What it Really Means to Hold Space
for Someone
How to be there for the people
who need you most
When my Mom was dying, my
siblings and I gathered to be with her in her final days. None of us knew
anything about supporting someone in her transition out of this life into the
next, but we were pretty sure we wanted to keep her at home, so we did.
While we supported Mom, we
were, in turn, supported by a gifted palliative care nurse, Ann, who came every
few days to care for Mom and to talk to us about what we could expect in the
coming days. She taught us how to inject Mom with morphine when she became
restless, she offered to do the difficult tasks (like giving Mom a bath), and
she gave us only as much information as we needed about what to do with Mom’s body
after her spirit had passed.
The
author with her mother
“Take your time,” she said.
“You don’t need to call the funeral home until you’re ready. Gather the people
who will want to say their final farewells. Sit with your mom as long as you
need to. When you’re ready, call and they will come to pick her up.”
Ann gave us an incredible gift
in those final days. Though it was an excruciating week, we knew that we were
being held by someone who was only a phone call away.
In the two years since then,
I’ve often thought about Ann and the important role she played in our lives.
She was much more than what can fit in the title of “palliative care nurse”.
She was facilitator, coach, and guide. By offering gentle,
nonjudgmental support and guidance, she helped us walk one of the most
difficult journeys of our lives.
The work that Ann did can be
defined by a term that’s become common in some of the circles in which I work.
She was holding
space for us.
Learning
to hold space for others
What does it mean
to “hold space” for someone else?
It means that we are willing
to walk alongside another person in whatever journey they’re on without judging
them, making them feel inadequate, trying to fix them, or trying to impact the
outcome. When we hold space for other people, we open our hearts, offer
unconditional support, and let go of judgement and control.
Sometimes we find
ourselves holding space for people while they hold
space for others. In our situation, for example, Ann was holding
space for us while we held space for Mom. Though I
know nothing about her support system, I suspect that there are others holding
space for Ann as she does this challenging and meaningful work. It’s
virtually impossible to be a strong space holder unless we have others who
will hold space for us. Even the strongest leaders, coaches,
nurses, etc., need to know that there are some people with whom they can be
vulnerable and weak without fear of being judged.
Understanding
the essence of holding space for others
In my own roles as teacher,
facilitator, coach, mother, wife, and friend, etc., I do my best to hold
space for other people in the same way that Ann modeled it for me and
my siblings. It’s not always easy, because I have a very human tendency to want
to fix people, give them advice, or judge them for not being further along the
path than they are, but I keep trying because I know that it’s important. At
the same time, there are people in my life that I trust to hold space for
me.
To truly support people in
their own growth, transformation, grief, etc., we can’t do it by taking their
power away (ie. trying to fix their problems), shaming them (ie. implying that
they should know more than they do), or overwhelming them (ie. giving them more
information than they’re ready for). We have to be prepared to step to the side
so that they can make their own choices, offer them unconditional love and
support, give gentle guidance when it’s needed, and make them feel safe even
when they make mistakes.
Holding space is not something
that’s exclusive to facilitators, coaches, or palliative care nurses. It is
something that ALL of us can do for each other – for our partners, children,
friends, neighbours, and even strangers who strike up conversations as we’re
riding the bus to work.
Every
day is an opportunity to hold space for the people around us
8 Tips to Help
You Hold Space for Others
Here are the lessons I’ve
learned from Ann and others who have held space for me.
1. Give people permission to
trust their own intuition and wisdom. When we were supporting
Mom in her final days, we had no experience to rely on, and yet, intuitively,
we knew what was needed. We knew how to carry her shrinking body to the
washroom, we knew how to sit and sing hymns to her, and we knew how to love
her. We even knew when it was time to inject the medication that would help
ease her pain. In a very gentle way, Ann let us know that we didn’t need to do
things according to some arbitrary health care protocol – we simply needed to
trust our intuition and accumulated wisdom from the many years we’d loved Mom.
2. Give people only as much
information as they can handle. Ann gave us some simple
instructions and left us with a few handouts, but did not overwhelm us with far
more than we could process in our tender time of grief. Too much information
would have left us feeling incompetent and unworthy.
