For decades I have explored practices that support an embodied sense of safety. When we experience safety our wholeness responds in a myriad of ways, from ease of tension, to digestive harmony, to relief from nervous system overload.

Physical grounding practices, hip and thigh releases, breathing practices, meditation, all are rich resources we can draw on at any time. In the last few years I have personally felt a growing sense of safety through deep listening to country and intentionally honouring the reciprocity of humans as nature embedded as and with nature.

I would love to share with you recent experience on Peramangk country in the Adelaide foothills. We were there to offer a residential Circle of Trust retreat themed ‘Embracing Life As It Is’, two of us co-facilitating and fourteen participants. I invited participants to feel the ground, to (inwardly, silently) let country know we come with good intent, with hopes to offer our care, respect, and listening and to ask country for permission to be there. To be open to how that answer might be received.

One of the sessions, lead by my co-facilitator, invited us to reflect and spend time however we felt drawn, be it drawing, writing, walking … I found myself picking up nine sticks from the base of the grandmother gum tree outside the room where we had our circle space, along with a dozen or so small cream coloured gum flowers which had fallen in the wind. I walked the gently zig zagging path to the summit of a small peak close to the house. Paused. Asked inwardly for permission to be there. I was drawn to look down and to my left, only to discover a rock in the shape of a heart emerging from the dry ground. It felt very much like a yes. I thanked country for holding me here.

Walking further, toward what seemed to be an area of placed larger rocks I paused before the invisible threshold and again asked permission, would be okay to leave the sticks and flowers here? I waited, willingly, for a yes, or a no. A small insectivorous bird flitted close by, flew around me and as I was questioning, could this be an answer, it swooped very close to me. Another yes. Thank you country.

I placed the sticks forming a circle with one end of each at the centre and radiating out like a sun. The flowers a small pile in the middle. It felt right, and connected to place and perhaps to ancestors. I had wondered on my walk to the summit if perhaps by great grandfather who was born in the Adelaide hills, had been to this place.

It felt as though this experience was truly reciprocal. My heart felt care for country meeting countries generosity in holding me so safely and thoroughly.

My experience is that the embodied experience of safety and belonging is life changing, life supporting, life giving.

Might you too offer country your care and respect, ask permission to be on country, and be open to receive the felt sense of being embedded and held in place?