E5 How To Feel Safe In Every Walk Of Life
March 2024
80 minutes
E5 How To Feel Safe In Every Walk Of Life
March 2024
80 minutes
Stream on:
Safety is a feeling. Therefore, safety is a subjective experience that can be influenced by our own actions and perceptions. By realizing that a feeling of safety is within our own control, we can act to bring ourselves more safety and security. In this episode we explore the different ways we can feel safe and some resources and tools to support us.
Key topics include:
0:00-14:37 Introduction To Safety 14:37-27:13 Importance of Safety 27:13-36:23 Conditioned Responses 36:23-38:22 Managing Fear and Anxiety 38:22-44:11 Creating Safety In The Body 44:11-48:59 Finding Safety In Crisis 48:59-53:03 Personal Boundaries and Safety 53:03-57:34 Feeling Unsafe In Corporate Environments 57:34-01:03:36 Perception and Reality in the Corporate World 01:03:36-01:08:19 Control and Manipulation in the Corporate World 01:08:19-01:15:15 Shifting the Perception of Safety 01:15:15-01:20:27 Tools and Techniques for Finding Safety
is a global, leadership-strategy consulting company. 3Peak creates the roadmap that aligns behaviours, relationships and Functional Human-Systems™ to achieve your business strategy.
Co-Founder holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience, and did extensive research in Consciousness, Trauma and Physical, Emotional & Mental Health in various Institutes and Research Centers around Europe.
Co-Founder is one of the most sought after therapists in the world, mastering diverse modalities and opening wellness centers in Istanbul, Santiago, New York and Berlin. Her approaches bridges transpersonal psychology, meditation, bioenergetics, family- and business-constellations and more.
Co-Founder has extensive experience advising Fortune 50 and FTSE 100 C-Suite Executives in leadership, strategy, team dynamics, and organizational change. Before coaching, Mino worked in finance, management consulting, and mergers and acquisitions (M&A).
Mino Vlachos: Hello and welcome to the 3Peak Master Leadership Experience. I am your host, Mino, and I'm joined by my colleagues, Dr. Mazen R Harb and Krisana Locke. We are the co founders of 3Peak Coaching and Solutions, where master leaders create healthy systems and we support businesses to develop their leaders and their employees.
Mino Vlachos: Today's topic is safety.
Mino Vlachos: The things that make us feel safe, why safety is important, how it might show up in our lives and how it might show up in our work. And throughout this, we'll be talking about some tools and maybe some exercises that will support us to feel safe. So to begin, and I'm going to pick on Krisana. As per usual, I'd like us to go back to our childhood, and I'd like to hear what helped make you feel safe as a kid.
Krisana Locke: What helped me feel safe as a kid. Being with my brothers and sisters, being around them, my bicycle, knowing that my mother and father were married and lived in the same home. So I came from an intact family setting, so as a young child, there was no worry about one parent living somewhere and the other. So I had a sense of safety. A container. And we never moved houses. We always lived in the same house. And the home was quite close, near my school when I was very young. So I always had an orientation in my child's mind of home. Wasn't far away. And my bedroom.
Dr. Mazen Harb: I like it. Yeah, I can feel it. Like, have you said it?
Mino Vlachos: Was there anything any of the adults in your life did to foster that sense of safety for you?
Krisana Locke: Yes. I would say, first, I'll go with the negative. Not really at school, because I went to a catholic school. So the early years, I grew up with teachings by nuns, and that was quite fearful for me. So my resourcing for a sense of safety with adults was my father and some of my neighbors. I really have to think back in my memory, I did have a good sense of safety. Oh, yes. And also my father's business. I really liked that he had a team of men that worked with him, and they always gave us gifts. So they were my uncles. So I had a good sense of safety through my father and his friends, and also the safety. I came from a big family and also an extended family from my mother's side. So adults, neighbors, healthy connections with neighbors, because in those days, the neighborhoods were still intact. Where I grew up, I didn't feel so safe. With my teachers, I was a bit on edge, but with my family. Yes.
Mino Vlachos: And so for context, and I don't know this for certainty. But having grown up in Australia and I grew up in the United States and partly in Greece, Krisana and I likely had some physical safety from, like, a geopolitical standpoint that we probably enjoyed and benefited from. Mazen, I feel like I'm always pimping you out for more interesting stories, but for context, Mazen grew up in Lebanon and grew up during a civil war. So safety for him is potentially different than Krisana and myself. But the question is really the same, which is what supported you to feel.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Safe as a child? I'm like, when you ask the question, I'm like, oh, my goodness, it will come back to me. And I really want to listen. So I didn't think it. And I'm like, wait until the question comes and see what needs to come up, what your subconscious relate to as safe. So what was safe for me as a child or what I consider as safe for a child? That's a question.
Mino Vlachos: What helped you feel safe as a child?
Dr. Mazen Harb: I really have to say war ended when I was five years old again, because for me, I don't know. For others, they consider childhood as one thing. For me, I consider childhood as separate things. Like there were events and in different episodes, more than events, and in each episode, many events. And the sense of safety probably evolved or changed or updated itself. So I'm like, as a child, I would say the first part during the civil War, where there was nothing major happened to the family. Because when I was around five, something major happened. But the first five years, I would say from a child perspective, war was happening. And then bombs here and bombs there, I was very safe. I didn't mind. I didn't know. Once you are in trust, in the feeling of trust, and you never lost it, you never know what's the opposite of it. So you don't question it. So I had my parents, both parents, my brothers, and to be around them was safety. As simple as that. I didn't start overthinking. What if a bomb hit? I'm like, those were adult thinking, and nothing major has happened. So just to be around them in their presence, to have the father, my father around, and to have my mother around, that gives safety. And they were giving instruction, whatever. Now we hide, now we go when we move. And then having my brothers to play with. So it was more joyous. Interesting. It was really joyous within that. So it was not unsafe or fearful. On the second part of childhood, things changed a little bit. But, yeah, I had to rely on other things to find safety. Where I lost safety. It was more challenging. I would say again, the house, my mother and my brothers. But also when I used to go to sleep, I could not rely only on adults and on a humans, I had to rely on my physical. Even though I was very young back then. I used to do sports in the morning. I copied my older brother, but they were formed later on and so they were form of meditation. So I woke up and then I do some push ups, some this, and help me to go to have a routine, to have a certain certainty, because certainty has been gone. So before going to sleep, doing sports, like briefly even at six, seven year old and going to sleep, closing my eyes, and I used to pray, maybe in silence, maybe something more of a ritualistic, not necessarily to a certain religion. And that helped me to give a certain consistency. And I remember I feel like I had chores, I had to do like some rituals. And then in that I could easily go in. And then when I woke up, I always thought myself coming up. And then I start the day with gratitude and then use a small prayer and then jumping out of my bed super happy and then doing push ups. For me, it was really giving a sense of predictability because school was not so safe as well. I really was stressed with the brutality of the system back then. I don't know the approach with students. That's it, actually. My family and myself finding consistency in some habits. Actually, that's it. I don't have more. What about you? I'm curious. We know that you live between. No, you're not in Philadelphia yet, probably, yeah, in the north of. So in the US and then summers, you were going every single summer to Greece to spend three months with your yaya, with your grandmother and family there. So I'm really curious to see, was it with Krisana or with me? For me, it's like safety has changed its definition with time or for you, it was kind of more or less similar wave, similar episodes of safety.