Knowing
how much information to give people in times of grief
3. Don’t take their power
away. When we take decision-making power out of people’s
hands, we leave them feeling useless and incompetent. There may be some times
when we need to step in and make hard decisions for other people (ie. when
they’re dealing with an addiction and an intervention feels like the only thing
that will save them), but in almost every other case, people need the autonomy
to make their own choices (even our children). Ann knew that we needed to feel
empowered in making decisions on our Mom’s behalf, and so she offered support
but never tried to direct or control us.
4. Keep your own ego out of
it. This
is a big one. We all get caught in that trap now and then – when we begin to
believe that someone else’s success is dependent on our intervention, or when
we think that their failure reflects poorly on us, or when we’re convinced that
whatever emotions they choose to unload on us are about us instead of them.
It’s a trap I’ve occasionally found myself slipping into when I teach. I can
become more concerned about my own success (Do the students like me? Do their
marks reflect on my ability to teach? Etc.) than about the success of my
students. But that doesn’t serve anyone – not even me. To truly support their
growth, I need to keep my ego out of it and create the space where they have
the opportunity to grow and learn.
Keep
your own ego out of it
5. Make them feel safe enough
to fail. When people are learning, growing, or going through
grief or transition, they are bound to make some mistakes along the way. When
we, as their space holders, withhold judgement and shame, we offer them the
opportunity to reach inside themselves to find the courage to take risks and
the resilience to keep going even when they fail. When we let them know that
failure is simply a part of the journey and not the end of the world, they’ll
spend less time beating themselves up for it and more time learning from their
mistakes.
6. Give guidance and help with
humility and thoughtfulness. A wise space holder
knows when to withhold guidance (ie. when it makes a person feel foolish and
inadequate) and when to offer it gently (ie. when a person asks for it or is
too lost to know what to ask for). Though Ann did not take our power or
autonomy away, she did offer to come and give Mom baths and do some of the more
challenging parts of caregiving. This was a relief to us, as we had no practice
at it and didn’t want to place Mom in a position that might make her feel shame
(ie. having her children see her naked). This is a careful dance that we all
must do when we hold space for other people. Recognizing the areas in which
they feel most vulnerable and incapable and offering the right kind of help
without shaming them takes practice and humility.
A wise space holder knows when
to withhold guidance and when to offer it gently
7. Create a container for
complex emotions, fear, trauma, etc. When people feel that
they are held in a deeper way than they are used to, they feel safe enough to
allow complex emotions to surface that might normally remain hidden. Someone
who is practiced at holding space knows that this can
happen and will be prepared to hold it in a gentle, supportive, and
nonjudgmental way. In The Circle Way, we
talk about “holding the rim” for people.
The circle becomes the space
where people feel safe enough to fall apart without fearing that this will
leave them permanently broken or that they will be shamed by others in the
room. Someone is always there to offer strength and courage. This is not easy
work, and it is work that I continue to learn about as I host increasingly more
challenging conversations. We cannot do it if we are overly emotional
ourselves, if we haven’t done the hard work of looking into our own shadow, or
if we don’t trust the people we are holding space for. In Ann’s case, she did
this by showing up with tenderness, compassion, and confidence. If she had
shown up in a way that didn’t offer us assurance that she could handle
difficult situations or that she was afraid of death, we wouldn’t have been able
to trust her as we did.
The
circle becomes the space where people feel safe enough to fall apart
8. Allow them to make
different decisions and to have different experiences than you would. Holding
space is about respecting each person’s differences and recognising that those
differences may lead to them making choices that we would not make. Sometimes,
for example, they make choices based on cultural norms that we can’t understand
from within our own experience. When we hold space, we release control and we
honour differences. This showed up, for example, in the way that Ann supported
us in making decisions about what to do with Mom’s body after her spirit was no
longer housed there. If there had been some ritual that we felt we needed to
conduct before releasing her body, we were free to do that in the privacy of
Mom’s home.
