Do you prefer watching videos or reading blog posts? This time round you have a choice!
Click on the image below to hear what Caitlin has to say about the Safe Place Guided Meditation exercise. Or scroll down to read the blog version if text is more your thing.
Either way, don’t forget to download your free pdf guide at the end of the blog post!
What is the Safe Place Guided Meditation (aka Guided Imagery, aka Visualisation)?
Because of the way our big, beautiful brains work, it turns out that feeling safe is just as important as physically being safe. So, today I’m talking all about the safe place exercise – a visualisation exercise designed to help you feel safe.
It’s really simple and it’s free!
It makes use of your imagination to create a safe place in your mind that you can escape to whenever the real world is a bit too much and you just need a moment to pause and reset.
If you’d like to try it I’ll guide you through step by step.
BUT
First, I want to explain what it is, outline a few things to consider before you try it and to highlight a few potential reasons the safe place exercise might not be for you.
That’s right, visualisation exercises like this and other mindfulness or meditation exercises don’t work for everyone.
Or, at the very least, they might not be for everyone at this exact point in their life.
Of course, even if it doesn’t work for you, having learnt about it, and perhaps tried it out, you can now share it with people you know and give them a potential new way to reduce stress and overwhelm and get that little bit closer to feeling safe again.
If we haven’t met yet, “Hi” 👋🏼
I’m Dr Caitlin Lance Hope and I work as a Chartered Psychologist and Protective Behaviours practitioner here at SFAC.
A big part of my job is equipping people to identify when they’re feeling unsafe and, having done that, find ways to help themselves feel safe again.
I’m constantly trying to give people new Care Kit options to experiment with.
What’s a Care Kit?
It’s a handy little collection of tools you can use to help you feel safer or calmer when life just feels a bit too big.
Why do I call it a Care Kit?
Because it’s designed to increase your capacity to care:
- for yourself,
- for others and
- for the world.
Essentially that’s my job, in a nutshell – to increase your capacity to care!
As I mentioned earlier, not every coping skill or technique will be right for every person, so it’s essential to get curious and experiment with as many options as possible to find what works best for you.
The safe place exercise is a great option to test out for your Care Kit.
The best bit is, once you’ve practised it a few times and your safe place becomes really familiar, you can use this strategy anywhere, any time.
No one has to know.
In a moment, I’ll walk you through creating your own safe place.
Once you’ve had a go with me guiding you through, you can either use the video above to keep practising as often as you like or you can guide yourself using this blog post (You’ll also find a link to a free pdf download at the end of this post so you can have a copy to hand whenever you need it)
But first, here’s
5 things to consider BEFORE you try the Safe Place Guided Meditation.
1 – Risk on Purpose
It’s perhaps a bit ironic that an exercise designed to help you feel safe might not feel entirely comfortable when you first try it!
Using your imagination or coping strategies like this may be outside of your comfort zone
If this is the case, I’d gently encourage you to give it a go anyway! In Protective Behaviours (or PBs for short), the framework I use as a foundation for my work at SFAC) we call this Risking on Purpose. Risking on Purpose is just an easy way to refer to something you do even though it feels uncomfortable, scary or possibly even unsafe either because it helps you move closer to achieving a goal, or because it helps you live in line with your values. In this case, your goal might be to feel safer or calmer.
If, on the other hand, something about this exercise makes you feel very unsafe, either before or during it, and your body is sending all kinds of warning signals your way (in PBs we call these Early Warning Signs – think heart racing, short sharp breaths, sweaty palms, a sudden need to use the toilet etc.), you are not alone.
Some people, especially those with a history of traumatic flashbacks or dissociation find that exercises like this bring up intense feelings, scary images, or lead to further dissociation.
It is absolutely ok for you to decide not to do this or, if you do go ahead, to stop at any point.
If this sounds like you, then you might like to consider the following options:
Option A.
Leave it for now, and experiment with other options for your care kit first. This post on evidence-based coping strategies could be a good place to start.
Option B.
Pause this video before the exercise begins. First, spend some time thinking about whether there are things you could put in place that would help you move from feeling unsafe towards Risking on Purpose, making it feel safe enough to try.
2 – For best results, practise!
The second thing to remember is that the safe place strategy works best with practice – so give it a proper chance before you decide it isn’t for you. Try it multiple times over a shortish period of time (e.g. several days a week for a month). If you’re still finding it has no impact on how you’re feeling – either your emotional feelings or the physical feelings, the sensations in your body then it’s probably time to move on and experiment with something else.
3 – Eyes closed or eyes open? It’s up to you!
It’s also worth noting that the language and steps I’ll use during this walkthrough are more intentional than it might seem. This is especially important to know if you want to share this exercise with someone you care about and/or work with.
At the beginning, I’ll invite you to either close your eyes or find a point on the ground (or wall) a metre or two ahead of you (that’s about 3-6ft if you’re brain doesn’t speak metric!).
There’s a couple of reasons for providing options. The first is that for some people, especially those with a history of traumatic experiences, closing their eyes can feel very unsafe and it’s best to practice this exercise in a context where you already feel safe.
As with many strategies you might experiment with, regular practice in a safe environment will make them easier to use when you find yourself feeling unsafe.
Another reason for giving this option, is that PBs encourages offering choices wherever possible and using invitational rather than command style language.
Why do we do this?
Both offering choice and using invitational language (which is really just another way of offering choice!) are more likely to give people a sense of control in a situation that may be unfamiliar and, in turn, help them feel that little bit safer.
