Karen Kenney: Hey, welcome to the Karen Kenney show. I'm super
duper excited to be here today. If you're watching this, you
might see that my hair is blowing around everywhere
because I got a fan going in the corner because it's hotter than
Hades up here in my office. We're in the middle of a heat
wave here in New Hampshire, and I just wanted to get this sucker
done. So fingers crossed that my internet stays on, because it's
been going in and out, and it is just like, hot as shit, which I
love. Don't get me wrong, you might be able to see my face is
a little red. I just got out of the shower because I went for a
little three mile walk outside. I wanted, I love the heat, love
the heat, but I also want to be smart. So anyways, here we are,
and we're back. We're going to talk about, we're going to talk
about this concept of safe enough. Now, this is something
that I kind of created for myself, for my own brain, for my
own ability to, like, calm the hook down, which we're going to
talk about a little bit
okay, like, what I mean by all of this. So the number one,
you've heard me say this before on other episodes, the number
one question that our nervous systems are always asking. Okay,
so when I talk about nervous system, I'm particularly talking
about, like, the autonomic nervous system, which is like
the sympathetic nervous system, which we'll talk about a little
bit in the parasympathetic nervous system. I'm going to
keep this really, like pretty much basic, so that you can just
get a a taste, like a sip, sip, as Linda Ty says, of what I'm
talking about, I don't need to make it super intricate for you
to understand the essence of what what's on my hat in my mind
today, and hopefully it'll be helpful and valuable to you too.
Number one question our nervous system is asking is, Am I safe?
Am I safe? Am I safe? Okay? So when we are picking up cues from
the world around us, and this started when we were wicked
young, that's the thing with little kids and babies like
little toddlers, little kids were, we were always kind of
looking up at the adults around us, at the people around us, at
the environment, and trying to understand, like, is it safe?
Here are these people safe, right? And this has a lot to do
with how we end up creating relationships and attaching and
all these other things, like attaching to our moms, attaching
to our fathers, like in healthy and good ways. But we can also
end up having like these dysregulated attachment styles
too, that they call although, for me, I just think that we
were in the situations that we were in, and we probably, as
children, did the best we could with what we had. So I don't
really like to label ourselves too much, but the nervous system
is either going to go into sympathetic response, which is
like that fight and flight, that like, oh shit, something's
wrong, right? We take a look at our environment or the people in
it, or whatever, and we go into like, Oh my god. How do I want
to respond to the information that is coming in that I'm
perceiving and receiving, right? Do I want to go into fight or
flight or freeze or what we sometimes call fawn? Now, if
you're if the threat level feels like this is to me, is just
common sense, right? If the threat level feels like, okay, I
can probably overcome this person, this situation, this
place, we might take a fight like, we might choose fight.
We're like, Okay, we're gonna fight back if we can't, if we're
like, oh my god, saber tooth tiger. This thing is gonna kill
me. It's bigger than me. It can harm me or hurt me, this person,
etc, this situation. Then we might flight. We might run, take
off, right? Choose not to, like, put down the Dukes and just rut
Hall ass, basically, right? If you can't do either of those,
sometimes we go into what's called the Free State, where you
literally just kind of shut down and kind of play a possum, you
know what I mean, where you're just like, can't move. And
there's more fancy words for these states, okay, but I just
want to keep it pretty simple. And fawning is when you kind of
just like, I say, you try to befriend the thing that is that
is perceived as a threat. Like, please don't hurt me. I'll be
whatever you want me to be, like, whatever. Okay, so we have
these different responses, and sometimes we call these also
trauma responses. Okay, that's sympathetic. That's the fight
and flight. Then we also have parasympathetic, and
parasympathetic is what we call the rest and digest state like
this is when we go into the relaxation response. This is the
response we can experience when we actually are feeling safety,
when we're not feeling threatened, when we're not
scared out of our minds, when we're not anxious or worried or
stressed or overwhelmed. And this is what a lot of the tools
right that are out there that people use, like everybody, from
yoga teaches to therapists to somatic body workers to
whatever, right. Use. They use different tools that help us to
return to kind of a more sympath parasympathetic state, okay, and
that's what we want. What happens sometimes, though these
days, is, I hear a lot of people saying, well, I want to regulate
my nervous system. We need to regulate our nervous system
because we have become dysregulated because of chronic
stress and social media and our phones and technology and AI in
the state of the world, in the government, in the wars and all
all the hatred and violence and whatever, people's nervous
systems are, like, jacked up beyond belief a lot of the time.
