The Importance of a Safe Space - learning from an experience
The Importance of a safe space
Student Spotlight: Estela V. Noble
I notice how each sensory receptor at the soles of my feet wake up at the touch of the plush carpet as I enter the dim, candle lit room. Notes of rosemary, orange peel, cinnamon, clove and star anise seed greet me long before I arrive, preparing me for a soothing experience. The low voice of a saxophone is dancing softly in the corner.
In the middle of the room, an indoor slim teepee stands tall and it is covered in blankets. Within, there is room just for a portable, cylindrical bathtub that will offer a ‘Temazcal’ type of experience.
My facilitator is nervous, she explains that this is the first time that she holds the session and pleads for my patience and understanding, as well as honest feedback.
The invitation comes from the centuries old aztec tradition for cleansing body and spirit, using the ritual and herbs that have been used for women after giving birth. After the temazcal, I will be swabbed in a series of rebozos, to close the bones and provide me a soothing self container. I will visualise entering into the ‘womb’ of the teepee to re-encounter my experience of giving birth, this time in a safe and nurturing environment where I shall be able to heal from whatever trauma there may have been when I lived that experience, no matter how long ago. A previous massage and a massage during the temazcal will help me in my journey.
I climb up and find myself sitting in a tight tub, the darkness broken by a shy orange light glowing from the top of the ceiling. It reminds me of the glow of the red-hot stones inside the hole at the centre of another temazcal tent in the middle of the woods, where I sat sweating together with a dozen of souls of all ages.
I find that I like this solitary experience. The temperature within keeps going up as my facilitator pours bowl after bowl of water ‘as hot as I can stand’.
She covers my head with a towel and the aromatic steam starts performing its magic. The soft music is almost a lullaby; the sweat pearls along my skin and the aroma of rosemary opens my lungs as I breathe long and deep.
¨So Estela, would you like to share your birth-giving experience?”
My memory enters a dark and painful tunnel. I have not really talked about that moment because i would have like it to be a happier one.The midwife screaming, giving her instructions at the top of her voice. The absent father that came just as I started labour, just to sit in the armchair in the corner of the room to sleep away while the moment came. The emptiness of the ward when all the medics went away thinking that it would be hours before my time was due, bidding me goodnight and promising to be there first thing in the morning. Only me and my breath to look after our wellbeing. The little head peeking out just after midnight, hours before they all predicted it. Their panic. My asking everyone please not to shout. My baby placed in the incubator.
Not the best experience.
As I find the words of my story, soothed by the herbs and heat, I thank the possibility to talk about it; but then I realise that my facilitator has gone from the room.
“Sorry, I went to get the towel because it is getting late”. “You took such a long time that I thought that you did not want to speak”.
I saw the bubble burst in front of my eyes. I literally felt how I swallowed my words and the experience escaped back to the tunnel.
I felt in my own skin the tremendous importance of providing and holding a safe space.
When I started my facilitator training with Breathing Space, I was impatient to get to know the science, the technique, the practice… but for many weeks we concentrated on learning to be caring, to listen to each other, to show our vulnerability so we could hold the vulnerability of our breathers. Week after week I have been witnessing my teachers and colleagues in the way they listen to the breathers’ shares, how they hold a space without judgement and without giving unsolicited advice.
“If you can hold space for a Conscious Connected Breath Session, you can hold space for any kind of breathing”.
Yes! I agree entirely but I would add that this kind training should be the norm in all the wellbeing sector in its wide spectrum.
I realise that we spend hours planning and trying to impress our attendants, when what they need the most is to be heard, witnessed and acknowledged.
Yes, by all means prepare your room and talk to all five senses, plan and know exactly what you will do and when. Frame it and deliver it. But know thee that it is just the tip of the iceberg. The healing work is being done by the breath, by the magic that you are channeling, and mostly by the person in front of you.
The facilitator is no longer the protagonist. This is what I have learnt and I feel so grateful to be in a training where the focus is on the wellbeing of the breather.
We are witnessing the emergence of wellbeing teacher training courses like mushrooms in Autumn, but very seldom the importance of holding safe space is even mentioned!
The theory, the techniques, they can be learned in any CPD but in my view, the main learning is holding a safe space.
Thank you for the teachings.
About Estela
Estela’s passion for holding a safe space for her clients is her way of fulfilling her vision for a new happy, healthy and soulful society. She approaches all aspects of her teachings with the knowledge that the mind, body, and spirit are intimately connected and is committed to provide her knowledge and tools so they can bring holistic awareness to people’s daily lives and develop their potential as human beings.
Estela is a Breathwork Facilitator student at Breathing Space, graduating in February 2023; a Yoga Alliance certified Vinyasa (USA) and Kundalini Yoga (Spain) Teacher; offers Mindfulness Therapies with a certificate of Mindfulness for Wellbeing and Peak Performance, Monash University (Australia) and also teaches parents how to massage their baby (IAIM).