Holding space is one of those often-overused terms we take for granted, yet it is a real skill to be able to do so! It is not exclusive to professionals whether they be facilitators, coaches, or care providers. Holding space is a practice we can each learn and then provide for our partners, children, friends, and neighbors.
These skills of holding space will be much needed by one and all as the baby boomer generation heads for the exit doors in never before witnessed rates of death. Our hospitals, hospices, and care homes will simply not be able to meet the growing demand for service and support.
Now is the time for real community to show up and learn to truly support each other.
Here are some techniques I have worked on developing over the years to hold space for dying, death, and grief;
- Prepare yourself first before entering the space you intend to hold.
- Serve others by putting them first – hold your ego at bay it is not about you.
- Build trust and relationship by listening first to understand.
- Empower those you are holding space for – finds ways to make them right.
- Teach them to trust their own intuition and internal wisdom.
- Remember it is their experience not yours help them by not making their experience have to like yours.
- Failure is a sign of growth and success – make space for it.
- Offer guidance and support with a kind and humble heart – refrain from overloading them with information they may not need or understand.
- Be open to complex and powerful emotions – welcome them.
I will be following up each week with what I do in each of these nine basic space-holding practices.
Warmly and with gratitude
Stephen
Some simple and basic hints for you to begin developing the capacity to hold space.
Holding Space – Tip Number One
- Prepare yourself first before entering the space you intend to hold.
Have you ever had the experience of walking into a room where something you know nothing about is going on? Remember how awkward and uncertain you felt? That is no way to begin holding space – just walking into a room or a home or a care space unprepared for what might be going on.
Here is one of the many things I do to prepare before I enter a room where I am expected to hold space.
I remember a lesson a Mayan shaman taught me ten years ago. He encouraged me to use my heart’s imagination and put my loving attention on the person or people I was setting out to serve and support. I a way to imagine what is like to feel as their heart does.
Now, before entering a home or a room I stand outside the door and put my imagination to work. I put my attention on who is in the space before I enter it and my heart does it’s best to feel what is going on in the heart of each person present. I does so with the intention to help and without any judgment about what my imagination brings to me.
I take a few deep cleansing breaths, imagine my heart is filling the room and then enter. I enter already holding the space I am walking into. This is a most important practice!
Holding Space – Tip Number Two
- Serve others by putting them first – hold your ego at bay it is not about you.
There is a subtle trap in holding space the involves the trickster ego and if we are not watchful ego can sneakily slide in and become front and centre. You will know this is happening by thoughts like this;
Wow, I really made a difference.
I asked all the right questions.
I chose the right techniques.
For me it is all about the ones I am serving. They are doing the work, they are pre-grieving or grieving. They are letting go. They are letting me support them. They are responding well to the techniques. They are calling the best out of me. They are courageous and willing. They get the credit.
I am simply blessed to be able to hold space for them plain and simple.
Holding Space – Tip Number Three
- Build trust and relationship by listening first to understand.
Often times we think we need to be clever and say the right things to earn people’s trust and respect. Or we believe we need to give a great session or provide some sort of magical fix to earn their trust. We are simply mistaken.
What I have learned is the best way to earn trust is to listen first to understand what is going on for those I am holding space for. To really focus on what they are saying with their words, emotions, body language, and heart. In other words I pay loving non-judgmental attention to them and them exclusively.
I let them know what I have understood. I may play back to them what they have said and shown to me. When I do this well the person feels gotten and understood. Almost immediately they trust in my capacity to be there for them first and foremost.
I listen with my ears, watch with my eyes, feel with my body and understand in my heart.
Holding Space – Tip Number Four
- Empower those you are holding space for – finds ways to make them right.
For many of those we hold space for they are often carrying with them a low sense of self-value and more often than not doubt them self and their ability to do the right thing. When dying, death, and grief are present this tendency to self-doubt can really get in the way especially when it comes expressing their emotions and saying what their heart tells them to say. Our culture’s aversion to death and grief exacerbates the situation.
Whenever I can, and based on the truth of what I witness going on, I find ways to acknowledge the individuals’ intuition, how well they communicated their thoughts, how well they expressed their emotions, how they were able to stay present and be themselves. No matter how small their capacity or expression may seem to me it may well be huge and meaningful for them.
I watch for these opportunities and in an honest way credit them for their success thereby building their capacity and self-value. By doing this I build their self-confidence in handling dying, death, and grief and avoid building their co-dependency on me.
Holding Space – Tip Number Five
- Teach them to trust their own intuition and internal wisdom.
Similar to making the individuals right and building their self-confidence I will also work on noticing what it is they are doing well, what their hunches are, and what their instincts are urging them to do.
I will play these wins back for them so they can see for themselves that they do have what it takes to hunch well and to draw on their own wisdom. This builds certainty and confidence in their ability to handle life issues.
Holding Space – Tip Number Six
- Remember it is their experience not yours. You help them by not making their experience have to be like yours.
Each one of us has a very unique outlook on the world. And the perspective you carry as a space holder is unique to you. One of the challenges of holding space is to notice this different perspective piece.
As a coach, counselor, or therapist we tend to coach others in ways that worked for us, or teach in the way we feel most comfortable learning. When it comes to holding space for dying, death, and grief this is a recipe for certain failure.
As space holders we need to tune into those we are holding space for knowing that their way of facing death and grief is unique to them. We run into troubles when we try to support them in doing it our way, because our way worked for us.
Expression, acceptance, pace, and processing style are all individual and when we notice and honor ‘their’ way progress will always take place. As an example a woman I worked with did not do well with talk therapy as it pertained to her grief. She did do well expressing her grief through art. When I asked her if she would like to paint me her grief she was relieved and joyfully painted her grief out.
Allow those you are holding space for to have their own experience with your guidance and support.
Holding Space – Tip Number Seven
- Failure is a sign of growth and success – make space for it.
We often consider mistakes the way we look at garbage; lets just get rid of it! My take on mistakes or failures is they are in fact compost for better decisions in the future.
As a space holder it is important to take this approach simply because mistakes happen. When we approach the error as a growth opportunity it changes immediately people’s willingness to try again.
Compost fertilizes – Garbage smothers.
Holding Space – Tip Number Eight
- Offer guidance and support with a kind and humble heart – refrain from overloading them with information they may not need or understand.
The operative word here is offer. As a space holder we often get hooked by the expectation that our support will bring about change – and it can. That being said it is not necessarily true that it will.
When we offer support expecting change we set ourselves, and those we are supporting up for a bumpy ride. We may feel disappointed that no change has occurred and those we are holding space for may feel like they are letting us down.
A simple offer of a supporting technique with no expectations attached to it has a higher likelihood to be successful.
Holding Space – Tip Number Nine
- Be open to complex and powerful emotions – welcome them.
Quite often lurking just underneath the surface are powerful and complex emotions all wrapped up in to one full and messy outpouring. Sometimes this fullness of complex emotions is hiding behind numbness.
When these deep emotions do surface welcome them into the space they are the sign of healing.
When you return home after receiving this type of deep emotions please do remember to shower allowing the water to take with it down the drain any leftover emotions that you may be carrying after holding space.
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