What Is a Felt Sense of Safety and How Can it Help You Manifest?
Lately I’ve been thinking about what's going on from a nervous system perspective when we're in flow and the connection between our nervous systems and being open to new, good, more and different things.
Our bodies are fascinating wonderlands to inhabit. Confusing at times too! But definitely full of interesting opportunities to learn about ourselves, others, and the world.
Just like we are as individuals, science as a practice is constantly in the process of discovering new and different things about the body that shape the evolution of how we understand and relate to ourselves.
As a trauma-informed practitioner, I’ve been learning over the past few years how fundamental SAFTEY is to the human nervous system, and how a lack of access to this sense of safety can prevent us from learning, growing and even healing.
What is a felt sense of safety?
Safety is a SUBJECTIVE experience, meaning that it is going to be different for EVERY body, and can also be different within each individual depending on a range of internal and external factors over time.
Safety is the state where our nervous systems can FLOURISH and THRIVE. When we feel safe ENOUGH, it opens up pathways of TRUST (of ourselves and of others/the world), allows us to access a suite of what are known as PRO-SOCIAL behaviours that help us build connection with other people (cultivating healthy INTER-dependence), and allow our inbuilt healing processes to function regularly and optimally as designed to maintain our overall health.
So, in a way – what FEELS safe to you is fundamentally unique to YOU!
Our nervous systems are shaped by our environment – including the environments members of our lineage experienced and passed down to us (we can talk about intergenerational trauma and epigenetics another time because it’s fascinating stuff!) so we are often responding to internal and external cues not just in the moment, but from a legacy of experience that has shaped the way we perceive and thereby respond to those cues.
In polyvagal language we summarize this as ‘story follows state’ – meaning that the state our nervous systems in influences HOW we perceive things – like wearing dark glasses on a sunny day dims the glare – we have lots of different lenses we wear – each of which has different stories about what we make things MEAN!
If we’ve experienced bumps along the road of life, and crafted meaning from them it can shape the way we interpret future experiences (story), and our nervous system set-point (state). The awareness and shifting of these set points and beliefs is at the heart of trauma resolution therapy.
Often the meaning we made of a situation in the past can be farrrrr from the FACTS, yet still leaves us gripped by the fear that it’s true. And the brain being a pattern recognition organ (designed to keep you SAFE NOT HAPPY!), goes about its merry way forcing you into hypervigilance or adaptive behaviours in an effort to protect you from further harm, that over time can be become crippling, debilitating, time sucking and leave you exhausted, isolated, burned out at afraid of the world.
But it’s absolutely possible to retrain your brain to desensitise part memories, rewrite old, outdated narratives and create new, life affirming thought patterns that serve the person you are right now and want to evolve into in the future!
Why does the nervous system need safety?
Using a trauma-informed and polyvagal lens, when we’re in the ‘safe and social’ zone we have the most ability to access the parts of our brains responsible for logical and rational thought and compassionate connection so we can view situations for the benefit of ourselves AND others and exercise CHOICE over our actions so they align with our short-term and long-term goals.
Safety is also where our nervous systems HEAL. Rest, sleep, play are all deeply nourishing to our whole system and vital to cultivating a happy, healthy life. It may not inoculate you from illness or injury but it can help you with resilience and recovery.
HOW do I cultivate an internally resourced (embodied!) sense of safety?
I’m SO glad you asked! There are plenty of ways that you can learn to access a felt sense of safety!
Some of the most simple and effective ways to intercept and redirect your nervous system are SOMATIC approaches, meaning that we use the BODY to help us shift the state of our brain.
Some of the quickest, easiest and most EFFECTIVE tools involve using our eyes, movement and breath (sounds a little yogi if you ask me! Pranayama, Asana, Drishti – guess those sages were on to something that neuroscience is only now catching up to!).
Here’s a few of my faves:
· Bilateral eye movements
· Bilateral body tapping/touching
· Extended exhale breathing
Bilateral means both sides. When we engage both sides of the brain can help with emotional regulation, enhanced cognitive function. It can also help engage the parasympathetic nervous system, responsible for creating our sense of calm, ease and safety.
Extending your exhale breath, even one beat more than your inhale helps lower your heart rate, once again signalling to your system to slooooow down! This promotes relaxation by once again tripping the vagus nerve to switch on the parasympathetic response and improving Heart Rate Variability (HRV), a marker for overall stress resilience and wellbeing.
How does safety help you manifest?!
Often when we’re trying to live into a new version of ourselves, we need to first believe it’s possible. Mental rehearsal, a style of visualising exactly how you’d like things to go has been used by high performers in multiple professions for decades to improve performance.
It works because the brain often can’t tell the difference between external reality and the internal image held in your mind and so physiologically responds to the mental image with hormones, development of neural pathways and sometimes even reflex responses.
So what you hold in your mind on the reg DOES make a difference to your daily life!
This is why it’s so helpful to practice daily meditations and affirmations to help train your body to BELIEVE it’s SAFE in the present – even if your external reality doesn’t quite yet match up!
