Whenever you feel overwhelmed, anxious, or trapped in your thoughts, you can use this perfect place of yours in order to calm, relax and shift your emotional state. When you experience fear of public speaking, fear of exams, or social anxiety, or else you can create this place for yourself in preparation for your performance. It will keep you more balanced and grounded. Classic symptoms of anxiety like shaking, pounding hearts, and sweaty palms can be reduced and you will be able to keep your mind open in order to speak or perform.
A safe place is a place you will create in your mind. It might be a place you already know or it can be a place you will invent. It might happen, it just pops into your mind and will shape itself during the exercise. Your personal safe place is the place where you feel at ease, calm, relaxed, even happy and fulfilled. Nothing can bother you, nothing, and no one can harm or hurt you. There is nothing else to do than just to be and to enjoy.
Keep this one Safe Place once you found it.
The more you stick to that one place, the easier you will connect it with a relaxed state of mind and body in the future. So, let’s go and find it:
1. Find yourself a comfortable place, where you can sit down or lie down for a moment and know, you will not be disturbed in the coming minutes. Find a comfortable position and take some deep and calm breaths.
2. Find an object in the room and focus on it with your eyes while you continue to breathe in through your nose and slowly exhale through your mouth.
3. While you are focusing on the object of your choice repeat to yourself with your inner voice: “My eyelids are getting heavier and heavier, and the heavier they get, the more relaxed I become. The more relaxed I become the heavier my eyelids get… Soon they are so heavy, they will close and I will be in this wonderful state of relaxation, and it feels good.”
4. Repeat this till you feel your eyes get heavy and just want to close and relax. 5. The moment your eyes are closed, let them relax and dive completely into that sensation. Experience your body with all your senses. You might feel your body becoming lighter and floating, maybe heavier and maybe even warmer than before. 6. Be still in that moment for a little while and enjoy your experience. Breathe normally in and out, don’t force anything.
7. Now in that very comfortable state of relaxation open your mind to the image of a place you like and feel very pleasant, the place where you feel most at ease, calm, relaxed, even happy and fulfilled. Nothing can bother you here, nothing, and no one can harm or hurt you. There is nothing else to do than just to be and to enjoy. Maybe you will find yourself at a beach at the sea, where you have been on holiday, maybe in a light and colorful garden, maybe in your bed or maybe you imagine a place, that just pops into your mind and that you didn’t know before. You are either alone there or surrounded by people you love, maybe your pet is with you too…
… Whatever it is you imagine, this is your personal SAFE PLACE. You can take it everywhere you go and you can go there any time you want or need it.
8. Explore this Safe Place now with all your senses and let it become really vivid in your mind. Maybe you want to walk around there for a bit? Smell, what you can smell, see, what you can see as detailed as possible. Maybe you can hear something there? Feel, what you could feel as if you would really be there. Enjoy all your thoughts and emotions of beauty, calm, and pleasure passing by.
9. Internalize your joy. Take it with you. Remember it.
10. When you are ready to come back to the Here and Now, take some deep breaths, stretch your body, move your feet and hands, open your eyes, and have a look around. 11. You are now back in the Here and Now, you feel refreshed and fully awake.
And most important of all, you feel great. Your state of mind has changed. You feel calm and relaxed and have a much more positive outlook on the future. It might appear difficult in the beginning, but the more you practice, the better you become at it. You may feel you cannot turn off the thinking and whatever kind of thoughts are disturbing your moment.
Know, this is OK.
Let those thoughts come. They will pass just by themselves. Do not force anything and do not put yourself under pressure. There is no right, no wrong. What is in that moment, is OK. Acknowledge it, accept it and it can just go. Practice this Visualization, for now, every day, just for a few minutes. It will become easier with time and sooner than later second nature to you.