What Is Emotional Spaceholding? It's Not A Framework, It's A Specific Bodily Experience

Sometimes emotional charge just needs to move.

This is not a framework. This is a specific bodily skill, like putting one foot in front of the other or reaching out to take a book off a shelf. All skills that, at one point, we couldn’t do. We learned many of these skills when we were too young to remember, but if we were learning something similar now - all the reading in the world would only get us so far. What are limbs? How do arms differ from legs when they both initially looked more similar on quadrupeds, somewhere higher up our phylogenetic tree? How many footsteps does it take to encircle the globe, what is the variance of a population’s armspans, how many inches is it from here to the bookshelf ?

At some point, after all that:

We become our body, and our body moves. Probably clunkily and wobble-ly, especially if we’re a year old and taking our first steps. But soon, with repetition and practice, our body figures it out.

It’s much the same with emotional spaceholding. Swells of sensation arise within us, as humans - swells that go through specific bodily arcs until they clear and leave us changed in their wakes. Our task in spaceholding is to surf those arcs. To tell the real catharsis and growth apart from “making lots of noise but merely spinning our wheels.” And, most importantly, to LOVE the whole thing. Because love and presence and grounding are the mediums in which emotional spaceholding works. ‘Love and presence and grounding’ are to ‘emotional spaceholding’ what ‘legs’ are to ‘walking’.

And much like walking, emotional spaceholding can be wobbly at first.

So, what’s emotional spaceholding?

I’m writing this article about a very specific format of emotional movement that has worked really well for me. It’s relational. It could be done in groups, but I learned it 1-1.

There’s one person who has the emotional charge that wants resolution, and one person who’s the spaceholder. The spaceholder’s job is to love and be present and grounded for the other person, who we can call ‘the receiver’ who holds the charge. They set a timer for the session - this helps step into nonordinary reality, where suddenly the foundation of the session is “you, the receiver, are good, and I am paying attention to you and I am with you. we’re here right now in this moment in time and I see and support all of you. yes, even that.” The spaceholder still exists and is a separate person, of course, it’s not a total merge - but for the time being, they set aside as many of their own concerns and judgements as they can, and open their attention to be with the receiver.

The receiver’s job is to explore whatever emotion it is they want held or discharged. I love this setup because it’s nonhierarchical - being an effective receiver is exactly as much of a skill as being an effective spaceholder! It encourages fluency with your own inner experience, and what would feel best to you, rather than handing that task off to someone else. Furthermore, the way I learned, the receiver and the spaceholder usually do trades. They’ll say, anywhere between “five minutes each?” and “an hour each?” and do the the session one way, then swap roles. Truly mutual networked support, which is a dimension I feel most therapeutic modalities lack.

So we’ve got the roles. Then, the aim of the session is to help the receiver find discharge, resolution, relief. The underlying thesis of these sessions is: undischarged emotions hang around in the body and our (sub)conscious experience of our lives, weighing us down and desiring resolution. Discharging them in a loving relational container frees up that energy and re-integrates us back into our fully felt aliveness.

Sure, this thesis may sound nice to read - but in practice, it can be a tough sell when the undischarged emotion is, say, covered in shame, and we’d rather pretend it’s not there. However, 1. shame is an emotion too, so we can discharge that 2. it can be a very easy sell to people who are already aware they have so much they’d like to get off their chest and be seen in, if only anyone would really receive it!

And moreover, the receiver is allowed and encouraged to ask for exactly what they want. Many times I simply wanted to lie in someone’s lap and do absolutely nothing and be held. And then I asked for that and it happened! Turns out I was working through some sort of story that “I have to do something or be interesting to receive love” and I wanted to create an embodied contradiction to that. And, bless, I did. I received love just for existing.

Also, the aftereffect of discharge feels obviously good. It’s a momentary euphoria coupled with lasting bonding and change. Life feels lighter, and over time even moreso - so “emotional spaceholding” is no longer something that requires a ‘sell’, but rather a self-propagating obvious habit.

So, that’s the foundation: loving presence with another person in service of emotional flow and discharge. Staying relaxed and delighted with them, even as they go into challenging terrain. More advanced spaceholders can also start to prompt the receiver towards their resolution. There’s lots of ways to gain mastery at this skill - creating embodied contradictions, encouraging the receiver a heck of a lot, querying their bodily sensations, pushing against walls or breaking sticks (good for anger), upskilling your ability to behold someone with reverence, really whatever - but that’s a topic for another post. The most foundational thing is the willingness to be there, and trust what comes up, and take its expression seriously.

This can look all SORTS of ways, many of which we don’t know in advance. When charge begins to flow, part of the whole point is we don’t know what it’s going to look like! I’ve been in and seen sessions where:

• someone infodumped anxiety and just wanted to feel that they weren’t judged. we held hands and I called up real, actual, nonjudgement and encouragement.

• screaming. there’s a kind of screaming that sounds stilted, and a kind that happens entirely by itself and surprises all of us with its force of life.

