holding space

holding space is a mix of group-based platonic touch healing work and audience-participation performance of humans holding each other in a spiral and coregulating with empathy, reiki, silence, sound, and mantra with the intention of modifying the auric field and proliferating peace, liberation, and love (openness without control or possession). 

to be held and hold another at once is to pause time; to experience the dichotomous reality of incubation and decay, the past and future. to feel the weight of another human being and be physically held—far beyond the format for numerous studies on touch, demonstrating a calming and stress-dampening effect via various neurobiological mechanisms (see Monika Eckstein)—has the capacity to awaken empathy and safety through the evolutionary circuitries. together, the group can change the field.

humans have gathered to pray for collective outcomes since before time. a series of recent studies spanning decades suggests that reality is supported by a "unified field" of consciousness, wherein a sufficiently large group practicing meditation or experiencing a collective nervous system shift in one location can lower crime, war-related casualties, and conflict in other locations. (see Valerie B. Hunt and studies on auric field changes based on emotional response, John S. Hagelin and the "Maharishi effect"). 

Charles Darwin, in The Descent of Man (published shortly and with limited attention before his death in 1871, over a decade after On the Origin of the Species), wrote that it was the survival of the kindest, not the fittest, meaning that empathy—not competition—is the most important element in human evolution and survival. more recent studies have shown that simply witnessing an act of empathy can improve your immune response. known as the the “Mother Teresa effect,” in a Harvard study where students watched a video of Mother Teresa caring for people in need, the antibodies in their saliva markedly increased, a sign of heightened immunity. (David C. McClelland and Carol Kirshnit). your empathy can support other people’s health, and their empathy can support yours.

American Artist Spencer Tunick has reflected on his own large scale, body-centered gatherings:

“I use the bodies as a tool against repressive governments and against repressive people, and I also use it, in a way, for beauty, so that we have an explosion of life.”