Beyond the Buzzword: Why “Safe Spaces” Aren’t Always Safe

Published August 8th, 2024; revised April 18th, 2025

It’s a phrase many of us hear a lot: “This is a safe space.”

And while the intention behind it is often rooted in care—a desire to create environments where people feel welcome, respected, and included—I’m increasingly aware, especially moving into 2025, that it’s not trauma-informed to promise that any space is inherently safe.

Because safety is personal. Each of us brings our own lived experiences, identities, and traumas into the spaces we occupy. What feels safe to one person might feel uncomfortable, disorienting, or even harmful to another.

For many trans and nonbinary people, for example, spaces that are labeled “safe” often still uphold systems, behaviors, or unconscious dynamics that exclude, tokenize, or harm us. Sometimes it's a lack of gender-inclusive practices. Other times, it's a refusal to name power dynamics, or a culture that prioritizes comfort over accountability.

This isn’t about dismissing the good intentions behind “safe spaces.” I truly believe many people mean well when they use that language.

And yet, when we make that promise—explicitly or implicitly—we risk unintentionally erasing the complexity of people’s lived realities. We flatten difference in the name of comfort. We silence necessary conflict. We prioritize a feeling over a practice.

So, what’s the alternative?

Credit to Michelle Cassandra Johnson, who was one of my first teachers on this topic: she taught me that safer spaces are the more honest and aligned aspiration.

Safer spaces don’t pretend to be perfect.
They don’t claim to be free from harm.
They acknowledge that conflict, rupture, and discomfort are part of the work of being in any relationship, and especially in relationship across lines of differences of identity or power.

What makes a space safer is the commitment to try—to take responsibility, to repair when needed, and to orient toward practices that reduce harm and build trust over time.

Safer spaces require care. They ask us to consider:

• Who holds power in this space?

• Who feels most at ease—and who is being asked to stretch, explain, or accommodate?

• What are we willing to do when harm happens—not if but when?

These are the questions that can guide us into deeper integrity. Because creating safer spaces isn’t a checklist. It’s not a bullet-point on a flyer. It’s an ongoing practice—personal and collective—that asks us to stay engaged, especially in relation to power, privilege, and oppression.

It asks us to be brave enough to move at the speed of trust, even when that trust has to be rebuilt again and again.

Reflection Prompts

I invite you to sit with these questions, whether you’re a facilitator, an organizer, a participant, or simply someone who wants to move through the world with more care:

• Have you ever been in a space that claimed to be “safe” but didn’t feel that way?

• What would creating a safer space look like in your community or workplace?

• What’s one commitment you can make to help build a safer space for trans and nonbinary people in the years ahead?

Want to keep this conversation going?

I write regularly about trans inclusion, collective care, and equity-informed marketing and business. You can sign up for my newsletter here or check out more articles and free resources.

Let’s build something better—together.

Spiritual Work Shouldn’t Harm: On Gender, Power, and Sacred Practice

originally published January 16, 2023; revised April 18th, 2025

Let’s talk about the divine feminine and masculine—terms we see so often in coaching containers, spiritual communities, and wellness spaces.

These archetypes are frequently introduced with good intentions: to offer a framework for understanding different ways of being, feeling, relating. The divine feminine is typically described as soft, intuitive, receptive; the divine masculine as structured, directive, assertive.

But let’s pause here: how are these ideas being taught? Who are they centering? And what assumptions do they carry?

Because too often, teachings about the divine feminine and masculine rely on or replicate a binary view of gender—and in doing so, they reinforce cisheteronormativity. That is, they assume or normalize the idea that people are either men or women, and that their identities and experiences must align with their assigned sex at birth. They often equate femininity with “women” and masculinity with “men,” collapsing expression and energy into identity in ways that erase trans, nonbinary, genderfluid, and agender people entirely.

And let’s be clear: cisheteronormativity is not neutral.

It is a product of colonial systems designed to restrict, control, and harm. It's woven into the structures of white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism. And it's not just harmful to trans and queer folks—it distorts what’s possible for all of us.

In the wellness and spiritual worlds—spaces that often claim to be radical, liberatory, and inclusive—it’s especially important to notice when teachings quietly (or overtly) replicate dominant norms. When we invoke “divine feminine energy” as something to be embraced by women, or something that’s been lost and needs to be reclaimed from masculine overdrive, we must ask: Which women? Whose bodies? What kinds of femininity? And who gets left out or harmed in the process?

If you're a teacher, facilitator, coach, or healer working with these frameworks, I invite you to go deeper:

• Are you examining how these archetypes intersect with systems of power and oppression?

• Are you explicitly welcoming gender-expansive people into the space?

• Are you assuming your audience is cisgender unless told otherwise?

• Are you using language that reinforces binary ideas of embodiment or worth?

Because let’s be honest—if we’re not doing this work, we’re not actually practicing healing. We’re just rebranding dominant culture with a spiritual aesthetic.

As I’ve written elsewhere: healing work is only as liberatory as our willingness to confront how power moves. If your teachings don’t make space for trans, nonbinary, and all marginalized people to exist fully—not just quietly included on a slide or buried in your FAQ—then there’s more work to do.

