The Art of Holding

Developing Attuned, Embodied Leadership in Group Facilitation

Monday, Feb 2 at 11am PT / 2pm ET / 7pm GMT Monday, Feb 9 at 11am PT / 2pm ET / 7pm GMT
Monday, Feb 29 at 11am PT / 2pm ET / 7pm GMT
Monday, Mar 2 at 11am PT / 2pm ET / 7pm GMT
Calls are 90 min + optional 30 min Q&A (replays available for 3 months)

A 4-week virtual training with Ariel Szabo & Candace Garland

Most facilitators know how to lead a group. Very few know how to hold one.

Learn to create spaces where people feel safe enough to be vulnerable, connected enough to belong, and held enough to transform.

This training is for you if:

You hold space in some capacity, whether that's plant medicine ceremonies, embodiment circles, healing workshops, retreat leadership, 1:1 sessions, or any form of space-holding - and you're ready to deepen your practice with groups.

Maybe you watch people show up to your circles but stay guarded, and you can feel them holding back but don't know how to invite them deeper without pushing.

Or you're exhausted after holding space and beginning to wonder if you can sustain this work long-term.

You second-guess yourself constantly: Did I hold that well? Should I have said something? Did I cause harm?

You know oppressive patterns show up in facilitation but you're not sure how to dismantle them in real time.

When conflict or intensity arise, you freeze, check out, or over-manage instead of staying present.

You sense your own trauma responses getting triggered when you hold space but don't know how to work with that.

You're not failing. You just haven't been taught how to hold space as an embodied practice.

Here's the truth:

Most facilitation training teaches you what to do but not how to be.

You learn agendas, techniques, and icebreakers - but not how to attune in real time. Not how to navigate power without re-enacting harm. Not how to stay resourced when someone's pain activates your own.

The good news? These are learnable skills. And we're going to teach them to you.

Most facilitation training teaches you what to do but not how to be.

You learn techniques and structures - but not how to work with your own shadows. Not how to recognize when your need to be liked is compromising boundaries. Not how to catch yourself performing instead of being present. Not how to notice when you're trying to save someone because it makes you feel needed.

Your shadows don't make you a bad facilitator. Your unwillingness to tend to them does.

Between us, Ariel and Candace have held hundreds of ceremonies, circles, and workshops. We've worked with plant medicine, sexuality, grief, trauma, and the messy, beautiful process of transformation.

And we've learned this: the difference between a space that feels safe and one that feels performative isn't about how much you know, it's about how present you can be. How attuned. How willing to stay with discomfort without collapsing or controlling.

We created this training because we kept seeing facilitators with good hearts burning out, perpetuating harm without realizing it, or holding back their magic because they didn't trust themselves.

We want to change that.

What You’ll Walk Away With:

Tools to hone your skills in reading the room - not just intellectually, but somatically. You'll learn to sense what's happening beneath the words and respond with precision.

Practices for staying resourced - so you can hold intensity without depleting yourself or crossing your own boundaries.

Tools for creating authentic safety - not performative inclusion, but containers where people actually feel held enough to risk vulnerability..

A map of facilitator shadows - and practices for working with them. You'll learn to recognize patterns like saviorism, perfectionism, hierarchy, over-identification, and performance as they're happening - moving beyond theory into real-time, embodied awareness. We'll practice returning to center without collapsing or abandoning the space.

A framework for navigating power -understanding how facilitator-participant dynamics work and how to invite sovereignty without abandoning leadership

Permission to trust yourself - your intuition, your voice, your magic. We'll help you stop second-guessing and start leading from your body's wisdom.

A community of practice - other facilitators committed to doing this work with integrity, who you can lean on for support and accountability.

Why This Training Is Different

We're not teaching theory, we're teaching embodied practice.
Every concept we explore comes with somatic practices you can use immediately in your facilitation work.

We've held the spaces we're teaching you to hold.
This isn't abstract. It comes from years in the trenches: plant medicine ceremonies, sexuality work, grief circles, trauma processing. We know what it takes because we've done it.

We center integrity over expertise.
We're not interested in making you a "certified expert." We're interested in helping you cultivate the presence, humility, and accountability this work demands.

We work with shadow, not around it.
Shadow work isn't a separate practice - it's woven throughout. You'll learn to recognize your patterns (saviorism, perfectionism, people-pleasing, spiritual bypassing) in the moment and develop practices for staying accountable to the people you hold.

We address what most trainings ignore.
Power dynamics. Oppression. Burnout. Your own trauma responses. The things that actually determine whether a space feels safe.

