Grounding Practices for When Life Feels Unmagical

forest on a foggy morning with sun rays and shadows. grounding

There are mornings when I wake up and can’t quite remember who I am. Not in a dramatic, identity-crisis way – more in the quiet disorientation that comes from realizing the storyline of your life has shifted without your conscious permission. The spiritual practices that once felt revelatory now seem hollow. The rituals that brought comfort feel more like items on a cosmic to-do list. And the carefully cultivated gratitude journals gather dust while real life – messy, mundane, and stubbornly resistant to Instagram filters – demands attention. Grounding practices can help bring clarity and connection in these moments.

I’ve been thinking about this lately, about how we navigate spirituality in seasons that feel distinctly unmagical. When the meditation cushion sits unused because your knees ache and your mind won’t quiet. When crystal grids and vision boards feel like spiritual bypassing in the face of genuine grief or anxiety. When you’re too tired to sage anything, let alone your entire life. Embracing grounding techniques may offer a way to reconnect with ourselves during these times.

The spiritual marketplace would have us believe that enlightenment is always luminous, that healing moves in a straight line upward, that if we just find the right practice or teacher or workshop, we’ll transcend the human experience altogether. But what if the most profound spiritual work happens in the gaps between epiphanies? What if our relationship with the sacred is meant to evolve as we do? Grounding ourselves in the present moment can be a vital part of this journey.

At 52, I’ve learned to be suspicious of any spiritual teaching that doesn’t make room for complexity. Life at midlife and beyond is rarely black and white. We’re caring for aging parents while launching adult children. We’re navigating career transitions or health challenges or relationships that refuse to fit neatly into “toxic versus healthy” categories. We’re questioning everything we thought we knew about ourselves, about God or the Universe or whatever name we give to that which holds us.

Grounding techniques, such as mindfulness and connection with nature, can serve as anchors when life feels overwhelming.

The Problem with Spiritual Performance

I spent years trying to be “good” at spirituality. I learned all the right words – authentic, aligned, manifest, embodied. I created beautiful altars and attended transformational retreats. I sage-smudged my way through darkness and decorated my walls with inspirational quotes about choosing joy.

There was value in all of it, certainly. But there was also an undercurrent of should that left me exhausted. Should be more evolved by now. Should have transcended these old patterns. Should be floating through life on a cloud of perpetual enlightenment.

What I’ve come to understand is that spiritual performance is just another way we abandon ourselves. When we’re constantly reaching for the next level of consciousness, we miss the wisdom available in this moment – even if this moment feels decidedly unglamorous.

Finding Sacred Ground in the Ordinary

woman in gray jacket sitting beside desk. grounding

These days, my spiritual practice looks nothing like it used to. Some mornings, it’s simply watching the birds at my feeder, allowing their presence to remind me that life continues its cycles regardless of my internal state. Other days, it’s doing the dishes with full attention, feeling the warm water and noticing how taking care of these small tasks is its own form of prayer.

I still meditate, but not to achieve enlightenment or manifest abundance. I meditate to remember who I am beneath the roles and responsibilities, to touch base with the part of me that remains constant even when everything else is in flux. Sometimes that means sitting in silence for 20 minutes. Sometimes it means taking three conscious breaths while waiting in line at the grocery store.

The Sacred in the Struggle

What if our spiritual journey isn’t about transcending our humanity but about fully inhabiting it? What if those moments when life feels most unmagical are actually invitations to a deeper kind of magic – the kind that doesn’t need mood lighting or special effects?

I think about the women in my life who have modeled this for me. My grandmother, who found God in her garden and her grief with equal measure. My friend Sarah, who discovered that her depression wasn’t a spiritual failure but a doorway to profound self-compassion. My friend, whose husbands’ cancer journey taught her that healing doesn’t always look like wellness crystal Instagram posts suggest it should.

These women taught me that spirituality isn’t about escaping the human experience – it’s about bringing presence and curiosity to all of it, even (especially) the parts that don’t fit our preconceptions about what a spiritual life should look like.

Practical Grounding for Unmagical Times

So how do we stay spiritually grounded when life feels anything but magical? Here are some practices that have helped me, offered not as prescriptions but as possibilities:

Release the Pressure to Transform
Sometimes the most spiritual thing we can do is stop trying to spiritually evolve. What if you’re exactly where you need to be? What if this unmagical season is actually perfect in its imperfection?
Find Micro-Moments of Presence
Instead of forcing yourself into lengthy spiritual practices, look for tiny opportunities to connect. Feel your feet on the floor. Notice your breath. Touch something natural – a stone, a leaf, the bark of a tree. These small moments of embodied awareness can anchor us more effectively than grand spiritual gestures.
Honor Your Rhythms
Just as nature moves through seasons, our spiritual life has its own cycles. There are times for expansion and times for contraction. Times for insight and times for integration. Times for action and times for deep rest. None is more spiritual than the others.
Create Simple Rituals
Not the Instagram-worthy kind with crystals and sage and perfect lighting. I’m talking about the small acts that help you remember who you are. Making your morning coffee with attention. Taking an evening walk. Lighting a candle when you pay bills. The sacred lives in these ordinary moments if we have eyes to see it.
Find Your People
Seek out others who understand that spirituality isn’t about perfection. Who can sit with questions rather than rushing to answers. Who know how to hold space without trying to fix or change you.

The Wisdom in Not Knowing

Perhaps the greatest spiritual gift of midlife is the permission to not know. To release our grip on certainty and allow mystery to enter. To acknowledge that sometimes life feels unmagical, and that’s not a spiritual failure – it’s part of the journey.

I’m learning to trust the fallow periods, the times when nothing seems to be happening on the surface. Like winter ground that appears lifeless but is quietly preparing for spring, these unmagical seasons often contain their own kind of alchemy.

This doesn’t mean we have to like every moment or find the silver lining in every struggle. It means we can stop performing spirituality and start living it, in all its messy, imperfect glory.

A Different Kind of Magic

depth of field photography of astrology items. grounding

Maybe true magic isn’t about transcending our humanity but about embracing it fully. Maybe it’s found in the courage to show up for another day, in the quiet acts of care we extend to ourselves and others, in the way we learn to hold both grief and gratitude in the same hand.

When I look back at my spiritual journey, it’s not the peak experiences that have transformed me most deeply. It’s the ordinary moments of presence. The times I chose to stay when I wanted to run. The simple acts of kindness I received when I felt most alone. The wisdom that emerged not from seeking but from surrendering to what is.

This is the kind of magic that sustains us through unmagical times. Not the flashy, Instagram-worthy kind, but the quiet miracle of continuing to grow and learn and love, even when – especially when – life feels completely ordinary.

For Reflection (A Gentle Invitation)

Take a moment to sit quietly with these questions. There are no right answers, and you don’t need to write anything down unless it feels helpful:

What if the unmagical moments in your life aren’t problems to be solved but doorways to a different kind of wisdom?

What small, ordinary moments in your day might be inviting you into presence?

How might your spiritual life be trying to evolve? What if it’s asking not for more effort but for more gentleness?

Remember: You don’t have to figure it all out. Sometimes the most spiritual thing we can do is simply acknowledge where we are, breathe, and trust that even in the most unmagical seasons, we are held by something larger than ourselves.