And so there's a lot of talk about like, oh, I need to be
regulated. I need to be regulated. I need to return to
safety. I need to return to safety. Now I am also a teacher
of some of these things, like some of the tools and stuff that
we can use to help ourselves become more regulated. But I'm
also a kid that grew up with, like, a lot of fear. I was also
a young adult and an adult that has a lot of fear. I've talked
about this on different episodes where I think one of the reasons
why, you know, I do the work that I do, is I was trying to
gather as many different tools as I could to try and help
myself mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, to
bring myself back into a state or a sense of safety and calm.
But here's the reality now, I'm not saying I'm right. I'm not
saying hashtag. I always say hashtag, not a therapist. I'm
not saying other therapists and other people will agree with
this, but this is just what has worked for me, and that's what I
share on this podcast. I'm always trying to let you guys
know that while nobody can actually pick up the tools and
use them for you, nobody can solve your problems for you.
Nobody can like, quote, unquote, do the work for you. But you
absolutely do not have to do it alone. So I love to share things
that have worked for me, tools that have worked for me, books,
resources, whatever, that have worked for me, so that as you're
trying to also navigate this whole being human experience,
you don't feel like, oh my god, I'm all on my on my own, and I
have to figure it all out. You're not alone. You are loved,
right? You're not going crazy, right? This stuff is hard. This
being human on the planet right now is hard. And then try to
imagine doing it as not a white person, as somebody who maybe is
in a group or a community, right? Whether you're black or
LGBTQIA or brown skinned or, quote, unquote, right, what the
world would say is marginalized or different or whatever. Again,
I don't like to put a ton of labels on people, but we
certainly know that not all of us are starting at the same
starting line. Do you know what I mean? So on top of just like
being human is hard, then we have, you know, economic
disparity. We have socio you know, we just have all the
things that just make it this, systems of racism, etc, etc,
that make everything so much harder for certain groups of
people. So one of the things that I can say is that has been
even more difficult, right? Meaning, more difficult as just
as a human is being female in this world, being a quote,
unquote girl or a woman in this world. Because here's the thing,
while my nervous system keeps asking me, am I safe? Am I safe?
Am I safe? I cannot bullshit myself, right? Like I know too
much, I've seen too much, and where I have landed is this,
this world, this 3d world, meaning the world that we've
created, although we would call it small, our reality. It's not
capital, our reality, right? Here in the dream, A Course in
Miracles might call it here in the illusion, right? Yoga might
call it the Maya, the illusion, this idea of, you know, we're
all individual, separate beings walking around on the planet,
right? Being, being a woman in this world, you do not, almost
ever feel safe. Now, if you're a dude listening to this, and
you're like, What do you mean? What are you talking about? Go
and talk to some of the women, the girls that you know right,
the young women, the grown ass adults that you know. And they
will tell you non stop stories of like not feeling safe enough
to walk to their car at night, how they use their keys as
weapons in their hands, how we're always aware of how we're
dressed. What we're doing is my drink gonna get roofied like Da,
da, da, da da, to try and move through the world, right? And
again, this extends beyond. I'm just using woman, because that's
something I can talk about in my own experience. I can't talk
about other groups of people's experiences directly, although I
can certainly listen and try to understand and empathize and
imagine how fucking hot it is. Do you know what I mean to be,
to be,
you know, to be in this world as well. And so we have this
conundrum, don't we? Because the nervous system is asking for
safety. And I've like again as a kid of a murdered mother, like
when you know that something that brutal, that tragic, that
violent, that somebody can beat another person to death, is a
