My safe place

There’s a meditation practice that I guide from time to time that is taken from the Mindfulness Association’s Level 2 course: Responding with Compassion. It’s an imagery practice called Safe Place. Pinning down its exact origins can be tricky. For instance, I know that it is a meditation that is also used in Compassion Focused therapy. In the meditation, course participants are invited to use their imagination to discover their own safe place. This space can be a real place that they have visited or an imagined place that they have seen in a movie or read about in a book. Most importantly, the space is a welcoming place in which the participant uses their imagination to feel safe and secure. Almost always, whenever I do this practice I imagine the forest behind my cabin in Canada. Recalling the sun dappled pines and the smell of the soft forest floor  immediately puts me at ease.

Well, guess what? I am here! I am physically in my safe place in the Canadian Boreal forest. Only this year, my safe place has been threatened by wild fires. As I write this post, I can hear the sound of firefighting helicopters competing with the majestic loon calls that echo throughout this land.

This gets me thinking about how sometimes the reality of life as a dynamic flow that is ever-changing and irrepressible can be hard to come to terms with. I know that I like things to feel contained. And in keeping with this post, I would go so far as to say that I like things to be marked safe. However, more often than I care to admit, life has shown me that it is anything but contained and safe. This can be a trying truth that regularly challenges my balance.

Saying that, I have also been shown that alongside the struggle that can come with unwanted change, new ways of being and new ways of growing also appear. When we can learn to surrender to the flow, to not be fixed on things being labelled as good or bad or safe and unsafe, the beauty of life begins to shows itself to us. If we remain open and malleable, we might just become humbled by surprise.

The question then becomes, how do we remain open in the face of adversity?

This is where the safe place practice comes in. It is much easier to surrender to the flow of life when we feel safe, regardless of what is happening around us. Our spaces might literally and figuratively be burning down, but if we can access a place where we feel welcome and safe within ourselves, we have more of a chance to remain steady and open so that we can be carried to higher ground. Or at the very least, we can move through whatever it is that we are facing towards a place in which we can catch our breath.

This week, at the Sanctuary’s online community meditation (10am Irish time), I will be leading the safe space meditation. So if you would like to cultivate a safe space within, why not join us? It may be useful for when it feels like everything is a little unsteady.

-Jane

Click here to join me at the Sanctuary’s online meditation session on Tuesday

Click below to listen to and download the Safe Place meditation