Beyond Survival Mode: Feeling Safe & Sexy

This is my first episode since Israel was attacked by terrorists on October 7. Since I have been in survival mode, along with many others, I have been thinking about that means as it pertains to body image and my work. The topics in this episode are centered around the bridge between feeling safe in our bodies and having the ability to feel sexy and connected to ourselves. I talk about the importance of creating our own safety and embracing sexuality instead of feeling guilty about it, especially during dark times.

Doors are now opening for The New Sexy, and more details will be coming this week! Feel free to email me to be one of the first to hear more and apply. rebecca@rebeccasigala.com

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https://www.instagram.com/rebeccasigalaboudoir

Transcript

Rebecca Sigala: 0:00

Hello, my beautiful souls. Welcome back to the body image revolution. Today is October 21st, 2023. And I feel like the date is very important to mention because this is a time in history that is never going to be forgotten. It's been a really dark time. And like many other people, I personally have been swung into survival mode and I'm going through so many different emotions, like sadness, anger. Fear and just feeling despair and brokenness. And all of these different things have come up since October 7th, when Hamas terrorists attacked Israel, my homeland, the country that my family and I live in right now, as we speak. Over 1400 Israelis have been brutally murdered and over 200 beautiful souls have been kidnapped. This is including entire families, women, children. Babies, babies. It's a nightmare that I never, ever thought I would experience in my own lifetime. Of course, I grew up hearing a lot and learning a lot about the Holocaust and a lot of these stories feel so similar and actually my own. grandfather, he survived the pogroms, which happened in Russia before the Holocaust. And a lot of those feelings and imagery are coming up right now for me. And I know for a lot of people in my country and Jewish people all over the world, it's hard to explain to someone who doesn't live in Israel or isn't super connected to Israel, but. The degrees of separation are just very small. Everybody I know has been personally affected by this war. And I hate to say it, but it's not over. And there's this balance between grieving and quote unquote, moving forward with our lives, but also remaining in the state of protection and fear. And this is just like a balance that I think a lot of us don't know how to navigate. And I really don't wish it upon anyone because it's really hard. My husband has been called up to reserve duty and the kids haven't been in school full time. It's been hard to just keep up with like the basics, let alone continuing my business and this incredible community that I've built. And so of course you guys are on my mind and my community and my clients are so much on my mind and I keep thinking to myself like. What light can I create even during this darkness? And what can I learn about myself right now? And how can I adapt my business and what I offer to help more women right now? And at the same time, in the same breath, I'm thinking like, who is thinking about sexy pictures right now? People are like literally running to bomb shelters. Who is thinking about feeling beautiful or deepening their relationships with their bodies? Survival mode is survival mode sometimes. And literally nothing else matters. It just feels like nothing else matters except for getting through this fucking day or this fucking week or whatever it may be for whatever you're going through. And the truth is, is that our bodies, they're going through all of this with us. And I personally remember the first several days after October 7th, when I kept scrolling the news. Not that I'm not now, but I'm really trying to work on it And I'm watching the death toll rise and I'm running to my bomb shelter a couple of times a day, calming my kids, locking my doors, making sure I have enough water and food and storage. It was just like such a surreal reality. It still feels very surreal. And my entire body for the first several days was like in knots, my entire pelvic floor. I don't know if you guys know what I'm talking about, but like, it was like tightened and like literally. I was feeling really aching and I felt sick to my stomach. I was alert and nervous. And at the same time I was exhausted and drained. And, you know, as I'm talking about it, it just really makes sense. Like when you think about our bodies being the home to all of our emotions, especially during this time and having all of the emotions that we haven't yet processed, of course, we're physically feeling this way as well. And the last thing I was thinking about was feeling sexy. But now I'm asking myself, why? And it's not because feeling sexy is vain or not important. But it's because I didn't feel safe in my body. Physical and psychological safety comes before anything else. We can't properly function without it. We can't connect to ourselves. We can't be ourselves without feeling safe. Without safety, we stay in survival mode. Even when we don't need to be. And you can think about it on this like war level and it's obvious why we don't feel safe and why we feel sick with worry for the safety of our own children. But to be honest, their psychological safety is what worried me the most. There was like one night when there was a false alarm with a possible terrorist infiltration nearby. And my kids, they're 11 and 13 years old. They completely freaked out in a way that I had never seen before. And they just like both laid on my body as I put my arms around them and they shook and cried in fear and terror. And then I see my four year old's joy wiped from her face when the sound of the siren blares and my heart just breaks. That is like the point of terrorism. The psychological warfare is even greater than the physical threats we face. So if you put the war to the side, which is like kind of weird to even say right now, but if we think about times when we didn't feel safe in our bodies, we might have other memories come up like sexual trauma that we experienced or just trauma in general. We might have a memory like when we needed to protect ourselves from a physical threat. Like we were walking down the street late at night or some creepy dude is coming up and hitting on us and we don't feel safe. Or just the general feeling of being like judged or embarrassed or shamed that could be coming from like an insecurity that we have about our body and we're thinking everyone is thinking about it or judging us for it. Or it could be an experience where we were actually body shamed by someone. Other things could be experiencing social anxiety or other kinds of anxiety or other mental health struggles like depression. You get the idea. In those moments that we are not feeling safe in our bodies, it's very unlikely that we feel sexy or beautiful or connected to our bodies because our bodies are doing what they need to do in that moment. They're protecting us and they respond in kind to whatever is happening to us or whatever we perceive to be happening to us. So a big