position and at any time.