reality when you experience it yourself, when you see the
violence in the world, the way people talk to each other and
treat each other the way we treat animals, when you just
look at it overall, right? There's no part of my nervous
system that is sitting there hunky dory feeling safe. And I
realized, like, oh, and I was just talking about this on a
podcast that I was recently on. I was on a podcast called it has
to be me, and the woman who tests masses is fantastic, and
it's her, it's her podcast, and I talk about it a little bit on
that as well. What has occurred to me is that this idea of
ideal, quote, unquote, safety that I'm hoping to feel here in
the human experience for me, I've just accepted it's probably
never going to come because I've just again. I've seen too much,
I've heard too much, I've experienced too much. I have
evidence of too much, right, cruelty and brutality and
violence and hatred and like all these different things. So my
goal, my goal for me, has been to gather as many tools as I can
to feel safe enough to feel safe enough to be able to do what I
came here to do, to be able to follow my individual curriculum,
to be able to answer the call of my divine assignment, to show up
in the world as a creative to speak and use my voice to be a
teacher, right? To have a podcast, to go out and lead
groups like, to to help other people as a spiritual mentor, as
a coach, etcetera. Because if I just listened to the fear that
my ego and my anxiety like, produces all the time, right?
Practically shouts all the time. I would become completely
paralyzed. I would probably become housebound. I would
probably be like, terrified out of my mind most of the time. And
I'm like, I can't live this way. I have to figure out a way to
experience as much as much physical and psychological
safety as possible. I want to be able to move through the world
without feeling a constant perceived threat that is so
overwhelming that it keeps me from taking action. And when you
recognize, oh, the world isn't safe, and your your your
history, your patterns, your the way your subconscious works,
right? A lot of us, kids who were had trauma, a lot of
trauma, we become hyper vigilant, right? Like I'm hyper
aware of noises, lights, flashes of lights. I'm hyper aware of
people's body language, their energy, what they're doing with
their face. Right when you grow up in an environment like I did,
you are constantly seeking not only verbal but body language
cues and sometimes even just sounds that alert me to whether
or not what's about to go down is going to be something
pleasant or unpleasant, you know what I'm saying. So I'm always
picking up either cues of safety or picking up danger signs. I
know I'm not alone in this. So like double A men hands, if you
can relate to what I'm saying. But one of the things that I see
is I feel like sometimes we're being sold this bill of goods,
where it's like, just do these 10 Steps, use these five tools,
and you will become regulated. You will have a regulated
nervous system. And I'm like, maybe you pal, maybe you pal.
But that's not my experience. My experience has not been that I
just exist in this, this little like floaty place of like, Oh,
now we're just
Unknown: going to put on our floaties and float down the
river and drink, you know, Virgin Penny coladas or
Karen Kenney: whatever. Like, no, that is not my experience.
My experience is that I tend to be, like I said, hyper aware,
hyper vigilant, and being constantly regulated for me,
finding constant safety, like where everything is just like,
oh, like, yeah, I can just, you know how, like an animal, like a
cat, will all of a sudden give you its belly and open up. And,
you know, I was recently doing something with some. People,
where we were trying, it doesn't matter, but just ponies were
involved, a pony and a little miniature donkey. And I was
listening to all the horse people, and they were saying
that, you know, horses out in the wild. And this was a some
something somebody said to me, I'm not quoting it as a truth,
but this is what somebody said to me, that horses out in the
wild will, wild will often walk for like, 18 hours at a time.
They will not bed down, they will not lay down and rest
unless they feel safe. And I started to think about this, and
I'm like, Yeah, that sounds like people too. I know people who
go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, move, move, move, move.
