What is the True Purpose of Grounding?

[Napoli]

I have came across several methods of grounding. Some asks the practitioner to take up energy from Mother Earth by using imaginary roots grounded into her. Some says that it is used to send one's excessive energies into it by sinking into the ground. What is the truth?

[RoseRed]

The tree meditation is much more involved than that but you have the idea. Think of it like scuffing your feet around a carpeted room and building up the static electricity to zap someone. If you touch rubber or wood or any other number of 'grounding' substances - the energy is dissipated. You no longer carry around the excess energy that can harm you or someone else.

Pulling energy out of the earth uses the same basic framework - extending your roots into it except in this case - it's flowing the other way. Instead of releasing excess energy you're acquiring more.

It's a word from electronics. You ground so you don't burn up.

[Desecrated]

Problem is that there is both grounding and centring. And they tend to get confused sometimes.
The other problem is that grounding exists in wicca, but there is also a grounding technique in yoga and some Chinese martial arts. So there is technically at least 3 different methods under the same name.

I don't have any sources right now but if you allow me some time to hit the books tomorrow I can probably whip something up.

But yes, you can use the ground both to receive energy and to release energy. There are similar methods to release sickness, pain and worries as well.

[RoseRed]

Really good point, D. Grounding is different than centering.

[Caerdon]

I may not have the, shall we call, definitions for these, or atleast not the technical definitions for them, that everyone else may have, but these are my views on the difference between centering and grounding.

Grounding is a way you either safely release or dissipate unwanted/harmful/excess energies, either by accumulation of other energies (usually done, in my experience, in a cycling type of method, drawing in the grounding energy and releasing it back into the source of it as it carries away the unwanted aspects), or by expelling the energies themselves into the earth, which has already been gone over.

Centering though, in how I see it, is the process of focusing your energies in order to get into the proper energy stability and mindset. This can be done purely without the taking in of external energies, and actually, from my view, is done as the step before drawing in any of the energies you will be using or working with. However the process itself has no expulsion of energies and isn't used to ground or remove aspects.

I guess the main difference, if I have to say one, is that grounding is to remove unwanted things, where as centering is for focusing and preparing to do something.

That's my thoughts on it though, not as complete as I would like it to be, but my mind is a bit tired and I don't want to write a huge thing that can get confusing through translation from mind to computer screen [thumbup]

[RoseRed]

Centering is finding your internal balance. Have you ever seen the small exorcise ball with the shelf around it? It kinda looks like Saturn. Anyways, you stand on the shelf and try to stand up straight and still. It's not a natural thing to stand on a ball. But when you find your balance point, you're centered.