A powerful practice everyone should have in their tool kit
This year has demanded a lot of us. We have been through a lot of changes and uncertainties. No wonder that this past year was challenging! It brought up all kinds of intense feelings and emotions, leaving many of us feeling overwhelmed.
To reclaim our ground and inner sanctuary, we can take advantage of the pull of the Solstice in our Northern Hemisphere. To draw our attention inward as well as taking the time to reflect. By Holding the Space For Yourself, the process of inner healing, acceptance and peace begins.
Holding Space is a huge gift, it is the gift of being present for yourself and for another person.
Holding space is an ancient skill, practiced in just about every culture. In our times, it’s not a skill we are taught, but we are finding our way back there. It allows us to connect to our soul’s wisdom, our inner knowledge and intuition. To find the answers that are truly aligned with our inner landscape. To live a life we love means to live a life that is in alignment and in harmony with our soul wisdom and desire. Holding space is also essential in creating strong and nourishing relationships with ourselves as well as with the world around us. But too often it is a skill we have disconnected ourselves from.
Learn to Hold Space for yourself so that you can hold space for others.
Hold space for feelings while you feel them, without the urgency of ego reactivity.
Stay open and curious even in the most challenging moments as you hold space for whatever you are feeling
Be with what is without needing to fix, solve or neglect it
By doing so, you will cultivate the space to be fully present with the desires of your soul.To trust life’s intelligence as it runs through you. And to trust your inner knowledge. Your inner wisdom.
Hold space for others
Since we care about our loved ones and the people around us, we want to help them when they struggle. When we listen to their problems, we are quick to come up with all kinds of advice and solutions. Those are based on our own experiences, our own stories, our own values. But they have nothing to do with the other person’s experiences, stories, and values.
Here is what actually happens when we ‘kindly’ offer our advice and suggest solutions: we take away their ability to solve things in their own way. We give the impression that the other person is not able to do it themselves. We unconsciously take away their own power - their soul wisdom.
Holding Space is not:
Giving unsolicited advice
Trying to fix or solve the ‚issue‘, the other person or ourselves
Interrupt, chit chat, or pretend you understand (we don’t )
Ask yourself: How often do you give unsolicited advice?
The magic of holding space lies in no longer doing this.
This is the magic of Holding space:
listening and offering a space where everything can just be
being present with what is unfolding
being comfortable with conversational gaps and silence
being able to sit with unresolved tension is a core skill in holding space
to sit in your humanity and your trust
facing what happens in you when you hear someone else’s struggle or joy (such as your desire to jump in and fix things for them)
As you hold space for others, you give them permission to trust their own intuition and wisdom. Holding space for yourself, you give yourself permission to trust your own intuition and wisdom.
From here true magic unfolds. This is how we find true answers that are in harmony with our needs, desires, and values.
Sometimes we need someone to simply be there. Not to fix anything, or to do anything special. But to let us feel our feelings while someone is lovingly holding the space for us.
Reflect on this:
Next time your partner, colleague, or child comes to you with a problem, just listen, don’t interrupt, and let there be silence at the end. Often things will clear up for them just from being given the space to talk, to be with their struggle completely, and fully feel it.
Remain in silence. Don’t break it if you become uncomfortable with your own silence. Be proud of yourself and know that you have given the other one the most precious gift by doing so.
After a while try this magical question: ‘And with all of this, what would you like to have happen now?’
As you hold space for yourself, someone else, a whole group or community, it is especially important to understand that you are not trying to fix yours or their problems, issues, concerns, or feelings. You are providing the safe space, walking alongside another person without judging them so that healing can happen - in everyone’s own time and pace.
Holding space sounds simple but as we love offering our help, our thoughts and our experiences can be challenging.
Can you let this other person just be? Can you let yourself just be when you hold the space for yourself? Where discomfort disappears, insights happen spontaneously. And they come to stay.
To trust life’s intelligence as it runs through you. It’s right there for you. It’s waiting for you to give yourself the space to be with it.
In my work, holding space is essential and provides the base for my clients to fully and deeply unfold, invite the change they are longing for and to support their growth.
*Parts from this article are excerpt’s from my Journal ‘The Magical Morning Method’*