Creative grounding — 3 practices with glass

Creative grounding — 3 practices with glass

Creative Grounding - 3 Practices with GlassBaker

Grounding is a technique for returning attention through sensory channels. Psychologists use it when working with anxiety and dissociation. Glass as a material is an unusually powerful tool for grounding practices: weight, temperature, transparency, soldering rhythm. This post contains 3 practices that we use in the GlassBaker studio.

What is sensory grounding

Sensory grounding is a psychology technique in which attention is returned to the body through 5 channels of perception: vision, hearing, touch, smell, taste. The most famous technique is 5-4-3-2-1 (name 5 things you see, 4 you hear, 3 you feel, 2 you smell, 1 you taste). This switches the nervous system from the “thinking and worrying” mode to the “being here and now” mode.

Practice 1: tactile examination of glass

Take a piece of colored glass (you can from our class or from the store). Close your eyes. Focus on tactile sensations: weight, temperature (glass is cooler than the body), smoothness of edges, uneven edges. Change the angle of inclination — feel how the pressure in your hand changes. 5-7 minutes of this practice brings you back to the moment. Can be repeated with any glass object.

Practice 2: temperature contrast in fusing

On fusing workshop you lay out a composition from cold pieces of colored glass, then the master puts the work in the oven and the glass is heated to 800°C. After a few hours, you receive the finished product — warm, then cooled down. The contrast of temperatures and states of the material is a powerful experience of the unity of the process.

Practice 3: Soldering Rhythm in Tiffany Stained Glass

Stained glass Tiffany involves wrapping each glass element with copper foil and soldering with tin. The sound of a working soldering iron, the smell of flux, constant movement — this is a meditative rhythm. 2-3 hours of such work ground you more effectively than many other practices.

When to Practice Grounding

In the morning before work as a ritual of entering the day. After an emotionally stressful situation as a way of recovery. Before bed to transition to calm. At regular workshops — weekly or once every 2 weeks.

Sign up

Want to try grounding through glass work? Sign up for a workshop — creativity as a grounding practice, lampwork or Tiffany stained glass. WhatsApp or Telegram.

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