The power of silence
Although the week has already started, I am still returning to normal life after experiencing an unusual weekend. My wife and I participated in a weekend-long Plant Medicine ceremony led by an experienced shaman called the “Laughing Shaman”.
When leaving on Friday, we both felt some level of anxiety about the unknown. We had no idea what to expect from such a deep dive into ourselves. Would any unexpected layers from our subconscious be revealed? Would that feel liberating or plain scary?
Little did I know, I was about to get a lesson in true facilitation.
Creating space
From the beginning and throughout our session, our shaman referred to our session as “co-creation”, which caught my attention from the start. Our fellow “psychonauts” were a diverse group of people from Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, and each had their personal reasons for joining us on this journey. We went through a range of ceremonies and bonding moments together, elegantly facilitated by our “Laughing Shaman”. Our facilitator’s continuous joyful expressions helped us not get stuck in the heaviness of deep-rooted emotions that got stirred up during our journey. I expected to learn more about myself during this journey; in addition, I ended up witnessing a pure form of intuitive facilitation, which I hadn’t ever experienced.
What stuck with me was how the shaman created space for us, including herself and her assistants. It reminded me again what facilitation really is about and how powerful it is to create space to unlock whatever is hidden or needs to be seen. Plant Medicine, in itself, can change your state to see things more clearly, but there needs to be space for insights to emerge. This space has a lot of different shapes and can only be provided with facilitation.
The different forms of space
First, there is a shared space for everyone to connect and express themselves. In facilitation, this is typically called “holding the space”, which the shaman practiced so intuitively, it completely blew me away.
Then there is the headspace, which each participant created with the shaman’s guidance to allow for channeling whatever comes up without it being cluttered by old thinking patterns. This is the space that occurs when your mind chatter starts quietening down. Plant Medicine does the right trick to achieve this, but only if the facilitator creates and maintains the right setting of peace and harmony.
Space is also created in the minds of the facilitator and her assistants to such an extent that they become highly sensitive and completely in tune with their intuition while connecting to the shared space and all the people in it. This space in our minds and the shared moment can only exist with our full presence. It only existed because of the art of facilitation coming from the shaman who created the setting and the right journey and then was able to fully tune in to the needs of each individual.
The sound of silence
The whole weekend required an amazing facilitation effort on behalf of the shaman. But her facilitation skills really came into play when we, as a group of diverse personalities, after being transported to the deepest layers of our subconscious, fragile and confused, shared our experiences and our personal stories with each other.
As she kept referring to how beautiful our co-creation was, describing the moment of helping each other cope and digest our biggest fears and challenges in life, I couldn’t stop noticing how she made such effective use of silence to hold the space and keep us present. At first, it felt obvious that she installed moments of silence because I figured she wanted everyone to have the chance to speak. But as we moved deeper into sharing and connection, vulnerability peaked, and stories became overwhelming. People revealed their real hurts and obstacles in life. And the use of silence developed a whole new meaning for me.
It was like I suddenly understood – for the first time – what the sound of silence truly was. It is the sound of creation.
Being immersed in the sharing moment, I paid close attention to the power of silence. Whenever a moment of silence occurred naturally or by invitation, I tried to be very conscious of what the silence did for us. I captured it in three different perspectives on the power of silence. This is how I could make sense of the power of silence so I would be able to apply it in a similarly powerful way during workshop facilitation. The channel, the shift, the cleanse – those were the three perspectives that emerged.
The channel
People bond together by listening to and sharing stories. We have a social hunger, a drive to find and reinforce social bonds, and we are motivated by dopamine to fuel this social drive. Our social nature bonds us together via storytelling. This means we can get deeply immersed in the experience of sharing or hearing a story, wound up with triggering thoughts and emotions. It can fill the entire shared space. Our feelings triggered by a story can overtake us and put us in a state. They can become sticky.
Silence can be used to slow down our rain of thoughts and our urge to respond so we can be fully present while someone is sharing their story. During our sharing moments after the ceremonies, our shaman ensured that everyone could first fully tell their story and share their thoughts before anyone else could respond. It gave all the listeners a pause from talking to let everything sink in properly before responding. It also allowed the storyteller to completely express themselves without their flow of thoughts being cut halfway. This way of holding the space for someone helps to avoid kickstarting an interaction too soon.
Nevertheless, when a story or opinion is fully shared, and other people start responding, the following conversation fills the space. When thoughts and emotions become “sticky”, they get repeated by different people (or the same people) in different words. The conversation no longer provides new insights; it just repeats what has already been expressed. This didn’t happen during our weekend because there was enough silence in-between the sharing of thoughts.
By providing moments of silence, people can let go of a flow of thoughts to allow a new one to emerge without forcing or continuing associations with previous thoughts. These are almost unnoticeable mini-seconds of connection to a non-local field of consciousness that suddenly lead to new thoughts arising. It feels intuitive, not rational. It is not only based on what we already know; it comes from the unknown, and we make sense of it based on what we know. The silence allowed for this to happen during our sharing moments. It is a form of refueling extra new thoughts from the source to mix into the sharing, trying not to repeat too much of what has already been said.
