What draws us to hold space, and what makes this practice sustainable?
We’ll sit with this question together: in the full circle, in smaller breakouts, and in paired witnessing. You might explore what draws you to hold space for students or clients, what you notice in your body when you hold space, and what fills you up or depletes you as you do so. You might ask yourself how you sense the line between holding space and taking on what isn’t yours. No right answers; only your experience.
Holding space shows up in embodied arts teaching as presence without fixing. When we hold space, we create a container so others can unfold. That may feel like a calling and like a weight. This circle makes room for your experience: what pulls you to this work and what keeps it sustainable. We’ll include explorations of boundaries, self-care, and who holds space for us. Join your peers and explore whatever wants to surface.
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The circle as mutual holding
The opening invited everyone to feel the group as a place where space is held together—where each person is both someone who holds and someone for whom space is held. That framing landed as a simple but uncommon experience: a reminder that receiving a held container, not only offering one, can feel rare in ordinary life.
What “holding space” meant in the room
Across introductions, several threads repeated:
Invitation and presence — Letting past and future lighten; showing up in the now; noticing subtle embodied “yes” (for example, ease or aliveness in the body) when a container feels real.
Meeting people where they are — Including across distance and screens; naming how much energy goes out in facilitation and how easy it is to forget to be held.
Service and receiving — A strong pull to be of service, to gather skills “for others,” paired with the honest difficulty of receiving attention, care, or structured inner work when the habit is to give.
Witnessing and room — Holding space as not occupying the other person’s space: leaving room for their expression, staying available as witness. One teacher summarized this with the word acknowledgement—seeing and receiving what is shared without having to fill it with one’s own story or verdict.
Regulation and practice — Stories of steady practice shifting reactivity, capacity, and relationships outside the classroom—not as a slogan but as lived change partners and families could see.
Sustainability: bless, don’t impress
In breakout conversations, teachers compared dysregulation in daily life with what it takes to stay steady while leading—how steady practice can soften reactivity over time and even show up in relationships outside the classroom, sometimes in ways people close to us notice before we do. Another thread was releasing the need to always have a firm opinion: holding space as staying curious when the full picture isn’t ours to own, and letting “I don’t know” be part of integrity rather than a failure to perform wisdom. A second group stayed with unlearning habits that drain the holder—performance, proving, subtle hierarchy—and with reframing teaching as offering rather than impressing: tending one’s own capacity first, leaving ego at the door when possible, and remembering that what we give lands differently when it comes from blessing and presence than when it comes from pressure to be exceptional.Conscious witnessing: form follows function
The paired (and triad) practice showed how “holding space” can look like stillness, words, or movement without direction—and how witnessing another’s spontaneous movement can feel instructive, connecting, and vulnerable. For some, the structured silence felt profound; for others, conversation in relationship was the right shape that day. Jennie named an important tension: for some people, this kind of witnessing can feel too stark or intense, and that response is valid—containers take many forms.
What’s next
The group’s input pointed toward a May focus on listening for what is actually there—needs, aliveness, resistance—rather than teaching to the audience we imagine, and on staying present without over-identifying from our own vantage point. Jennie indicated she would share prompts and follow-up (including in Slack) so the thread can continue between meetings.
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Articles
1. "11 Ways to Hold Space for Difficult Emotions in Your Yoga Classes" — Yoga Journal (Desi Bartlett) – Note: Requires setting up a login
https://www.yogajournal.com/teach/teaching-methods/10-ways-hold-space-difficult-emotions-yoga-classes/Practical approaches for movement teachers: leaving space for emotion without needing all the answers, self-care before teaching, authenticity without oversharing, and holding the room when the world feels turbulent. Speaks directly to embodied-arts contexts and the line between therapeutic presence and scope of practice.
2. "Holding Space Without Burning Out: Understanding Compassion Fatigue and How We Safeguard Ourselves" — The Belonging Effect (Hannah Wilson)
https://www.thebelongingeffect.co.uk/holding-space-without-burning-out-understanding-compassion-fatigue-and-how-we-safeguard-ourselves/Frames compassion fatigue as a natural cost of caring—not a personal failure—and names ethical safeguards: supervision, decompression, self-awareness, boundaries, and rest. Pairs with the April theme of what makes holding space sustainable.
3. "Witness the Struggle: the Gifts of Presence, Silence, and Choice" — Faculty Focus (Patricia Kohler-Evans & Candice Dowd Barnes)
https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-and-learning/witness-the-struggle-the-gifts-of-presence-silence-and-choice/A teaching-focused take on being fully present, using silence to open space, and inviting students to construct their own paths instead of defaulting to rescue or advice. Useful for witnessing vs. fixing and classroom or studio presence.
4. "Holding space for uncertainty and vulnerability: reclaiming humanity in teacher education through contemplative | equity pedagogy" — Powietrzynska et al. (Cultural Studies of Science Education, 2021; open access via PMC)
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8265715/Interpretive research on contemplative and equity-oriented pedagogy in remote teacher education: emotional check-ins, wait time, breakout dialogue, reflective journaling, and repair when harm lands. Offers a scholarly lens on container, relationship, and sustainability under stress—without replacing the circle’s peer focus.
5. "What it means to ‘hold space’ for people, plus eight tips on how to do it well" — Heather Plett (2015)
https://heatherplett.com/2015/03/hold-space/The widely cited practitioner piece that helped popularize the phrase: walking alongside another person without judging, fixing, or controlling the outcome, plus eight practical tips (e.g. permission to trust intuition, keeping ego out of the container, making room for complex emotion). Pairs naturally with the BETTER with Mark Brand episode featuring Plett.
YouTube Videos
1. "The Heart-Centered Art of Holding Space with Shawn Moore" — Holy Shift Class
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TORBDCJU6BUA conversational take on holding space from the heart—useful for teachers who want spoken reflection alongside movement-based practice.
2. "The Art of Holding Space" — Rodolfo Young (TEDxUbud)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eTWew9zbAsA short talk on presence, invitation, and the “container” metaphor—portable language for facilitation across modalities.
Podcast Episodes
1. "Heather Plett: Holding Space" — BETTER with Mark Brand
Trigger Warning: Heather approaches some difficult themes, including death and suicide – listen with care
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/better-with-mark-brand/id1613751224?i=1000622977863Heather Plett on grief, tools for holding space for self and others, and her framing of the practice as love, liberation, and leadership—strong audio companion to the April theme.
2. "The Power of Holding Space: Reflections on Facilitation and Emotional Labor" — She+ Geeks Out Podcast
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/she-geeks-out-podcast/id1128497037?i=1000612462707Facilitators discuss emotional labor, boundaries, burnout, and how facilitation skills show up in everyday life—aligned with sustainability and who holds space for the holders.To be added following our circle