Keith S. Cox Ph.D.

You don’t have to feel adrift. Try these mental activities to anchor your roots.

Key points

• Many of us are disconnected from the roots that used to anchor people.
• Even if we aren’t rooted in a place or a religion, we can grow stronger roots in our daily lives.
• Spiritual-ish practices can help us grow stronger roots and feel more connected.

Roots. Home. They’re hard to find in these modern times. Do you feel that? Unrooted, disconnected. I do.

In times past, many found roots and home in place or religion. That’s harder for us now.

Often we aren’t rooted in a place. Americans move almost 12 times in their life, according to the U.S. Census. I’ve moved a lot and to a lot of different places, and lived in seven states and D.C. Transplanting is rough on roots.

Religion doesn’t provide roots for many of us. Almost a third of Americans are “Nones,” claiming no religious affiliation. Less than a third of Americans attend a religious service regularly. I’m a religious nomad, myself. Been Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Agnostic, Atheist, and a None. I’ve also dabbled in Buddhism. It’s hard for many of us to find a religious home.

So what are the threads that bind our life together across the years, to others, and to place? Where’s home? Sometimes I feel adrift, unmoored, like a rowboat without oars floating down a sometimes gentle, sometimes turbulent river.

Living, over decades, in one physical place or as part of a spiritual or religious community is likely the best option for finding home. But that’s not possible for most of us. I can’t get that. I can’t give you that. But here’s what I can do: Use what’s ready to hand for me as a contemplative psychologist.

Here are six spiritual-ish practices to grow deeper roots.

Get someplace quiet, get comfortable, and take five minutes to do one of these mental activities.

User tip: Not all of these will work for you. When one doesn’t hit, move on.

1. Imagine a place you felt so loved: Walking up to Sunday morning breakfast at my grandmother’s house, she opens the door, big smiles, warm hug. That’s one place I imagine. What’s a place you’ve felt loved? Imagine it. Really imagine it. What’s the sequence: start, middle, end? What are the sights, smells, sounds, tastes, and touches of the experience? Go through it slowly. Relish it. Roots might start growing. Watch out, though. The goal is to pick a place that helps you feel rooted. So if sadness or regret comes up, pick a different place.
2. Our lunch becomes our neurons: Take a meal and spend time relishing the bizarre and wondrous truth that the chips you are putting on your tongue become the building blocks for the neurons in your brain. Lunch becomes you, becomes your firing brain, pumping heart, coursing blood, and fingertips that feel. Or when outside look at the clouds overhead. The water droplets in those puffy sky pillows will course through your body as H2O. We are not separate, distant, or cut off, from our physical world. It is us. We are it. Take a week and think about this for three minutes a day. Bet you’ll feel more rooted to the physical world.
3. Connect to the generations: My nephew Warren is coming to visit. I sit down to meditate. It occurs to me that Warren is the fifth generation Warren in my family. I imagine the four earlier Warrens sitting with me in eager anticipation of his arrival. In my mind’s eye, he comes in, hugs, high-fives, and oh-yeahs all around. When he arrives in the flesh, I’m a better uncle. I feel more connected to him (and to the four other Warrens.) What’s your version of that? Probably not five Warrens. Do it with a teacher or friend focus if family history is too dark for this one.
4. Sit at the foot of a great teacher: Brother Lawrence and Thich Nhat Hanh are two great teachers for me. The first was a 17th-century French Christian monk, and the second a 21st-century Vietnamese Buddhist monk. I imagine them sitting with me as a I meditate. What they look like, how they breathe. I think about amazing things they’ve written. Who are some great teachers for you? You might feel more connected, like I do, if you imagine them teaching you, being with you, in person.
5. Remember we came out of a womb: On my mother’s birthday this year, I was sitting down to meditate, and it hit me that this was the day my mom came out of a womb. This brought up warm and connected feelings for me, so I went with it. I imagined her being in my grandmother’s belly. Then I imagined me in my mother’s belly. Next, my daughter in my coparent’s belly. Then, these three pregnant mothers together, smiling. I felt different in my body. Connected. Like there was a cord running from my grandmother to my daughter. A cord like that can run through you.

1. Nuclear explosions on the sun fire your neurons: Ten thousand processes in our brain and body are regulated by the diurnal path of the sun. From cortisol spikes in the morning to phases of sleep late in the night. So when you wake, go outside, face the sun, spread your arms wide (if that’s not weird), and know that light beams fueled by nuclear explosions 93 million miles away are hitting your eyes and kicking off a host of brain-awakening pulses. This solar system is our home. Feel it.

These six practices are (mostly) mental. That’s great, but without action, the spirit they create will wither on the vine. The feeling of rootedness will dissipate in minutes. So follow the mental stuff with action. Call that nephew. Read that spiritually alive book. Hug your mother and feel her belly rub against yours.

We can be rooted, have a home. The exquisite imagination machine just behind our forehead, our neocortex, can create that for us. Let’s punch our ticket and go there together.