Safety, Belonging And Dignity: Foundations Of Healing

And I'm just going to go ahead and light my candle.

If you don't have one,

That's fine,

If you have one,

It's great.

You don't need a candle,

There's nothing special about a candle,

It just can be used.

As we know,

Everything is about attention and desires.

So we have a desire to be here,

Present,

Whatever your desire is.

Anything related to,

Yeah,

Something that is important for you,

Flow,

Presence,

Groundedness,

To be present,

To have access to the fullness of who you are,

Whatever your desire is.

To know your goodness,

To connect with your okayness,

Whatever your desire is.

You're going to use the candle or whatever object you want to bring your attention to this moment.

So the candle is really easy for me,

I get to hold it,

I can feel it in my hands,

It's very tactile.

I can't hold something or experience something tactile in the past or the future,

I can only do it now.

So I can feel this candle holder,

And then I can see the flame.

So I'm using two sense receptors,

The sense of touch and the sense of sight,

And I'm using both of them in a very simple,

Actual,

Factual way.

And I'm just resting my attention there,

Resting my attention with what I'm feeling in my hands.

It's so simple,

I don't need to manage this candle holder or fix it or understand it,

It's just so simply in my hands.

I don't need to manage the flame,

Fix it,

Figure it out,

It's just here.

As I set it down,

I'm going to let my attention continue to orient on purpose,

I'm going to choose to orient in a way as to connect with simple and actual,

Factual.

So regardless of what I'm feeling inside,

Regardless of what my thoughts are doing,

My emotions are doing,

My internal sensations are registering as I'm on purpose orienting externally to some simple,

Actual,

Factual.

I'm just doing that very slowly in my room.

As I'm orienting this way,

I'm also just going to notice there's no threat or danger in my room,

And I'm going to verify that,

I'm going to look all the way behind me,

No threat or danger behind me on my left,

Slowly make my way through the room with my eyes,

Across the room to my right,

No imminent threat,

No danger that's coming at me,

If there is,

We should be in different rooms.

So we can see with our eyes open that we're in a safe room,

We may not feel safe inside due to various thoughts that we're having,

But we can see that there's no imminent threat outside of us,

And we're just going to take that in for a little longer.

Sometimes we get mixed messages from our thoughts in relation to what is actually happening around us.

So in this moment,

We're not trying to change those mixed messages,

We're not trying to change our thoughts that are connected to sensations,

Perhaps,

We're just noticing that there's no danger in the room,

That there's safety in the room that we're in,

And we can see that,

We can bring our cognitive attention to include that safety in the room,

And we're just letting our eyes continue to be slow and soft,

Looking through the lens of actual,

Factual and simple,

What doesn't need to be managed or fixed or figured out,

And we might just go ahead and include things that we see that are really solid,

Like the walls.

That's useful for a nervous system and a brain to include if we're wanting to remember that we have safety,

The walls are stable and secure and safe,

The ceiling,

Solid,

Stable,

The floor,

Solid,

Stable,

And then I'm going to guess that what we're sitting on,

The objects that we're sitting on,

I'm going to guess they're also solid.

Even if I was in a rocking chair,

It would be solid and moving,

But I'm not today,

I'm on a couch and it's not moving.

Just aligning with your context and just seeing with your eyes open that the chair or bed or couch is a safe one,

There's no imminent threat on that chair,

With that chair,

We're kind of reminding our bodies like,

Oh yeah,

Safety is under our sit bones,

If our feet are on the floor,

Safety is under our feet.

We're not using the word safety as a concept,

We're using it as an actual factual,

And we're inviting our nervous system to attune to the actual factual of the stable floor,

The stable chair,

I'm just going to use the word chair for now.

We're having almost like a little mental telepathy conversation with our feet or sit bones,

Like okay,

Let's attune to what's safe here,

An actual factual,

Solid,

Let's let our feet remember our sit bones,

Remember the safety of this couch or chair,

Floor,

And we remember it just by letting our attention stay with the experience of now.

So thoughts are going to come in of past or future or of idea making or concepts and that's just going to happen,

That's to be expected really,

And then we bring attention back to what is literally here and now,

What doesn't need to be figured out,

What is already figured out,

My feet already have a safe place to land,

Where they belong in this moment,

My sit bones have a place to belong in this moment on this couch that I'm on,

Where there's safety and stability.

I also feel that in my hands,

My hands apparently belong together,

They're just holding each other,

Simple,

Stable,

Safe.

In your context,

It might be something different,

Might be behind the back or could be lots of things.

