Finding the Safe Place Within: As You Are Community Guided Meditation | Micheal Sinclair

Finding the safe place within.

Hello and welcome to the As You Are community meditation. Thank you for being patient with me as I change my setup up. I was worried that I'd run out of Wi Fi signal if I was too far away, so I had to move a little bit closer.

I'm Micheal Sinclair, I'll be your host for this meditation. Today, I want to try to point you to a place that feels safe. I know that everything that's going on in the world nowadays, got mass shootings at schools and churches and grocery stores, that people are being targeted because of the color of their skin or what they believe in. Not to mention the fact that we're still pretty much in the midst of a global pandemic, it can be understandable why someone wouldn't feel safe in the current climate. As much as I'd like to tell you that the world is safe. The truth is, the world is not safe. I kind of see the world like the ocean, you know, the ocean is a very dangerous place. But it's a place that we'd like to go and enjoy. And I think the world is the same way we can enjoy the world, we have to recognize that like the ocean, the world is full of dangers. The ocean is full of jagged rocks and seashells that might cut you, it's full of creatures that might want to see how you taste. It's also full of water that will crush you or drown you if you don't respect it. And the thing about the ocean is when we've had enough time in it, we take a step out, we go back to a safe place on the beach. And I think we have to approach our relationships with the world the sam way. We can spend time in the world. But after enough time has passed, we have to retreat back to our safe place.

In this guided meditation, I want to try to lead you to a safe place. The first thing I want you to do is try to find a comfortable position. Now if you're sitting you want to sit with your spine as straight as possible. I want you to align your heart over your hips and your head over your heart. If you have difficulty doing that on your own, maybe use the back of the chair for support. Or if you'd rather lay down flat, that's perfectly fine as well. But what we want to make sure is that our spine is as straight as possible. Once you close your eyes if you feel comfortable doing so if you feel safe doing so hopefully you're in a safe place now a place that feels safe. But if you don't feel safe, and you don't want to open your eyes, that's totally fine as well. Or if you don't want to close your eyes, that's totally fine as well.

The first thing I want you to do is to picture in your imagination, your mind's eye, the place that you feel the most safe. It's a place you can go to and always feel safe and secure. Perhaps that's you know, a place in your apartment or place in your home, perhaps us in your mother's lap or your lover's arms or perhaps it's a place on the other side of the world. But whatever that place is for you, I want you to imagine it. I want you to bring it into your awareness and hold it in your mind's eye. I want you to think about how that place looks. I want you to smell how it smells. I want you to feel how it feels. Want you to allow yourself to really embody this place this place where you feel safe perpetually. Once you feel comfortable enough in that space, all we're going to do all we're going to do for the next several minutes is watch our breath. We're going to feel safe and we're going to watch our breath.

I want you to bring your awareness to your breath. Whatever rhythm it's at right now it's totally fine. Pay full attention to the inhale and the exhale. You can do this by paying attention to the sensation to the airflow on the tip of your nostril as you breathe in and out. If you find difficulty doing that and bring your awareness to the rising and the falling of your belly. And since we're in our safe place, I want you to feel totally allowed to let go of any of the weight that you're carrying, any of the weight from the current events of the world, any of the weight of the roles that you have to play in your day to day life, any of the weight of not feeling safe not feeling safe outside your home within your home. I know a lot have us don't feel safe within our homes. I want you to do your best to let all of that go to release everything that may have happened prior to this moment prior to you stepping into your safe space come into the present with me come into this present moment where it's safe. And for the next several minutes, we're just going to watch our breath

It's totally fine have thoughts come in, if thoughts come in and try to take you away from that safe space. If that happens, all you have to do is notice that you gotten lost in a thought just return back to the safe place. It doesn't matter how many times you leave. What matters is that we return.

Because we're in this safe place, because we're in this place within ourselves that we don't have to worry about any threats, you should feel for permission to relax, to let your guard down to release any tension that you may be holding. You're clenching your jaw, you're holding your shoulders up to your ears. Whatever it is that you may be doing, see if we can relax a little bit more.

Allow your breath to become longer and deeper. See if you can regulate the rhythm of your breath to a nice natural rhythm, a nice easy pace. Sink deeper and deeper into the breath. Just like we were talking about the ocean before, maybe imagine your breath as waves coming in and going out. I want you to see if you can sink into that rhythm.

Really embody the feeling of what it feels to be safe. I want you to really remember how it feels to feel safe. What is that feeling feel like? See if you can call on that feeling right now and see if you can feel that feeling of feeling safe on the inside. Not necessarily on the outside. But how does it feel to feel safe on the inside? I want you to grab hold of that feeling and see if we can sit with it for the rest of our meditation.

If you're hearing a lot of background noise, I apologize, but allow the distractions to be a part of your meditation. Meditation doesn't require a complete silence. Instead, we are using our awareness, we're using our will to focus on something within, to hold our focus on something within, regardless of what's going on without. Embrace the distractions. They can't reach you in your safe place.

You are several minutes into this meditation you've been doing a great job so far. If you happen to get lost in a thought that's totally fine. Come on back to your safe place. Release any obligations that you may have in the future. Just use this time to be with yourself and to be totally safe and to not have to deal with the world.

I want you to feel how easy it is just sit with yourself. Just be with yourself to just be by yourself. I want you to feel how safe it feels to retreat to that place within yourself where no one else and nothing else can reach you. So that place within yourself where you are totally unassailable by external forces. Now the external safety is never guaranteed, although we are always risking danger when we go out into the world, I want you to remember that safeness is really an internal state. Safeness is something that you feel within yourself. Part of the reason why you feel safe at the ocean when you're in the ocean is that you know that you can get back out. The same goes for navigating this often chaotic world. I want you to remember that you can always retreat back to safety within yourself.

We've reached the end of our meditation, you can start to maybe wiggle your fingers, wiggle your toes a little bit, a little movement to the body. If you roll your shoulders if you feel like it. Just take a second to come back into this place.

I just want to say thank you for taking this time out for yourself. Anytime you take time to sit and just be with yourself, it's commendable. Because it's not an easy thing to do, especially in a world that's always telling you to go. So thank you for doing that for yourself, and thank you for sharing your practice with me. I hope that you got something out of it. And we do this every Wednesday and Sunday at 6pm Eastern time. You're welcome to join. We'd love to get the community together of people who want to meditate regularly so that we can support each other and hold each other accountable and so that we can help lead each other back to the safe places within ourselves when the world gets a little too chaotic. So thanks again.

Hope you enjoy the rest of your evening. If you have any questions, comments, you can message me here message me on Instagram @michaelsinclair. If not, and I'll see you next time. Thanks.

As You Are is a community of people, led by Micheal Sinclair, dedicated to discovering and loving ourselves in our present condition. Before we can love ourselves, we must get to know ourselves and I've found that meditation is the best tool for helping us connect with ourselves on a deeper level.

The 'As You Are' community meditations happen every Wednesday and Sunday @6pm via YouTube live. This is is a recording of the guided meditation held on May, 25, 2022.

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