• crying in someone’s arms. In a trade with one of my teachers I got into a moment of sobbing all over her, and started getting self-conscious that I’d get snot on her, and bless her, she said “do you think I’d care if a toddler snotted on me? of course not! don’t worry about it at all, I’m here, heyy heyyy this is exactly the thing” and hugged me closer and I’m still shocked and heartened by that level of acceptance.

• on a less dramatic note: some of the sessions are simply “I’m tired, can I lie in your lap while you stroke my hair” “yes of course!” and then I feel tingles of relief all over my body. as long as energy is flowing, it doesn’t have to look any particular way.

• I’m personally prone to coughing and retching as discharge. once at a grief circle I felt emotionally blocked, and called on a friend to help spacehold - and what immediately, obviously came out as soon as he started supporting me, was forceful retching and coughing. I still have no story about what that was, but it felt cathartic and real.

• full-on embodied theatrical enactment! here’s one of my tweets about it. yes, we designated part of the room as a “swamp of not mattering” and held hands and she HAULED me outta there while I also strained and strained. this all came about because of a ‘minor’ upset in my day - but I called a friend, and she held space. we pulled the thread of the upset and this is the way it went.

But, no matter how it looks - the most important thing is that people actually feel better afterwards! This is the part that I was skeptical of - why would I let someone see me in a coughing fit or the depths of despair - but, yep, afterwards, the wave passes and frees up more space and energy in its wake. This is what I mean by “emotional spaceholding is a specific bodily experience.” If it worked, you know, because your qualia changes in gratifying ways. And these changes are lasting and enduring. People will comment that you look more alive.

In many ways, this method of spaceholding is like practical metta meditation. The spaceholder isn’t sitting solo as they send love - they’re right there with the person who wants the support. And the whole point is for the receiver to feel the love, to feel the presence, meaningfully, in the way that helps them feel emotionally supported. That helps them feel that cathartic, relaxing sense of - oh, I’m real, things are flowing, I’m in a broader network that cares about me. And all sorts of weird, physically obvious things can come out of that - like layers of weight physically lifting off your body.

Nothing matters except the receiver’s felt sense that they are being supported. Any techniques that are initially taught about “how to spacehold” are ultimately suggestions in service of the feeling, and should be discarded or modified based on what feels right for the moment.

Another way of saying this is: have you ever walked into a room and, there’s someone there, someone in whose presence you immediately relax? Like, you feel like they get something about you and it’s deeply affirming? And you feel a sudden compulsion, urge, a relieved ability to offload emotional burdens you forgot you were carrying, into the space with them? And they’re not weird about it at all, they’re happy for it, and happy to see you grow, and they understand the necessity of the process you’re going through? The goal of emotional spaceholding is to upskill at being exactly that kind of presence.

And this is what I mean about - holding that presence is a specific bodily skill. It’s likely not going to happen overnight - although, never say never, maybe it’s already in you!

Learning to spacehold?

I owe much of my confidence and knowledge about emotional spaceholding to a particular training I attended in the Asheville grief community in early May. Sure, I’d been reading about emotions for years before, and benefitted from many paid modalities - but this was a four-day experiential space specifically devoted to teaching us participants how to support someone through an emotional experience. We learned by alternating teachings, demos, and practice sessions. Oh my GOD I’m so grateful for the practice.

I signed up largely because I was tired of freezing up or feeling lost when people around me had emotional charge. Clearly they needed support - and often I needed support - and not being able to provide it was very, very frustrating to me! I’d get in my head if someone started feeling something, looping something like “oh no I hope I’m doing this right” and generally not be very present. I feel really gratified that this training resolved that specific pain point. Now I feel decently well-equipped to hold and move emotions.

I say ‘decently’ because -

From what I’ve observed, there is definitely a skill gradient of spaceholding. The same way that someone can be an ok soccer player, or an olympic athlete.

If I had to break them down into levels, they’d be:

Level -1 and below: The ‘spaceholder’ is actively harmful, or judgemental, or dismissive of emotions. The way they show up in the world is creating new emotional charges, rather than settling existing ones.

Level 0: Literally not there. Either the person is physically absent, or they’re physically present but not paying attention to you.

Level 0.5: Ahhh you can tell they’re here with you and paying attention - but they’re mostly motivated by wanting to “be a good spaceholder” or something else that has nothing to do with you. And you can tell they’re bumbling, or maybe a bit freaked out, or maybe only hearing half of what you’re bringing - but dammit, they’re still here and showing up. That’s not so fluid, but it’s something.

Level 1: Ahhh they’re here because they do actually care about you! And they don’t have so much experience with what you’re going through, but wow, they’re totally willing to trust and believe that you are good. They might not be so relaxed or so delighted, as they’re still getting their bearings at this new skill, but you can tell they care and they’re willing to trust your process.

Levels 2-4: Basically smooth interpolations between levels 1 and 5.