Everything's fast. Everything's quick. Don't stop, because if I
stop, I'm going to have to feel some things. And what I'm going
to feel is I'm not going to going to feel that I am not
safe. You know what I mean? So rather than me just trying to
feel regulated all the time, I discovered that number one, I
don't have to feel 100% safe all the time. I just need to feel
safe enough, and I'm not waiting for this perfect like little
island of regulation in my nervous system. I would rather
teach my nervous system over time, and this is what it's
been. It's been a journey for me. I've been collecting and
gathering tools for a really long time, tools that I now
obviously share with my one to one clients, people in the nest
and I oftentimes, you know, try to drop little breadcrumbs here
and there too. Also on the podcast, some things are just
better taught in person. Do you know what I mean? Some some
things that I do like Thai Yoga, bodywork, Thai Yoga, massage,
yoga, certain things like that. I just prefer to do them in
person. So, but here are these other hours, right? You know, I
love alliteration, so I was thinking to myself, Okay, rather
than being reactive all the time. So if I'm in a state of
not feeling enough safety, I will certainly be reactive, and
I will be looking and feel looking for and feeling
triggered, probably a lot of the time when I move out of
regulation and I'm in dysregulation, right? And I
don't feel cues of safety, I don't feel like, okay, I can put
down my Dukes here. I can't be safe and vulnerable and open for
business, right? If I'm in that state, I'm certainly almost
going to be more hypersensitive to being quote, unquote
triggered or having my buttons pushed or being on edge or being
anxious or worrisome or stressed or overwhelmed, right? So I
don't want to be in a place where I feel constantly reactive
to the world around me, and I also don't want to be in a place
where I am very rigid, right? So for me, what I found is that
when in my younger years, I would tend to always, quote,
unquote, react in particular ways, I wasn't able to respond
yet from a place of love, I was always almost reacting out of a
place of fear. And I would become rigid in my responses,
meaning, like anything new, like no, I was deeply patterned in
the way that I re was reacting to the world. And I don't want
to move through the world in a very reactive and rigid way,
like so much of like, you know, when I when I think about my
yoga practice and being a yoga teacher, you know, for I don't
know, like, 25 years or whatever,
I wanted more flexibility, But I didn't just want more
flexibility in my body, in my muscles, in my fascia, right?
Like I wanted more mental flexibility. I wanted more
emotional flexibility. I didn't want to be a person who always
just reacted to things in the same way, right? I wanted to be
able to choose who and how I was going to be. I wanted to be able
to have authorship and agency and autonomy right over the kind
of person I was going to be, what was going to come out of my
mouth, the choices I was going to make. Because a lot of times
when we're in fight or flight, in that sympathetic, sympathetic
state, when we're being reactive, we're not coming from
our highest capital S self. We're coming from one of those
parts of ourselves as trying to protect ourselves. And I always
say, like, it's like, the front of my brain goes offline and all
good decision making goes like, out the door, you know what I
mean. And like, I'm like, I don't want to live that way I
did those years, like I did that time. You know what I mean. So
now, rather than just waiting for like, quote, unquote,
perfect safety, I have trying to create an experience within my
own psyche, my psychological and physical experience where I am
safe enough that I can feel. More regulated, that I can feel
more responsive like I can respond to the world. I can
choose how I want to respond to what I'm seeing, hearing,
feeling, thinking, imagining is a lot of times what we're
reacting to is our fear of what we think is going to happen,
what I think they're going to say what I think this person or
this situation is going to do, right? So I want to be able to
be more responsive. I want to be able to be more resourced. You
know, when we're little kids, we don't have a lot of tools, so we
just do our damn best to survive. And a lot of the things
that we do, those survival strategies that we picked up as
kids, walking on eggshells, fawning, making ourselves small,
trying to be the good kid, trying to be the one that
doesn't need anything, whatever. There's 1000 ways right that we
can like react to our circumstances as children when
we feel out of control, but I wanted to be able to feel more
responsive, more resourced, like I had some tools. I had a bunch
of different tools in what I call my spiritual toolkit that I
could choose to pick up and use on any given day, depending on
what I needed that day. I want to also just not feel, quote,
unquote, regulated. I want to be able to be resilient. I want to
have a resilient nervous system that can have big fluctuations,
but also knows how to return to feelings of safety and calm. So
I'm not always just looking to feel regulated. I'm like no,
because the world doesn't work like that. You know, I know me
personally. I can't speak for you, but me personally, I'm
probably not going to walk around in this totally regulated
ventral state all the time. You know what I mean? It's like, I
am going to have spikes of energy where my hat starts to
thump and, you know, I become aware that it's a little harder
for me to swallow, and I'm like, a little more hypersensitive to
my environment. And then it's like, okay, what do I need right
now? And that's when I go looking for the tools. Because
if I can experience physical and psychological safety, then I
will feel more connected to myself, my true capital, s self,
and just myself like like my body, me also. I'm not my body.
