What It Means to Truly Sit With Someone

I spent this past weekend in Colorado apprenticing at a Holotropic Breathwork event. Once again, I was in awe of what becomes possible when people are given a space where they don't have to be anything other than exactly where they are.

It is one of the few places I've experienced where people are truly allowed to just be. They can be vulnerable and messy. They can be angry, joyful, grieving, terrified, ecstatic, confused, or silent. They can go places within themselves that they may not have words for, and they don't have to explain it away, make it make sense, or perform wellness. They simply get to experience what is there.

And we sit with them. We witness. We hold space.

There is no agenda for their experience. We aren't there to tell them what their journey means, rush them toward a breakthrough, or fix them. We are there to say, in whatever way we can: You don't have to do this alone.

The Profound Simplicity of Circle

I've been a breather, a sitter, and part of the facilitation team. Every time, I'm struck by the same thing: how simple it is.

We come together in circle with people who may have never met. They come from different parts of the world, with different backgrounds, religions, political beliefs, and lives. For those hours, so much of what we usually use to define ourselves falls away. It doesn't matter who you voted for, what you believe, what you do for work, or what your life looks like on the outside.

Someone is hurting. Someone is healing. Someone is searching. Someone is moving through something deeply human, and we sit beside them.

We don't need to agree with someone's worldview to care about their humanity. We don't need to understand exactly what they are experiencing to stay beside them. We don't need to know where their journey is going. We can simply witness.

When someone has enough safety, space, and freedom to stop performing, something can begin to unfold. Sometimes grief held for years finally has somewhere to go. Sometimes anger that has never been allowed a voice can move. Sometimes a person meets a part of themselves they have been afraid to look at. Sometimes there is joy, or surrender, or nothing that needs to happen at all.

We don't always know what is waiting underneath the surface. But when we create the conditions for someone to be with themselves, I am continually amazed by the places they can go.

Learning to Sit With Ourselves

Just as important as learning to sit with others is learning to sit with ourselves. How often do we actually do that? How often do we feel something without immediately distracting ourselves from it? How often do we notice what's happening inside without deciding it needs to be fixed? How often do we let ourselves be tired, sad, angry, uncertain, joyful, afraid, or simply not know?

We live in a world that offers endless ways to move away from ourselves: another notification, another task, another podcast, another solution, another thing to improve, another reason to keep going.

Sometimes the most courageous thing we can do is stop, get quiet, and stay long enough to hear what is underneath all the noise.

The Harder Part: Allowing Ourselves to Be Seen

There is another side to being witnessed that I keep coming back to. We have to allow ourselves to be seen, and that can be much harder.

We are so accustomed to keeping parts of ourselves tucked away. We learn what is acceptable to share and what isn't. We learn to be strong, to be capable, to take care of everyone else, and to keep moving when something inside us is hurting. We become very good at functioning.

Being witnessed asks something different. It asks us to let someone see the parts that aren't quite as put together, and to say, "This is actually where I am." Not where we think we should be or want to be, but where we actually are.

There is risk in that, especially when we don't have the answers, when we are uncertain, when we aren't the strong one or the caregiver, when we aren't okay. Maybe that is part of what makes being witnessed so powerful. When we allow ourselves to be seen, we give another person the chance to meet us somewhere real. And when we allow another person to be fully seen, we offer them the same gift.

Watched vs. Witnessed

I think there is a profound difference between being watched and being witnessed. Being watched can make us self-conscious, as if we're being evaluated. Being witnessed can make us feel less alone. It can allow us to soften, to exhale, to stop guarding, to become more honest, and to remember parts of ourselves we may have forgotten.

Maybe that is why being truly witnessed can be so healing. Not because someone else healed us, but because their presence helped create a space where we could finally meet ourselves.

Healing doesn't always happen because someone gives us the right answer. Sometimes it happens because, for the first time, we don't have to hide the question. Sometimes we don't need someone to tell us who we are. We need someone willing to sit beside us while we remember.

Bringing It Out of the Circle

I often wish I could put the feeling of this kind of space into a little bag, like sprinkles, and give it to everyone. I always wonder what would happen if everyone interacted this way, in the world, outside of the circle.

What if we learned to sit with our partners this way? Our children, friends, parents, and communities? What if someone we loved was hurting and, instead of immediately trying to make it better, we simply stayed with them? What if we could listen without needing to agree, witness without judging, stay present without taking over, and love someone without needing to rescue them? What if we allowed someone else's experience to belong to them?

And what if we offered ourselves that same spaciousness? What if we could be curious about our own experience rather than judging it? What if we allowed ourselves to be human?

I wonder what would change if this became more of how we move through the world: in our marriages, friendships, and families, in the way we parent, in the way we care for people, in the way we move through conflict. Not because we understand one another perfectly or agree, but because we are willing to stay connected to our shared humanity.

I haven't found many spaces where this is practiced as intentionally as it is in this work. Every time I leave one, I carry the same wish with me: What if we could bring more of this into the world? What if we could sit with one another a little more gently, make more room for vulnerability, and listen without an agenda?

What if we remembered that sometimes the most healing thing we can offer another person isn't an answer at all?

Sometimes it's our presence. Sometimes it's our willingness to stay. Sometimes it's simply saying:

I'm here. You can be exactly where you are. And you don't have to walk through it alone.

An Invitation

Perhaps the invitation is not only to learn how to sit with others, but to learn how to sit with ourselves. To become a little more willing to be seen. To tell the truth about where we are. To let someone sit beside us in the places we usually keep hidden.

Because when people are given space to be fully human, something happens. When they are met without judgment, something softens. When they are witnessed, something that has been hidden can finally come into the light.

And when we learn to sit with ourselves and with one another in that way, perhaps we begin to remember something we have always known:

We were never meant to do all of this alone.