🔼: [[🛠 Safe Place Visualization]] ##### 🧘 The Pathway Home [[On Tools, Skills, and Practices...]] Use: [[🛠 Self-Soothing]] An [[💡 Emotional Regulation]] tool from [[👤 Deb Dana]]. You might want to grab a pen and paper or some art supplies (or a tablet) before you start. You could also play some [[🛠 Music]]. ###### The Practice Imagine if safety were a physical place you could walk to. Invite yourself, your [[💡 Parts]], your entire body to ponder what [[💡 Home]] would look and feel like, and then wait for an answer without thinking about it. When you have your answer, imagine the path leading to it as vividly as you can. In your mind's eye, look down at your feet, and begin to walk the path. As you walk, you might document what you see or feel. Without intellectualizing, you could draw a picture, put different colors on the page, or write a few evocative words or even lots of detail about your path and how you feel. The idea is to put enough on the page that you could return to this path if you wanted to, but not so much that you're taken out of the experience. As we use this practice over time, we might notice that our place or path to change. We might notice something is added or removed, or it could be a different path entirely. There's no right or wrong. The path is yours. ###### Note If we struggle to come up with a place or path, there is nothing wrong with us. It can be helpful to look at pictures online of paths that look peasant to walk. We can pay attention to what we see when we're outside and remember them for later. Once we have an option we like, we can be curious and allow ourselves to wonder, "Where does this lead?" We don't have to have an answer. Curiosity is enough, because curiosity is a relaxed state. We'll find our way. I sometimes combine this with [[🧘 🎧 Richard Schwartz - The Path]].