What does it mean to sit with somebody and in particular to sit with someone who is suffering? How do we hold space for someone else in pain and support ourselves in the process? This is one of the key components in our work.
Sometimes listening to our clients’ challenges, pain and confusion can be overwhelming. It is important to observe ourselves around this. How is this for you? Are there ways in which you support yourself, or do you feel a need to protect yourself from your client? Do you move toward dissociation or close down your heart, disconnecting you from your clients and limiting your ability to hear their systems? Or, do you lean into your own resources and sense of well being, creating a greater sense of security, safety and expansion within the session?
How can we be kind to ourselves and keep finding the capacity to sit in unconditional acceptance at the level of our client’s being? As always the answer is to return to the principles of the work. Always remember that all of life is an immense step-down process from Source via the Breath of Life through all of the Three Bodies (the tidal field of potency, the fluid field and the tissue field). This knowing will allow us to rest beneath the conditioned forces of our clients’ histories.
I recently came across a quote from Luther Standing Bear, a Sioux Shaman from the early 20th century, that speaks beautifully to this:
“From the Great Spirit, there came a great unifying force that flowed in and through all things—the flowers of the plains, blowing wind, rocks, trees, birds, animals—and was the same force that had been breathed into the first human. Thus all things were kindred, and were brought together by the same Great Mystery.”
We are in touch with that Great Mystery every time we meet our clients. It is invaluable to educate our clients that we are listening for the very essence of Health and its expression in the eternal flow of Long Tide. We are trying to help people understand that no matter how broken they feel they are in fact whole. This can be very challenging when someone is in dire pain and desperately wants us to fix them. We may find ourselves being drawn in to wanting to fix them as well. We may get lost in our need to help rather than trusting the wisdom of the body and it’s organizing forces to further heal.
In the most compassionate way you can, try to stay aware when you are being pulled off your center. Learn to recognize the times and places where you lose that deep connection to Source. Learn to sense your own warning signals that let you know you are becoming lost and gently bring yourself back to your Midline and your Fulcrums. As you do this over and over, gradually you begin to cultivate a deeper trust of the process. You can then begin to rest in the knowledge that these strains, compressions, heartaches and headaches are conditional forces being expressed, and that truly the vibrant life force of Potency is at work within these patterns, centering and containing these forces so that everything is held in the best possible manner.
Each person that we treat with all of their holdings are the very expression of the Source of all. We can appreciate that healing is within whatever symptom is being expressed in connection to the whole. When we remember that it is not our individual selves who are doing the work, we can lean into the constancy of the Breath of Life on our healing paths and find ease in supporting our clients.