Level 5: This person is able to see you and see the best in you no matter what. Working through assault trauma? Suspicious of them, and testing them with anger? Can barely take two breaths without sobbing? They’ll meet it all with understanding, without losing their ground. They’ve lived a real world order in which this charge that feels unfathomable to you has already resolved hundreds of times, in other bodies, so they trust you. They also know exactly the right thing to prompt, exactly the right way to hold your hand, so that emotional charge that feels stuck in you - or maybe you’ve forgotten about - is suddenly right there, on the surface, in cleansing catharsis.

I’d put my teacher Josh at a 5, and maybe Suzannah at a 5.5. Josh has a gently honed gift of detecting exactly what I need to cry about, even if I’m initially unaware of it myself. Suzannah is simply - pure trust and exuberance and ground, even among the darkest topics.

Level 6 and above: I’ve never personally met someone at this level, so I can’t say for sure. But I suspect saints may have been somewhere in ‘above.’

Before this training and these last 6 months, I was solidly at level 0.5. Now I vary somewhere between levels 2 and 3, depending on the topic. I learned a real skill! Yay! And, none of these levels are ‘better’ or worse than any other. The main thing that separates them is practice. I expect to get better, simply by continuing to show up and care. If I don’t have capacity for something now, that’s fine. I very likely will later! Or, someone else might have that capacity now. Expansion of capacity is a natural developmental process.

Which is interesting, because in my life outside of Asheville there seem to be precious few opportunities to practice emotionally supporting someone in a safe learning container. My experience has been that situations that call for emotional support in ‘real life’ feel higher-stakes somehow, or like I’m not allowed to be well-intentioned unless I’m perfect in my execution! So, I’m really grateful to this community for the cultural context that emotions can be meaningfully and helpfully fielded even by people who don’t have 100% full emotional fluency - as long as they’re willing to show up, assume the best, love, and trust.

An old tweet of mine, for proof that I couldn’t always do this. Now I’m really comfortable with people crying in my arms! Yay!

A few other nuggets and tips I picked up for learning to spacehold:

• Don’t lie about your capacity, or try to pretend you have more than you do. The receiver can tell, and it’s stressful and breaks the trust. If they’re working on emotions that are hard for you to hold attention for - because perhaps they bring up fear in you, or they’re simply too big - don’t say “I could be here with you all day!” to try to encourage them. Say what actually feels true to you. That might be something like “hey, I’m fully here for it for the next 7 minutes” or even excusing yourself to say “hey, that’s out of my capacity to hold attention for, but maybe we could work on something else?”

• “Read the person, not the story.” So long as their emotions keep moving, the spaceholder does not need to know facts of the situation the charge is about. in fact, ‘gaining facts’ can be at odds with ‘going where the charge is’! Furthermore, completely nonverbal sessions are possible.

• Any of your own stuff going about "am I doing this right??? I hope I am!!!!" is taking you out of presence with the other person. Be there, and behold them with as much relaxed delight as you have.

• Here’s a link to a twitter thread of my notes from this training.

A Closing Note

So, those are my own experiences with emotional spaceholding, and the lenses and practices I have for relating to it now.

Sometimes, emotional charge just needs to move. It arrives in our experience, and either we show up to field it, or it weighs us down or gets passed down to later generations.

In practicing, I’ve observed that the process of emotional movement seems closely interwoven with decisionmaking. At the other side of this discharge process often lies obvious clarity about who we are, and what our next steps are, and what matters to us about the world and how we show up in it.

Why is it like this? I don’t know. Is it a reminder stay inter-connected, that we really do need each other and in a real physical way we can’t do it alone? Is it a reminder of humility, that some things we just don’t know, and won’t know, even though they seem obvious later, but there’s simply no way to know them without first getting the mysteries of the body involved? Is it the portal through which our soul speaks to us, and this is simply a normal accepted ritual protocol for receiving its messages? Is it emotion physics?

I don’t know (yet). Probably some measure of all of the above.

But for now, I’m simply happy that it works, and I’m happy to have the skill in my life.

---

An Afterword - Pictures!

In this post I reference a specific training a lot, and - one of the participants happens to have been a photographer! So she took some photos. Here they are.

We were all at Sun Song community, a 6-person homestead and intentional community and event space and glorious garden, that’s one of my favorite places in all of Asheville, North Carolina. It’s not a business. It’s run by people, and friends, who do what they care about and live their hearts.

One of my own photos of the gardens at Sun Song.

More specifically, the workshop was “Holding Space - Tending Individual Grief” with teachers Josh Fox and Suzannah Park. (Fox is one of the residents of Sun Song.)

Here’s photos of Fox and Suzannah! They’re very sweet and lively people.

Here’s me!

And, here’s other people -

And a scream, being held -

Some others. Thanks for reading, and I’m always open to hearing what resonates most for you! Drop me a line.

The simple physicality of handholding. Pure anti-dissociative, grounding magic for staying with something challenging.