Safety, love and belonging

How many of us really, truly, deeply feel the grace of safety, love and belonging? I mean feel it in an embodied way; enough to relax back into it; to actually rest in it; heal in it; and shine through it.

Not you? You’re not alone. For the vast majority this is a concept at best.  

In my experience, becoming an embodied expression of safety, love and belonging requires rewiring the nervous system. There’s work to be done on our own, and in the presence of another, others, community.

For most, there’s a constant low grade or sub-perceptual buzz of trauma manifesting as behavioral and physical symptoms. We’ve learned to hide, numb and deny the very source of such symptoms. Trauma separates us from the grace of safety, love and belonging and many walk through life in varying degrees of fight, flight, freeze or faun.

So how does one become a living breathing embodiment of these three pillars? 

We heal the trauma stuck in our nervous systems with simple yet potent tools. If trauma separated us, connection reunites us. One of my favorite tools is the practice of the felt sense. It has the power to reconnect us to ourselves. It’s a simple practice of making contact with yourself. It’s through such contact we’re able to complete long held patterns of trauma stuck in the nervous system. 

We must dare to follow the thread of our symptoms to the source. The symptoms are the clues that can lead us to the place where deep repair is possible. The felt sense is a good tool for this. 

How to:

1. Find a comfortable position sitting or laying down with your eyes closed. 

2. Breath in and out of your mouth with no pause between the inhale and exhale. Equal inhale and exhale. Nice and easy. 

3. See if you can let your breath begin to fill your low belly and like a wave continue to move up though you and then back down on the exhale. 

4. Breathe like this for about ten breathes. Open mouth. Connected breath. Nice and easy. 

5. With your awareness on the inside, notice any sensations. 

6. Allow your active imagination to show and tell: Where is it exactly? What does it feel like? Look like? Sound like? *(know that even “nothing” and “numbness” are sensations)

7. You can ask it questions: What do you need? What’s your purpose? 

8. Let the intelligence of this felt sense reveal itself. Just allowing, acknowledging and witnessing is healing.

9. Become aware of your relationship with this felt part of you. You can make corrections. You can give it a purpose and place. 

10. Stay with it as long as is needed. When you feel complete, open your eyes. 

11. Check in with this part of you over the next few days.

This is not without hurdles and challenges.

We live in a culture that treats symptoms. Culture is, as we are, distracted by and even obsessed with symptoms. Why? Because it’s easier (at first) to treat the symptom than it is the cause, and because symptoms are big business. But no amount of pharmaceuticals, vitamins, superfoods, infrared-heat, colon therapy, talk therapy, or ayahuasca alone have the power to cultivate deep lasting well-being. We create and sell, buy and consume, products and ways, to heal symptoms we suffer, that are rooted in the deepest place of our severed connection to self and source. 

As a white woman with white privilege, I only know the very personal experience of trauma that severs connection to the three essential pillars: safety, love and belonging. BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of color) have as a starting point the trauma of being born into a culture of white supremacy and systemic racism. It’s on each of us to disrupt both the internalized cultural patterns that make it unsafe for so many, as well as the external ones. We’ve found the work of Layla F. Saad deeply healing http://laylafsaad.com in this regard.

We’re conditioned to outsource our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health and healing. We invite you to disrupt this pattern and wake to the infinite healing wisdom within you own body, mind, and spirit.