Ani
Hello, and welcome to the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. Hey, Brian.
Brian
Morning, Ani.
Ani
Morning. Happy New Year. I’m a little late, but I’m still high on the New Year energy. Are you? I love this time of year. I know everybody says, “Don’t make resolutions. They never work”, and all that. We could talk about that actually in another podcast. But just the energy of the New Year is always super inspiring for me, and I’m fueled by inspiration.
Brian
Yeah, well, oftentimes it can be like a clean slate. Here where we live in the northeast, if we have snow, and you know what I really love are those fresh crisp drops of snow where everything is just clean and fresh before it’s untracked at all. Yeah, that’s so pretty. It just feels like a clean slate. Like possibilities, clean possibilities. I think that’s what this time of year feels like to me, too.
Ani
Yeah, I agree. It’s exciting. I don’t know. My mindset is just all excited. I’m excited to talk to you today. What are we talking about on this episode?
Brian
This is a timely topic, I think, or however you want to frame it for yourself. It’s this episode 63. This week, we’re talking about how to cultivate safety, even in what feels like a dangerous world. That is a timely topic. So let’s set the stage for this. Let’s just talk about the transitions that are happening right now in the world. In the US, certainly, there’s been a change in administration here in the US, and this is happening globally, too. There’s a lot of political upheaval. There’s a lot of a challenge around. How do we want to say this, governmental leadership and structures and those types of things.
Ani
From a government standpoint, certainly, and all of our systems. This is a point in history where it feels like all of our systems are on the brink of breaking or breaking or broken. There’s a lot of mental health issues and violence issues that we deal with in the world. For some people, they feel like it’s a really scary time. Yeah.
Brian
And so the world can really feel like a dangerous place. And sometimes that danger is perceived because if you really think about it, over the last few years, we’ve been told every day that the world’s an unsafe place. What do you mean? Well, if you think about, again, not to make this a political statement, but if you look at election cycles and news cycles, often the times the information that we get to try to make a decision a certain way is based on how dangerous things are. If we don’t make a certain choice, then they’ll become more dangerous. I’m not saying that’s all perception. There’s obviously some real danger out there for certain folks.
Ani
Right, but finding your way through that information is crazy right now.
Brian
We’ve been told a lot. We’ve been told a lot, again, ‘you’re not safe, you’re not safe, you’re not safe, you’re not safe, you’re not safe, you’re not safe’ for several years now. And that can really create a firm perception that ‘I’m actually not safe.’
Ani
I think each of us has within us programming around not being safe. And so when we hear it from the external, it can further reconfirm, even if we’re like positive, calm, happy-going people, all of us have that program somewhere inside. So if we keep having it reinforced from the external, it starts to take hold in some manner, and it takes a great deal of energy to refocus our programming rather than fall into that programming that lives within each of us and go like, ‘Oh, hey, maybe I’m not safe’, or, ‘Yeah, you’re right’, and then to reconfirm that programming. It takes energy and focus and skill and capacity and all that stuff. It’s a resource to do that.
Brian
Yeah, absolutely. It’s the primal need, really, for safety that can get activated and then filter and perfuse its way into all parts of our lives. Now, we’ll say, too, certainly if you identify in a certain way or if you are identified in a certain way, you may actually be objectively not safe in the world that we live in right now, too. Let’s just call that out. It’s not just all perception. There’s actually some objective lack of safety. Certain people are losing their rights to make certain decisions for themselves. That creates real life issues of not being safe. Yes. The world does and can feel like a very dangerous place. What can we do here from our podcast is the way I’m thinking about this. What can we do here from the podcast to help people really resource themselves and their lives in a way that they can cultivate safety, even in a place that feels dangerous. I think about this from an internal, external way, that there’s things we can do to cultivate internal safety, there’s things we can do to cultivate external safety, and that we need both, and that feeling like we can do one without the other isn’t really a reasonable way to go after it.
Ani
Yeah, I agree with you so much. I think we’re really at a time in history where our external evolution has outpaced our internal evolution as species. Looking at my cup right here that says, ‘I love being in my window’, which means I love being in my window of tolerance. I actually love having such a simple mug, but I love having it on my mug because I see it all day and remind myself about how much power I do have to do something about my internal state. But the pace of technology and our external evolution has just exploded in our recent history, and yet our internal evolution really has not met that pace. So I’m excited to hear you say, let’s talk about both.
