A key orienting idea when you are holding space for healing. 1. Between you and the person or part you're serving. 2. Between you and your own resources: teachers, inner wisdom, higher self, ground. What flows across each connection? In one direction, loving attention. In the other attention, vulnerable honest expression. Words, noises, tears, gaze, gesture, movement. "Person or part": there's a lot of similarity between doing this for another person and doing this for a part of yourself, perhaps a feeling in your belly, or a vision in your mind's eye of your inner child. When my presence helps someone heal--when they feel as though my presence has helped them to liberate something--I have not drawn it out into my own body. But something does move _through_ me, through the first connection and then the second. Because I believe that my body is limited in its capacity--a small body in a big world, that can only hold so much before it tires--I draw strength and trust from knowing that my work is only to make the two connections. An intelligence far vaster and older than mine does all of the rest. ## Resources It's the world's oldest and most innocent pyramid scheme. Something happens and we feel better; we try to repeat it to make ourselves feel better; we start doing it to and for others. The world we live in is blessed with many collections of these practices, and new ones are being remixed all the time. We're making new ones all the time because the old ones are imperfect, because humans are imperfect. So when we practice on each other$^1$, even with the best of intentions, we also transmit some of our coping mechanisms and blind spots. Every person playing this global game of telephone gets to say for themselves, "I didn't like that one. I want something different." Bless the bodies of practice that are still with us, that have understood something about truth, moral beauty, longevity, reality. That have survived because each generation has helped them balance consistency and evolution across all the subtle dimensions of life here on Earth. This balancing never ends; it is the activity of life. I feel deeply fortunate to have been touched by some of these streams... #to-be-continued --- $^1$: I'm being charitable here; often we're not intentionally practicing, but just "acting out upon" each other while trying to get our needs met. --- Naturally the usual caveats apply: All models are wrong, and some are useful. I offer this freely, not claiming it is anything new. How you receive it and what you make of it is up to you.