What Makes You Feel Safe?
What makes you feel safe?
Is it feeling supported and loved?
Is it living with an abundance of basic necessities like food, water and shelter?
Is it having knowledge of what is happening or what is going to happen around you?
Understanding what makes you feel safe may be very different than what makes someone else feel safe. Your answer is your truth, as we each have our own. As you journey toward your truth, you may seek answers to questions that have blended fact vs. opinion, right vs. wrong, and hope vs. fear. There may be moments where your journey to the truth is filled with struggle and sacrifice. Other times you may have feelings of joy, celebration and relief. Reaching your truth may take years of personal work, or it may come quickly. This is no small task. Let your process unfold naturally.
Navigating the unknown can be a very scary expedition, and we are being asked to travel this both through our own individual inner landscapes as well as in partnership with humanity as a whole.
Living through and surviving a global pandemic is a new experience and test for our community. It’s hard not to take on the weight of the world when we are surrounded by so much pain, suffering and loss.
I can relate. I’ve struggled with feelings of overwhelm, exhaustion, helplessness, and loss of a life I once knew that may not ever be quite the same this past year. I have questioned the sustainability of all I have known life to be — from where I live, to what I am doing for a living, to any future plans I’ve ever had. This experience has turned my life upside down, and it’s been exhausting.
Feeling safe during a global pandemic that has reached all corners of our community can be challenging, inconvenient, frustrating — and for some — completely devastating. On the physical level, we wash our hands, social distance, wear masks, and quarantine when needed. On the emotional level, we may have gaps where we could have feelings of worry, anxiety and depression.
When we are fighting an invisible, mysterious enemy that drains us the physical level — like a pandemic — we tend to forget about caring for our emotional and mental well-being.
Taking care of our emotional and mental well-being is a deeper sense of safety, and a very personal one, which is based more on our own life experiences and less on science or government. For me finding inner ground in an otherwise groundless time is the key to feeling safe.
As my Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche once said, “The bad news is you’re free falling; the good news is there is no ground”. In other words, the more comfortable we can become in groundlessness, the more grounded we will feel.
Growing up in a Buddhist household, I am very familiar with these concepts and teachings, but I had no idea how important and lifesaving they would become moving through the rest of my life. Learning to let go is probably been my biggest ally as it applies to all suffering. Loosing my mother to lung cancer seven years ago proved to be one of my biggest challenges. Death is the ultimate time of letting go, mostly for the dying person, but truly for all surrounding them as well. Through my dedication to my practice I was able to stay present and available through the entire process even though some of the biggest supports in my personal life had fallen away. Death will do that, it will bring forth everyone’s most inner truth, and some will cower while others will rise to the occasion.
The fuel of feeling unsafe is fear of the unknown. Letting go of the unknown brings a sense of calm, a sense of presence, and a sense of acceptance. Finding inner ground doesn’t have to be fancy, or demand any outer circumstance, tools, potions, or feedback of any kind.
Finding inner ground can start now by simply moving out of the mind and into the body.
Finding inner ground can start with a simple breath.
Some of you may doubt that it could be this simple to feel safe and grounded. Having doubt and questioning things as they are is healthy, and in fact, part of your journey.
Each day I devote at least 10 minutes toward strengthening my mental and emotional well-being.
This daily practice has helped me get through my most challenging times throughout my life, including loss, heartache, and disappointment. Life can be painful and overwhelming at times, and through my daily practice I have learned not to try and get rid of the pain, but relate to it differently.
Through this practice, I lean into it and listen, and therefore I can maintain a sense of balance and ground that supports me every day, including my darkest days.
Here are a few simple techniques that help me feel safe and grounded:
Find a quiet place to sit. Preferably with your seat bones on the ground, but if not, seated in a chair, upright, with both feet firmly planted is also ideal.
Feel the ground —not just your own weight, but also feel the support of the ground lifting up against you.
Relax your jaw and drop your shoulders. Then drop them again.
Feel your breath as it enters and then slowly exits your nose. Notice its texture, smell, and temperature? Feel your lungs fill with the rise of your chest, and then empty out as your chest falls.
Be present in your body, and let go of your thoughts. They will be waiting for you when you’re done.
Spend time in your inner landscape, and realize, it’s yours.
You are the one who dictates how you react to the outer world.
You are the one who has the power to come back to this place.
After all, you are the only one you have any control over.
This is where fear is not, where doubt is not, and where a warm embrace of safety and ground will always be waiting for you at any time, in any circumstance.
In the wise words of astrologer Caroline Casey, “Believe nothing but entertain all possibilities”. Start with the breath, be curious, ask yourself, “If I let go, then what?” Then you are here. Not lost in illusions of the past or fantasies of the future, but here in this very moment, void of judgement, void of fear.
Remember anxiety can only live in thoughts of the future. A future we have never had control over at any time in our lives. So, if you choose, take this time as an opportunity, for practice, for the practice of now, for now is all we have and all we have ever had so we might as well become friends with it.
What do you do to feel safe and grounded?
How do you remain in the present moment?
How do you strengthen your mental and emotional well-being?
If not now … When?
Leila Bazzani
Certified Pilates Instructor