Finally, even if you begin practising the safe place exercise with your eyes closed, you may wish to progress to doing it with your eyes open. There will be situations in life where this strategy is useful but you can’t close your eyes for safety reasons (physical or emotional safety) – driving a vehicle, operating machinery, sitting in a classroom or in a situation where closing your eyes might be considered rude.
4 – You’re limited only by your imagination!
One of the wonderful things about using this safe place strategy is that you are limited only by your imagination.
You can picture a real place, somewhere you know and have been before, or you can conjure up something based on reality – maybe a beach, or a woodland. You can always make tweaks to reality to make it feel safer. For example, I might choose a place on the farm where I grew up in Australia but in my imaginary version, none of the animals crawling or slithering nearby can kill me!
You might ignore reality altogether and use a fictional place as a starting point – a scene from a movie or a book, or a game you love.
Or you can create a safe place entirely from your imagination –
Perhaps you’re floating on the softest cloud surrounded by blue skies and enjoying some gentle sunshine warming your face.
Or you’re in a castle made of jelly.
Or living in a giant shell under the sea.
Or sitting on the moon looking down at the earth. It really is up to you!
And, if at any point your imagination takes you somewhere you don’t want to be, remember you’re in control. You can simply redirect it to something else, or, if you need to, come back to the present moment and focus on the place you’re in right now, paying close attention to what you can see, feel and hear around you.
If this happens, you may find it helpful to talk through your experience with someone you trust.
5 – Not all minds are alike (Aphantasia)
And one, final thing: not everyone can create pictures in their mind. This is known as “aphantasia.” If that’s you, feel free to get curious and try out the aspects of this exercise that rely on other senses. Or you may decide to focus on other strategies for your Care Kit (you can find some suggestions here) and give this one a miss. It’s entirely up to you.
Let’s get started – a Safe Place guided imagery script
Find a comfortable position where you can be reasonably still for a few minutes – you can sit, stand or lie down, whatever works best for you.
Once you’re feeling relatively comfortable in your position, gently close your eyes or focus softly on a neutral point about 1 – 2 metres ahead of you. Choose somewhere where there’s little to no movement to distract you.
Start by taking a moment to settle and put the rest of your day to one side for a moment. .
You could take a few slow, deep breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth.
If focusing on your breath feels unsafe, you could focus for a moment on identifying any sounds around you. Or gently give yourself a hug, rubbing your hands slowly up and down between your shoulder and your elbow as you do.
Whatever best helps you settle and focus on this moment.
Now imagine you are in a safe place.
Start to picture it in your mind’s eye. Look around your safe place, what do you see? What colours do you notice?
Pay attention to where and how the light falls… Is it bright light or soft? Where is it coming from? A lamp? The sun? Something else?
Now notice the shadows, what is casting them? Perhaps there aren’t any in your safe place…
Whatever safe place your imagination conjures up is perfectly fine.
If something that doesn’t feel quite right appears, pause for a moment and change it now.
And remember, if at any point your imaginings start to feel unsafe, you are in control and can step out of this exercise at any time.
As your picture becomes clearer and more detailed, start to pay attention to the sounds in your safe place. What can you hear?
Perhaps there’s music playing? What sort of music is it? Maybe you can hear a breeze rustling the leaves of trees nearby or birds singing? Maybe it’s completely silent.
If there are sounds, are they close by or far away?
Slowly let your mind drift towards what you can touch. What textures are in your safe place? Are they soft or hard? Smooth or sharp? Rounded or angular? What, can you feel on your skin? Perhaps clothes or the surface you’re on, or it might be the air around you – is it warm or cool? Dry or wet?
If you went bare foot, what would you feel beneath your feet? You may want to wriggle your toes or move your feet around as you imagine what it feels like.
On your next in breath notice what you can smell in this safe place.
Perhaps there’s the smell of something delicious ready and waiting for you to eat… Are there any tastes and flavours in your safe place? Something sweet, or sour – or a perfect combination of favourite flavours.
Are you alone in your safe place? Or is someone with you?
Remember, you are in complete control here, the only people who can join you are those you personally invite.
And, because it’s your safe place and your imagination, you’re not limited to people who are alive or even real.
Perhaps you’ll invite a favourite fictional character, or pets or other animal friends to join you.
And now you’ve created your safe place, take a moment to notice how you feel in this place. Can you name those feelings? What physical feelings do you notice in your body?
As you soak in the atmosphere you’ve created, imagine that this safe place wants you here.
That you are entirely safe here.
That you belong here.
In a moment, when you’re ready it’s time to leave the place you’ve created and return to the reality of our present moment. But you’re leaving safe in the knowledge that you can return to this safe place any time you want to.
When you feel ready gently wiggle your fingers and toes and slowly open your eyes or expand your focus to take in your surroundings.
You might find yourself blinking a little or needing to stretch, do whatever you need to do to connect back to this moment and the place where you are.
But don’t stay away too long! Your safe place will be most effective and most likely to work its calming, joyful magic if you visit often.
How did you go?
If you tried this exercise with me, I’d love to know how you’re feeling now. Let me know in the comments. If you found it helpful, please consider sharing this with someone you know.
And, if you’re keen to experiment with more options for your Care Kit, let me know and I’ll work on some more videos like this.
In the meantime, you can download a pdf version of this post by clicking this link or on the image below. And, if you’ve found this post helpful, please consider making a donation to our work here.
References and further reading:
Guided imagery visualisations and meditations have a large body of evidence showing their effectiveness in reducing physiological arousal (physical feelings) and increasing feelings of calm and relaxation.
They’re also widely used to improve performance amongst athletes and other groups.
This post outlines the research around the potential negative effects of mindfulness and mediation strategies as does this review article.