Calling all deep divers!
Therapists, coaches, and educators,
I know you've gone head first into all the beautiful resources out there on why we (you, your clients, your relations) may not feel safe. But do you find yourself voraciously reading, studying, searching (the internet, the globe, your own mind) wondering:
"How can I, practically speaking, experience safety myself and nurture it in relationships and in the collective in the midst of external forces, pressures, + stressors?"
If so, you've come to the right place.
Embodied Safety is my life's work. I consider myself, in this lifetime, to be one of the stewards of this emergent work and my ancestors, teachers, mentors, guides, friends, family, and relations have every part of their hands and hearts in it.
Embodied Safety equips healing arts practitioners with pragmatic tools to embody safety so they can serve personal and collective liberation at their highest capacity.
As such, the Embodied Safety curriculum is focused on training Safety Skills.
Does it actually work?
Yes. I teach pragmatic somatics. I track the impact of this work with qualitative and quantitive metrics.
All students of Embodied Safety walk away with at least an 85% improvement in every skill they came to learn.
Some experience as much as a 200% improvement on how safe they feel on a daily basis.
Imagine what that makes possible...
See the results of Embodied Safety education for yourself at the bottom of this page.
The lineage of this work has its homes in my 11 years of study and practice in body psychotherapy, somatic movement education, martial arts, expressive arts, transformational coaching, manual therapy, and embodied skills training for activists and movement builders.
Embodied Safety is an emergent skills-based framework and lived practice for HOW to self-generate safety in our bodies -- personally, relationally, and collectively.
It’s designed to support healing justice practitioners and facilitators in answering a huge question: HOW?
As an individual...
"How can I experience safety in extreme moments of overwhelm?"
How do I embody safety in the context of chronic pain?
In relationship…
"How do I feel safe when moving through difficult emotions in relationships?"
"As a practitioner (or friend), how can I support someone who's feeling unsafe and help them to return to safety?"
As a part of a culture...
How can I experience safety when moving through the world as a person with marginalized identities? How can I support myself and others in that?
How can we self-generate safety (actually do that) as a culture, so that we need not rely on old structures to feel safe, and instead, we can be open to interdependence and community building?
WHERE DO I LEARN EMBODIED SAFETY?
At the moment, Embodied Safety is being taught as a long-term program and practice space with a small, dedicated group of healing justice facilitators (LCSW's, therapists, coaches, and teachers) in all parts of the globe. If you're curious about in-depth study of Embodied Safety and potential collaboration with the crew, you're welcome to reach out to me.
I occasionally teach drop in Embodied Safety classes open to all. From the class, you'll walk away with a new paradigm around generating safety, a clearer picture for bridging the gap between healing + activism, and a concrete practice to back you up in those moments when it matters the most.
Interested in Embodied Safety? Sign up to be notified about classes and programs below:
Embodied Safety Results + Testimonies
How will you change through your experience in the Embodied Safety Program?
EMBODIED SAFETY RESULTS BY THE NUMBERS:
Participants are asked several questions at the start and completion of the 6 month program including:
“How empowered do you feel to self-generate safety?”
Results: Some participants begin the program as low as a 4 out of 10 empowered and reach as high as 9 out of 10, making a 125% improvement.
Embodied Safety Empowerment Improvement Average = 82.5% Improvement
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“How often do you feel a sense of being supported during your daily activities in your life?”
Results: Some start as low as 30% of the time feeling supported and reach as high as 80% of the time at the completion of the program, making a 166% improvement.
Embodied Sense of Support Improvement Average = 133% Improvement
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“What's the level of safety that you tend to feel inside yourself on average on a daily basis?”
Results: Some start the program feeling safe only 30% of the time and reach as high as 90% of the time, making a 200% improvement.
Time Spent Feeling Safe Improvement Average = 150% Improvement
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Recommendation Score
Upon completion of the 6 month program, participants are asked:
“How likely are you to recommend this program to a friend or colleague on a scale of 1-10 (10 = Where’s a Megaphone? I’m shouting from the rooftops about this!)