Mino Vlachos: I think what's I'm finding very interesting about the conversation is for you, you had a difference based on time, so different. Safety meant things different. For me, actually, you caught it. Safety meant different things geographically. So when I was in the United states, and this is me really trying to take responsibility for myself, I think I was probably more of a sensitive child. I felt things very deeply and I think I didn't have a lot of tools at that time to manage my own emotions. So I struggled with a Mediterranean family that was very passionate and hot, but also very intellectual and smart and enjoyed challenging debates so if I add it up, I personally, at that time, did not feel safe within my own house in many ways. I think it's just my constitution was not equipped at that time to be able to regulate within the home. But the things that supported me inside the home when I was in the United States was, I was very fortunate. I had my own bedroom and my parents really, I think, like, whatever, 90, 95% respected not entering my bedroom ever. So I really had the space just to myself. I remember even as a young child, I like to crawl under my bed. And even though it was like a very tight space, something about being in a very confined space, almost hidden, was something that brought me a lot of enjoyment and joy. So I really took a lot of time under my bed. I found myself in the United States getting lost in books a lot. So I found a lot of, I think, feeling of safety by almost going to these imaginary worlds and enjoying an adventure that was outside of my own reality. I found safety playing with friends a lot. So getting out of the house, the more I could get out of the house and be outdoors and have fun and do adventures and go to my friend's house. So I found a lot of safety in community and neighbors and enjoying myself outside of the house. But then in Greece, it was very different where I really just loved my time in, really. I don't really have any sense of being unsafe there with my grandparents and extended family. I have so many just positive memories of my grandparents, all of them creating different experiences for me, whether it was playing games or my grandfather would take me on the trolleys in Athens or take me to museums or the botanical garden, like many things, or my paternal grandmother just taking me to the beach. We'd play a lot of uno. There was many things that we enjoyed that for me, I never felt a sense of insecurity around my grandparents. So I'm really grateful and appreciative for those experiences. And yeah, there still continue to be resources to this day. When I think back on my grandparents and really how much love and support they gave me, it really touches me to this day. And I wanted to bring up this topic because recently I rewatched the movie the Pursuit of happiness, which is with Will Smith from 2006 movie. And in it, Will Smith plays a character based on a true story of a brilliant guy, a very intelligent man, intensely driven and motivated. He has incredible social skills. So across the board, it's like, check, check. This guy is the real deal, is an amazing kind of person, but he's struggling a lot as a single father, in poverty, without any money, trying to find a job. And there's one scene in particular that when I first watched the movie, whenever, probably when it first came out, it was brutal. I found it very difficult to watch. But on second watching it, I thought it was a really amazing scene where at some point, they are kicked out of their home, and they're homeless, and he doesn't know what to do. He has no money, and so he's just riding the metro station. He's riding the trains with his son. I think he's about five years old. And at some point, he realizes they need to find a place to sleep. And so he does this amazing game with the son, where he imagines that they're time travelers, and there's dinosaurs, and he gets the kid very excited about the dinosaurs and the Trex, and the kid is having so much fun imagining all these imaginary dinosaurs. And then the dad is, we have to go find a cave so we can sleep. And so they go into a public bathroom in the metro station, which is, whatever, dirty, filthy. And he locks the door, he puts some napkins on the ground, and they sleep there. And there's one way you can watch it, where you see Will Smith's character, which is just like, complete breakdown, desperation, like struggling, crying, and it feels brutal. But this time, I actually watched the sun, and the sun was having an amazing time. And later in the movie, the sun actually asked, can we go back to the cave? And I thought it was this amazing example of a parent creating safety for a child in the most desperate of times. And how children actually can be led by adults to have these amazing, safe experiences, no matter the circumstance. And so I'm going to ask Krisana, I know you've done so much work for decades now, working with people, working with safety. Why is safety important, and how do we create it?
Krisana Locke: Safety is really important because we have a sense and orientation that we're okay. And the nervous system knows okay. I've been through things, and I'm okay. So when I've worked with a lot of people, and also in process work, and this comes up, it's really giving the person tools to find ways to feel safety, and it's brain body safety. And you can only feel safe through the brain and the body. So a lot of people can talk, but talk therapy won't work. If a person doesn't feel safe. They have to find somewhere inside of them a sense of safety, relative safety. So it's really working with the brain and the body. So when you've been a lot of trauma events, overwhelming events, nothing feels safe. So it's trying to find just one bit an island of safety inside of you. And your body is the container of all your feelings and all your sensations. So if you connect this, that your body is a safe place, then from that people can start letting go, regulating, feeling a somewhat sense of wholeness that I'm okay and also through memory of remembering when you did feel safe, supports a person. So safety is the initial. Safety and bonding are the initial threads of survival. And once you have that, you will feel safe because there's your family around, there's your tribe, you had a cave, there's also healthy bonding. So this is why it's inbuilt in our brains when we're not just always on fighting or fleeing in the reptilian part of the brain, but we're actually in a safe space with limbically we know we have a social setting that I can let go and be okay. So sense of safety needs to be restored in people. If you don't have something resourceful at home, where you feel safe or where you can calm down, it's good to create that in your life or create it in your imagination. Myself, when I was young, I used to fall asleep when I was very young, I used to make stories of being in a cave. What would I put in the cave? Put down furs, have a fire. So it was a way of self soothing, it was a way for me of creating my own space, even if I didn't feel afraid to fall asleep. But it was just my night ritual of I can look out of the cave, I've got a fire, I have food, I have water, and I just cover myself with cozy furs. And by that time, I'd fallen asleep. So children do create daydream or stories because this gives them a sense of safety. Even imaginary friends is a way for them to feel like I have someone that backs me up or toys when they need their toys. They're all resources at that stage where they're anchored in being safe. So it's part of survival if when we feel safe, we can trust and open. So it's establishing trust with ourselves. I hope I've kind of covered it a little bit. Yes.
