Becoming You Again

Grounded Swaying: Reconnecting with Your Body's Wisdom Post-Divorce

• Karin Nelson • Episode 229

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Feeling like the ground beneath you has shifted after divorce? You're not alone. That sense of instability, of losing your foundation, is one of the most challenging aspects of divorce recovery. But what if reconnecting with your body could help you find your footing again?
 
This episode of Becoming You Again explores what it truly means to feel grounded after divorce and introduces a powerful practice called "grounded sway" that can help you rebuild trust in yourself. Many women tell me they feel constantly off-balance during divorce, unsure how to recreate that sense of safety. The truth is, you have the capacity to create safety for yourself through reconnecting with your body's wisdom.
 
The guided practice I share walks you through a gentle swaying movement that helps you experience different sensations while actively narrating safety for yourself. As you sway and feel the solid ground beneath your feet, you learn to stay flexible rather than rigid when facing uncertainty - like willow bending in the wind rather than breaking. There's no right or wrong way to do this exercise, only your way, as you discover what feels right for your unique body.
 
So much of healing after divorce involves learning to trust ourselves again; our bodies, our intuition, and our ability to create the lives we want. This practice offers one gentle pathway toward rebuilding that trust, reminding us that everything we need to feel safe and balanced already exists within us. Sometimes we just need a reminder of how to access it.
 
Ready to go deeper with your healing? Working one-on-one with me as your coach might be exactly what you need to implement these practices in your daily life. Visit karinnelsoncoaching.com to learn more about how we can work together to help you become you again. 

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Karin Nelson:

This is Becoming you Again, the podcast helping you heal from divorce and deal with the mental and emotional challenges you face so you can get on living the best of the rest of your life. I'm your host, karin Nelson, and you are listening to episode number 229. Welcome to Becoming you Again, the podcast where you learn to step into your power as a woman in this world, where you learn to reconnect to you podcast. Karin Nelson, welcome back to the podcast. My beautiful, lovely ladies, I am so happy that you're here with me today.

Karin Nelson:

As always, I have been thinking a lot about what it means to feel truly grounded after divorce. You know me I have many, many episodes where I'm teaching you grounding exercises, I'm teaching you somatic practices, I'm teaching you how to pay attention to what is happening in your body so that you can realign and recognize and understand what it feels like to. Number number one feel emotions. But number two, and probably maybe even a little bit more important, is recognize what it feels like to be aligned through your brain, your body and your intuition, and what that feels like. And a lot of that isn't possible without being in the present moment right. We can't understand or feel or recognize what's happening in our body unless we are present with our body. And so I've been thinking about what it feels like to truly be grounded after divorce, because a lot of times I will hear from women who are like, when they're going through their divorce, they're feeling constantly off balance, like the ground beneath them has shifted and they're not sure how to find their footing again. They're not sure how to find like that foundation that they felt like they had when they were married and whether or not it was like a true safety. Probably for many of us when we were married, it wasn't true safety, right, it was just a perceived like this feels comfortable and I'm going to equate comfort with safety, even though maybe it wasn't Probably a lot of us, it wasn't right. And again, when I'm talking about safety, I'm typically the majority of the time meaning emotional safety. But like, what does it feel like? And how do we get back to that foundation of being able to create safety in our lives, lives? And so when people women especially, who are going through divorce are telling me like I don't know, I don't know how to find that footing, I don't know how to find that foundation, like it makes perfect sense to me, because divorce I mean literally, it's changing the foundation of everything we thought we knew about our life up into the until this point, right, and so here's what I want you to know you can learn how to trust your body again. That is totally something that can be in your wheelhouse.

Karin Nelson:

You are capable of figuring out what your body is trying to tell you and whether or not you knew how to do it before. Maybe you knew how to do it when you were younger. Maybe you were more connected to your intuition at that time. Maybe you were more able to recognize oh, what is going on with my body. It's like tense, or my shoulders are feeling this thing, or my stomach is feeling these knots, or like whatever. Right, maybe you had a connection before and you lost it over time, or you forgot how to listen, or maybe you never have been connected. It doesn't matter. You have the capacity, as a human being, to learn how to reconnect or connect with your body and understand how to create safety for yourself, moment by moment.

Karin Nelson:

You are capable of doing that, and so today I am going to share with you a practice that I learned from one of my mentors, and it is called grounded swaying, and so I'm going to walk you through it. Obviously, you need to be in a place where you're not driving your car, so if you're driving, you're listening to this, just you can finish listening. It's fine, maybe just get like an idea of what this sounds like. But if you're actually going to do the practice, as I'm walking you through it, please just like, be safe, don't be driving. Be in a place where you feel safe. Maybe, if you don't like to do these practices around other people, go in your room and lock the door or wait until nobody's home and close the blinds in the room so that nobody outside can see you and you don't have that fear in your head of, like I don't want to embarrass myself, I don't want somebody watching me or walking in on me. I just we want you to be safe in a way that you feel comfortable and secure in knowing that, like, your brain isn't going to be. Like, am I going to be making a fool of myself if I do this? No, we want you to feel safe and comfortable in your environment. So be in that space before you practice this grounded swaying, all right? So okay, get in your safe space.