Conversations during our meetings and workshops at work usually don’t happen like that. Instead, people often force their opinions into the shared space; they sometimes even try to crowd out other people’s opinions to control the conversation.
Takeaway: Slowing conversations by having participants fully express themselves before anyone else can respond is already a great way to create an atmosphere of holding the space for everyone by everyone. It also allows others to think twice about their response and not repeat what others have already said. Whenever conversations seem to become circular, meaning that the same things are being said repeatedly, it can be helpful to install half a minute of silence to let go of everything that has already been said, connect again to the field and allow for new things to occur. This can be part of the facilitator’s way of facilitating the conversation. Install moments of silence so that participants can “channel” new thoughts to fuel the conversation.
The shift
When we share our own opinion or story or respond to someone’s opinion, it often comes from a place of identifying with something. It may mean we express ourselves from the perspective of our professional role, a title we have been given, or a place of suffering we feel as victims of an injustice or trauma. It can turn sharing moments into battles of the ego, whether or not we mean it to.
When sharing our darkest emotions during our weekend, the shaman always elegantly invited us to become present with the emotions and situation in full acceptance. She did this because when sharing our stories, we were obviously never objective about them. These are our stories, our lives and our pain; we are the stories we tell ourselves. But by being these stories, we can’t look at them from a higher perspective. By resisting them or becoming a victim, we identify with the stories, which can lead to blind spots. By accepting them in full presence, suddenly, our perspective shifts. To be objective, we can’t be the object we are talking about and thinking about. Inside the bottle, you can’t read the label.
Having some silence to shift perspective from being subjective to becoming objective allowed us to break free of a fixed way of thinking about a situation. Space is needed for such a subject-object shift –that space was provided by silence.
Takeaway: The conversation we facilitate in co-creation almost always comes from single-minded perspectives being shared. This type of sharing rarely renders new conclusions. When the participants can shift their perspectives, they see things in a different light. It deepens or widens their understanding and leads to new interpretations and conclusions. Shifting perspective means loosening one’s grip on one’s opinions. It means not identifying as much with one’s point of view and allowing in other points of view. As a facilitator, you can instigate a shift of perspective by asking everyone to think about how a different stakeholder would express their opinion on the topic. Ask them to express it as if they were the other stakeholder; you can even have them roleplay this different perspective. This works best after allowing for a moment of complete silence so they can shift their perspective and let go of their identification with their opinion.
The cleanse
To allow for a fresh look at things or to introduce a new topic, the facilitator needs to make sure the space is cleared, and the minds of the participants are open again. This is what I would like to call the cleanse. Look at it as cleansing your palette while enjoying a magnificent meal. You were just immersed in tasting a delicious starter, and now you want to get ready to taste a completely different main course. When you are enjoying a lovely sushi plate, the ginger cleanses your palette so you can let go of the taste of one kind of fish to open up completely to the next.
Our shaman patiently waited in silence for a sharing moment to end. And somehow intuitively, we all felt everything was said and were ready for someone else’s story to be shared. I was amazed by how intuitively we, as a group, could move from one topic to another, bridged by a moment of cleansing silence. An important moment of collectively letting go of one topic to get ready for the next topic. That cleansing moment of silence was an important moment of closure for everyone. It helped everyone to become present again to continue sharing together.
I wish these transitions from topic to topic would happen so intuitively during the workshops I facilitate. Usually, people do not sense the ending of a topic together because not everyone is as present in the conversation. The facilitator has to indicate that a decision or conclusion should be made at a certain point in time. When this finally happens, it is best practice to ensure the conversation’s outcome is summarized or recapped for everyone to be aligned with it.
Takeaway: When closing a conversation about a topic or when closing an activity in a workshop, after a good recap of the outcome, allow for a moment of cleansing silence for everyone to become open and present again for the next activity. It is not a moment of silence to reflect and reopen the same conversation. It is a moment of “cleansing the palate”, being at ease with what has come before and now open to what comes next.
In sum …
I am sure there are more ways to use the power of silence beyond using it for channeling, shifting and cleansing. From the perspective of the sound of silence being the sound of creation, these three approaches to silence can make a big difference in providing “space” for your participants to become and remain present in co-creation.
Silence is scarce in our lives. Noise pollution has increased dramatically in the last years. We have also been filling our lives with all kinds of distractions, cluttering the space and hampering our creativity and ability to channel from the creative field. Whenever I provide silence in a workshop, people become uncomfortable because they are no longer used to a quiet moment. They feel anxious because they tell themselves there is still so much to do and there shouldn’t be any time available for silence (!). Silence is the gateway to breakthroughs, unlocking creativity, to allowing for new realities. The space necessary to co-create comes from silence, from nothingness.
As a facilitator, you have a mission (if you choose to accept it) to help people realize the importance of silence and slowing down. By installing silent moments in your workshops, you will notice how people can’t escape from connecting to the present moment in co-creation. They will appreciate your care for their attention once they experience a silent moment’s impact.
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Happy Captaineering,
Alwin
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