As Michelle Cassandra Johnson writes in Skill in Action:

“We live in a toxic culture that affects us all. We are not encouraged to see it, so we must learn to see our culture and how it teaches us to transform the absurd into normal.”

This isn’t a call-out. It’s an invitation. To get curious. To notice what you’ve inherited and what you’re passing on. To reflect on who your work truly includes—and who it might unintentionally exclude. To begin again, with more clarity and care.

You don’t need to throw away every teaching about feminine and masculine energies. You do need to interrogate how they’re framed. You do need to acknowledge the power structures they’re rooted in. And you do need to expand your language, your references, your imagination—so that what you're offering can actually support all of us.

LGBTQ+ Allyship for Yoga Teachers

Originally published as “Want to be a True Ally? Do the Inner Work” with Yoga Journal magazine.

We can create “safer” spaces for trans and non-binary people in yoga spaces. Here’s how. 

In yoga and wellness communities, the term “safe space” has intended to mean that “all are welcome.” But, the truth is, we cannot guarantee safety for every single person in a yoga space—because each individual has different needs and a personal understanding of what “safety” means for them. It’s impossible to hold space for an entire group of people and ensure that each person’s individual needs are constantly met, especially when what they need may shift or change.

But, while we might not be able to guarantee safe spaces, we can create safer spaces, says yoga teacher and social justice warrior Michelle Cassandra Johnson. Our yoga practice can show us how.

What is a safer space?

As a transgender, nonbinary, and queer person who has been practicing yoga for twenty years, I know firsthand the need for safer yoga spaces for those of us who don’t conform to gender norms, assignments, or expectations—spaces that welcome and respect trans and non-binary students, spaces where we aren’t misgendered or subjected to transphobic remarks, where we aren’t given dirty looks for being “unreadable” as a “man or woman,” where we can use a public bathroom or changing room in peace.

Safer spaces and communities are created by and with allies who see, validate, and affirm trans and non-binary community members. But genuine allyship—also often referred to as being an “accomplice” or a “co-conspirator”—is rooted in inner work. We cannot be in solidarity with others without committing to the deeper practices of noticing and questioning our thoughts, our actions, and our relationships. The truth is that allyship, like yoga, is a practice of inner work. And we must commit to this deeper work in order to create safer yoga spaces for all.

Finding the ally within

As a yoga teacher, you cannot guarantee the safety of your trans students. But aiming to create safer spaces for trans folks is within everyone’s reach. Doing so calls on the teachings of yoga, beginning with the yamas and niyamas—the ethical precepts contained in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras that are intended to guide our thoughts, actions, and relationships.

On our yoga mats, we learn to watch the nature of our minds, to observe our reactions and thought patterns, and to return to the present moment. This is Yoga Sutra 1.2, Yogas-citta-vrtti-nirodhah, in action. Melissa Shah, a yoga therapist trained in the Viniyoga tradition, interprets this Sutra to mean “directing the mind with sustained attention.”

Slowing down and practicing mindfulness is a yogic practice that supports us in engaging in the inner work we must do before we can fully engage in the outer work of allyship. When we slow down and when we practice mindfulness, we can remember the things that help us to become stronger allies.

Through present-moment awareness, we might be better able to notice our biases, the assumptions we make about others, and the ways in which our minds might be conditioned to see gender. By staying mindful, we can shift our minds, our behaviors, and our language choices in the moment.

When we practice mindfulness, we can remember that we can’t assume someone’s gender based on appearances. We can take the time to slow down and remember someone’s pronouns—or find the humility to ask if we’ve forgotten. We can choose to replace gendered language and heteronormative images with gender neutral words, cues, and imagery in our practice space and communities. Most importantly, we can acknowledge when harm has occurred—whether we’ve been the perpetrator or a witness—and we can engage in the practice of repair. We can take responsibility and hold ourselves and others accountable.

Applying the yamas and niyamas

Practicing this way is ahimsa, or non-harming, in practice. But it is also about svadhyaya, or self-study. When you look within, you can reflect on what narratives you might have internalized relating to your own experience of gender. Reflect on the ways you’ve personally experienced internal disconnects, suffering, or harm because of the gender binary and our gendered systems. These are constructs and systems that impact us all, regardless of our gender identities.

Trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming folks suffer in this system, while cisgender folks benefit from it because they’re seen and upheld as the “norm.” And still, this is a both/and scenario. Cisgender folks also experience harmful effects.

For example, cis men and people socialized as men may limit emotional expression, a characteristic associated with toxic masculinity. A system that reinforces heteronormativity also proliferates Western cultural beauty standards. It promotes body shaming, fatphobia, diet culture, slut-shaming, and other harmful behaviors and beliefs that affect people of all gender identities.

Beginning the Culture Shift

In order for us to subvert the gender binary and create safer spaces in which all of us can thrive—and especially those of us most impacted by oppressive systems and structures—we must reflect on what we’ve internalized from harmful messaging and how that plays out in our lives.

This is what it means to take responsibility for yourself and others; this is what it means to commit to the work of holding yourself accountable. Yoga invites us to commit to our individual and collective transformation and liberation, creating a more welcoming and inclusive world for everybody.