Brian
Let’s talk about both. So maybe let’s talk about internal first since you opened the door for that. Sure. What can we do to create more internal safety? Really, we’re talking here about developing capacities for resilience, which is really the ability to respond and mindfully and consciously shift our internal experience regardless of what’s going on externally.
Ani
I’m not going to take us down this rabbit hole, but can we do another podcast about resilience because this is a tricky topic for me. On one hand, it’s like both and situation, like 100% cultivating resilience. And also some of us and some peoples are so frigging tired of being resilient because of external things. I’m not going to take you down that rabbit hole, but let’s talk about it another time. So go ahead. Yeah.
Brian
Well, let me just touch on that really quickly because I’ve had this conversation with other people, too, and there oftentimes is some debate around, well, what does resilience mean? I’m really talking here about a micro resilience, not macro resilience. What do you mean? Macro resilience is a sense that in order to be worth something, deserving of something, be worthy of telling my story, I need to overcome some macro challenge in my life. I need to overcome a disease, or I need to overcome an abusive relationship, or I need to overcome addiction or something like that. I think that in terms of macro resilience, and I’ve talked to people, I’m so tired of that. I’m just tired of having to overcome something all the time in order to feel valuable or worthy or meaningful. Micro resilience for me is a little bit different. The idea of being in your window of tolerance, to using your mug for an analogy here for a moment, that being in our window of tolerance means we’re in a place of nervous system regulation. That’s a great place to be. And also, things happen in the world that kick us out of that window.
Brian
That’s just life. Life kicks us out of that window. When I think about microresilience, it’s the capacity to not always try to stay in the window all the time, because that’s also not reasonable. Because life will kick us out. It’s the idea that when we do get kicked out, we know how to get back in.
Ani
I like that. I like the way that you’re talking about it because life does kick us out. And sometimes, and for some people, more than other people. Yeah. Right. And that capacity and the skills are learnable to be able to get ourselves back in. And also the acknowledgement that you gave right there about it’s not a bad, wrong thing to get kicked out of your window. No, not at all. The goal isn’t to be in your window all the time, because I think that can be something that we do to ourselves to say, the goal is to always be regulated all the time.
Brian
Yeah, that also sets up an unrealistic expectation for ourselves and for other people.
Ani
Which feeds that macro resilience you were talking about, actually, to be there.
Brian
Which can be degrading, demoralizing, demotivating over time. If we just step back for a second and say, Hang on a second. I have a window of tolerance, and I can do a couple of things with it, at least. The two things I can do with it, I know for sure, are I can widen my window of tolerance over time with certain practices, which means that I am more likely to be inside of my window more of the time. Then the other thing I can do with my window of tolerance is knowing that sometimes you just get kicked out of it because that’s life, that I have the capacity to get back into it again. Those are the two ways where we and our students and our clients that we work with a lot of time are those two primary key things because that’s something they can control. They can control practicing widening their window of tolerance, and they can control practicing getting back into their window of tolerance.
Ani
I think I’ll speak for myself. When I don’t feel safe, the very first thing I start to do is start to try to control the external environment. I don’t know why I’m doing that. By the way, right away. It takes a great deal of watching myself and witnessing and self-awareness and practice and all that stuff to be like, Oh, that’s actually me trying to control my external environment. Because in the moment, I think I’m right or that’s the right solution. The practices have given me the opportunity to learn how to and practice controlling my internal environment or bringing, like you said that resilience to my internal environment, which is actually something I can do. Trying to control the external environment just creates more chaos.
Brian
Yeah. To your point, that point exactly is right now, wrapping back to what we said right at the beginning of today’s podcast is that the external world feels really out of control. That things are happening in the external world that as an individual, we don’t really have much control over. If we reflexively try change the external circumstances when we feel dysregulated, right now, we’d even feel more powerless to do that. We even feel more disempowered. What can we do, I think which we’re talking about is if we can learn to regulate our own nervous system, then we don’t need to have a reflex to try to control the external so that we feel more regulated internally. We really put ourselves in a very disempowered, disadvantaged place when we do that.
