Becoming Safely Embodied: A Guide to Organize Your Mind, Body and Heart to Feel Secure in the World

Whether you are stuck in the distress of life, or appear like nothing’s wrong, you may have faced trauma or incredible stress or suffocating fear. Maybe you wonder whether those emotions, memories, and experiences are blocking you from being as fulfilled and happy as you could be. Maybe you’re stuck in patterns that simply no longer work for you.

What if you could change it all? What if you could feel safe and solid and secure inside your own body? What if your life could be peaceful and centered and fulfilled?

In Becoming Safely Embodied, Deidre Fay shares from her 35 years of psychotherapy and spiritual practice to provide a truly practical way to integrate modern neurobiology and ancient wisdom to finally and completely heal from emotional trauma, no matter how deep or faint, how long ago or recent you experienced the pain.

Throughout her years as a therapist, Deirdre noticed that clients would make progress while in a therapy session and then revert to old patterns between sessions. What people need is a set of skills and practices to support ongoing healing and wholeness.

That's what this book will help you with. You’ll discover:

What “trauma” is and why you might have had a hard time healing from this pain,

Why shame is an attachment wound and how to harness self-compassion to truly transform suffering,

What to do when you feel like you’re easily “triggered” by a certain person or situation in your life so that you can stay centered and safe,

Instantly effective methods of breath work for brain change and emotional regulation so that you can calm your mind or energize your body,

The nine core skills that can help you to be more at home with your internal world and cultivate a body that’s a safe place for rest, reflection, and wellbeing,

Simple daily practices that (like brushing your teeth) promote ongoing healing in your body, mind, and soul,

And much, much more.

Whether you are healing from abandonment issues or from pain or from grief―or whether you are helping someone else to heal―Becoming Safely Embodied is your map and guidebook to finally becoming at home with your internal world, cultivating a body that’s a safe place for rest, reflection, and wellbeing, and creating the life you want to live, instead of living in the life your history catapults you into. You may be wondering, “Is it possible for ME? Can I change? Is it possible for me to shift these painful patterns into a more fulfilling life? Can I truly organize this crazy inner world?” The simple answer is, “Yes,” and your journey to becoming safely embodied begins inside the pages of this book.

Deirdre Fay, MSW has decades of experience exploring the intersection of trauma, attachment, yoga and meditation, and teaches “a radically positive approach to healing trauma”. Deirdre founded the Becoming Safely Embodied skills groups, the basis for this manual, and is the author of Attachment-Based Yoga & Meditation for Trauma Recovery and co-author of Attachment Disturbances for Adults, as well as the co-author of chapters in Neurobiological Treatments of Traumatic Dissociation. A former supervisor at The Trauma Center, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute trainer from 2000–2008, certified in Internal Family Therapy, qualified trainer in Mindful Self-Compassion, former board member of the New England Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, and trained in Self-Awakening Yoga and LifeForce Yoga, Deirdre is a respected international teacher and mentor for working safely with the body. She currently resides in Boston, MA.