Holding space is not
something that we can master overnight, or that can be adequately addressed in
a list of tips like the ones I’ve just offered. It’s a complex practice that
evolves as we practice it, and it is unique to each person and each situation.
What it Really Means to Hold
Space for a Woman
Four important ways you can
learn to be truly present
‘Be authentic.’ ‘Hold space.’
‘Be present.’ These phrases may sound vague, but they’re what the women you
love really need. And here’s how you can give it.
“I just need you to hold space
for me.”
This phrase may strike fear into
even the most stoic male heart.
“You can’t hold space!”
you may cry. “It’s space!”
But if you want to be with an
emotionally intelligent, spiritually inclined, mindful woman, chances are
you’ll be hearing this type of phrase. It’s becoming more and more mainstream,
and whether or not you consider it New Agey, this phrase describes an
active state of being that is extremely powerful in a relationship.
It is an active state of being
that is extremely powerful in a relationship.
It may seem like an absurd,
haphazard combination of words that doesn’t actually describe anything. It’s
actually describing one of the mysteries of life, something that cannot be
described. It’s speaking about a more complex—and complete—understanding of
human experience. When a woman says something like this to you, she’s inviting
you to live in the moment in a full, focused, joyful way, with her. She’s
asking for your help, your support. She’s asking you to pay full attention to
her, witnessing her experience, without judging her experience as good or bad.
When a woman says this, she is
actually asking you to be with her, and to pay attention to her, fully. This is
incredibly important and I can’t stress it enough. My
upcoming book has a whole chapter about how powerful it
is to be truly present with the women you care about. And as
Jordan Gray says, another way to say ‘presence’ is ‘paying attention.’
She is actually asking you to
be with her, and to pay attention to her, fully.
They say our bodies are 80%
water—but we’re really 99% space!
To hold space for another
person, you have to first do it for yourself. They say our bodies
are 80% water—but we’re really 99% space! So breathe deeply, opening up your
body further. Hold space within yourself first, which means allowing yourself
to simply be. Whatever arises, don’t judge it as good or bad. Witness it, allow
it, accept it.
Holding space for another is
to hold space for them, within yourself. This isn’t just foo-foo energy talk:
it’s building a connection with this other person, based in part on
subconscious physical cues. It’s holding the person you’re with in your
awareness, just as he or she is; to witness their emotions with empathy,
whatever they are.
Anyone can hold space for
anyone else. However, I feel that there’s an added dimension available when a
man does this for a woman; namely, he is able to be present in his masculine
power, and thus allow her to relax into a more feminine state. My experience is
that holding masculine for myself can be very exhausting, and being with a man
who is willing to step into the masculine fully so that I can ‘drop my guard’
is a huge relief.
Holding space is a way to make
your masculine power available for the women around you, for the good of all.
We need your presence, your masculinity, and your power. When
women realize that this is what you’re doing (and yes, you’re allowed to tell
them!) they will relax. Unwind, release tension, melt. They might cry, they
might simply smile, they might snuggle up. However they express it, what they
will really do is show you a part of themselves that few people ever get to see.
It’s beautiful, and it feels great for both of you.
Here’s a primer on how you can
integrate holding space into your daily life, to improve your relationships
with women, other men, and yourself.
They will show you a part of
themselves that few people ever get to see.
Pay Attention to Your
Experience
You don’t have to be a yogic
master to experience the benefits of mindfulness in your life—and your
relationships with women. You don’t even have to meditate! All you have to do
is be aware of what is actually happening right now, within you and all around
you, while trying not to judge it as good or bad.
That’s it.
It’s the simplest thing in the
world. And the hardest.
Being mindful of the people
around you means witnessing their experiences, their emotions, their
words…without becoming reactive. Mindfulness is an inner space of stillness, of
being, which manifests outwardly as focused attention.
Witnessing their experiences,
their emotions, their words…without becoming reactive.
