If you talk long enough about the field of coaching (particularly life coaching, spirituality coaching, wellness coaching, or career coaching) you’re going to hear the phrase “holding space” quite a lot. It’s one of those terms that can be just ambiguous enough for you to kind of get the sense of what it means without fully understanding the concept (no cap, on business, and that’s a vibe all fit into that category for me). So what does it mean to hold space?

To answer that question, we need to clear up some misconceptions about the nature of coaching. People often confuse being a coach with being an instructor. A tennis coach teaches you how to play tennis.  A debate coach teaches you how to improve your debating skills. A relationship coach fixes your lousy dating game. Right? So a life coach must be really good at life, a spirituality coach must be super spiritual, and a wellness/career coach must be the fittest, most successful person in town, right?

Eh. Not so much.

First of all, telling people how to be better is not necessarily how good coaching works even in the sports world. Secondly, this framing limits our concept of coaching to people who are just learning the basics of a particular field of study. But even the very best athletes (and professionals, believers, and . . . just people) all over the world still employ coaches to help them through various stages of their lives and careers. So there must be something more to coaching than just teaching people how to do stuff. Hint: that’s really not what coaching is at all.

So if a spirituality coach isn’t teaching you how to be spiritual, what exactly does a coach do? Well, holding space is a big part of it. Heather Plett, who literally wrote the book on holding space, writes that holding space is the act of supporting someone with safety, trust, and empathy in times of grief, crisis, and healing. Personally, I always understand this type of thing best with a word picture . . . and the perfect picture for holding space (for me, at least) is a ball field.

Holding space safe

Imagine a coaching or therapy session as a game of baseball. You can play it in the street, but you have to look out for cars. You can play in the yard, but you risk breaking a window. You can play in the house, but . . . yeah, you can’t really play safely in the house. If you play anywhere other than a well maintained ball field, you risk personal injury, property damage, and substandard play. But the most likely outcome when you don’t have a safe place to play is . . . you just don’t play.

But with a proper baseball field, you can actually play without fear of oncoming traffic or tripping in potholes. And while you may fail or stumble, you have the freedom to do so within the safety of the game you’re setting out to play. 

Coaching provides that same sense of shelter and purpose to growth and development as a ball field gives to a baseball player. A good coach gives you a place designed to safely develop, explore, experiment, and grow. And talk. You have the opportunity to talk in a safe space with a most attentive audience.

holding a dedicated space

The coaching relationship holds space free not only from danger but also from distraction. When you try to find your way through a spiritual crisis in the midst of all your other responsibilities and relationships, it’s kind of like trying to play baseball at a crowded park or a beach or the mall . . . or with your phone in your pocket. Simply hoping that no one will bother you or that you’ll find time at some point won’t allow you the time and focus you need to make progress.

Like a baseball field, fenced in and reserved just for you, coaching holds space for you in the sense that distractions and diverseions are walled-out from your efforts to reaching the goals you and your coach set. When you are in a session, there is no mistaking what your main purpose is. You know exactly why you’re there, and you don’t need to worry that you or your coach are being pulled off onto other tasks or rabbit trails. You don’t have to worry that you’ll lose heart or back down. You’ve shown up, you’re in uniform, and you’re ready to play ball.

The coaching session is sacred. It is ground dedicated to one purpose and one person. As a client, the session, the goals, the processes . . . everything is centered on you and reaching your goals. When you walk away from a session, other priorities, people, and plans will almost certainly take precedent. But during your sessions, your focus is singular. Most goals never get reached not because they were impossible or impractical but because they get shoved to the back burner and forgotten. Through holding dedicated space in a focused coaching program (or any occasion where you allow yourself to hold space or hold space for others) progress is a certainty because you follow through on the commitment to the task.

Holding attention