Mino Vlachos: Mazen, part of your background is you have a doctorate in neuroscience. You're a biologist of many other things that you also have done, experienced and know. But from that perspective, if we talk about safety, what happens to the body when it is safe and what happens to the body when it is not.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Safe first, I'm really trying to play on the words before defining the biological components of such experiences. For the body not to be safe, it's because we are not feeling comfortable and we do not know what to do with those emotions. So there is two form of safety. It's outer and inner. As a child, you're more like regulating. There is more regulation happening. Your mind, it's not super on yet. You rely on the outer to feel the safety. But then when the outer is not so safe, this is where a child starts struggling and the child doesn't know what to do anymore. And how it translates in unsafety or not feeling safe in a body to a child, in the simple equation, biological equation, which is when the child is not mirrored with safety, the child will have so much overwhelming emotions that nobody told them how to deal with it. Unsafety starts to happen. So if we help the body, anyone, the children or the adults, because or anyone to regulate or to be able to find a way how to deal with a little bit of the emotions that comes, this is safety. The ultimate safety is lost from ourselves through our unknowingness. How to deal with our own emotions that they are intense in nature. And when I talk emotions, I'm talking about hormonal physiological response to the outer experience of something which is dangerous. And this is what we go on all our life try to solve. And then all the issues that happen as adults, it's based on that stress response, that emotional response that it's conditioned from very early on. That's why when you see couples, whenever there is intimate, whenever this is where we are triggered the most, we're so vulnerable. Because if any moment, someone so close mirror to us, something that shows or we understand as unsafe, we freak out and freak out. It's not just a philosophical term. Our body brain system start to shooting out all those emotions. The conditioned one. Oh, my God. And then based on the past, and immediately we feel unsafe in the body. So I would say even for ourselves, or we have someone around us, every single person, a human, even animals, kids, adults, old adults. Whenever we're having, in that moment of when we feel immediate unsafe because of an event, all what we need is to feel safety outside through someone, so we can feel safety through our bodies. So if something happened, I would immediately, or like lots of people, like Krisana's research and work. She worked a lot on trauma response. On trauma. What happens on the first instances is so important. There's an accident, people jump on the person and help him. Help him. They start shouting. The unsafety happens there. Of when an event, a very big incident happened. And then the person don't feel safe. So I remember many times in Krisana's work or in Krisana's life, in our life, she comes like this event happened. She comes and then she asks me, can you just hold space for me so I can go back to my safety? And I'm like, okay, interesting. This. And this happened to me. There was nothing safe around me. She gives me a call or if I'm not available, anyone else that she feels that he can hold space for that. Again, holding space is not doing. It's really not doing, but just being present. And then in that she can regulate by feeling, okay, I'm here, she's good. And then she allows her body to take it in and regulate itself. And this is what children actually need. This is even when animals. All what you need is another being or another where. So you can regulate with yourself. We can deregulate. Again, you do not regulate consciously. The body feels all is okay. All is okay. And then it goes by default into a self healing mode. And then regulation starts to happen. And I really feel. Chris, Anna have a lot to share about that. I'll give it to you.
Krisana Locke: I would just like to add. I remember that situation. It was an encounter accident with my bike and a strange encounter from behind. So I went into a bit of a shock. So my rational mind took over. First of all, I felt, oh, I'm embarrassed. Why did this happen? But I could. Because I have worked a lot on trauma work and the somatics that goes on and what happens. And then I noticed I was trying to make sense of what happened, trying to orientate. And my body went into a fight flight. And then after, when the police came and I had to give information, I went home and I could feel something in my body. I'm okay. I didn't have to go to hospital. But I was trying to rationalize what I should do. I should just work now. But then I stopped myself. And I thought, actually, just for me to self heal, to regulate, I need to not stay working. I need to connect. And I felt ridiculous in that moment. But I still said, no, this will help me. So in this situation, Mazen wasn't available. And so I called a friend who I felt safe with. And I told him, hey, I'm just connecting because I had a bit of an accident. And I don't even know why, but you're a really good friend. And then I could feel tears coming. And I said, I just need to know my body's okay. And he said, oh, that's really nice. You think I'm a close friend. And I said, thank you. And it was just five minutes just to help me. I felt my breathing go down, regulate. So in a sense, the tension, the accident was held in the nervous system, and I wanted to override it. But I knew to support me not to have tension or to wonder why this happened or to have fear of why this situation, out of the blue happened with this person. And I can let go of a bad memory. I did this because this is a source of knowing what tools you can to support yourself. Yeah, but I did know at the time, my rational brain, this part, the forehead, was going, don't be ridiculous. You're okay. Just go back to work. You're tough. But I felt my body was shaking. So you really have to listen to the body. You have to say, okay, if I want to heal better, I need to reach out.
Dr. Mazen Harb: And this is what we're missing in the society now and more and more schools and education since they start to be aware. We really had to allow kids to feel their emotion, make them understand that emotions are not something scary. Mino, I would like to do a small experiment. May. I love experiments. And you do. I want to ask you, because I have something to share, but I'm like, I like it that it's shared through you, and then we give it an understanding. You're asking about physiologically, biologically, the brain, body system, psychologically, what really happened. I want you to remember. Yeah, just, you don't have to remember, actually. It's an act of non remembrance. Just allow an episode that happened in your childhood, something happened, and just remember that incident that you felt unsafe without going deep. Just allow that memory to come forward. Do you have it nice?
Mino Vlachos: Of course.
Dr. Mazen Harb: And I invite also the listeners to do the same so I can guide you through the small, nice experiment. It's a safe experiment. All right. Now, can you tell me what happened to you in that instant when, how did you move from not even considering the word safety, you didn't even know what it was to word very unsafe, what happened in your body brain system? If you can just bring a bit of awareness of that child part of you.
Mino Vlachos: For me, I went from a state of pure kind of joy, creativity playing. Like you said, I didn't know the word, but I really did feel safe because I had created this really nice cocoon environment for myself. And then an event occurred, and from there, I moved to feelings of terror, crying, like kind of pleading and begging and feeling completely again. Now, these are adult words I'm putting on it, but out of control. As a kid, though, the thing I knew is just being very upset and terrified and crying. And then now I can say like, no, I felt out of control and there were forces that were almost acting upon me and there was nothing for me to do in that moment. So I felt like a victim in that moment.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Okay, so before that event, immediately before that, when joy and everything, did you notice that you had the experience of being in the moment? Right?
Mino Vlachos: Fully.
Dr. Mazen Harb: And now I'm going to explain, what does it mean? It's not philosophy that we're doing. When you started crying and you collapsed, did you feel the effect of time?