Ani
Yeah. I don’t know where this goes on your list but I’m going to say it anyway. Another thing is looking out there and seeing all of the different things and all of the different causes. The reason I’m saying this is because you said something about making a difference as an individual. I think one of the ways that we can make our greatest impact as individuals is actually to consciously choose, which is why I’m putting this in internally, consciously choose what we really are making a difference in. We fight against and complain about and worry about and resist topics and problems in the world that we really aren’t going to take our life force energy to put the time, energy, and money into changing and making our difference. So internally choosing what am I going to… What cause am I really going to put my energy into and focusing our energy in those ways. If as individuals, we really got in alignment with our own passions, thoughts, soul’s agenda, and focused our energy in those places, I think what a difference we would make.
Brian
Yeah, absolutely. Can we talk just a little bit about some practical things people can start working on to cultivate a sense of internal safety? Sure. There’s a couple of things. One of my favorite things, which a lot of you, listeners may already be doing, are grounding practices. Just what we can do on a regular basis to help support and cultivate our own internal sense of safety are grounding practices. Grounding practices would be things like standing out in the grass, actually, is a grounding practice. Spending some time underneath big trees in the grass, in nature, those are grounding practices. There are different implements that you can buy to help you do grounding things, grounding mats, grounding plugs, grounding wires, those kinds of things. I think it’s even more important to, when you’re doing grounding practices, have some really mindful attention to how you’re doing those grounding practices.
Ani
I was just going to say that to I feel like we teach in the Somatic Practice Essentials, there’s a certain way to do those that really sets you up for success. One of the things that people forget about a lot of times when we’re doing grounding practices, a lot of people choose a guided meditation or something or a visualization. When we forget about the fact that we’re living in a body, grounding our body actually makes a big difference.
Brian
There’s some great visualizations. We do a rooted breathing practice in our Somatic Practice Essentials.
Ani
You get your body ready for it.
Brian
Yeah, get your body ready for it. Then there’s… We do it in a standing practice, oftentimes. You bend your knees a little bit, you get your legs engaged so you feel like your legs are really working, your quads are working. That moves energy from the top part of our body into the lower part of our body.
Ani
Let’s just pause there for a second. A lot of us spend a lot of time with most of our energy in our body here in our head and in the top. It’s really interesting when we start practicing for real grounding practices to notice how much of my life am I spending above the shoulders place. I still find myself a lot of times up in my head space and bring it back down. But a lot of people aren’t even aware that their energy is actually above their shoulders most of the day.
Brian
It’s interesting when we do a master class or an open class, oftentimes for core centering, for anxiety. When people come into the class, I ask them, Where do you feel anxiety in your body? Almost no one ever says anything below their waist. It’s always my heart, my gut, my head, my thoughts, something like that. It just continues to validate the idea that when we experience things like being afraid, when there’s safety issues, anxiety, it’s all above our waist, and our legs basically go to jelly, and we lose the energy in our legs. The grounding practices help to resource our energy coming back down to have a better foundation, a stronger, more stable foundation.
Ani
It just makes sense metaphorically. If you think about it metaphorically, if you can’t feel your ground, then of course, you might get scared.
Brian
Yeah, Exactly.
Ani
Of course. You can’t feel yourself grounded on the earth. You can’t feel your body here.
Brian
Of course. Of course. That rooted breath practice we do, you can even visualize the breath moving in and out of the bottom of your feet, like your roots, like you’re growing roots down into the ground. I’m sure a lot of you have done this practices before, but those are some basic easy peasy things that people can do to start to cultivate more safety internally in their bodies to help them ground and actually help them get back into their window if they get kicked out of their window.
Ani
Yeah. Some of the practices I use are my safety anchors for sure. I use a quick body scan, specifically to move from the top down, I have a tennis ball in my office, and I roll my feet during the day, which is a great way to do that.
Brian
Yeah. Another great way to get energy down into the bottom part of your body, into your feet, right? Opening up all those connection points with the Earth. For those of you who have been through our Triple Your Confidence program, one of our core or signature proprietary somatic practice we do with that, we call it Core Resonance remodeling. We go through a series of movements and affirmations and energetic practices in a series that develop and strengthen and fortify our chakra systems from the bottom up. And those are another really powerful way to create and develop safety. For those of you who are listening, who’ve done those practices before, go back to those. Those are really, really powerful.
