In learning to navigate these uncertain times of disruption and turmoil, it is beneficial to understand the meaning of liminal space.
Essentially, a liminal space is the space between the no longer and the not yet.
The pandemic has thrown us from the known world into the unknown world. Our once familiar and stable way of doing things can never be fully returned to. We’ll never go back to “the way it was” and yet, we are not stabilized in the new order. We are not even sure what the new order will be.
With the entire world hanging in a space of liminality, you might be asking yourself – how can I be of best support to others during this time?
One very powerful way is by learning the art of holding space.
Holding liminal space is no easy task and being an effective space holder takes training and lots of practice. However, here are three principles that can support your awareness and understanding of what it means to hold liminal space in our world today.
1. Surrender to the Liminal Space
Holding liminal space invites us to embody a deeper knowing that there is nothing wrong with chaos and that we don’t need to escape, avoid, or resist it.
Rather, what we can learn to do – often with a lot of practice and support – is surrender to it. We learn what it means to surrender to life as it is now (full of disruption, change, and uncertainty) and by doing so, we help others surrender as well.
When we stop focusing on resisting what’s going on outside of ourselves, our awareness and attention moves inside of ourselves. Naturally then we begin opening to our own innate capacity, resourcefulness, and core strength. If we go deeper, we begin to know who we truly are.
When we’re connected to that (when we know it and feel it) then we cannot help but navigate the chaos outside of ourselves in very different ways.
2. Emptying our Vessel
The next principle in holding liminal space is providing a safe, well-held space in which people may safely attend to what’s really going on in their lives.
And I do mean anything that’s going on.
As life increases in complexity and uncertainty, the need for spaces in which we can bring our grief, confusion, loss, anger, turmoil, excitement, or whatever it is that we are experiencing becomes ever more necessary.
Through the full allowing of personal expression, we experience an ’emptying out’ process, letting go of all of that which does not support us so we may live in the liminal space with greater ease, peace, and confidence.
A held space provides the opportunity to feel deeply, express, and release.
3. Listening for the Emerging Truth
Once we have allowed ourselves to empty our vessel, we discover a newfound spaciousness within ourselves from which we are able to listen for the truth that is wanting to emerge.
What is the truth about me and my life that is wanting to emerge?
What is wanting to emerge for my family, for my children?
What is wanting to emerge for my organization or community?
When we really practice this deeper level of listening (to ourselves and others), we will start sensing too what is wanting to emerge as a global collective. You’ll start to sense it within. You’ll start to feel it, as a knowing. The really exciting part is then you have the choice to align with it, to enable its emergence.
This is how holding space enables the “not yet” to become our known reality.
It is born of a conscious partnership with yourself, life, and with the new world that is being born today in the liminal space.
If you are feeling called and inspired to serve the wellbeing of the whole at this significant time in our evolution, check out our Holding Space training through the Center for Transformational Coaching.