Mino Vlachos: It's tough to say. If I can just speak out loud and kind of go through it a little bit, explore it. I think in that moment I felt strong attachment to certain whatever toys or objects that were being taken away. And I know after that, after that event, then there was some perception of time. It's like in the acute moment of whatever incident, I wasn't aware of time for sure. After that event, then I would always think back to that event, I would think back to that past, and then I would use that to project into the future about what might happen. So I started to calculate risk.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Exactly. So what did you use? What came on that was not on in your childhood until that event? It's the rational mind. When the rational mind came, you start to think in time. Before that, you were living in the moment, expressing your natural aliveness. The event happened. You start thinking time through rationalizing. Did you notice that with it, it correlates with the amount of fear that the rational thinking start to bring. So what I'm trying here in that experiment to show when we feel unsafe in the body, that mean we really are not trusting. That's it. We are not trusting the body. We are not trusting the emotions of the body. So we really want to separate from it, but it's impossible. So we go rely, we activate, we awaken the rational logic mind to come and save us. But the only problem with the rational mind, it uses as force the fear and being trapped outside of the moment. So when we're outside of the moment, we're outside of the body, we really do not feel safe. So actually the event that created unsafety, it was not only the event itself, it's what happened after our reaction, relying on the mind and not anymore on the body, because we could not regulate. Made us start the journey of feeling unsafe, relying on the mind. So here, as adults, we're sitting here, remember, in your life, same experiment, you're doing well, you're not thinking about time. All is good. You receive a letter from the tax office, from your lawyer, from whatever, anyone. That's a good one.
Mino Vlachos: The tax office.
Dr. Mazen Harb: We can all relate to it. And then what happens to you? Can you relate to where you learn the same thing from very early on, a conditioned response. So you're flowing, you're happy in your day, you receive a letter from tax office asking from like five years ago, this, whatever, €100,000 of taxes that you forgot and you thought it was your own money, what happens to you?
Mino Vlachos: Well, of course, I don't know about other people, but I've been through that circumstance. I've had the IRS come and say, you owe me a lot more money than I thought. When it did happen, I was 24, 25 years old. And I went into first like a shock. So first there's just that, like, and this is my, one of my stress responses is the disassociation. So complete numbness and whatever, I leave the body totally and go to some other dimension. And then when I come back, it's like pure anxiety. So it's all about fear and control coupled together and how to strategize and get out of this and get through it. So it's all mind, it's all mental games. I would say today it'd be different just because I've done a lot of personal development work through an amazing company called Tantric Energetics. So today I think I would treat it differently. But before I had done personal development work and learned how to regulate myself, I would go into a complete fight, flight, freeze, collapse, all the above response.
Dr. Mazen Harb: And did you notice that in that the main component that remained and was very active is the overthinking, is the conscious logic, rational mind that really wanted to really solve it. By the way the mind is trying to solve it. But the problem is it goes into a zillion probability that brings so much anxiety, but they are disconnect without trying to solve it in here, in the now first to feel safe to go out and find a solution. So it really go into the cessation state through the body, through the mind, because the body is not safe.
Mino Vlachos: And if I can add, then every single time I did taxes after that event, I would actually go into the same episode.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Exactly.
Mino Vlachos: Regardless of like okay, whatever. After that, I never had tax issues because I corrected so much from that, mentally, I was like, okay, I have to do this thing, this thing, this thing, so it never happens again. But the conditioned emotional responses, it took years. I mean, honestly, I think even to today, I probably still have some association because that was such a severe event for me. I don't know. I took it very hard. So every time I do taxes now, I go into some kind of, like, okay, it's less than it used to be, but it's still a little freak out every time.
Dr. Mazen Harb: And then what do you do to support yourself these days?
Mino Vlachos: I really try to just breathe. So I notice I disconnect my breath. So I'm like, okay, breathe. I try to relax the body physically so that I'm not tense. And then from there, I can then almost reason with my mind and be like, all right, man, chill out. I have all this evidence of filing taxes for, whatever, ten plus years and being okay, and I've done everything. I have an accountant, like, across every board, I can then almost give myself the resources, become like, I have an accountant. I have evidence that I have ten other years of successfully filing and not messing it up. So I think it just comes up now because there's novelty, because we have our own business. So business taxes are like a new novelty. So it triggers that same fear of, like, will I mess it up? But now I have different ways of. I can call you my business partners and talk about it. There's different ways now. I can manage that. So it never goes into anxiety. It might just go into a bit of fear.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Exactly. So here, actually, because we might have. Oh, okay. So the mind is wrong, is bad or. No, look, you use your mind in its best quality. The mind is an amazing tool. It's an amazing tool. Again, the mind is not the brain. The mind is one part of the brain. The brain is way bigger. It has so many other components. So the rational mind is one tool of the brain. So here, what you did, actually, now what you're doing is reconnecting to the physical body and then bringing up and bring rationality through your mind. So actually, this is safety. You went to safety and then used your mind. So the mind can solve problems accurately when we are safe. But to expect from the mind to solve problems where we are not safe, we're not in the body, we're really insecure and disconnected. It's really to ask so much for the mind, because the mind job is not to bring safety of the body, because it's different a little bit in that sense. So it's our responsibility to reconnect to the body, ground ourselves, and then ask help for the mind to find solutions. I lived for Krisana. I was feeling we charged her because we love those topics. And then she's like, I could feel her. Yeah.
Krisana Locke: I would like to say that sometimes for some people, the body is not safe. There has been incidents that happen where it's just not safe to go inside and resource themselves. Like, the body is safe. So in that case, to find other resources through imagination or a safe space that you can go to, or also to have a place that is safe, to have a home, to have an apartment, to have people around you that you feel safe with, not the people where I like to hang out because we go and get drunk. If you're not feeling safe, it's really looking for what will support you on outside resources so that the brain body system knows, okay, the outside world is safe. And then there's some sense of coming back into the container of the body and finding ways to find that the body is safe. Like, there are some techniques of people tapping the body, like the container, the outside of the body, or squeezing the muscles to feel like my body is the container of all my feelings and sensations. So that when I'm in the body and when it is safe, I can regulate the emotions, and I also can digest them and process them so that I can come into a healthy regulation. So any situation we've had has to be processed through the body and has to be done in a way that's not forced or pushed, but finding ways to support yourself, to come more in ease and grounding and establish trust first in the body. So that's one thing. If I see some people and I see, like, they don't even feel safe to enter the body, then it's really to use other resources. Nature, what has made you feel safe? Playing music. Wow.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Animal. Something you always watching an animal. We did once in tantric energetics workshops. It's really nice exercise when you ask people in the workshop to go out and then try to look at animals. And then Kristena was explaining, really, it was beautiful learning for me, the idea to watch an animal walking a cat, a dog, a bird, just to show when nature is fully embodied, because they're really much in their bodies, it gives, because we can imitate their mirror neurons, the cells. We always imitate what's around us. So it really gives a sense of even babies looking at babies, because they are the most embodied, actually, in that sense, they're not yet overthinking. And for me, this is one of the things where I felt, because I did it most of the time and never felt so much safety in my body. And then when we're doing this exercise to others, I was like, interesting. When I'm around animals and even petting animals, it's an instant, at least something that is regulated, embodied, and really was supportive.