Ani
Super quick. You can take two minutes a day and do your core resonance remodeling and set yourself up. I love that you bring that up because sometimes people will have gone through and done certain things with us, and they know certain practices, but it doesn’t queue in or click like, Oh, I should use that for this. That’s a great Yeah.
Brian
Just another great one, too, is to do a mindfulness practice during the day, and with specifically the idea of scanning through your body and asking yourself, Where do I feel safety sensations in my body right now? I don’t know what safety sensations are for you. I know what they feel like for me. I don’t know what they feel like for Ani. She knows what they feel like for her. I sure do. If I were to ask you the question is, when you feel safe, what does that feel like? Where do you feel something? What does it feel like? You’ll probably be able to identify. It feels like something somewhere. If you’re having a hard time, I don’t know if even I can get there, then it’s okay here to resource something externally to activate those sensations. Maybe you have… I was just thinking about Ani this morning, you were laying on the couch doing a meditation, and our cat was lying on top of you. And so you’re resourcing Lucky.
Ani
Yeah.
Brian
As an anchor. It really was like an anchor. He was so big. He was lying on top of you.
Ani
Big cat. Yeah, I could feel his extra. It was like having a weighted blanket on me.
Brian
Yeah, it’s probably purring up there. You may have a dog or a cat, probably not a goldfish or something. It’s probably an animal that you could pet and connect with that would help activate a sensation of safety for you.
Ani
Yeah. A lot of people I’ve worked with use photos that they’ve taken of places that they feel really good about.
Brian
That they feel really great about? Yeah. Or stuffed animal could be good, too. Squishmallows, right?
Ani
Squishmallows are literally the best.
Brian
Yeah. Our niece loves Squishmallows. She’s just all into them. Our kids liked them, too. and they’re grown. There might be some type of external something that you could use to activate sensations of internal safety and then spend time each day nurturing those sensations, being with them.
Ani
A really great tip I’ve used with a number of different clients who are working on this exact thing, Brian, is to have them notice the sensations of internal safety and then say to themselves, I’m safe enough. That I’m safe is really great and use that. But over this past year, I’ve had a number of people tell me this particular thing has changed their entire lives to say, I’m safe enough when they feel those sensations. If that’s helpful to anybody listening, man.
Brian
Yeah, absolutely. Of course, for our private clients and for our students, our somatic coach professional students, we use a method we call advanced cross-mapping for safety. That’s a whole other deeper way to do these practices. If that’s something you’re interested in learning, reach out to us at the Somatic Coaching Academy, and we can connect you with an associate coach to do that work.
Ani
I think part of the difference here that’s important to bring up is there’s techniques that you can use that are really, really helpful, and you’ll do them as practices, and do them as practices. There is also rewiring your nervous system, like you were talking about at the beginning of the podcast about that macro resilience to reprogram your macro resilience and reprogram your nervous system. There are also things you can do to actually work on that, too.
Brian
As we segue from internal to external here, there’s something really interesting that can happen between internal and external. One of the things that can happen for folks, especially for people who have experienced past episodes of loss of safety, so let’s just say traumatic experiences in the past, and their internal nervous system tends to become dysregulated more frequently or more easily than they would like to. Oftentimes, what can happen is someone can feel dysregulated internally or lack of safety internally, they’re not safe internally, but the external environment that they’re in the moment is objectively safe. So they feel unsafe, but their environment is actually safe. That experience for people can feel very unsettling because part of their awareness is like, I’m looking around my environment and my environment is safe. I’m home, the doors are locked, I’m alone, I’m with my cat. So I’m in no immediate danger. But internally, my nervous system is freaking out like I’m in immediate danger. That discrepancy can actually bring along with it, as you were talking about before, a lot of judgment. Oh, yeah. A lot of self judgment, a lot of guilt and shame and all those sorts of things.
Brian
Yeah.
Ani
I feel like I might be crazy. I might be making this up. What’s wrong with me? All of that stuff.