But you know what I'm saying, I will feel more connected to
others that I am in relationship to, and I will feel more
connected to the world around me. And if I am never feeling
safe, if I'm always running scared, if I'm always in a state
of overwhelming anxiety, and I can never get regulated. That's
that's not soothing. So not soothing. Don't want to live
like that. But I'm not actually expecting the world to be a
particular way so that then I can feel safe. And that's why,
like, for a long time, I used to say things like, Oh, I'm trying
to create a safe space for you, this is a safe space. And I
realized, like, one day I'm like, I can't say that. Like,
it's not for me to determine what feels safe for somebody
else. All I can do is to do my best to create an environment
and an experience of safety. But I don't know everybody's
subconscious triggers. I don't know everybody's backstory and
their history and what they've been through, so all I can do is
do my best, and are there going to be times when I might blow it
or screw up or whatever? Yeah, because a I'm human and again, I
don't know everybody's, you know, biography. I don't know
everybody's history and what they've been through, and what
the things are that trigger them or upset them, a particular tone
of voice, a smell, it could even be a color, like whatever it is,
right? A tone of voice at certain energy level. You know,
people can get quote, unquote, triggered by like, 1000 little
things. So all I can do is try to do my best. Okay, so again,
what I want to experience in my own body is safe enough. I want
to be able to drop into parasympathetic when I find
myself going into sympathetic, that fight and flight and freeze
and fawn because it's guaranteed that it's going to happen. This
is not a safe world. I don't even like saying that out loud,
but it's the truth. It's not a safe world. It's not a safe
world for the animals. It's not a safe world for a lot of
different people. And if you are lucky enough to move through the
world where you never feel scared or threatened, or like
you have no power or you have no voice or you have no authority,
then I hate to say it, but you're probably some old white
guy not to pick on the old white guys, just saying, You know what
I mean. But the rest of us, we sometimes tend to feel like we
gotta have eyes in the. Back of our head. You know what I'm
saying. So here's the thing that I have found to be a little bit
helpful. Okay, here are some things. They're not all tools.
But number one, I gotta know my own triggers. I have to be aware
of the kinds of places, the kinds of people, the kinds of
environments where maybe I'm going to get a little antsy, I'm
going to get a little suspicious, I'm going to get a
little on edge, I'm going to get a little like I need to know
thyself. And this is so much of the work that I do with people.