Krisana Locke: Yes. We've also worked with a woman who works with horses. So there's horse therapy where people come and just be around horses. And there's a sense of regulation because the horse is in. Animals do know how to regulate themselves. We have forgotten, we override that. We override what we feel, our emotions, what's happening in the body, and we override that to just be in the rational mind all the time. Oh, everything's okay. Oh, I can do this. I don't need to relax. Oh, I can overwork. Oh, I can push through. But you do not know how much the body has to process that. So that puts a heavy load on the body, that puts up the stress levels, and then the bodies cannot cope after a while. And that's why you get burnout.
Dr. Mazen Harb: But also, Mino, you tell us if we're going away. But from the topic, I think we're still in it. But it's very important to know that the body is super intelligent. We're speaking about millions and millions of years of evolution. So when we're like, I will solve it with my mind, I'm like, good luck. The body is constantly carcinogenic cells and everything that the body take care to get rid of and then heal. And then we're talking of milliseconds constantly the immune system, the body system is really supporting body, brain system. So luckily, the last 15 years, something happened where before the psychology of talk therapy was took over and was very intellectualized. So Chris gave here the example of horse, horses, to be around horses, horse therapy. There is very little speaking and you're going to, but how can I understand it scientifically, is to rely on the intelligence of the body. Funnily enough, the healing ability of the body is the default mode. You're going to tell us, but why we feel unsafe, why we cannot heal? Because we are so afraid when an event happened to us. And then we step in the way of the body healing itself by overdoing. Even as a kid, we start thinking, trying, but we cannot let go anymore. We lose the opportunity of letting go. So that's why all those new therapies, tribes and aboriginal people, they know that that's not new. Everything all those healing abilities from are nothing but has been used with our ancestors. From cold showers to drumming, to all of those things, we give them names. It's good names to market them, to bring them out. But I do not believe that we are the creators of those healing abilities. We are the marketers, marketing people to bring again what our ancestors discovered.
Mino Vlachos: Yes, I have a question for Krisana, and then Mazen will have a separate one for you. It'll be actually different question. So, Krisana, I'm going to actually go back in time a few years to the COVID time, so I'll just share my personal experience, which is like, I struggled a lot during COVID I was in New York City, in Brooklyn, living in a basement. We had lockdowns, so I spent months and months in a basement without sunlight. And anytime I did venture.
Mino Vlachos: The population.
Mino Vlachos: Density is high in New York. So I was seeing literally people put into whatever ambulances with the hazmat suits. And it was a period of a lot of uncertainty and unknowing, and a lot of fear from the government and the media. So through all of this, it was very difficult for me to find resources for myself. I did have some tools, so I ended up doing, I think at some point I was up to like 4 hours a day of active meditations in the basement by myself, like moving my body and trying to find some regulation. But it wasn't working for me personally. I couldn't find a way to sustain myself in that environment. And I think it was around May or June. So we had been doing the lockdowns for a while. I participated in an online tantric energetics workshop. And what really was very novel and surprising in a good way, is this concept that we can create safety for ourselves. It's not something that's out there. So my question to you is, and I don't know if you remember that workshop. For me, it was like a massive turning point in my mental health during that time.
Mino Vlachos: But how can people take kind of.
Mino Vlachos: A little bit more of the. I don't know what the word is, control or responsibility. How can a human make themselves feel safe when the world around them feels unsafe?
Krisana Locke: Well, just to begin with, life is uncertain. There's always going to be change, and we have to adapt with it. So when this happens, a lot is we are social animals. So in this lockdown, there was a lot of isolation, there was a lot of fear, there was a lot of survival fear, and there was a lot of isolation. So people felt like they were on their own. So there's a part of the nervous system where it's called social engagement. And when we know we're safe, it's when we're around people, where we connect with people. So it's to understand, when you feel that you're in isolation, what will support us? Support me to come out of that. Even if I do my own tools, I do active meditations, I work on myself, I regulate my body. But there's a part that we have to have human connection. A baby. A baby. You can give a baby food, you can give it a newborn baby, you can give it powdered milk. If the mother's not there, you can put an incubator. But if it's not cuddled, if it's not touched, the bonding, they will end up dying. Because it's innate to survival of a human bonding and connection. So to feel safe is to also, when you're feeling isolated or when you think you can do it on your own, is to also to have some healthy reaching out to people like we did when we did this tantric energetics workshop online. Just to have a human connection, seeing everyone through the screen, it gave a sense of we're all in this together. So you will also see this in older people. They get very isolated when they're on their own. And this brings up overwhelm. And this brings up. They don't know that they can't support themselves. So to have neighbors, to have animals around them. So they're saying, no man, no person is an island. It is so true. We are so interdependent of each other. The thing is to find the right people to connect to. When we do feel shut down, it is very difficult to reach out. But it's to understand by the body what is happening. If I'm feeling numb, what will support me is to slowly connect. Connect with nature, connect with animals, connect with people you feel safe with that. Give you a sense of safety.
Mino Vlachos: Role of personal boundaries.
Dr. Mazen Harb: And safety.
Krisana Locke: The role of personal boundaries.
Dr. Mazen Harb: You're asking a big question, man.
Krisana Locke: Yes. When we've been in overwhelm, when we've been in an event that's been traumatic, we lose sense of orientation, we lose sense of boundaries. So even if our outer boundaries, we take care of them, or someone takes care of them for us, food, shelter, someone staying with us. The basics, sleeping. These are all. Have you slept? Have you eaten? Have you hydrated? Will, come with us. We'll take care of you. These are the basics. To just support anyone who's gone through something. They're the basics, what we need to do with ourselves. But when we've been through an overwhelm or a big event, our internal energetic boundaries get ruptured. So this is when generally, we work with someone who can support bringing these internal boundaries back online. So we get a misconception of what is safe and what is healthy. So we create outside boundaries that maybe are not healthy for us because we overstretch them. So then it's really working with first finding safety, a safe space in your imagination so you can come in to find and then finding where you feel that in the body, to start to find an island of safety in the body. So a lot of that's got to do. You can find personal boundaries with people outside, but you may not have your energetic boundaries intact inside. So it's to work on those with different tools.