Brian
We’re just highlighting it here because that’s the thing that happens. To be integrated as we integrate our nervous system is to have more accurate alignment between our internal sense of safety and what’s actually happening in the external. Because it’s also not functional to be in a situation where the external environment is objectively It’s really unsafe. But internally, you’re not registering that. That’s also not healthy. So either way you go with that is a problem. So really, what we’re trying to do is help people to have a better sense of integration between what’s happening externally, what’s happening internally, so that there’s more accurate transfer of information between the two. Just be aware that that could happen. One of the things you can actually ask yourself if you do internally feel unsafe, but objectively, externally is safe. You’re with your family who has always been safe. Because oftentimes, we can project outwards that something’s happened and it’s not actually happening because of the way we feel internally. We have to be able to come to a balance point and say, Okay, is my external world actually objectively safe in this moment? If it is, then just a lot of grace, a lot of forgiveness, and use that as a resourcing tool to help you get back into your window rather than using your dysfunctional or dysregulated nervous system as a projection to create disturbance in the external environment.
Brian
Does that make sense? Yeah. Is that what I’m saying? You have to practice that back and forth, but that can be an unsettling place to be. What about external environments? We’ve talked a little bit about internal. How do you cultivate safety internally? What about externally? Obviously, what we’re talking about is that when we do consistently have an external environment that is objectively safe, it helps us to be more regulated. It helps us to feel safer, helps us to feel more grounded, helps us to feel more resilient. It’s whatever it is that we want to talk about it. Functional? Functional, yeah. Creating an external environment is really, really important. How do we go about doing that, I guess, is the point. There’s the next question. We can spend time cultivating our local environment, our home, our car, our bedroom, our bathroom, our kitchen, all those kinds of things. As we walk through each room, just stand in the room for a moment and feel it. Just feel into that room and be like, Okay, so I’m in this room. Does it feel safe? I’ve been practicing my internal safety sensation, so I have a good idea of what they feel like now.
Brian
As you’re in each room, you can ask yourself, Does it feel? Does it feel safe? I’m reminded, remember when one of our kids was little and I had a mask hanging on the wall? It was a mask that my cousin brought back from Haiti. It was hanging on the wall. Every time he saw, he’s like…
Ani
Every time he saw. He couldn’t even move past it.
Brian
It was by the stairs, and he couldn’t walk past the stairs to get up to it, right? Because he was so, so freaking out by it.
Ani
So for him- We had to move the mask.
Brian
We had to move the mask. For him, that felt unsafe. He wouldn’t go upstairs. It felt unsafe. Yeah.
Ani
You also had that coconut head thing that you brought back from somewhere that also was. We had to move that, too.
Brian
I like that coconut head.
Ani
It was freaking me out.
Brian
It’s the whole story behind the coconut head. We’ll tell that on another podcast. When it comes to external environments, obviously, if your immediate environment is objectively unsafe, call 911, remove yourself from it, those kinds of things. We just want a public service announcement about that right now. It’s like, if your external environment is unsafe, get away from it, remove yourself from it, get support.
Ani
I think there’s also this idea of sometimes we’re in environments that are incredibly challenging and may be unsafe and having what’s called a cope ahead, which basically means like a plan for what may or may not happen and thinking ahead to how I can prepare for if something does happen, then, of course, moving ourselves whenever possible into a place where we’re not in unsafe environments anymore.
Brian
Yeah.
Ani
There are also times when… I hesitate in bringing it up, but it reminds me of how the kids have to practice in school, what might happen when things go wrong, because the fact is that things go wrong. It could go wrong, yeah.
Brian
So you practice fire drills in the house with your kids and those sorts of things. Not to also say to go overboard on that. It’s like, set up your system so that you feel like you are prepared. We never feel fully prepared in the moment when something happens, but just so we have a sense that enhances our sense of internal safety. Getting that point.
Ani
To some degree, we then need to know that we have a plan and to be able to let it go so we can live our lives.
Brian
Yeah, exactly. We’ve talked a little bit about our local environment. Now, let’s go on to this expanding this global environment because this is how we started the podcast, that there’s things changing globally that are creating a perception of the world that is a more dangerous place. That could be a perception, it could be objective, but there’s a global expansion. We have less direct control over. In our house, we have control to change things in our house. In our car, we have control to change things in our car. But once we start to expand beyond our little communities and cities and globally, we have less immediate, direct, individual control to change things. What do we do? Because if we’re reading the news and we’re getting these news cycles that make us feel upset all the time, we feel powerless around it. How can we cultivate safety in a larger world that feels like it’s not safe? You said something even last night when we were talking about this, Ani, that I think is really important is that community. Community is the new grounding factor, the safety net. Community is our new safety net.