We got to know why we do what we do, think, what we think,
believe, what we believe, say what we say, do what we do. As I
said, we have to know ourselves. We have to be curious enough as
about our own patterns, our own habits, our own stories, our own
beliefs, our own identity, how we're showing up in the world,
why we're showing up that way, and if we don't like the
experience, what maybe can we do to tweak it, to adjust it, to
transform it, to change it, to develop it, to have personal
growth, self development, right? This is the work that I do with
people. So we gotta know our triggers, and it's not like, oh,
avoid them. My hope is that I can experience them and know how
to come back to safety more quickly, that I can get a little
dysregulated by something, and then go, oh. I know how to be
responsive. I know how to do that breath, where I breathe in
through my nose fully and deeply and then exhale out through my
mouth twice as long with a little bit of sound. I wear a
watch. I don't have it on right now. I took it off to take a
shower, but if I have on my Apple watch, I can just hit that
little hat icon and it will show me what my heart rate is. The
other day, my heart rate was up around like 74 Okay, I just sat
and did the breath that I just described to you, inhale through
your nose, fully and deeply, exhale out twice as long,
through the mouth with a little bit of sound. This helps to down
regulate the nervous system, move us from sympathetic to
parasympathetic into the relaxation response. And I
literally watched my heart rate drop down within a minute, like
six beats per minute. It went down from like 76 or whatever it
was, to 70 and then I got it down to like 64 just from
breathing. That's one simple tool that pretty much everybody
can do. Okay, so I want to know my triggers, the other ways, the
other incredible. And I wouldn't even call it a tool so much as I
don't even know what to call it, but let's call it a tool. Is
building relationships with people that you feel like you
can be yourself with people that see you, I would say your
balcony people, right? The people who love you. And this
might be one other person, if you're lucky, it's two or three
or four, where you have your people for some of you, that
might be your family. For some of you, your family is the place
where you do not feel safe at all. Right? For some of you,
it'll be your sweetie or your partner or your best friend. For
some of you, maybe it's a sibling, I don't know, but for
whoever it is, it's like building relationships with
beautiful people who see you, who try to understand you, who
get you, who celebrate you, who support you, who say, come here,
right? Let me give you a hug. I'm listening. You don't have to
do this on your own. Sometimes we have to hire those people,
coaches and mentors and whatever. And there's no shame
in that. And there's nothing wrong with that, because
sometimes the environments that we find ourselves in, they are
not supportive. They are not supportive. And you need to have
somebody who can be in your corner, like Rocky to like, I
always say in the Rocky movie, Mick, mix in his corner like,
you know what I mean? He's like, cheering him on. He's pointing
out some ways to help him grow and develop and become better,
right? The other thing is so one, knowing your triggers,
knowing what might upset you, and then gathering some tools to
be able to when you do get triggered or dysregulated, to
bring you back to psychological and physical safety, to
relationships and people. And then another thing is that body
awareness, right? Body awareness techniques are incredibly
helpful, whether that's somatics, whether that's yoga,
whether that's breath work, pranayama, breathing, whether
that's EFT, tapping, Emotional Freedom Technique, right?
Whether that's bilateral stimulation, whether that's
like, you know, peripheral vision and going out, whether
it's hypnosis. I mean, there's a shit ton of tools out there to
help us learn, but I want to say this to me, and again, I might
be wrong. I don't want to just blame like my I don't want to
ever have to blame my behavior. Behavior on my trauma and say,
Well, I'm just reactive, because it might be true, but I want to
be able to be aware enough that I am noticing that I'm being
reactive, and then I can choose to respond instead. I don't want
to be stuck in rigidity, in my patterns, and my habits and my
ways of being that are causing my own suffering or inflicting
myself on other people. I can't tell you how many times I heard
growing up, that's just the way he is, that's just the way she
is, that's just the way that they are, like everybody else
had to fucking suffer because this person had no emotional
intelligence. This person never bothered to take a look in the
soul mirror. This person never bothered to pick up a book and
read it. The person never went to therapy. They never got a
coach. They never fucking took two seconds to look at
themselves and realize that their way of being was bullying
and traumatizing and awful for other people to have to be
around double A men hands, if you know what I'm talking about,
right? So part of how I also try to experience safety is creating
more safety in the world for animals and for other humans to
to find their way home. To Do you know what I mean, we can try
to be a safe place for other people to show up in curiosity
instead of judgment, to listen, maybe more than we talk, which I
know it's funny right now. Me saying that because I'm talking,
talking, talking, but it's a podcast, right? But to be able
to quote, unquote, hold space for people when they're going
through a thing and to just be there, you might not always need
to know the quote, unquote right thing to say that, can I hold
the space? Can I be there? Can I be a container for somebody
else? So I hope that this is landing for you in some way,
that this resonates for you in some way, that this concept of
being safe enough that we're not waiting to feel perfect safety
before we go after our dream, before we say yes to being on
the podcast, before we say yes to starting to write the book or
join the club or start the project or start a business, or
say yes and go on the date. You know, I had a friend the other
day write to me out of the blue, and they just said, I'm going on
a first date. They're like, Karen, Karen, I'm going on a
first date, Karen. I don't like first dates, right? I just
started laughing, and I wrote back, and I was just, you know,
trying to be a safe space for them and say some things and
make them laugh and loosen up and try to enjoy the experience,
because you never know that date could lead to falling in love.
