Grounding
As we prepare to come back together, we offer you this grounding exercise.
For those of you who are able-bodied, we invite you to join us somewhere outdoors where your bare feet can touch the earth for the next five minutes.
One of our participants, Kymberli Colbourne, who is a professional voiceover actor recorded this written assignment into audio and gifted it back to you. You can close your eyes and let her lead you through the exercise or follow along below.
When you are ready, hit play.
Begin by taking off whatever is covering your feet and bring them to rest bare upon the soil of this [Chinook] Land and take three deep breaths in, and out. In, and out. In, and out.
Your feet are resting upon sacred [Chinook] Land.
Imagine what this part of the world used to look like before the [Chinook] land was stolen and gifted to white settlers.
Imagine the [Chinook]…What do you see? Envision them.
What is written on the faces you see?
What is their relationship with the land and how do they care for one another?
Now bring your attention back to this moment and imagine all of the energy of vibrant [Chinook] life that still lives in the soil on which you stand.
Now, think about that energy coming up through your feet to your ankles, calves, knees, thighs, hips, belly, chest, shoulders, and if this energy was a liquid flood rising in your body it would spill over your shoulders and fill your fingertips, wrists, forearms, elbows and keep flooding upward and now it’s at your neck and as this energy floods your body it’s energizing you as it fills your neck, your chin, your cheeks and ears, your nose, your eyes, your brow all the way until it has energized your entire body up to the tip of your head.
As it energizes you, it calls every cell in your body back to life, rehumanizing, empowering, filling you with love, joy, and the will to change your world.
(Say out loud)
I breathe in this land energy, and breathe out shame, inactivity, privilege, overwhelm, anxiety, and fear.
(Repeat 3x)