Let’s talk about grounding and centering for a minute today. Everyone who’s read books on witchcraft, Wicca, magick or even New Age topics will likely have read umpteen versions of instructions on this important practice. One of the most common is to imagine you’re a tree – your roots plunge deep into the earth, drawing life-giving sustenance and energy from the core of our planet, and your branches reach into the sky, drawing down the light and energy of the cosmos. Or something along those lines.

My problem is, I really hate growing roots. It gives me the feeling of inertia, of being trapped, of being pinned to one location. In my twenties my motto was “a rolling stone gathers no moss” and that’s exactly how I wanted my life to be. I wanted to keep moving, rootless, accumulating nothing – no moss, no house, no car, and so on. And that’s exactly what I did for many years.

Now in my thirties, I feel pressured to “settle down,” especially in terms of buying a house. That’s just another thing I can’t come to terms with – committing to one plot of land on the planet, and being a slave to it through mortgage payments, upkeep and the like.

So it’s definitely a personal, psychological issue when I say that I don’t want to imagine myself like a tree, much as I love them. I don’t want to put down roots – they’re so terribly permanent. How do you move on with the rest of your day if you’ve just planted roots while grounding and centering? It’s not a literal question of course, but metaphorical. Does grounding slow you down? Fix you in your thinking? Leave you pinned to one moment of your day? Or does it somehow give you momentum to get through it all? Or do you practice another form of grounding and centering which does not involve becoming a tree? What are your favorite practices for grounding and centering? Does it make you feel at peace, or does it fill you with energy and drive? Can it do both?