Pay Special Attention to the
Women Around You
You have an incredible power
when it comes to women. The power to hold masculine space, so that they can
relax into their feminine selves. A very simplistic description of the sacred
masculine is that of a container. The feminine is the fluid within, able to
flow because she doesn’t have to contain herself. If you’re craving feminine
presence—softness, receptivity, playfulness, authentic adorable womaniness of
an indescribable quality—holding space for the women around you is how to get
it. This doesn’t just benefit you: it is a huge relief to be able to just be feminine.
It’s a huge relief for anyone of either gender to know that they are being
truly seen, and that they are not judged. Holding space makes life easier for
the people around you.
The next time you’re in a
fight and don’t know how to move forward, or find yourself getting frustrated,
feeling that you aren’t helping, it’s time to take a deep breath, and hold
space for this woman.
This can be especially
powerful when the woman you’re with is feeling sensitive, upset, hurting, or
needs your emotional support and listening. The next time you’re in a fight and
don’t know how to move forward, or find yourself getting frustrated, feeling
that you aren’t helping, it’s time to take a deep breath, and hold space for
this woman.
Turn your focus towards her
fully. Really notice this woman, the details of her appearance, her posture,
and how she has chosen to present herself; what she is doing, how she’s doing
it, the things she’s saying and the things she is leaving unsaid; anything and
everything. If a reaction starts to arise in you, accept it within yourself,
and try to provide a non-reaction externally. You don’t have to give any
compliments in order to hold space. You don’t have to provide advice to be
providing your masculine presence.
You don’t have to say anything
at all.
Really notice this woman and
how she has chosen to present herself.
Body Language
This is really about holding
space within yourself. Be aware of how you feel, place the nexus of yourself,
your consciousness, fully in your body. This has the effect of holding space
for the other person, within yourself. Doing that creates a connection between
you, an exchange of energy, with subconscious cues. The same way yawns are
contagious, if you tense up in response to another person’s emotional charge
(to protect yourself from it, which is understandable and we all do it!) the
other person will do the exact same thing: tense up. But if you realize that
you are tensing up, and instead breathe deeply and release the tension, perhaps
by being aware and breathing into it, you are giving that gift of relaxation
and space to the other person.
It’s therefore important to
use your body to show that you are really there, really present. If you’re not
sure how to do that, try turning your body towards her, squaring your shoulders
so that she lines up with the middle of your chest, and turning your head to
face her fully. Watch her eyes. This may seem obvious or insignificant, but it
is profoundly meaningful, and often we change our body language without
realizing it, accidentally sending cues to our partner that we don’t want to
send. Being aware of your body language is powerful. Practice being aware and
trying to open.
Being aware of your body
language is powerful.
Holding Space Means Support in
Healing.
Everyone has trauma.
The only way through trauma is
to feel it. If a person doesn’t feel their pain, their anger, their fear—if
they instead repress it—it grows and festers, like a sliver that doesn’t get
pulled out. But feelings like pain, anger and fear are, well, painful! And
scary! And upsetting! Feeling them isn’t fun. It takes a great amount of
courage and strength to do so.
Holding space means lending
your courage, your strength. It means creating a safe environment for someone
you care about to exorcise the hurt within them.
Holding space means lending
your courage, your strength. It means creating a safe environment for someone
you care for to exorcise the hurt within them. Allowing that person to cry, to
scream, to shudder; witnessing their authentic experience and reacting with
love and acceptance to the extent that you are able, is a powerful way of
supporting them in this most important spiritual and emotional work.
Don’t worry—it isn’t always
going to be tears and screaming! In fact, the more you practice holding space,
the more you integrate it into your daily life, the more relaxation and fun and
silliness will follow you, from everyone around you. As you learn to do this
with women, the results will be especially profound and lovely.
It means creating a safe
environment for someone you care about.
When a man is holding space
for me, I light up. I let down my guard. I feel more energetic, more free, less
worried.
When a man turns the power of
his attention to a woman, and holds space in this way, magic happens. When you
truly see her, hear her, know her, you can become aware of her beauty and
power. Because of your awareness, she’s able to relax into the moment, be more
feminine, be more herself.
Love is a verb, like eat, or
sleep. You don’t just do it once. Being present with a woman is itself an act
of profound love. So practice it, and watch as magic happens around you!
