Liminal Spaces

Liminal Spaces

I recently went to the European Assocation of Body Psychotherapy congress in Cork, Ireland. It was a very full weekend of workshops, keynote speakers, panels, think tanks, research symposiums, nights, out, ceilidhs, dancing, laughter, chance encounters and reunions. Wonderful and intense all at the same time.

Margaret Brady, an Irish Body Psychotherapist, held a workshop around Celtic spritituality, liminality and the place for ‘not knowing’ in our day to day lives and in therapy.

She talked about ‘thin places’ where the veil between worlds was thin. Physical spaces where sky meets the land - on top of a mountain for instance. Or where lakes meet the shore, where the sea meets the earth. Waves lapping over beaches - a coming and going, never quite arriving at a destination. These places are often remote - it requires a pilgrimage of sorts to get there. You have to set out with the intention of going, out of your way, to this space. Perhaps with a question to be asked, something to be hoped for.

Liminal Spaces can also be sunsets, sunrises, forests - where light and dark create dappled patterns write Matthew Appleton in his book ‘Transitions to Wholeness’. It can be when the seasons change such as we are experiencing now as we move slowly into Autumn, out of late summer.

Liminal spaces can also be things which aren’t physical. I find poetry, when I voice it out loud, to be a liminal space. There is a not knowing in a poem. I often don’t have much reasoning or rational behind why a particular line draws me to tears or chokes my throat. I often feel a yearning, a longing, when I read a poem. But it’s hazy, in terms of what it draws for me. I don’t necessarily ‘figure it out’. Resolve something. Just that it speaks to me and perhaps that’s enough.

Grief, is a liminal space. Pregnancy and postpartum - now matter how long a pregnancy was or how it ended - we enter into a liminal space with so much uncertainty, newness and unknowing. It requires a lot of holding. Transitions into adult hood - our teenage years perhaps - menopause, the days before our period…

Yoga Nidra is often felt as a liminal space - a space somewhere between being fully awake and fully asleep. Similar to those moments just before we wake up perhaps, or just as we fall asleep in bed at night.

When I practice Biodynamic Massage there is often a sense of liminality. We enter into the session with a ‘not knowing’ together. I don’t have the answers, I don’t diagnose, I don’t try and fix or cure. But I hold a curiosity to simply ‘what’s happening now?’. What does it feel like. What sensations may come up. Hot. Cold. Warm. Tingly. Emotions may arise. Feelings without words. We may never discover what’s happened in a session, perhaps no narrative will be attached. Perhaps a memory will arise. Perhaps not. Listening into the story of the body.

In my own life I can certainly feel my desire to have things figured out, resolved, tied up. To have chaos ordered, made sense of. To speak about it eloquently, with awareness. To have a narrative or a story in place. To plan for the future. To try and prevent or cause things to happen. Certainly, these times that we are living in at the moment can make us feel lost, overwhelmed with how much unknown there is.

It’s worth noting that we can’t be in a liminal space all of the time. Whilst in a liminal space we may feel as though all of our ‘spidey’ senses are switched on. We, might, feel on the edge. Or it can be very dreamlike. This is where a container can help, a ritual to guide us through, something to anchor us - sometimes we need to have our feet firmly planted, hands in the soil and centered in our being.

If I am in a liminal space then I need more holding, a container so that I can be spacious enough, held enough, to be with the not knowing.

In liminal spaces much can be met - much can be revealed far beyond perhaps our conscious mind.