We're noticing what is,

The mind often thinks or our thoughts often orient to what should be or what's supposed to be or ideas of past or future,

And that's again really normal but we're really inviting our attention to connect to what is already in happening,

Not as a concept but as an actual factual in this moment,

It's as simple as it could be,

My hands belong with each other right now,

My hands have safety with each other right now,

My feet belong on the floor,

My feet are on the floor,

Feeling stability,

My sit bones belong where they are situated,

I can feel the steadiness under them and if it's easier at this point,

Just let the eyes close to feel what you had been seeing,

To feel this belonging,

To feel the safety,

To feel what is apart from right or wrong or good or bad,

And for now we're really inviting our attention to kind of stay with the bones,

You can go into the interior of the chest or the belly but if that's really easy and simple for you,

We're really orienting to simple and actual factual in this moment,

We're not trying to avoid the complicatedness of different sensations,

We're just starting with what's really simple,

So if there's something really vying for your attention and it's maybe a discomfort or something struggling,

Maybe some thoughts of not enoughness or whatever your predictable thoughts are that might be really challenging for you,

We're not trying to avoid those or pretend they're not here,

We're on purpose orienting our attention to some simpleness,

To some experiences that don't require our urgent brains but bring our simple brains online,

We're not denying urgency or denying things can be complicated but we're really using effort to orient to what is simple in this moment and you can include breath if it's simple or an aspect of breath that is simple,

Maybe it's the air coming in and out of the nostrils,

Could be another component of breath,

Could be just kind of noticing the movement from the shoulders or from kind of like the outside of the body,

The breath has a lot of experiences or experientials within it and we're just on purpose orienting and choosing to bring attention to some simple aspect of the breath,

Just like some simple aspect of sitting before,

Now it's a simple aspect of breathing,

Just like we always belong to gravity or always within gravity,

We always belong to breath,

Breath is always here,

We're never apart from it,

Whether we are having a good day or a bad day,

Breath and gravity remain,

Whether we're being jerks to our friends or really loving to our friends,

Our breath and gravity remain,

We are in belonging with them all the time,

Whether we're having kind thoughts to ourselves or judgmental thoughts to ourselves,

Harsh judgmental thoughts,

Breath is like yep I'm still here,

Gravity is like yep I still got you,

So we can observe this experientially,

No matter what we're thinking or feeling,

Breath it's just going to keep happening and we can invite our attention to just notice that we don't have to try to breathe,

Just like we don't really have to try to sit and if we want to test this theory with breath,

We can on purpose kind of um let's see not hold breath rigidly but choose not to breathe in and just watch to see what happens,

Eventually breath will kick in because it's an automatic part of our nervous system,

Sooner or later it will kick in and once it kicks in we can just let breath have its way,

Let attention follow breath,

How breath wants to breathe us as we're in within this belonging of breath,

At this point we might want or choose to change our positioning a little bit,

What helps,

What in your positioning helps you to be in an easy relationship with sitting and breathing,

So for example if my chest is concave or in position in such a way I might inhabit the physiological ability to breathe and I'm just gonna orient my body a little bit more or a little differently maybe to have some hmm I'm gonna use the word dignity in relation to breath,

What allows my body to be in an open state of receptivity with breath,

This is the breath I don't have to earn but a breath that I wanted to be available to physiologically in my positioning,

Luckily we again we don't have to earn breath we already have an inherent dignity of getting to exist,

I don't have to be good enough to earn breath or good enough to earn gravity,

A comfort of an object holding us,

Oh and we can be situated in such a way that it helps our sitting breathing body experience that that simple dignity,

That simple receptivity or sense of being within that occurrence of breath and sitting gravity,

I'm just being curious here with this and in this rest we're just playing with these,

It could be concepts but in this moment they're actual invitations to notice the experientials of safety belonging and dignity,

Just noticing how in some kind of way even if we don't even know what these concepts exactly mean,

Experientially we've been exploring them,

Safety to be here in this moment,

A sense of not only belonging with breath and gravity but we are in community here doing this together,

We've already established we belong with each other regardless of what we've done today,

What we've done yesterday,

What we're going to do later,

We belong in this moment with each other now,

It's already happening,

Even if we resist it or disagree with it on some level it's already happening and if your mind is really trying to figure it out,

Mmm boy,

Well we won't be able to so we're just going to really just acknowledge that and drop attention to what's already happening and into the experiential dignity of a body that is designed to receive and release breath,

It's our core design to be here.

A few more breath cycles,

In a few minutes we're going to move into some words of Prentice Hemphill who talks a lot about safety belonging and dignity but for now as your eyes slowly start to open,

I'm going to invite you to jot some things down,

Do some writing about what you have been experiencing the last bit of time with regards to a the simplest version of safety belonging and dignity that you have access to experientially,

That you've been experiencing experientially connecting with the last few minutes and yeah let yourself find your paper or if you don't have a pen and paper just put it in to your phone,

Just take your time with this if you're listening to it later,

I'm going to pause the recording now and you can just take your time with it.