Presence is a hot topic right now with Oprah and Eckhart Tolle doing a 10-session course on A New Earth via webinar each Monday night at Oprah.com. Now this is very exciting to me, as I have been teaching speakers, communicators and performers to develop presence for many years. In Class 2 of the Oprah.com webinar, Eckhart teaches a simple mindful breathing exercise as an entre into discovering presence. It is, of course, a valuable exercise, but a very basic one. Much more effective, is a Grounding Exercise that grounds you in your body and relaxes you deeply into the present moment. Both Oprah and Eckhart have a strong presence, meaning they resonate a star-quality presence that others can sense and are attracted to. It also means they spend lots of time being present in the moment.
This is, in fact, the secret of all stars in any field – they have the ability to be present. The way into the state of presence is through the body, through giving attention to being in your body and to consciously flowing energy through the body. Here is a brief instruction on how to ground yourself for a star-quality presence. You may use this exercise to calm and center you before a speech or important meeting. Or you may use it to develop the spiritual sense of presence that Eckhart is teaching the whole world about.
Start by sitting with your feet flat one the ground. Take a few deep breaths, close your eyes and focus your attention inside the bones of your head. Notice the energy that is buzzing in your head. Then, imagine you flow or drain that energy down through your neck, into your chest, into your diaphragm area, into your pelvis, around your hip joints, down through your thighs, around your knees, down through your calves, around your ankles and into your feet. Then notice the energy at the arches of your feet. You may feel it tingle or pulsate there, and finally drop that energy deeply into the ground to anchor your feet to the ground.
If you want an audio version of Grounding that really relaxes you deeply into your body and into the present moment, you can find it as a CD or downloadable audio file at www.self-expression.com.
I would like to teach the world to ground, because it has helped transform my life, as a human being and as a communicator, speaker and performer. If you try it, let me know how it goes and what it does for you.