What's Included

  • Four live Zoom calls with Ariel and Candace

    • a foundational overview of the core principles of trauma-informed, embodied space-holding for groups w/ somatic practices and Q&A

  • Group chat for ongoing support and reflection between sessions

  • Home practices to deepen your embodied learning and integrate the material

This training is for facilitators who know that holding space well requires continuous practice, honest self-reflection, and support. We'll cover foundational principles across four calls, planting seeds you'll continue to tend in your own practice. If you're ready to refine your craft and tend to the sacred responsibility of this work, we'd be honored to practice alongside you.

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  • Integrity as Devotion
    What does it mean to stay accountable to your lineage, your mentors, and the practices you teach? We'll explore continuous learning, naming what you don't know, and staying devoted to your own practice.

  • Personal Practice, Pleasure, & Shadow Work
    Your own trauma work, shadow awareness, and nervous system regulation aren't separate from your facilitation - they are your foundation. We'll explore nourishing yourself, managing your energy, and boundaries as safety. We'll work directly with facilitator shadows: perfectionism, saviorism, fear of being disliked, spiritual bypassing, and more. We'll practice tracking pleasure and aliveness as guides back to your center..

  • Building the Container
    From agreements and co-creation to prep and integration, we'll look at what it means to hold beyond the event itself, and how to create a strong foundation to hold the unknown.

  • Trauma-Informed Approaches
    Understanding how trauma manifests, regulating your own nervous system while holding group space, and offering tools for grounding and choice.

  • Embodied Transmission & Communication
    Teaching through presence, not performance. Inviting embodiment, not just intellectual understanding. Creating transparency and making repair when needed.

What We'll Explore Together

  • Dismantling Oppression in Space-Holding
    Examining hierarchy, perfectionism, and saviorism. De-centering yourself as "the knower." Practicing respect, reciprocity, and giving back, especially in relation to indigenous wisdom.

  • Power & Responsibility
    Navigating the power dynamics inherent in facilitation while inviting each person into their own sovereignty. Not everyone needs the same thing - attunement is artistry.

  • Community & Belonging
    Moving from individual to collective healing. Seeing each participant as integral to the whole. Remembering we're part of something greater.

  • Relational Integrity
    Trusting people's process. Addressing conflict directly. Holding accountability within facilitation teams. What goes unspoken will leak into the space.

  • Trusting Your Intuition, Voice, and Magic
    The practice of continuous learning, receiving feedback and support, and staying humble in this sacred work.

Meet Your Facilitator

Candace Garland (she/her)

Candace has learned the art of holding through being held and through holding space for others in some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives.

Her path began in 2018 as a participant at Nimea Kaya, seeking her own healing. Within a year, she was called to serve, and spent the next five years facilitating plant medicine retreats - learning through direct experience what it takes to create containers strong enough to hold grief, trauma, breakthrough, and rebirth.

For seven years, she has trained extensively in plant and animal medicines, completing Master Plant Dietas and studying with Indigenous wisdom keepers who taught her that ceremony is an act of deep reciprocity - with the plants, with the participants, and with the unseen forces that move through healing work. She has held space across plant medicine retreats and ceremonies, women's circles, and 1:1 energy work and tarot sessions.

Her work weaves sacred medicines: Kambo, Cacao, Rapè, and Sananga with sound, movement, energy work, and divination, creating multi-layered containers that meet people exactly where they are. This breadth of experience, combined with her training in indigenous traditions, gives Candace an embodied understanding that holding space requires more than technique, it requires grounded presence, exquisite attunement, honest shadow work, and the capacity to remain steady when others cannot.

She creates spaces where sovereignty, truth, and belonging can emerge naturally, because she has done the work to cultivate these qualities in herself. Through her Plant Medicine Women's Retreats in the Sacred Valley and her ongoing service, Candace continues to deepen her capacity to hold complexity and trust the wisdom that moves through bodies when they finally feel safe enough to remember.

Meet Your Facilitator

Ariel Szabo (she/her)

Ariel has spent two decades learning what it takes to hold the complexity of another person's transformation - through her own healing, through studying with plants and human teachers, and through creating containers where people's most vulnerable parts can safely emerge.

Holding hands-on space for sexuality, one of the most vulnerable human experiences, has taught Ariel what it takes to create containers where vulnerability feels safe, where shame can transform, and where people can find their way back home to their bodies. Her journey from dissociation into embodied aliveness required learning to attune to her own nervous system with precision and to rebuild her capacity for integrity from the inside out.

For five years, she has studied with the plants through Master Plant Dietas, learning directly from Indigenous wisdom keepers how ceremony, reciprocity, and deep listening create the conditions for transformation. Alongside this, she has devoted herself to understanding how to work with erotic energy as a force for healing - studying the sacred arts of sexual awakening, consent, and the wisdom that lives in pleasure.