thing that I talk to women about is like. What does sexy mean to them? What is their definition of sexy? So I'll always ask them like, when is the last time that you felt sexy? Or when in your life did you feel the most sexy? And they often come up with such beautiful answers and a lot of them have to do with feeling comfortable, feeling liberated, uninhibited, trusting, surrendering, which now that I'm thinking about it all really stem from this foundation of Safety, feeling sexy is only possible when we feel safe enough in our bodies. When we feel safe enough to explore ourselves, to understand ourselves, to go to those places, to embrace ourselves and to outwardly be ourselves. We don't feel like there's a threat present, either real or perceived threats. And we get to drop the preconceived notions that we have about ourselves and the judgments of others. And we just get to feel connected to our bodies in a way that feels good. We feel present. It's tangible. Imagine being with. A sexual partner and feeling their arms caress you, your body is intertwined their lips on your neck. And you're not wondering, is this person going to leave me? Is this person comparing me to their past lovers? Can I trust them? Are they judging me? Am I too fat? Am I good enough? None of that. You're just there. Experiencing the pleasure, feeling the sensations, letting everything else, every other worry go. And that my friends, that is safety. And that is a big part of what it feels like to be connected to your body and feel sexy. And even now, especially now during these unprecedented dark times, we can still create safety for ourselves. And our loved ones. And we should, our bodies are talking to us right now. They're saying, I don't feel safe. Help me. I don't have everything I need. I need to be loved. And all of those emotions, they need to be heard. They need a voice. Can you guys like take a moment right now and ask your body what it needs? If you can sit down and journal about it, even better. You can pause it and do that right now or you can do this at the end of this episode, but it could be really, really helpful right now. I know it will be. And I'm sure that things will come up that you're not consciously thinking about. I'm realizing more and more that tapping into our sexuality isn't just about like fun or earthly pleasures, like feeling good and just having a party. It's about safety. It's about moving beyond survival mode. It's about self actualization and creating space for ourselves so that we can show up fully for ourselves and for other people to just think about it. Our bodies are our homes. Just like it's important that we have all the basics in our house, like a security system, heating and cooling, running water, everything that we need to survive at the same time. We can't just like sleep on the floor and survive off of bread and water. We create beautiful homes so that we can feel that psychological safety too. Our comfortable blankets, a candle, the homemade food, the bouquet of flowers that we bring home for Shabbat. And no one ever says that's vain or superficial. All of that needs to be happening right now. Just like you deserve to feel in connection with your body and your sexuality right now. And don't get me wrong. That doesn't mean you have to, everyone has their own way of coping and dealing with this. And if you're not in that place right now, or if you're not in that place yet, that's totally okay. As I mentioned in the beginning, my own generational trauma, we all have our own versions of that. Also our own ways of processing what is going on in the present moment. So if you're not feeling connected to your body or you're not feeling sexy, which believe me I felt like that for many many days over the past couple of weeks. That's totally okay, and that's totally normal. But I think what i'm saying is that if you are feeling that Don't feel ashamed. Don't feel like there's something wrong with you. I think a lot of people have guilt for that, like, Oh my gosh, there's so many people suffering in the world. There's so many horrible, dark, disgusting things going on in the world. How could I feel good or connected to my body or sexy? Take it as a positive. Take it as a sign that you feel safe enough in your body to feel that way right now. Take it as a sign that you're processing your emotions and doing what you need to do to feel safe in your body and go beyond that survival mode, because that is going to help you go beyond this. And we have to, as human beings, we are resilient and we will move beyond this. It is going to be hard and there is going to be so much trauma and grief and sadness as we go through this, but we will also get through this somehow. So that means take care of yourself right now. Pleasure yourself, put makeup on, have sex, eat delicious food, drink some wine, and catch up with a girlfriend. None of this means that you are not mourning. Part of what terrorism tries to do is to break our spirits. So. We can mourn, we can be disgusted and heartbroken, and feel all of these freaking feelings, and still, at the same time, find ways to create safety in our bodies, so that we can function beyond just our basic needs, so that we can live our lives wildly and joyfully, in retaliation to those who want us dead, and in honor of those beautiful, innocent souls who are taken from us for far too soon. So I'm going to leave you with this question today. How can you right now create safety in your mind, body, and soul? Try to choose something that you haven't yet done since all of this started and do this with this new intention as a way to feel safe in your body and know that you're doing what you need to do for yourself, for your loved ones, for your community and for the world at large. I am excited to be able to get to this point where I'm not only in survival mode. I know that there will be times when I'm thrown back in to it. I am human. We all are human, but I am excited to be able to show up for you guys in this way and I was going to launch the new sexy, which is my group coaching program to help women feel sexy naked and to love what they see when they look in the mirror that was going to be starting on October 8th. And of course it was postponed and now I am opening registration because of everything that I talked about here today. And because it is so important for us to seek safety in our body, to have a deeper connection with ourselves and other women. So that we can return to ourselves so that we can work through this generational trauma so that we can live our lives in a way that feel truly deeply aligned with our souls. And I'm going to be adapting this round for the situation, because I know that we're all going through so much and. It's going to be interesting to see, you know, what comes up during this time and how I can help women specifically in these times of darkness and sadness, and perhaps even physical danger so that we can actually find that spark, that joy, that light, that safety in our bodies, no matter what is going on around us. All right. I love you all. And I hope you stay safe, that you find safety in your body and keep being you give yourself kindness and compassion and grace always. And especially right now.