The Soulfull Living Journal

Most of us don’t consciously decide to lose touch with ourselves.

It happens gradually.

Life gets busy. There are people who need us, things that need doing, work to keep on top of, messages to answer, appointments to remember and all the ordinary practicalities of being human.

We get very good at keeping everything moving.

And somewhere along the way, we can stop noticing how we actually feel.

We are functioning. We may even be functioning very well.

But we’re no longer quite sure when we last stopped long enough to ask:

What do I need? What do I want? What feels right for me now?

That’s what I think of as living on autopilot.

Autopilot isn’t always obvious

We tend to imagine that if we were deeply disconnected from ourselves, we would know.

Surely something dramatic would happen.

Perhaps we would feel completely lost, desperately unhappy or unable to cope.

Sometimes that does happen, but often autopilot looks much more ordinary.

You get up. You do what needs to be done....

Holding space isn’t passive. It is a very particular kind of presence. 

It means being fully there with someone without immediately trying to fix what they are feeling, steer their experience, fill every silence or rush them towards feeling better.

And although we often talk about “holding space” in healing or therapeutic work, it is something we do in many different situations. We hold space when we work one-to-one with someone, when we facilitate a group, teach a course or lead a retreat. We may also find ourselves holding space for a friend, a family member or someone going through a difficult time.

At its heart, holding space is about creating the conditions in which another person can safely meet themselves.

Being present without needing to fix

When someone is struggling, many of us have an instinctive desire to help.

We want to reassure them. Offer advice. Find the right words. Make things better.

That instinct usually comes from care.

But sometimes, in our eagerness to h...