She has held space across diverse settings: plant medicine retreats and ceremonies, sacred sexuality retreats, workshops on consent and touch in psychedelic spaces, grief circles, women's circles, facilitator support groups, and 1:1 and couples somatic intimacy sessions.

This breadth of experience, combined with her training in somatic sex education, sexological bodywork, and psychedelic therapy, gives Ariel an uncommon ability to sense what's happening beneath the words - in the body, in the nervous system, in the field between people. She understands that holding space is an embodied skill requiring deep resourcing, exquisite attunement, shadow awareness, and unwavering commitment to consent and integrity.

She now teaches others to cultivate this same quality of presence.

Love Notes

  • "The retreat held by Candace and Ariel was the most life-changing experience I’ve ever had. It transformed me from the inside out. Since being home, everything is shifting and aligning and it feels so incredible to be in my own skin and love the skin I’m in."

    Kolbi

  • "Candace is a deeply grounded, beautiful soul and her ability to hold gentle space is unlike anyone I’ve ever met. She held a loving, supportive, extremely safe and ethical container. She truly has a real gift and I am so grateful to have worked with her in this capacity!"

    Raychel

  • "Ariel’s work is truly so skillful, attuned, transformative, and ecstatic. She has traveled all the realms she invites you into and really offers equistite mastery. Many lucky particpants in her offerings and in her hands."

    Matt

  • "I have so much to take back with me from the retreat with Ariel and Candance. The lessons I’ve learned, the wisdom I’ve been given from the mountains, land, water, plants, and the beautiful souls I’ve gotten to share this experience with. The embodiment I’ve come to feel. Things I didn’t even know I needed - I have found here. Everything has been perfect."

    Trista

  • “Candace held with so much love, care, grace, and gentleness. I felt profoundly safe in her presence The way Candace holds space is something you can feel in your whole body. Her years of devotion, her reverence, and the depth of her learning all come through so clearly in the way she guides. I felt supported, seen, and truly held every step of the way.”

    Shauna

  • "Ariel is a midwife of the soul, creating deeply needed space for you to not only sit with your feelings and sensations but gently explore and move through the root cause. I cannot sing her praises enough! She has a brilliant, nurturing energy that soothes your mind, calms your heart and calls your spirit home. Working with her feels like being guided back to yourself in the most honest, tender way."

    Anita

  • "Candace was exquisitely present—listening not just with her ears, but with her whole heart. I felt completely seen and honored in my vulnerability, and that made all the difference. She was so gentle yet powerful, guided by an intuitive wisdom that comes from true alignment with spirit. She walks the path with such grace and authenticity. "

    Maitreya

  • "So much reverence for Ariel, her vulnerabilities and participation with the group as a facilitator pave the way for others to show up as they are. She’s humble, wise, attuned, and listens to everyone’s needs. Her presence doesn’t just guide a room — it transforms it into a sanctuary where people feel truly seen, held, and empowered to explore the depths of themselves."

    Claire

  • "Candace is a really lovely and high vibrational person that really radiates compassion and warmth. I feel instantly safe and cared for when I am around her. She was very attentive and attuned to what I needed at various times and had many tools to support me. Candace has just the kind of energy one needs on a difficult journey."

    Will

  • "Ariel takes care to make you feel as safe and comfortable as possible. Her work is transformative. When you are with Ariel, you are safe in the hands of a leader, but a leader who is more of a guide, who is putting you first. Her grounded presence makes it easy to trust the process and go deep."

    Jamie

Investment

1 payment of $555

or

5 payments of $111

Including:

Four 90 minute zoom calls + optional 30 min for Q&A

Group chat for ongoing support and reflection between sessions

Home practices to deepen your embodied learning throughout the training

We have a few reduced-cost spaces for BIPOC, trans, single mothers, and sex workers who could not otherwise attend this training. Just let us know when signing up if you need support.

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Frequently Asked Questions

  • All calls will be recorded and available for replay for three months. We encourage live attendance for the full experience of group learning, but we understand life happens.

  • Home practices are designed to be integrated into your existing life and facilitation work. Expect 30-60 minutes per week of focused practice, though the real learning happens as you apply what we're exploring to your actual facilitation.

  • Probably not in this exact format or at this price. This is our first cohort, and we're still learning what wants to emerge from this work. Future offerings will likely be different -deeper, longer, and more expensive. If this is calling you, now is the time to jump in at this introductory investment.

  • Yes. This training is designed for people who are already holding space in some capacity - whether thats 1:1 or group facilitation. We'll be building on existing skills rather than teaching facilitation basics.

  • All sales are final.