Many people believe holding space means remaining silent. 

As space holders for healing and transformation, it is certainly a gift to offer spaciousness and silence to others so they may work through their issues and challenges and reach a deeper place of truth and understanding within themselves. 

However, the potential to enliven healing in others doesn’t mean that as loving witnesses we must withhold our voice from the spaces we navigate. A few heart-centered words have the capacity to shift others dramatically and fan the flames of connection and intimacy between us and those we hold space for.

Here are but a few ways to bring our voice to a well-held space for healing:

• Mirroring: reflecting back to someone exactly what they said (in their own words). Folks often forgo this technique in favor of trying to bring greater value and insight to others. Space holders may think to themselves, “it can’t be that simple!” Yet, to hear our own words reflected back to us can instantly create a grounded sense of being “gotten” and affirms that we are being accurately and intently listened to.
• Reflective Listening: reflective listening is when we reflect back to others the deeper feeling underneath the thoughts being expressed. It conveys that we are attuning to a deeper journey transpiring and supports others to explore what is happening on the level of soul and heart.
• Questions: there is no “wrong” or “bad” question to ask someone when holding space. Questions either support an unfolding of a story that wants and needs to be told or they can be a vehicle to bring someone into their feelings and embodied experience.

However you choose to share your voice when holding space, a vital practice is to formulate your words from your heart-center. From your essence and innate source of loving. 

When it comes to holding space for healing, it is not so much what you say, but where you are speaking from.

This is why when I hold space, I use the mantra “I am the one who brings love.” In Transformative Practice 2 we are learning how to activate our spiritual values. We are coming to understand what it means and looks like to energetically radiate the value of love as our consistent state of presence.

By putting “I AM love” into action, we dance in the space of authenticity and spontaneity. Love can be brought though our gaze or facial expression. It can be brought through a natural sound, a laugh, or tears welling up in our eyes. When I remind myself, “I am the one who brings love,” I let go of any question of what is and isn’t loving and happily rest in a state of trust that no matter my reaction or response, I am assuredly bringing love to those I am engaging with.  

Love can take many forms. It can look like compassion, honesty, curiosity, and even challenge. When our mind is connected to our source of loving, our words create infinite possibilities in the spaces we hold. Others feel and respond to the intention and energy behind our words, no matter the ripples they may create in the waters we are swimming in.

So the next time you are in any conversation – be it with a stranger, a loved one, a client, patient, or student – simply say silently to yourself, “I am the one who brings love,” and give yourself permission not to know exactly what wants and will be expressed from that place.

In doing so, everyone in the space is touched with love (and you as the space holder experience more ease and fun in the process). 

Happy loving! 

Rachael Starr Bruck

Rachael Starr Bruck is the learning leader for the Holding Space training through the Center for Transformational Coaching. Passionate about creating spaces that engender greater self-love, she has nearly twenty years of holding space experience as a facilitator, teacher, psychotherapist and deep transformational coach.