Mino Vlachos: And so now I'll share a little bit, but I'm going to gear us a little bit towards the work we do with our business company, three peak coaching and solutions, where we support businesses. In the last ten days, we've actually done a couple of workshops virtually for folks that are in Lebanon. And what I've been struck by is, at the time of recording this, March 2024, there's still a lot of skirmishes and bombings in southern Lebanon. So it's a country that's quasi in a war right now. And the folks that we've connected with in Beirut, there's still a lot of fear about war and bombing. What I've been struck by in two workshops we've done now is that we did focus on exercises on safety. And by the end of it, you could see people. I mean, they articulated it, but you could see it physically. It was like they had this huge weight on their shoulders and they dropped it. And there was this beautiful community feeling that emerged. And it was such a joy and pleasure and a privilege and honor to be around a group of people that really found safety and found community. And it's what makes our work very meaningful for me. So I very much enjoyed those workshops. And these are folks that, again, are in Lebanon right now while there is a quasi war going on. And meanwhile, we also have done workshops in the last couple of weeks with corporate clients. And what I'm struck by is, in the corporate setting, is that the folks that we do the exercise with have almost less of an ability to get to that safety than folks that are actually in a war right now. And so, Mazen, I would love you just to reflect a little bit about our work in the corporate environment. And with business people. And of course, I'll add my own two cent in a bit. But what do you observe about safety in corporations and almost what we're observing with our clients who are in safe places, Germany, United States, Ireland, they're not in a war, and yet they seem to be in a bit of a shock at times. What are your thoughts?
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yes, we really need to go back to physics and really to understand and respect the human body, so it will allow us to respect and understand people regardless where they come from and regardless of the incident. There is the relative, relative within the body, within the psyche, and there is the absolute in the nervous system and everything what's happening, it's really relative. I cannot go judge our corporate clients that they're not experiencing harsh incidents of war or like why they'reacting like this their worst place somewhere else. Our reality is where we focus our attention. Our nervous system doesn't care about philosophy. Our nervous system only lives in one instant of time, which is the now. And it really reacts based on its environment. It really reacts based on what has lived, the conditioned emotional response, stress response, mental response. Hence it makes it very, very relative. I worked with a lot in war and migration trauma. And then I realized, and that's why actually, I came to Berlin in 2015. I was given a position as a main research scientist when the syrian refugees were welcomed in Germany in 2015. And I was given this opportunity to create a project on war and migration trauma. And then when I was sitting and then meeting with those, most were young adults and some were older folks, actually, I really start to understand the relativity of incidents, of who we are and what's really happening. And of course, something I struggled with when I came to Europe. That's a joke, we said in the other podcast. And I'm like studying Krisana, I came to Europe and I saw people depressed, burnout, suicidal, because of whatever, an incident that the father slapped them. And I could not grasp it, or something happened, I could not grasp it because I thought what happened to me and televon is way worse than that. And I found gratitude in this and this. Slowly I start to understand, to respect other people, to respect and understand. Luckily, I was doing biology very early on, since I was 19 years old, studying biology and oh my God, everything is really, really relative. So when we sit with the corporate clients, it doesn't matter the history, because each individual has his own and her own history, and that's the reality of it. And we do not know what they suffered, struggled with, and on top, both person can have the same incident. And that's actually was basic. All my research, both can have the same incident. The father slapping them, or both having that bomb blast happening beside them. And all the research I've done obviously would say the same incident should have the same effect. This is not true. Because what we are forgetting, that each person is not only nervous system, it's a whole consciousness on its own. That's full of memories, emotions, epigenetic things that given genetics, things given from their own generational things. All the DNA is very specific to them. So we really cannot say because of an incident, that's what happens. We really need to take it case by case. So that's why in our corporate clients we sit. And that's the best ability I can give to every human being is to listen first and to really consider. You do not know what they went through. Not based on the event, on what's really happening within them. So the best way is to ask them, please tell me not only the story, tell me what happened to you. So when we're able to speak the language of the body, we're closest to the truth. So we're closest to healing. And in a corporate sense, we're closest to the solution.
Mino Vlachos: So now I'm going to ask you to maybe create a hypothesis as a good scientist. Because I observe so much feeling of unsafety. Not feeling safe in the corporate environments. What do you think are some of the things that lead to that feeling of not being safe in a corporate working environment? Mazin or mean? Let's start with Mazin.
Krisana Locke: I will add the first one. First you have to look at. Is it my own unsafety that I have accumulated. My own personal associations and events. So that's one. And then you have to look at what's contributing to feeling unsafe in the corporate world where you're working. So there's two. And I give it to Mazen.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Thank you. You gave it more specific to the front. I'll go even backwards. It really has to do with your. I don't know. I'm going to go like a name, a new name. With your emotional history. With your emotion conditioning history. With your stress response, conditioned history. It really has nothing to do actually big one. But I don't know if it has nothing to do with the corporate and everything to do with the human. So those people, because we work in corporate, you're noticing them. But if we go somewhere else, we will notice them somewhere else. The thing is, we bring to the corporate our consciousness, our nervous system, our whole existence. And then when we leave the house and go to work and change our clothes, we cannot change who we are. And who we are is based on how we react. We have a choice to respond to things. But this is healing. Now I'm going to speak, not in a very self aware way of understanding and healing myself is when we come and change my clothes, to change meetings or change settings. I still come with all my baggage, my luggage, of all my lived experience, in the good, in the bad, in the ugly, in the high, in the low. And then when I relate to the outside world, I only relate to it based on my own perception. And now I'm going to give an understanding through neuroscience, through what is perception? Perception, it's the most relative thing that can ever exist, because it's not. I see, that's it. And that's why religion, cultures, countries, fraction, everybody's fighting. This is my truth. No, that's my truth. Everybody perceived the truth in their own way. Because on the biological matter, perception is not one thing, it's a mix of things. One of it is your lived experience that created a memory to adapt. So whenever something similar happens, or I see something similar, I have a conditioned response to give a solution and second. So imagine how each one of us has a different reality, how we live certain episodes. And a second is the emotional state where I am right now, which is constantly changing. So to have two people, two persons, have the same perception, identical, it's asking the impossible. And then when you see more people, like connecting or creating communities to all think and feel the same way, that means you have really to cut your aliveness, you have really to believe in dogmas, you have really to become a certain way fanatic. Hence the word fans and fans of soccer, or you have to be fanatic to always start to perceive the same thing altogether. And to unite on that, you have really to cut parts of your perceptions, to align that the three of us, we have the same way, you can have the same intention, you can have the same expectation, you can have the same vision, but you can never ever have the same experience lived from inside. And that's a fact. That's not philosophy. And hence the question of identity, identity crisis. But why don't you accept my identity? We are eight billions. I don't know, it's all rising, probably last time I thought about was 8.1 billions or something. We have, and this is, and this is fact, again, not philosophy. Let us say 8 billion humans on this planet, and not talking about other beings with the 8 billion were we still thinking in philosophy and religion, let us come toward one perception of the truth and reality. Here's the fact. The brain and the consciousness and the lived experience makes it that there is 8 billion realities. But wait, wait, I'm going to even make it even way more complicated. At any moment you have 8 billion realities that mean whenever we see something, we always see it an 8 billion possibility through what we feel. And then it's very unique to our experience based on our DNA and our lived experience. But now, to make it even worse, to go to probability numbers are huge numbers. But that perception is changing constantly because we changing constantly and our emotions changing constantly. You have eight billions that they have a different identity and reality is constantly changing. And on top of the 8 billion everyone goes through one day, so multiple times changing their reality and how they perceive it. So we're talking about huge numbers of realities created perceived within each one's brain. So when we say let us unite on one perception and that is, that's the truth, is really asking to put the planet in one bottle. Yes.
