Co-Creating A Pro-Tainer – What It Takes To Hold Space Together
- Oct 15, 2024
- 5 min read
Updated: Nov 6, 2024
The Empire of Love initiative supports executives, boards and organizations in embracing the idea that Love ultimately governs any evolutionary process. We are three professionals from various horizons who are committed to catalyzing leaders´ and relationship-systems development, expanding consciousness and capacities.
Think about the last work meeting where you felt fully present, accessible, and capable of tapping into your creative genius and contributing generously and impactfully without feeling depleted. What made that possible?
At Empire of Love, we love this question and revel in the practice of holding spaces where each participant can access all their potentialities to benefit themselves, others, and the whole relationship system. This, too, is leadership as love.
In this article, we are delighted to share some aspects that characterize the experience, which is always a prerequisite when Empire of Love gathers, and the key factors we attend to when we hold such spaces. When we convene, Empire of Love facilitators and participants co-create a feeling of being profoundly safe, connected, brave, inspired, joyful, and energized. We can almost touch the texture of our field when we all summon it because a third entity is felt, a consciousness of our unique leadership as love together. It feels like a potent, expanding wave rippling well beyond the boundaries of our shared space.
This note that I (Ilaria) jotted down a few months after the foundation of Empire of Love still resonates as I write now: “Since our first encounter with Silvie and Gabriella, it became crystal clear to me that our Empire of Love is a reality when we are together. Our space together is absent of dogma, judgment, and barriers; I feel held as I am, participating in co-creating a field where everything becomes possible and where I can express myself freely and share my love abundantly.”
This feeling describes the emotional foundation from which I can honor my truth and my oneness with all living beings, giving me the chance to make the impact I am directed to make in the world. It is very far from my experiences of meetings where I don’t feel heard or seen, from myself first, and when I disconnect and, as such, spoil much of who I am and can contribute.
Does this experience sound familiar to you?
We deeply care about holding purposeful spaces with and for all the people who cross our path, those who feel drawn to working with us. We call it co-creating and co-stewarding our 'pro-tainer' (as opposed to a con-tainer) that holds us all safely, intentionally crafted, and at the same time allows us to, or dares us to grow and be/come/ (re)generative together.
What are the factors that make pro-tainers possible?
The first, of course, is love joining from a place of genuine care for ourselves and the others we share the space with, understanding that the whole relationship system and the task at hand is always the higher purpose.` Showing up for oneself, others, and the whole in this way is usually the most demanding and determinant step, so we can be creative with how we can support each other in this grounding into love. Grounding into love involves accepting ourselves as we are and genuinely speaking from our hearts, whatever happens to be there at any moment.
Secondly, we design and embrace the shared intention for our co-creation. Our intention becomes a powerful attractor, summoning our energy and capacities and strengthening our connection within the field . In our courses, for example, we all share the intention to grow, witness each other grow, and then cross our respective edges. This journey becomes the focus of our time together. Hence, our efforts and partnerships are directed towards that.
Thirdly, we deliberately engage in co-creating our field by defining the principles we want to infuse into our shared space. We acknowledge that we shape and continuously evolve our system with every thought, emotion, word, and action we think, speak, and act, so we choose to be intentional about that: What do we commit to, to steward for ourselves and each other?
The answers to these questions above inform our ways of being and doing together, how we communicate, give and receive feedback, and nurture inclusivity and openness, always honoring beginnings, transitions, and endings.
Fourthly, we invite self-awareness and shared awareness of essential experiences in our relationships with others when we are together. Sharing about how our experience is unfolding helps our relationship system regenerate at will, learning and adapting from every conscious step we take together. Any discomfort we face and attend to can become a potent ´fertilizer´ for the subsequent emergence. Any intuition we receive and share may inform, even reorient, the whole system.
Our field then widens or evolves, and our consciousness and capacities expand. We repeatedly attune to our lived experience: Am I speaking from my heart now? Are we stewarding what we most care about in this gathering?
Fifthly, we recommit to and enrich our relationship system or design the partnership alliance in a new system, which allows us to keep expanding our individual and collective consciousness, developing our co-creation and its impact on our larger environment (and the joy that comes from that!), and hence strengthening our connection in a way that opens to ever more possibilities.
By taking the pro-tainer co-creation process seriously and assiduously through time, we can be Rexible, creative, and playful together in the now.
Each of these five factors offers infinite avenues for shared exploration and practice. They also build on each other in a powerful amplification of intending, connecting nurturing into the most exquisite experience that is possible for our relationship systems at any moment.
Imagine that all our meetings, whether private, public, or at work, could unfold as a regenerative instance for everyone involved and for the larger whole. How powerful would that be!? Please take this article as a cheerful and tenacious nudge to summon your leadership as love when you hold space for your next meeting. We would love to hear about the beauty that will unfold!
Read more from Empire Of Love
Empire Of Love, Executive Leadership Coaching & Facilitation
The Empire of Love initiative engages executives, boards and organizations that embrace the irony and the truth of Love, which ultimately governs any evolutionary process.
Ilaria Distefano (Italy), Gabriella Fenesi (Hungary) and Silvie Le Muzic (Norway) are the visionary stewards of this initiative. They bring together a unique blend of backgrouonds in organizational and leadership development, action research, sustainability, governance, architecture, creative technologies and entrepreneurship. They channel this diverse experience towards expanding human capacities and partner with leaders and relationship systems committed to growing, prospering, and elevating their contribution to the complexity of our times.