Recommendation Rate Average Score = 9.5 / 10
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What do Embodied Safety students say?
Sample Testimonies from the Embodied Safety Program:
“If you are looking for an opportunity to challenge yourself to the core, through embodied practice and self-reflection, with deeply rooted, trust-worthy support and loving guidance along the way, this is for you! This program is deeply counter-cultural, as it is grounded in a foundation of radical honesty, self-care and culture creation. Are you ready???
Before I began the Embodied Safety Program, I was feeling unsafe in my interactions with my virtual workplace, which impacted my relationships with my physical home and body. This manifested in my body in feelings of being trapped, constricted, restless and ashamed. This showed up in my thought patterns, which told a story of stuckness in my life and powerlessness in the face of authority. This made me feel more alone in my experience, and alienated from my own sense of purpose. This in turn made me less confident in my facilitation, and less motivated to initiate new spaces for connection and exploration.
Although I felt clear that this program was where I wanted to be, I also was hesitant about committing a large amount of time and energy to it when both of those things were feeling scarce.
However, the program helped me to feel more spacious and supported within the conditions of my life, and as they continued to shift, it helped me to adapt and channel more energy where I wanted it to go beyond the structured activities of the program.
During the course of this program, I took many steps to change the conditions of my life for the better. I advocated for my needs, and for culture change, within my workplace, in multiple interactions with colleagues and supervisors over a period of months. Later, I decided to leave my workplace in order to make space and time for possibilities that would be more aligned with my needs and values, and generative and inclusive in a community context. Alongside these shifts, I also cultivated greater trust with my brother as we discerned around, and ultimately decided to go in on buying a house together. This level of mutual trust and shared process felt unprecedented in our relationship as well as in the context of our larger family story. Later, when my brother was involved in a traumatic accident during moving week, I was able to quickly reorient and choose to accompany him through his recovery process in the months to come. Being in utterly changed circumstances, including temporary housing situations, new geography and sense of place, new daily rhythms and responsibilities, greater proximity to complex and unfolding family dynamics, immersion in complex medical systems and new providers, etc. has called me to find the most direct routes to my inner resources. Through this program, I've started to embrace my need for time and space in the process of reorienting and responding to changing circumstances and external needs. I feel more connected to self-compassion and healing power.
I am most proud of how I've been able to integrate the concepts of this class in practice, in situations and challenges that I had no way of anticipating. I have developed more confidence in saying "No" to conditions that do not serve me, and trust in my "Yes" to the conditions that I can only change by accepting them and reorienting myself to them. This work is many-layered and ongoing, and I am grateful to have a heightened awareness of the vastness of possibilities that exists within any given moment or situation to respond in ways that are life-giving and healing.
It felt like there was space, permission and even invitation for everyone to cultivate their most honest self in community.
Thanks so much for this special opportunity, I can't wait to witness and participate in the ongoing unfolding of your radically caring and prophetic work, Jacey!”
~ Kaia Jackson, Healing Arts Facilitator & Movement Chaplain, Turner Falls, MA
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“This is a program where you get to declare your full commitment to explore and stay curious. The process will 100% surprise you and bring out an inner warrior you didn't know you had. This program will guide you to the ways to resource safety within yourself and gaining independence from external sources. This program will remind you of your personal power. You'll also make amazing friends along the way which is such a huge plus.
I wasn't able to clearly name how I was feeling before the program. I was often unsure what safe and unsafe really felt like. It manifested in ways of ambiguity, not having the language to contextualise my human experience which made communication challenging. This impacted the way I coach my clients because I wasn't able to support my clients in an embodied way.
After the program, I was able to name how I'm feeling a lot clearer and that is such a gift to myself and others. Having the language to support myself and clients through their journey and offer practical ways to FEEL safety and not just conceptually know what safety means changed the way we love and be.
Being able to apply all stages and concepts throughout my day or while going through a challenging moment has been so helpful, especially for daily challenges! I'll cite an example. I realised I lost my wallet while traveling on the bus and was already late for my appointment. Being able to connect the dots for me using the foundational concepts that in the moment helped me to regain a lot of confidence to manage the situation without blowing my top off which would affect the people I was going to meet later in the day. I felt the trust and safety in my body to cope with the challenges thrown at me.