Krisana Locke: So what is the perception corporate world?
Mino Vlachos: I'll answer that. Okay, I'll jump in. So again, this is my perception filtered through all my life experience working in corporate, being a coach, a consultant, blah, blah, blah. I don't think there's one answer, but I'm going to use words that might offend people. But I think inherently most employees, and I'm not saying this is a bad thing, so there's no judgment, but most employees are selfish, so they come to the corporation to get something for themselves. And I'm not saying that's wrong, that's maybe the way it should be. I just think they come because they want to get something. There's something either intrinsic or extrinsically motivating them that they want to come and take and they exchange. It's a marketplace, right? I give you my labor, you give me something, money, visibility, status, power, belonging. Like we're going to these places for a thing that we're exchanging with. Okay. When we enter the corporate world, I think that we're to your point, Mazan, we're very much ruled by also a strategy because I'm there to get something. So it's really led by the mind. And so when we're in a position of I want something that's outside of my control and I'm using my mind to get it, what we're doing is we're ceding any power we have to the corporation and to the boss. So all of a sudden these are people that have something and they're the gatekeepers. And now I have to basically change my behavior to get them to give me what I want, which, if I'm going to use, again, a blunt word, which with no judgment, because we all do it and we're all masters of it, is manipulation. So the corporate environment is a place that's rife with control, politics, manipulation. I want to get something. It's very different than, let's say, the three of us want to go out to dinner and we genuinely care about each other. We're friends and we want to pick a restaurant. So we're going to find something that really works for each one there. We can just be very honest and open and communicate, share our feelings. Oh, I don't want pizza. I want a salad. We can just talk about it. But what happens when you become the gatekeeper of what I want is I start to hide, I start to lie. I start to again, skew the truth. Every word I'm using is a tool, but it's a tool based on the mind and based on fear, because I'm afraid I might not get the thing I want. And when I'm operating on mind fear, control, manipulation, it's very hard to feel safe because I've created the conditions where I might not get what I want or someone else has control over me, but I'm trying to control them. It's a lot of games, and there's not a lot of checking in with how I actually feel and what's within my own sphere of control and sphere of influence. So I've given all of myself away to someone else. And it's an interesting juxtaposition because, of course, I was an employee and I did all these games, I did all these experiments myself. But now we're running our own company. So I'm on the other side. I'm an owner, and I can see the other side of the coin. And I was telling Mazen the other day, it's like I have both voices alive in me now. So I have that employee unionist that wants to get the comrades together and unionize the employees. And then I have a part of me that's now an owner that's like, you don't understand the other side of the thing and the entitlement of the employee and all these things that will probably trigger people. But as an owner, I see it now and I get it where I'm like, you just want to come to me to take something from me that I'm working very hard to build and to protect and to make sure that the mission and vision is pure and clear. So now I have this dialogue inside myself, and then I get the employee where I'm like, yeah, go for it. Maximize what you can get from your employer. Of course you should. They do have a lot of resources that they're hoarding, and I think probably unfairly so I don't know what to make of that. I don't have a grand point in this point. It's fun to have different perceptions right within oneself.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Mazen.
Mino Vlachos: So at least for my living body, you can say I have at least two perceptions and probably many more based on the angle I can take on a problem. But that is some of why I think the corporate environment tends to feel very unsafe, because it's not a place of safety. It's an arena where everyone's trying to get something and compete and show something and project an image and get in return. I don't know how, if you stay in that game, I don't know how you can feel safe. Now. I think you can stay in those environments and feel safe, but I don't know that you can stay in the game and feel necessarily safe. The individual needs to shift something within themselves to bring something with themselves so that they can feel. So I'll give a real personal example, and then Mazana seems like you might want to share something, so let me just give a quick personal thing. But there was a point where I stopped playing these games at work. I decided I was no longer going to care about promotions, I was no longer going to care about financial increase in money. I was no longer going to care about how other people perceived me. I really just wanted to do my job, do it super well, be effective, and then go home and enjoy my family. So I stopped playing the game. And instantly what happened was I started to feel safe because all the things I wanted, I could obtain on my own. They had no power over me other than firing me. But I was doing my job. I was fulfilling my requirements. Yeah, some people didn't like me. Some people didn't think I was this really cool guy anymore, but I was fulfilling my job duties and I wasn't being progressed. So there were people who were my peers who started to go above me, and I found that okay, but in that moment, I could regulate myself, I could find safety, I could have full power and control over myself. And I stopped manipulating people, and then they couldn't manipulate me. And then honesty started to emerge, and trust started to emerge. And then real companionship started to emerge. And all of a sudden work wasn't bad. Work could be enjoyable as an employee who one day, once upon a time, perceived themselves to have no power, no control, no nothing. And that everyone was out to get them.
Mino Vlachos: The shift happened in me and the environment tolerated me.
Mino Vlachos: I think that's the other. Fear is like if I step into my own being and I start to bring all my perceptions, my authenticity, the environment is going to destroy me somehow it didn't. If you can do the competent parts.
Mino Vlachos: Of your job, they will tolerate it.
Mino Vlachos: I think there's this leap of fear of like. And that goes back to the conditioning, I think probably from the childhood. But the leap of fear. If I start to be myself and I start to say no. If I say no to my colleagues, no to my boss, they're going to destroy me immediately. But that's not the case. I've never actually seen that happen. There's steps you can take along the way to take back the autonomy, take back the power within yourself. And if you're doing a competent job.
Dr. Mazen Harb: They will tolerate it.
