Picture: Iceland ~ Is this water safe, scary, exhilarating, challenging, beautiful, fierce, etc. Every individual has the free will to decide what it is for them. Read on for a more in depth discussion around safety, choices and autonomy.
There was a time when I thought that safety was outside of myself. I would say, “I don’t feel safe around these people.” Or this place doesn’t seem safe.” I am sure you can think of many others scenarios where this question might rise. Now let’s go a bit deeper into this question and explore another understanding about safety.
Safety is also experienced as our well being and a sense of security. Safety is defined as: the condition of being protected from or unlikely to cause danger, risk or injury.
I’d say these last almost 3 years have been nothing but a constant barrage of situations that could create “unsafe” feelings and experiences within and without. Do you agree?
Again, I will ask: What is safety? Think about that question for a few moments. Feel your body. Allow for the word safety to course through your veins, feel it, experience your present moment sensations and then think and sense what safety means to you. You see safety is really a personal exploration of self.
Example: I felt unsafe with the forced dictate around masks. Every time I looked at a mask I started to feel dizzy. I put on a mask during these last almost 3 years approximately 10 times and each time I did I felt as if I would pass out. Now I can say it was air flow restriction and I do believe it was that but I also know that it was a safety piece for me. I didn’t feel safe having my face covered and my words and expressions stifled. I felt extremely unsafe and a sense of detachment from those that I looked at with their faces covered. I would literally start shaking and then anger would rise inside of me.
As a child and young adult I fiercely rebelled against any form of suffocation of my words and actions. And I had a lot to say that was punishable by those who thought they knew more than I. And maybe they did but I didn’t feel they had a right to shut me down. And because of those actions I felt unsafe in my body and in those environments. Unsafe to speak, to be myself, to express myself in the way that life was moving through me. I am using those examples to help you understand that safety can be explored and expressed in many different ways. It is not a stagnant or one size fits all thing. It is a moving and fluid experience to be explored and felt into in each moment.
Another example: I am walking at night and I start to feel “unsafe.” I am cautious about my surrounding and aware of others around me or even if I am alone. My senses are heightened and I am on full alert. This is a different kind of “sense of safety” and also can be examined in the moment.
Safety is a full bodied experience that wants to be reviewed in each moment. No one can “make you unsafe,” however, you can perceive something or people as unsafe. Words, actions, comments, facial expressions, etc, are all a part of our individual safety responses.
I hope these words can give you some insight into your own safety. Feeling safe in our bodies is a day to day and minute to minute experience of checking in and seeing how you feel, what you feel and even if you are feeling anything in any given moment. There is no right or wrong in feeling safe. It is an individual process and experience.
Safety is cultivated by knowing yourself deeply. It is explored by taking the time to be present in each situation and allowing yourself to feel into the existing circumstances and conditions. This is also called your gut instincts or your intuition. This is something that a lot of us have been shamed, scapegoated, ridiculed for the internal instincts or a natural feeling sense that is instinctive and individual.
Another example- I remember in grade school having to use the bathroom and being told to wait. That act of being dismissed by an adult told me in their actions that I was not to trust my bodily instincts. That someone else knew better than I what my body needed in that moment. No wonder so many people don’t have a relationship with their bodies! It seems that most cultural norms are a directive to leave your body. To leave your source of all pleasure and deep knowing. If it feels too good then it must not be good for you. If it feels bad then it must be something not good for you. However, if we haven’t had the deep cultivation of understanding who we are and what we want and what we know then how do we get to truly know what is best for us~ good or bad, right or wrong?
And that leads me to this moment in time where millions of people followed something outside of themselves to be comfortable and desiring the perceived safety of the outside sources of information.
It seems the narrative for the last 3 years went like this:
Protect me somebody, anybody, because I want to feel safe! You see I don’t know who I am or what is right for me! Is this YOU?