Ani
Yeah. Let me just expound upon that a little bit, because what I was going to say as I was listening to you talk about this was we have a choice to a large degree in what we consume. And we have habits around what we consume that we can change. I am pausing for dramatic effect here because I have clients who tell me, for example, I watch the news and I get so worked up, or I open social media, I get so worked up. I see my email, I get so worked up. Brian, I don’t have social media on my phone. I don’t have email on my phone. I don’t watch the news on my phone. I do have a phone in my pocket most of the time, but I am conscientious about what I consume. I would assert, really need to be intentional about that. The reason I’m bringing up with community is because it’s exceptionally hard to change habits when our communities are still functioning within those habits. For example, a lot of my private clients are business owners, and everybody has their email on their phone. One of my clients will say, “The email on the phone is just really like, I’m getting like acid reflux”, and I’ll say, “Take the email off your phone.”
Ani
How about? And that’s a great idea. But then because of the community of people that all have email on their phone, they don’t take email off their phone. We really have to watch. We really have to be intentional about the communities that we get ourselves into. I think one of the most important things to be questioning is what does this community consume?
Brian
Great question.
Ani
Another one that’s similar. Remember when our kids first got… We tried to keep cell phones and social media away from our kids for as long as humanly possible, but once COVID hit, it was pretty much inevitable. They started to get on YouTube, and we started to have conversations with them about how much time are you spending consuming versus creating on platforms. I think that’s another thing. With the communities that you’re a part of, are you a part of communities where people are taking time to be creators? Are people primarily consumers? I think that’s another thing to really think about. Yeah.
Brian
So let’s just lean into this idea about community a little bit more. So really, what we’re advocating for here is you have to find a community of like-minded people. If we even go beyond that for a second in terms of cultivating safety, because that’s what we’re talking about today, then you need to be a part of a community of people that are not only like-minded, they’re also like-spirited. There’s also a sense in the community, not even sense, I would even say framework, guidelines, standards. That’s what we’re looking for. Standards. Standards of non-judgment, of non-violent communication, of acceptance, of openness, of curiosity.
Ani
Maybe trauma-informed principles. I mean, yeah.
Brian
The idea is if you’re specifically looking to cultivate more safety in your life, then in this global world that feels unstable, it’s about coming back to a community that you feel accepted by, you feel heard in, you feel validated in, you feel seen in. All those basic constructs of our human needs, which are really based around those ideas of safety and belonging. To be in communities that cherish and nourish and advocate for non-judgment, for acceptance, and for, what else? Global acceptance, really, I think is the big word.
Ani
Yeah, and personal empowerment. This has been such a fantastic conversation, Brian. I’m so glad that you brought it up. I think it’s really timely that you did. I always love to leave listeners with some hope. I know a lot of you who are listening are already a part of this Somatic Coaching Academy community in terms of our private clients and our certification students who we communicate virtually in our virtual network. I’m so thrilled as we’re talking about this, that that is a place that people can come home to every day. That makes me really happy that that’s there. If you’re listening and you’re not a part of the Somatic Coaching Academy community in our virtual network, well, number one, we’d love to have you there. And also there are communities. There are communities doing really good work in the world and taking some time to get intentional about thinking about that for yourself. We’ve given you some really awesome tips also in this podcast for cultivating internal safety. So use them yourself, send them to somebody else who could – “Hey, I listen to this podcast, and I thought maybe you would like to listen to it, too.”
Ani
You don’t even have to say, “Listen to the 20-minute mark, or I think you need…” Just pass it along if you think it could help. Because the fact is that it takes a smaller percentage of people who are coming from places of safety and internal peace and harmony and love and things like that to make a massive global difference. It takes a small percentage of people, actually, to be coming from those places within themselves to make a ripple effect with the masses. Just know that every time you cultivate internal safety, every time that you feel safe and you are in your communities, that you’re making a really big difference in the global residents every time you choose to do that.
Brian
Yeah, absolutely. Find a community that you feel supported, loved, appreciated, accepted in and pay that forward to other people in the community as well, and practice all those internal mechanisms for creating safety within your own nervous system and your own self.
Ani
We’d love to see you next time on the Somatic Coaching Academy podcast. Thanks for joining us today, and we’ll see you real soon.
Brian
Thanks so much. Bye-bye.