Holding space wasn’t a term I grew up with.
It wasn’t something anyone in my life modeled particularly well either. Like most people, I was surrounded by well-meaning advice, quick fixes, and a lot of just think positive energy. Nobody talked about simply being present with someone without trying to change what they were feeling.
That changed during a period of deep personal healing, when a practitioner I was working with showed me something I hadn’t experienced before. A quality of presence that didn’t rush me, didn’t redirect me, didn’t try to make me feel something other than what I was actually feeling. I didn’t have a name for it at the time. I just knew it felt completely different from anything I’d encountered before — and that it was transformative.
I wanted to understand it. Not just receive it, but actually understand what it was and how it worked.
At first I thought I was simply learning a skill for my own relationships. Something to bring into friendships, into how I show up for the people I care about. But somewhere along the way, it became clear that this thread was pointing toward something bigger. A coaching path. A direction I hadn’t consciously planned but that kept presenting itself with increasing clarity.
Reading The Art of Holding Space by Heather Plett became the obvious next step.
What holding space actually means
Holding space means being fully present with another person without trying to fix, guide, rescue, or redirect their experience. It means creating a container — Heather uses the image of a bowl — that is sturdy enough to hold whatever arises, without collapsing under the weight of it or controlling what comes in.
It sounds simple. It is not simple.
What I discovered reading this book is that holding space well is one of the most demanding and most nuanced things a human being can do. It requires self-awareness, emotional intelligence, an understanding of power dynamics, cultural sensitivity, and an ongoing commitment to your own inner work. Heather is honest throughout that she is still learning. That she has made mistakes. That the work is never finished.
That honesty is part of what makes the book worth reading.
What the book covers
The Art of Holding Space moves through three parts. The first lays the foundation — what holding space is, what it requires, and what gets in the way. The second goes deeper into the personal work a space-holder must do — understanding your own nervous system responses, your unmet needs, your shadow, your shock absorbers, and the importance of having people who hold space for you in return.
The third part moves into more advanced territory — how holding space operates across differences in culture, privilege, and power. How to move from safe space into brave space, where real growth actually happens. How conflict can be transformed rather than just resolved.
One concept that landed particularly deeply for me was the spiral of authenticity — Heather’s framework for the inward and outward journey of becoming more fully yourself. Most personal development content focuses on the inward journey. What rarely gets talked about is the outward journey — the vulnerable process of re-entering the world as your new self, after the inner work has already happened. Emerging, revealing, trusting, connecting, rising, offering.
That felt personally very relevant to where I am right now.
What surprised me
How much more complex this skill is than I anticipated going in.
And also — how ancient it is. Holding space isn’t a modern coaching concept. It is, as Heather acknowledges throughout the book, something indigenous cultures have always known. The circle, the talking piece, the understanding that you are better together — these are not new ideas dressed in contemporary language. They are old wisdom finding a new audience.
That reframe changed how I hold the whole book. It isn’t a methodology. It is a remembering.
Why I’m sharing this
This is the first book I’ve read as part of building toward a coaching career. Specifically a nervous system coaching practice — working with people who are ready to reconnect with their own biological intelligence, regulate their system, and find clarity in the way they navigate their lives and relationships.
I wanted to document this step publicly because the path to becoming a coach isn’t just certification and theory. It is reading. Reflecting. Connecting material to your own lived experience. Sitting with concepts until they stop being concepts and become something you can actually feel.
That process takes time. And it deserves to be visible.
If you’ve ever experienced being truly held by another person — without judgment, without an agenda, without being rushed toward a conclusion — you already know what this book is pointing toward.
And if you haven’t experienced that yet, this book might help you understand both what’s possible and what to look for.
About the author
I’m Tani — writer, educator, and someone who has spent fifteen years learning to read her own body like a map. Based in Amsterdam, I navigate the crossroads of EMF awareness, post-viral healing, and nervous system regulation. Not from theory — from lived experience. This space exists for the ones who feel things deeply, who sense what others miss, and who are done being told it’s all in their head. Subscribe to Whispers from the Field — a quarterly newsletter for the quantum sensitive. No noise. Just signal.
The Indigo Healing Guide
Fifteen years of living with Epstein-Barr, post-viral fatigue, and quantum sensitivity — distilled into the guide I desperately needed and couldn’t find anywhere. Part memoir, part manual. Written for anyone navigating the invisible gaps where medicine ends and embodied wisdom begins. I made it because I needed it. And because you might too.