Karin Nelson:

I want you to start by finding your feet. I want you to feel them on the ground beneath you. Okay, what does it feel like your feet touching the ground? And just notice that? Okay, I want you to stand with your feet about hip width distance apart and just let your knees be slightly bent. We don't want to lock them, just make them soft. And now take a moment to really orient yourself to where you are right now, in this present moment, in the here and now. Look around, notice what's around you, just take inventory of a few things that are around you and be in this present moment. You are choosing to be in this moment.

Karin Nelson:

Now I want you to begin to slowly sway from side to side. This is just a gentle movement. You're going to shift your weight from one foot to the other, but nothing like crazy here. We're just keeping the sway very smooth, very gentle. If your eyes want to close, go ahead and do that. If your eyes want to close, go ahead and do that. I don't like to close my eyes during this grounding session, because I easily get dizzy and I easily feel motion sick, even with just a gentle sway, and so I keep my eyes open, but I keep them just soft, focused on my environment. But you do what feels right for you and your body and I want you to just let your body move however it wants to move. Remember, we're just keeping this gentle, we're just listening to our body and letting it do what feels right.

Karin Nelson:

And as you're swaying, I want you to play with the rhythm a little bit, like what happens when you move a little bit faster. Listen to your body. What is your body telling you when you move it just a little bit faster? Or what about when you slow it way down? What is your body telling you? Just listen. I want you to imagine the ground beneath you is so solid and so supportive Because it is. You are held, you are supported, you are safe and if your body wants to touch something maybe your hand wants to rest on your heart or your hands, you want to rest them on your hips. Honor that. Let your body guide you through this exercise. Now, as you're doing this, keep doing your sway, keep letting your body guide you.

Karin Nelson:

I just want to talk a little bit about what this practice is doing for you, this gentle rocking motion. It is doing several things. You're experiencing different sensations while you are actively narrating safety for yourself Because you are reminding yourself I am oriented in the here and now, I am safe, I am grounded, I am held, I am intentional and my body is making choices about how I move and how I feel. Through my safety, you are literally creating safety for yourself in this moment. Creating safety for yourself in this moment. I know a lot of us panic when we feel a little bit off balance, and so ask yourself what happens when you panic? We tense up. What happens when things get tense? When things get rigid, they break, but when things are soft and when things are movable and things are flexible, they bend, they flow. Think about bamboo or willow just bending in the wind, right. So, as you're swaying, can you allow yourself to go just a little bit off balance and can you trust that this movement is safe for you? Can you trust your body is going to take care of you in those moments?

Karin Nelson:

Now, as you're doing this, I want you to continue to notice the pressure of your feet against the ground and feel the safety of that foundation beneath your feet. As you sway, as you flow, as you flow, notice and recognize your feet, creating safety for you, connection, pushing back to support you. What if you change your height a little as you sway and you bend your knees more, or you straighten them slightly, or you arch your back more forward or more back a little? And what about your arms? Do you want to keep them at your sides? Do you want to rest them on your hips? Are they moving side to side with the sway? Are they crossed over your chest? Remember, with these grounding exercises, there's no right or wrong way to do it, there's only your way. All right, as we are finishing up this grounded sway, and ask yourself how do I recognize what this safety feels like in my body? What are some key points that I can notice and tell myself so that I can recreate it moving forward? And if it means you come back to this practice over and over again to continue to recognize what that safety feels like, then do it. You to recognize what that safety feels like, then do it.

Karin Nelson:

So much of our healing journey after divorce is learning to trust ourselves again, to trust our bodies, to trust our instincts, to trust our intuition, to trust our ability to be able to create the life that we want, ability to be able to create the life that we want, and this grounded sway is one way to begin to rebuild that trust through one gentle movement at a time. Come back to this practice as often as you need it, if you're feeling overwhelmed, if you're feeling anxious, if you just need a moment to reconnect with yourself. This practice is here for you and here's the truth, and I've said this before in my podcast, but I want to reiterate you know you best. You have everything you need within you to create safety, to find your balance, to reconnect with yourself, to trust yourself again. It's inside of you and it's always been inside of you. Sometimes we just need that reminder of like how to do it and that it's possible for you and that you're capable of reconnecting and seeing yourself again. I hope this is helpful for you. Again, come back to it as often as you need.

Karin Nelson:

I love you. You are amazing and the work that you're doing on yourself and on your healing and on the reconnection of you and on seeing yourself and trusting yourself is such important, beautiful, amazing work. Continue to honor that. You deserve to be honored by you. You deserve to be honored by you. You deserve to be seen by you. You deserve to be reconnected to you. You are incredible. I love you. Thank you for being here. I will be back next week.

Karin Nelson:

Hi, friend, I'm so glad you're here and thanks for listening. I wanted to let you know that if you're wanting more, a way to make deeper, more lasting change, then working one-on-one with me as your coach may be exactly what you need. Together, we'll take everything you're learning in the podcast and implement it in your life, with weekly coaching, real-life practice and practical guidance. To learn more about how to work with me one-on-one, go to karinnelsoncoachingcom. That's wwwkarinnelsoncoachingcom. Thanks for listening. If this podcast agreed with you in any way, please take a minute to follow and give me a rating. Wherever you listen to podcasts and for more details about how I can help you live an even better life than when you were married, make sure and check out the full show notes by clicking the link in the description.

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Karin Nelson

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