There is frankly nothing like this program and learning from Jacey is THE reason to invest in this. What surprised me the most was how healing it was to allow myself to be witnessed by others throughout the experience. Over the 6 months, I had been on a rollercoaster ride with my own human experience and I was never alone. I had a community that saw me for all that I am without judgment. So so healing.
I've loved every minute of it, Jacey. Thank you for creating such a space for us. I love us infinitely!”
~ April Hoon, Mindset Coach, Singapore
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“This program will open you up to seeing how our safety is not outsourced to our circumstances. We all possess the power to source our safety from within.
Before the program, I felt unsafe almost all of the time but I was not conscious of it. I could feel the sensations in my body come up but I either ignored them or was so numb to it that I didn't pay any attention to it. Feeling unsafe and anxious was a norm to me.
I am so much more aware of my body and attuned to what I am feeling. I have more awareness over how safe I feel and I now realize that I can source my own safety and dial it up & down. I have been able to experience peace and safety in my body more of the time. I am not as scared when the fear and anxiety comes up and I know how to channel it, be with it, and allow it to move through. I am much more aware of what arises in my body and my awareness gives me dominion over the sensations & emotions...rather than letting the sensations & emotions overtake me.
One of my key learning takeaways is that I get to be whoever I want to be and do whatever I want to do (not in an irresponsible, selfish way...but in a way where I recognize my freedom in every moment). Choice is something I can exercise in every moment. I have agency over my internal state.
I loved our community and the safety & love that was in it...so special!”
~ Jean Young, Transformational Coach, Monrovia, CA
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“These are vital tools for living! I think we could all use more of the basics we've been practicing and expanding on in the program, at any age - to develop more capacity for feeling, for play, for present awareness, for engagement, for ground.
Prior to starting the Embodied Safety Program, I was still fresh out of a lot of change and chronic intensity - in about a year and a half, the pandemic happened, I endured unemployment and depression, I started a new job, a romantic relationship ended and then shifted to friendship, and I continued working with a caseload of clients all of whom had been impacted by complex trauma and forced displacement - and primarily via phone and Zoom, at that! An ongoing challenge for me has really centered around deep ambivalence about the internet and telecommunications-based relating - it brought back feelings of grief and alienation from childhood, having grown up transnationally in the early days of the internet and cell phone technology. Could I attune on Zoom? Could I experience "the real" when I had to spend so much of my time online, disembodied - often feeling exhaustion, resentment, dissociation, lack of focus? Moreover, a past year's worth of personal work made me aware of a need to learn to navigate boundaries and conflict in a more fluid, moment-to-moment way, and I felt a yearning to be able to better self-observe and come back "in" to situations in which I felt disconnected due to feeling dsyregulated.
I had a lot of wins because of the program:
1. I feel greater awareness of when and how I “mask” and am more able to capably self-soothe and transmute energy.
2. I feel greater understanding of how my movement practices and their ability to help me build strength, flexibility, and grounding contribute to my ability to also stay attuned and self-regulate.
3. I feel able to play and work with myself when I am outside of my window of tolerance.
I continue to feel really informed by dialectics or polarities in my worldview, and I think this training has really helped me understand how expressiveness, balance, and presence can all work together. I definitely feel freer in my embodiment and much more open to bodily learning and self-expression than I’ve felt in a long, long time. I feel more connected to play, too, after a tough few years!
I feel excitement about what I got from this course in tandem with my professional work and my aikido practice. I definitely notice hyper-activation - overextension, rumination - and hypo-activation - collapse, constriction - more in the body, which has led to feeling more agentic in terms of the day to day pacing of my life, in very physical ways. I do less, generally, I feel more comfortable with ebbs and flows, I feel more anchored to nature and to my senses, even if I think it's still a road to develop skills around presence, initiation, and trigger management. What'll help with that road, though, is the renewed sense of patience that I think is coming with decreased perfectionism, which I'm excited to keep reinforcing in lots of areas of my life - my martial arts practice, my clinical work, relationship-making-and-building locally.
