Robert Bal Counselling Services
  • Home
  • About
  • Services
  • ISTDP
  • Policies
  • Publications
  • Contact
  • Blog

5-4-3-2-1 (A Grounding Exercise)

2/23/2023

 
1.Take three slow breaths and focus your attention
2. Note FIVE things you can see around you - they can be literally anything within your field of vision.
3. Note FOUR things you can touch around you – the chair you are sitting on, the ground beneath your feet, anything.
4. Note THREE things you can hear - any external sound, even if it is coming from inside your body.
5. Note TWO things you can smell, no matter how faint, or commonplace.
6. Note ONE thing you can taste - what is going on in your mouth? Can you taste your breakfast still, or your cup of coffee?
7. Notice how your body responded to each step of the exercise.
8. Notice how you felt before starting this exercise, and how you feel now.
9. Be present to any changes.
10. Return to your day
 
Adapted from: https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/behavioral-health-partners/bhp-blog/april-2018/5-4-3-2-1-coping-technique-for-anxiety.aspx
 
I am always glad for the opportunity to reacquaint myself with this grounding exercise. I find it to be a useful portal to presence – it invites attention to sensory experience, beginning with the most privileged (sight), and focusing more and more on internal roads perhaps less travelled. The exercise involves a gradual turn inward from our habitual looking out position, and for me this is very welcome. I can imagine that some people will feel resistance to the instructions – the mind can rail against this kind of attending, needing some kind of rationale for what might otherwise seem like pointless and meaningless acts. The countdown acts to narrow the focus, and I like that it ends on taste, because this brings the attention down, from the head into the chest and torso, where feelings arise.

​One thing that I realized can happen as a result of performing this activity is the discovery of just how far away you were from where you end up – in my experience, how far away I had been from the experience of feeling in the centre of my body when I sat down to perform the exercise. I may have been all up in my head, as is so often the case in this busy life, and I imagine that for people who take refuge in their head (or elsewhere for that matter) because being in their body has been at some point unsafe, this might be a genuine surprise.
​
The exercise is something I invite you to do at regular intervals throughout your day as a way of building that muscle of attention, or something you could do whenever you feel the activation of your anxiety pathway (whether that be anxious thoughts, tension in the body, finding it hard to think clearly, etc), or simply something I might use with you in session if I feel you have become overwhelmed during therapy and need help in returning to the room.  

Comments are closed.

    Thoughts on Counselling, Therapy, and Mental Health

    Archives

    August 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023

    Categories

    All
    Ableism
    Addiction
    Anxiety
    Attachment
    Body Image
    Boundaries
    Cultural Competence
    Grounding Techniques
    Immigration
    ISTDP
    Masculinity
    Misogyny
    Neurodivergence
    Psychedelic Therapy
    Psychodynamic Therapy
    Racism
    Self-Care
    Spirituality
    Therapy
    Trauma

    RSS Feed

​Home
About
Services
​
ISTDP
Policies
Publications
Contact
Blog
Ph. 604.655.1151
​​​I live, work and grow on the stolen ancestral lands of the Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations. 

​
​My intent is to travel with care while I am here and to be part of the healing journey being undertaken by those who belong to these lands.


  • Home
  • About
  • Services
  • ISTDP
  • Policies
  • Publications
  • Contact
  • Blog