Safety Is a Feeling
We create feelings of safety in the nervous system and in our own perception. Thoughts, feelings, and body states create the sensation of safety.
We have much more control over feeling safe than we realize. We feel unsafe because we have been trained our entire lives to feel unsafe.
We can change this, right now, and at any given moment we can use our inherent powers of imagination, thoughts, and feelings, to create safety.
The most important part of this is remembering and rediscovering how safety is something subjective, it is an internal reality made up of thoughts, feelings, and body sensations taking place inside our own experience.
This is true no matter what is going on outside of us.
Most of Us Are More Safe Than We Feel
The film Life is Beautiful by Roberto Benigni tells the story of how a loving father created feelings of safety for his child, even when the reality was the child was not safe. But the child was able to have the feelings of protection and safety anyway.
I won’t speak for you, but my life is, by any reasonable person’s standards, quite safe, if not outright wonderful. The feelings of unsafety are mainly memories of the past and fearful imaginations of the future, what ifs.
The only thing that threatens my life verifiably at this moment is phantoms in my own head, scary thoughts, and scary feelings.
Exercise for Feeling Safer
1. Three Big Breaths
Sit or lie down comfortably. Start with three very big, very deep, very full breaths. On the inhale take as much air in as you can, and on the out breath, let everything go that you can in this moment. Release all burdens, tensions, stress, toxins, pressure, and discomforts.
2. See Your Inner Sun
Close your eyes and now picture that there is a small ball of energy tucked under your rib cage just above the navel. It can be whatever size is right for you, but maybe it’s somewhere between a baseball and a soccer ball in size. Imagine this energy as like a small sun, a ball of very potent, bright, powerful light full of your own vital life force essence. This energy is yours, comes from your Core Nature, and belongs fully to you. As you are placing your attention on it, see what colors it has, and see that it is alive, vibrant, potent, and humming. This is your Inner Sun.
3. Expand Your Inner Sun to Greet the Six Directions
You are now going to imagine that this ball of energy, your Inner Sun, is getting bigger and stronger as you allow it to grow in strength and size. You don’t have to force it, just see that it grows bigger as you allow it and intend it to.
Once you feel it is big enough for you for today, send energy from your Inner Sun out in front of you, as far out into the horizon in front of you as you can imagine. This happens very quickly, and once your Inner Sun energy has touched the horizon, greeting it warmly and lovingly, bring the energy sent by your Inner Sun back from the horizon back into your Inner Sun.
Now send some Inner Sun energy out to touch the horizon to the right of you, again allowing it to return back to your center Inner Sun after having touched the horizon to the right of you.
Flow some Inner Sun energy through the back of your body out behind you, to touch the horizon behind your back, again returning to your Inner Sun at your core.
Flow Inner Sun energy out the left side of your body to touch your left-most horizon, and return it to your core.
Send Inner Sun energy down below you, deep into the center of the earth, and return it to your core.
Finally, send your Inner Sun energy up to touch the sky, then return it back to your core.
4. Write Some Safety Affirmations
Now switch modes and get out your journal. Set a timer for 5 minutes. Write a free-flowing paragraph: I am SAFE. I am free. I am calm. I am independent. I am lovely. I am strong. I am surrounded by loving, peaceful energy. Make up whatever sentences, mantras, and statements you like, that seem to come out of this Inner Sun experience.
5. Record Yourself Reading Your Safety Affirmations
Now record yourself reading these statements out loud to yourself. Read your paragraph, what you wrote down, whether you fully believe these things or not doesn’t matter, just try them out with your voice and record yourself doing so.
6. Listen to Your Own Voice Saying Your Safety Affirmations
Listen back to your recording of your own voice, saying these things.
May you feel full to the brim with your own powers of safety. Thanks for reading!