Mino Vlachos: There's a lot more destructive people that bring a lot more destructive traits to work than saying no. That's like one of the least offensive things you could probably do in the workplace. So that is my kind of summary and whatever perception on some of the dynamics that exist within the corporate world. But I know, Mazen, you had something you wanted to potentially share.
Dr. Mazen Harb: I don't know, man. You just really rounded. You really rounded very beautifully. It really sank in my belly. Probably more on a. I will give it just as a complementary to what you said, those beautiful. Understanding the truth of it that yes, whatever happens all the time, we are mirrored. When we have fear and unsafety, we will mirrored with fear and safety. Whenever we go back to intimacy, authenticity. We cannot but create an experience and form a reality that's based on that. Even when we lose that to a moment, we always. When we know how to get back to ourself, then reality changes again. Because wherever we put our attention, we shape the reality through our just. It's more of a last word for me on that and pass it on. Just to Krisana on one last thing. To really show a bit of understanding and compassion to the corporate world and to the people to really say, it's their biology. It's our biology. Not to give an excuse or justification. There are three main incentive for survival. Like motivation that even if you're starving or dying, there's something you go and then your whole survival system goes. It's the psychological shelter. It's food. Right? Eating, it's really knowing how to. I forgot them.
Krisana Locke: Food.
Dr. Mazen Harb: It's food, water, shelter, self engagement. Sorry. Social connection. Really connecting with other beings. And then. Yeah, our stress response. So it's hunger, stress and sex. Actually, that's it. I should have said it from the beginning. It's hunger, stress and sex. Okay. This really brings a really conditioned animalistic response because it's necessary for survival. When we eat, we're fed, we can survive. When we have a stress, we can respond to our environment. The stress hormones help us. Sun and sun. And then when we have the sex hormones, the sexual energy, we can continue the species. So this is ingrained in our DNA. Deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deepest thing, if any of it. And you know very well, like in marketing and everything that happens in the still until now, they really targeted those three. Motivational drive. They call those three motivational. The basic motivational drive. Yeah. Hunger, stress, and then sex. So most movies are around that you do those three. Yeah. We have the society we have. So now coming back to really bring understanding and support for everyone in corporate and beyond it and outside of it still. But when we're speaking about corporate, the exchange is money. What is money? It's shelter, it's food, it's having less stress. We're really playing with the currency of survival if it want to be seen through that lens. So when we say folks out there really feel unsafe and they really manipulate, I'm like, yes, I understand them, because at any moment they can be fired. But what happens to me if I'm fired? They might find another job or not, it doesn't matter. But the idea is there is an inherited fear when there is the exchange between I give you my time, you give me money, but if I stop your money, I will go starving. And then so we go work and we all unsafe because we are really afraid. And just I want to really give this understanding that there is no judgment that we feel unsafe in those places. And because that's the currency. And I'll give it to Krisana just.
Mino Vlachos: To round up, ask you a question, Krisana?
Krisana Locke: Yes.
Mino Vlachos: So this will be to close us out. So this will be the last question. What are some tools, resources, or even experiences that support us to find safety?
Krisana Locke: I can walk you through. We can do it together. Just some techniques to find some relative safety in the body. So there's one also everyone can do at home is to have your feet on the ground or even if you're standing but I hope you're not. Maybe some people are listening. No, but basically this is one you can do, is have your feet on the ground. So this is always a sense. I know where my feet are on the ground. So connect with the feet on the ground. Sit. And there's one that we can do, is to put your right hand underneath your left. Yeah. I'm sending some new. Under your left armpit.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Should we try it with you?
Krisana Locke: Yes. And so it's out where the heart side. Yeah. And then you put your left hand holding your shoulder like this.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Above.
Krisana Locke: Yeah.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Because if someone is not watching but listening to podcast.
Krisana Locke: And just feeling what happens when you do this, if there's a shift or this connection, a sense of the container. So this is one we can do.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Sorry, one moment. But the scientist in me is, I cannot wait to share why. The moment I did this, my breath likely sank and dropped. That's too fast. Why?
Krisana Locke: Because we're giving a sense of safety. The body is our container, of all our sensations, feelings and emotions, and it's also being held. So it's really just holding the shoulder so we can do this to bring instantly some self soothing and self regulation.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Where were you 35 years ago? Alone. My room. Feeling safe. Oliver, sometimes things can be.
Krisana Locke: We can do this. And then just for a few minutes. Five minutes, or, you know, you're something. And then there's another one that we can do, is you can put one hand on the upper chest.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yeah.
Krisana Locke: And the other hand on your forehead.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yeah.
Krisana Locke: And just feel the connection between them.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yeah.
Krisana Locke: And you can do this for a minute. You can have your eyes opened or closed, whatever feels safe, if you want to have your eyes closed. Or you can have your eyes open and just feeling into that, between those two spaces and just letting a shift happen. Maybe with a feeling, with a sensation. Some people, you can do this for about five minutes. So your hands on the upper chest and on your forehead. So you're feeling this space. Yeah. This bridging. And now keep your hand on your upper chest, and then the other hand goes on to your belly. You can do this one standing or sitting. And then you feel the shift and you notice the feelings or the shift or sensations.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yeah.
Krisana Locke: And you can hang out doing that for a while. And then I like to ask Mazlin, how was that short experience?
Dr. Mazen Harb: Look at my eyes.
Krisana Locke: Something dropped, something shifted, like, in my.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Breath, but also back in my shoulders and my back. I don't know.
Krisana Locke: It's simple, but deep.
Dr. Mazen Harb: Yeah. Like, my scientific mind is like, that's very fast because we're in a podcast as well. From being here, trying to like speaking and being present to really connecting to the body. Immediate drop. And then I got excited fast and my engine is like, oh my God, I want to share that.
Krisana Locke: So you dropped aliveness.
Dr. Mazen Harb: I dropped everything. Dropped my shoulders, my belly, my breath. But for whatever reason, where I am now, I feel also aliveness. I feel wanna.
Krisana Locke: Yeah, you feel aliveness?
Dr. Mazen Harb: My voice on.
Krisana Locke: Yeah. So it's really connecting with the body.
Dr. Mazen Harb: I feel my feet on the ground.
Krisana Locke: Yeah. So that's something some techniques people can take with them. It's called for self soothing, soothing, self regulation, tapping the body, shower, feeling the water. So it's also what we can do with ourselves anytime, anywhere.
Mino Vlachos: Lovely. And on that, I am going to ask us to bring this podcast in this time and space to a close. And it seems like we have a lot more to share on this topic, so I'm sure we'll revisit it at some point. So I just want to thank everyone for listening and we hope to see you soon. Thank you.
Krisana Locke: Thank you. Bye.