I also feel much more aware of above/below relating and social anxiety, which allows me to keep my projections in check as I notice them arising. That's big! I feel like I have the basic frameworks, and now I get to review and apply them in order to be able to really develop them moment-to-moment.
I liked how practical a lot of the tools were. It really does feel like there's a bridge being built between the physical and the conceptual for me, and exercises like "the volume knob" and acts of tracking-by-naming more general really help use my mental energy and direct it back towards the body in order to shift.
I chose this program because I felt a lot of trust in you as a facilitator, Jacey! I think, too, the relative smallness of the group and the welcoming of group process into the space in ways that felt expansive but still structured/contained felt like things I need to do well in a learning environment. I would definitely say that while I could stand to further digest these concepts much more, I also felt that you struck a great balance between rigidity and chaos - you kept us moving along, but there was also a lot of room for everyone's wisdoms and experiences to emerge in the container.”
~ Pablo Baeza, Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Oakland, CA
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Sample Testimonies from Embodied Safety Workshops & Classes:
“I signed up for this class because safety is a theme that’s been coming up more and more around lessons that I am learning + unlearning, and I was wanting to deepen my understanding of it for myself and others. The class opened up new ways in which I can make sense of my experiences and in which I can have conversations with my body. The invitation to stay curious in the context of nuances of the body’s experience + the sample questions given to help explore the mother skills really stayed with me. The day after the first class I was walking on the street and noticed I was clenching my jaw, which is a habit that my acupuncturist has been asking me to watch and avoid. It was the first time I allowed myself to get curious - why do I do it? And I realized I very often didn’t feel safe enough to unclench it. Then I remembered the lesson around sensing support so I tried to let go in my jaw a little and asked, is this still okay? I played with a few different levels of letting go while sensing support as I walked, and I think I’m noticing my jaw naturally stay more relaxed for longer periods. Such a gift. Thank you. I’m very grateful for all you have shared, Jacey. This is a powerful and much-needed gift to offer the world.”
~ Ira Briones, Business Coach, New York, NY
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“I love how this experience allows us to walk away with actual practice tools to play with in real time to help tap back into feeling supported vs just concepts. This doesn't mean you don't ever feel unsafe or stay in situations that you feel unsafe, but rather having tools to recenter after walking away and being with yourself allowing it to come up and move through. One big takeaway was the insight that feeling supported beyond yourself doesn't have to mean believing in God or that the universe has your back, or even another person. It can be as simple as feeling connected to the support of a wall, or the ground beneath you, or a rock you are letting your body rest against. You can choose to tap into support now. You are amazing and gifted. The work you are doing is important, valuable, and needed. Safety is such a huge subject that many people don't know how to support themselves around, and cultivating that internally can have profound effects in how we show up in the world. You providing practical tools (combined with your knowledge of space, expansiveness, somatics, energetics, etc) will be a gift to whoever works with you. Thank you <3”
~ Dor Raz, Retreat Leader, San Diego, CA
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“I signed up for this because safety is important! I was curious about your take and the word “embodied” paired with “safety” felt powerful. It was just a yes. I liked the pace at which you operated as a teacher-no stress. You gave an overview to create a foundation-the theory part and it was not boring or dry. The deep theory - you offered it and we all opted in. The fact that you didn't require this was interesting and a learning for me. Then the deep dive! It is clear you have many tools and you practice them. The exercise in trust was simple and profound - it was enough and beyond all at once. From this class I took away insights into my unconscious behaviors, body language and thought processes. I have a tool that is easy to apply in any situation to bring myself into a space that is more productive. Your sharing of your story at the end really solidified it - having good examples in life is SO helpful and your story offered this. It helped to ground my own tool and enhanced it by giving me a behavioral tool. Your work is powerful and so excited to see how you can help so many! This is big!!”
~Karena Kalinuk, Licensed Esthetician, Monterey, CA