I recently had the opportunity to experience something I neeeever would have considered for myself, if it hadn’t been for someone else inviting me to try it.
I wouldn’t have sought it out on my own, because I brushed it off as too “out there” for me.
For context (otherwise this whole email is going to seem SO VAGUE), this was one of the more “extreme” practices in the BDSM space.
I say extreme not out of judgement, but as a way to describe how the majority of society would view this practice. It’s also something that requires more caution.
And despite being a very open-minded person, I realized afterwards that I HAD been excluding this experience from things I was willing to consider for the exact reasons I just mentioned.
I didn’t see myself as someone who did those kinds of things.
But I was invited into this experience, and I said YES.
Hold your horses 🎠🎠though, because this was not a willy nilly yes.
This yes was made possible by feelings of trust and safety.
You do NOT have to be in the BDSM space to have new experiences. And it certainly is not the only space that requires trust and safety to try new things.
The takeaway here is that I felt safe in my body and my surroundings, and this enabled me to say yes to trying something new.
Curating my circle of people and learning what safe actually feels like in my body meant I was equipped to experiment for the sake of it.
I was able to feel safe testing my own boundaries and previously held assumptions about myself because of the trust and safety I’ve cultivated within myself.
And – I learned something new about myself as a result. Being open to the possibility that I COULD learn something about myself was also 🔑.
How do you cultivate trust and safety within yourself?
A practice of embodied self-reflection helps you to be present with yourself, in your body, within the experience of self-observation and exploration.
You offer your Self a safe and judgement free space to show up fully and wholly.
You come to be the safe and nourishing space you need. You create a home for your Self within your body.
You build trust and a sense of safety within yourself over time, by consistently showing up for yourself.
I do this through my self-portrait practice, but there are MANY ways to do this for yourself.
What practices do you have? Has there been a time that a “why not” YES felt easy for you? How did that experience help you expand or learn about yourself?
Tapping into your human design strategy and authority
Having a regular self-oriented reflective practice that works for you can be essential for tuning into your human design strategy and authority.
In the tropical system (traditional human design), I’m a splenic projector, so my strategy is to wait for the invitation and my authority is splenic, which can be a very subtle and brief instinctive or intuitive whisper in the moment. These whispers can take a LOT of practice to “hear” (and have for me), which is why getting super comfy with yourself and giving yourself alone time is so important – especially if you have a lot of open centres (as I do).
My own journey has required me to tune out external influences and noise and really start to listen to my SELF first. Cultivating that relationship is the priority, and once I figured out what my splenic authority feels like, THEN I can go into new situations and be able to tell of they’re for me or not.
Splenic authority is very focused on this abstract (and literal) sense of safety, so it’s been really important to take time to understand what safe feels like for me.
Through my own journey, I’ve been able to decipher how my splenic authority communicates with me. For me, there is always a feeling IN my body, so an embodied self-reflection practice has been really helpful. I am also claircognizant, so spending a lot of time by and with my Self has helped me distinguish between my own internal voice and the psychic or intuitive information I receive. These are the two main channels through which my splenic authority speaks to me.
If you’re not sure how your authority speaks to you, that’s okay! Starting or going deeper with your own self-reflective practice can help you deepen this relationship of self-trust.
I also find it super interesting that with my story above, I was INVITED into this new experience, and I immediately knew that it was a safe yes for me. Even one year ago, if I had received the same invitation, I might not have known if it really was a safe and expansive yes for me, because my relationship with myself and my understanding of my intuition, internal guidance system, and splenic authority was not as developed.
What’s your strategy and authority? Do you feel tapped in?
