While multitudes of theories and techniques to facilitate healing abound, in nearly fifteen years of clinical practice I have found one element to be most fundamental. In order to create an environment where emotional, physical and spiritual healing can take place, emotional safety is a cornerstone.

Emotional Safety: What Does It Mean?

Emotional safety can be best understood through experience. Try the following exercise to think about what emotional safety means to you.

Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths. Let yourself be comfortable. As you inhale, feel the support of the surface underneath you (be it a chair, the floor, a bed). As you exhale, let yourself feel the support of what supports you....Take a few moments just to focus on your breathing and the physical sensations of the surface supporting your body....allow your focus to be with your heart...notice where you feel your heart when you hear the word heart....take a moment to notice how your heart is feeling physically and emotionally....is it full? Is it empty? Is it heavy? Is it light? Is it separate? Is it connected ?...Let yourself become a little bit more familiar with whatever is happening in your heart.

Now, see if you can remember a time when you felt emotionally safe....It may have been in a special place, with a special person or other being....If you can recall such an experience, take a moment to let yourself remember... where were you? Was anyone with you? What was happening? How does your heart feel? What sensations do you notice in your body as you think about this experience? Give yourself a moment just to be with whatever you're experiencing.

Now, see if you can remember a time when emotional safety was lacking ...If you can recall such an experience, let yourself fill in some of the details....where were you? Was anyone with you? What was happening? How did you feel emotionally? Notice what sensations come up in your body as you think about this experience. Contrast your two experiences of emotional safety and emotional safety lacking, and notice the differences in your thoughts, in your body, in your feeling. Make some notes in your journal of what you have noticed.

Emotional safety is an emotional, somatic and spiritual experience. Feeling warmth, joy, expansion, relaxation, the ability to breathe freely, a sense of connection and a sense, of peace are common feelings when emotional safety is present. Here are some reflections I've collected of people describing how they feel when they are

"My stomach relaxes."
"It's easy to let go."
"I feel a sense of trust."
"I feel welcome."
"I know I won't be judged."

All of these experiences suggest an environment of healing. This environment supports feeling more deeply both emotionally arid somatically, and having a greater sense of peace. Contrast this to people's descriptions of what they feel when emotional safety is lacking.

"A knot in my stomach."
"Tension in my jaw."
"Adrenaline rush."
"Can't let down or relax."
"Tension in hands - holding on."

"Alone"
"Hopeless."
"Feeling trapped."
"Hyper- vigilance"

"Head starting to work overtime"
"Wondering when the other shoe will drop."
"Wanting to hide"
"Wanting to disappear"

Many of the physical sensations and emotional responses could be classified as symptoms for which people seek medical care or psychotherapy. Emotional safety can be a healing experience in two ways. First, emotional safety creates an environment that alleviates the above symptoms by removing factors that create them in the first place. Second, emotional safety adds elements that support intimacy, connection with self, other and the divine in the moment.

Creating Emotional Safety: What It Entails

While many factors contribute to emotional safety, I have found five to be particularly important.

Pacing is important in building trust and establishing emotional safety. Creating an emotionally safe relationship - personal or therapeutic - takes time. Every person has their own unique pace of engaging and relating. This pace needs to be cultivated and respected in a healing relationship. Creating space is another part of emotional safety in a relationship.

Creating space means welcoming all parts of a person, known and unknown, comfortable and uncomfortable, spoken and unspoken. A healer may need to teach a client how to take space for themselves - to slow down, go inside, allow for emotional and somatic sensations, and know they will be respectfully held in time and space as they do so.

Accountability means that a person's actions are in line with what they say. An accountable person will walk their talk. Accountability also includes an attentiveness to the other's needs and the impact of one's behavior on another.

Appropriate boundaries are essential for emotional safety. In healing relationships, many boundaries need to be defined including use of touch. Clear boundaries help define a "safe container" or holding environment for inner work.

Presence means being able to offer your full attention to another while being grounded in yourself, holding no agenda. Presence offers a sense of welcoming, allowing and non-judgment. If a healer is present, the client has more space to feel their experience and learn to be present with themselves.

The use of touch In healing relationships is a key part of emotional safety. This may include a clear understanding between healer and client not to touch at all because physical touch is not safe, or an understanding that permission must also be asked for and granted each time touch could be incorporated into a healing process. In some cases, emotional safety and deep healing cannot take place without touch. Here is an example.

Mark was a self-employed plumber in his 40's with a successful business, two grown children, and financial security. However, he was plagued by a sense of terror at night and could not express feelings of love to those close to him. He had tried conventional talk therapy but all the talking in the world could not reach the parts of him where the source of his pain and distress lived. So he was referred for body-centered psychotherapy.

When I first met Mark, he appeared to be tough and together but unable to feel his heart emotionally or somatically. He was also unable to talk about the problems that troubled him deeply and brought him to therapy. When I would try to make contact with him emotionally and verbally, he would start to shake. It seemed clear that he was experiencing deep feelings, but didn't know what to do with his experience. I asked if it was okay for me to explore the shaking and hold his shoulders while he was shaking. He said it was okay. When he let himself be held by me, he started shaking and sobbing very deeply, in a way that was entirely unfamiliar to him. It turned out he had lost his mother at a very early age and had been severely abused as a child. The physical contact of another person literally holding him created the safety for him to feel and experience what he could never access through words alone. Touch and holding became an important part of our therapy and a cornerstone for the emotional safety needed to do his healing work.

The sensory experience of safety is very powerful. Holding and being held create a real physical container or space in which a person can let down and feel their experience in the moment. Perhaps you've had the experience of being with a child who is clearly upset, but keeping it all in. Then, as soon as you reach out and hold him, he bursts into tears. Here, you are literally offering them a safe space where they can feel and express. Your very being communicates the messages: It's okay. I'm here, you're not alone, I love you. Our hands and arms can literally be an extension of our hearts.

Touch is particularly important in working with parts of ourselves that are precognitive and preverbal. To a newborn baby, a 6 month old infant, an 18 month old toddler or a 3 year old child, your physical presence and the quality of your touch have profound meaning. This week, as I was working on this article, I watched my son's music teacher reach out and make contact with three two year olds. She gently touched their shoulders or tickled their bellies while singing a playful song. I was glad to see that she respected their boundaries, looking to see if they were interested before making contact. I watched each one of them light up, eyes full of life and laughter as she non-verbally said, "hello." Safe touch is powerful both in offering important developmental experience and in helping heal from trauma, including the abuse of touch.

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Linda Marks, MSM, has practiced heart-centered, psychospiritual body-centered psychotherapy for sixteen years.  She is founder of the Institute for Emotional-Kinesthetic Psychotherapy in Newton, and author of LIVING WITH VISION: RECLAIMING THE POWER OF THE HEART (Knowledge Systems, 1988).  She has taught and spoken nationally and internationally, and has been a leader in the emerging field of somatic psychology.  She lives in Newton, MA with her four year old son, Alexander.  Linda's new book EMBODYING THE SOUL: DANCING INTO LIFE is due for release in the spring of 2001.  You can contact her at (617)965-7846 or LSMHEART@aol.com.

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