And how exciting is that, right? But the ego mind gets involved,
and it goes into like a time travels into the future and it
starts to worry and get nervous, or it time travels into the past
and it goes into shame and blame and guilt and weirdness, and I
blew it that last time, and it's not going to work out. And I'm
like, dude, like, let's be in the present moment. Like, let's
just experience this. You know, this is kind of exciting. Tell
me more. You know, it was pretty cool. So we're not always going
to experience perfect safety, but if we can use some tools, if
we can find our people, if we can become aware of our own
triggers, our own anxieties, our own fears, and use right use
these things. And if you're like, I don't know how to do
this. KK, please, for the love of of all things holy, join the
nest. It's 50 bucks a month. I can probably help right. Sign up
if you hate it. You leave after one month, right. Find out more
about working with me one to one in the quest. You know, I love
helping people navigate this whole being human experience
using, you know, spiritual principles, spiritual practices
and subconscious reprogramming and hypnosis and neuroscience
and practical tools to interrupt our patterns when we're getting
reactive, you know, oh, my God. So the goal for me now, and
maybe it is for you too, is to feel safe enough so that we can
do what we came here to do, so we can be who we are meant to
be, who the divine and you know, just you, maybe you don't
believe in anything greater, right? Maybe you're just like, I
just want to be my best self. Perfect, great. Run with it. But
it's hard to be our best self when we are getting hijacked all
the time by fear, right? We want to learn how to operate from a
place of love. And here's just the facts. Sometimes, right, we
are not going to feel safe, and sometimes we have to do it a
little bit scared. I do, if you knew how many things I did
scared, right? I think a lot of people perceive me as like, you
know, I am tough, okay, right? Like, and I don't mean like, Oh,
I'm tough. Like, I'm gonna beat you up. I am wicked resilient. I
am pretty tough. I am strong and right. And I have a lot of
patterns and habits in my nervous system of being scared,
and those things rear up. They they present themselves, but now
I have enough tools to be able to help myself to come back to a
state where maybe I'm not feeling 100% safety, but I feel
safe enough to take the leap of faith to know that my spiritual
team comes with me. My ancestors come with me, my mom comes with
me. God, Holy Spirit, my inner teacher, because so much of
safety for me is learning how to trust myself. I can't always
trust other people. I can't always trust the rest of the
world, but I can trust myself. I can trust the inner voice, the
inner teacher. I can trust God and source in the Divine, or
whatever you happen to call it, the universe. I can trust a
handful of people around me who I know have my back, who love
me, who cheerlead me, who champion me, and who want the
best for me. And if you can gather these people, these
things, these tools, keep listening to the podcast, maybe
join the NASA. However, it is, read some good books, look up
some of the tools that I mentioned, right? And you too,
because this is the goal for me, is to feel safe enough.
And I've I've made my peace with that. I've made my peace that,
like this is the body and the nervous system that I have, and
as long as I'm alive, right, I will be trying to help myself
and reparent myself and be kind to myself and compassionate. And
there's going to be times when we just have to feel safe enough
and maybe do it a little bit scared. But you don't have to do
it alone. I'm here hopefully you have some people around you who
also love you and support you. Okay, I gotta go. I gotta go
teach a yoga class. But I hope this has been helpful in some
way and valuable. And if you listen to this and you thought,
Oh, my God, this is great, or whatever, this was valuable.
This was helpful. Please share it with somebody. Send it to a
cousin, a girlfriend, a best friend and a sister, whoever
your auntie. Send it to somebody you love. Okay, wherever you go,
may you leave the animals in the other humans and yourself in the
environment and the planet better than how you first found
it wherever you go, may you and your energy and your presence
and your love and your safe enoughness be a blessing. Bye,
you.