Holding Space

 A lot of people don’t know or understand what holding space means and for a lot of us Africans, it feels like a very white thing to say. Speaking for my community, whenever something is said in English that we have a hard time grasping, it can be very triggering to our collective colonial trauma. These days, in my process of becoming an acupuncture point in the collective body by addressing and discharging my own trauma, I have learnt to sit in contemplation with triggers in order to interrogate their root. My interrogation of why “holding space” feels like a hard foreign concept to connect with had me contemplating on what the equivalent is in my own language as a Gĩkũyũ person. In my language, there’s a distinction between “kũigua” which is to hear, and “gũthikĩrĩria” which is to go beyond the ears to listen with your presence. So in “gũthikĩrĩria” there is “kũigua” to hear, there is “kũigua” which also means to feel for instance empathy, there is observation of body language, there’s an engagement of multiple senses beyond just hearing the words coming out of someone’s mouth. In my opinion, that is holding space. 

As a born healer, I have always been great at holding space, which is something I hold in the highest of honors that people feel comfortable and safe enough to be vulnerable with me because I am able to listen without judgement, having already released judgment against my own Self and I come carrying great compassion in my heart towards my Self, so I am able to be compassionate towards others too. However, it is until I stepped into a Somatic Experiencing training class that it was broken down and taught to me what holding space really means. What is it to listen to someone with presence? From my own perception, it is to be so grounded that another person can lean on my grounded energy as they process whatever is happening in their own system. This doesn’t mean that the person holding space does not have their own stuff going on, but in that moment that the nervous system in front of them needs grounding, they are able to tap into safety so that they can offer it to the person that needs it through resonance. Fortunately, this tapping into safety is something that can be learnt and it is such an important resource in our day to day whether we use it for our own nervous systems or in the capacity of a friend, a romantic partner, a parent, a teacher or a trained therapist. 

Why is tapping into safety so important? Because it is when we feel safe that we’re able to fully occupy our bodies and then we can offer grounded presence thus holding space either for ourselves or for others. And how do we tap into safety? Personally, what has really worked in making me feel fully grounded is engaging my senses by paying attention to the support my feet feel when they meet the surface I’m stepping on, observing the taste in my mouth, the sounds in my environment, the smell in the air the textures of the fabrics on my skin and using my eyes to confirm that the space around me is indeed safe for my body to be in. As this is happening, I also like to observe what is happening in my internal environment, which thoughts, emotions and feelings I’m arriving into my body with in that moment, simply witnessing without making any judgements. This has been very helpful in helping me differentiate between what is mine and what belongs to the person I’m holding space for in order to avoid enmeshment. 

From my own experience, holding space is a sacred communion that can be quite healing for both parties. As you sit there with your whole presence witnessing someone’s system process something in the most natural way it knows how to without feeling the need to offer any advice or judgement, there’s such a deep and pure human connection that occurs in that vulnerable moment which has the capacity to repair something collective in all of us. In that moment, you become an acupuncture point in the collective body.