What if you don't feel safe in your body?
Early on in my embodiment journey, one of my teachers asked a group of us,
“How do you know you are safe?”
As we paused to consider, I looked around my apartment and thought, “well, the door is closed and locked, the windows are locked. I know the building porter is downstairs monitoring the cameras. I know I’m alone here. The oven is off.”
Then it came time to share our answers. Others talked about how they could feel their bodies resting on the solid ground; they could feel their heart’s measured, calm beating; and their breath flowing in and out naturally and consistently.
I was a bit shaken because it hadn’t occurred to me that safety was something I could feel and source INSIDE of myself.
In fact, when I tuned in to my body, it didn’t actually feel all that safe!
At that time, I had a lot of big emotions I didn’t know what to do with. I had a lot of grief in my body. I had a lot of digestive problems probably as a result of my “frozen” emotional state. Looking back further, I had spent a lot of time in my early 20s struggling with disordered eating & trying to control my weight and food and exercise. I had a history of serious illness as a cancer survivor. I had a very difficult postpartum recovery and long-term postpartum depression. It seemed very much like my body wasn’t a safe place to be… like my body betrayed me, broke down, and didn’t function very well. Like it was out of control and chaotic and unpredictable.
Honestly, safety in my body seemed not only inconceivable, it did not seem possible.
I know you can probably relate. This might be the first time you’ve heard of or considered the idea that you might be able to source a sense of safety from INSIDE your body. You might feel like I did: that your body is actually pretty chaotic and unpredictable, and not really a safe place to be at all.
But based on my own experience and that of my clients, it is possible to discover and even expand a sense of safety in your body. Even if you’re starting where I was, from a place of feeling like that would be impossible.
Embodied safety is cultivating an awareness of a felt sense of safety in your body.
It starts with noticing what safety feels like in your body. Where you feel safety, and coming into deeper intimacy with this felt sense. The texture of it. The flavor. Where its edges are.
The more time you spend with your awareness on this somatic sense of safety in your body, the easier it becomes to feel its presence. To rely on it. To allow it to expand.
You can try this right now if you like. I invite you to take your eyes off the screen for a moment and look around the space you’re in. Let your eyes come to rest on something that is pleasant to look at. It might be a plant, or a photograph, or a piece of art, or even just an interesting pattern or texture, or the way the light is reflecting from the window. Let your eyes take in this pleasant thing you’re looking at.
And then see if you can notice anywhere in your body that feels safe. Some people experience this as a sense of groundedness or solidness. I can often feel this in my base, in my hips. You might notice this as simply an absence of any chaotic feeling. You might even only feel this in your fingers or toes, or an elbow.
If you can’t seem to notice any sense of safety, see if you can notice anywhere in your body that feels neutral or still. Even if it’s a very tiny sense, you can begin to work with it through your awareness, breath, movement, or sound. To cultivate a greater sense of it, and even to expand it.
There are several other ways you can create or cultivate an embodied sense of safety.
Anchoring your awareness of your physical body in the physical space you’re in right now.
Coming fully into the present moment through deeper awareness of your body.
Relaxing any places where we are bracing ourselves for something to come in the future or because something happened in the past, creating tension that isn’t congruent with our current circumstances.
Creating resilience and flexibility in the nervous system through breathwork, meditation, or embodiment practices.
Safety in the body is the foundation of embodiment work.
Without it, it’s really hard to go deep on any other feelings or sensations. Safety is the touchpoint we stay connected to when working with intense emotions, and where we return to close any embodiment practice before returning back to “regular life.”
Especially in these uncertain times, having an embodiment practice that guides you to return to safety is so important in weathering the ups and downs of the news cycle and your social media feed.
I created my embodied safety practice to guide you through this process. I’m offering it to you for free. It will help you contact and cultivate a somatic sense of safety in your body. It’s a sweet little 10 minute meditation that will help calm your nervous system and anchor in a sense of safety that you can return to again and again.
