October 29, 2025

Ten Practices for Staying Grounded in a Restless World

Written by David Schmidgall

As 21st century humans we often live in a holy tension—driven by vision, yet prone to disconnection. Our pace can outrun our presence. When we lead without grounding, we lose touch with our bodies, our teams, and the quiet voice of God already near. Spiritual formation, in this sense, isn’t an escape from the world—it’s how we learn to stay human within it. As a professional counselor who specializes in interpersonal neurobiology, I’ve observed the impacts of our 21st century pace and tsunami of content we consume - most of us have found sophisticated ways of numbing or avoiding the truth of our hurried rhythms.

At Scatter we use a lot of organic imagery. In our hyper-digital world, we’re reclaiming the patient, agricultural metaphors in the scriptures: good soil, planting and watering, scattering seeds. In fact, humility comes from the word “humus”, or earth. Humility is when we’re close to the ground. Adam comes from the Hebrew “Adamah”, or soil/earth. We are the substance of soil and spirit.

These ten practices offer an embodied way to remain rooted, grounded, creative, and alive:

1. Begin Each Day at Normal Speed

Before checking a single notification, resist acceleration. Sit in silence long enough for your nervous system to find a baseline. Name what you notice—breath, sound, tension, or gratitude. Stability starts in slowness.

2. Keep a “Presence Inventory”

Several times a day, pause and ask: Where am I—mentally, emotionally, spiritually? Naming location cultivates awareness. In neurobiological terms, this activates integration; in spiritual terms, it’s the beginning of prayer without performance.

3. Tend to Small Joys

Jesus broke bread and blessed it. Ordinary gestures reveal divine texture. Keep a brief record of small, unnoticed delights—a scent, laughter, a quiet kindness. Joy grounds you in the sacrament of now.

4. Honor Your Edges

When you feel irritation, fatigue, or restlessness, don’t override it. Notice it. That’s your body whispering for care. Grounded leaders interpret signals, not silence them.

5. Engage Restorative Movement

A slow walk. Gardening. Stretching in the sun. These simple acts co-regulate body and spirit. Motion metabolizes stress.

6. Practice Reciprocal Care

At Scatter, we call this inconvenient mutuality—resisting self-sufficiency by choosing interdependence. Ask for help. Offer help. Mutual care keeps power and pressure in check. The most common refrain I hear from clients is “I’ve never said this before.”

7. Name the Good Before the Gap

The human brain clings to negativity; hope must be rehearsed. End each day by naming one thing that is working. As we say at Scatter: start with good.

8. Create One Unproductive Hour a Week

Let wonder interrupt efficiency. Read poetry, cook slowly, or sit outside with no goal. This disrupts the myth that worth equals output.

9. Resist Spiritual Bypassing

When we hurt, many of us reach for quick spiritual language to explain, fix, or rise above pain:

“It’s all in God’s hands.”
“Everything happens for a reason.”
“I just need to trust more.”

Sometimes that’s faith. Other times, it’s a subtle way of avoiding pain, emotion, or human limitation—what psychologists call spiritual bypassing. Instead of integrating spirit and body, we separate them, bypassing the nervous system’s real signals of fear, grief, or fatigue.

This practice invites awareness, not shame.

10. End with Embodied Benediction

Each night, place a hand on your chest and whisper a blessing—something as simple as “I am held.” The nervous system learns safety through repetition; the soul learns trust the same way.

Written by David Schmidgall