Making Silence Feel Safe For Your Clients
There are so many aspects to celebrancy, and specifically Heart-led Celebrancy, that pulling all the threads together and distilling them into ceremony, is quite the ask. However, I’ve been thinking a lot about the most important aspect; the one thing that needs to shine a light ahead of, and on, all the various components. It’s the one thing you can’t beg, buy or borrow. You have to bring it into your way of being with conscious awareness.
When the actress Diane Keaton passed away the other day, her son Dexter paid tribute and said she “Made silence feel safe.” And that was it, right there! The very thing I’d been contemplating as the HEART of Heart-led Celebrancy.
Silence is a healer,
way shower,
comforter,
creator,
balm
and elixir.
In essence, silence is soul medicine; it’s how we make our Heart-led Celebrancy sacred. If we step away from the egoic need for five-star reviews, celebrant ‘awards’, and the dopamine hits of social media, we recognise that our success is most reliably measured by the amount of safety people feel in our presence. So, how do we do this? How do we create this space? In a world that just keeps on talking, how do we usher in silence like we were welcoming home a long, lost child? As soon as we become emotionally intentional in our work (and indeed, our life), we see there are so many moments for magic making. Silence is magic? Oh yes! It is, I believe, the ultimate healer.
Quiet equates to calm. These moments offer oasis for ourselves and our clients to relax into and find meaning. Silence gives a space for one’s parasympathetic nervous system to start settling down. This is where we recalibrate. Silence gives us pause to be fully present (rather than just bursting to share our relatable stories). But what if we are, by nature, part of the ‘noisy world’? How do we integrate silence into our celebrant practice and what does it even look (sound) like?
When you let your heart lead the way, and be the most beautiful thing about you and your celebrant practice, then you realise that your inner work doesn’t require an audience or stage. It simply needs a sanctuary. This means creating time and space away from distractions and learning to become comfortable with silence and stillness. That can seem like an impossible ask when your diary is screaming out to you with constant pulls on your time. Do this! Do that! Do it now! Stepping into busyness becomes something we can do with grace and gratitude when our energy source is one of serenity sweetened by silence. We can have one foot in the world of noise, and slip into the world of silence, in a heartbeat. Like any skill, it can be learned.
Two ways that I find help me fill my well with silence are meditation and solo walks in Nature (without the phone). Meditation is ideal. This conscious journey inwards allows everything to fall away. Even if you feel you can’t meditate or that you have ADHD, try something as simple as sitting in a dark room with a single candle flame. Keep your focus on that. Bit by bit you’ll develop the skills for self awareness, reflection and eventually silence. One of the quickest ways to develop stronger skills of attention and focus is to eliminate screens and scrolling for good chunks of each day. They are energy vampires. Here’s the simple truth (and it may be hard to hear), but the world won’t stop because you’re not online or scrolling to see what everyone else is up to or posting your pictures. Read it again: the world won’t stop. Truth be told, the world is so darned noisy that people won’t know if you’ve posted or not. So why not treat yourself to the luxurious necessity of silence?
Silence in celebrancy shows up:
• in the way and manner in which we speak (in meetings and in ceremony)
• it is reflected in our writing style (not just scripts, but also in emails/messages)
• in the space we create for our clients (regardless of type of ceremony)
• by creating comfortable silence for our client to draw on memory or be with high emotion
• in the Zen spaces within ceremony
Why do we need to fill every waking moment with people, constant conversations, screens and other forms of noise? What are we blocking out or avoiding? Why are people so scared of silence and stillness? For those well versed in the sweet ‘sound’ of silence, it is a refreshing retreat that we can access every day to bring deep mind, body and soul calm and clarity. Those who haven’t experienced this, and shy away from the inward journey, do so because they are intimidated by internal truths. This can take many forms such as inner judgements and feelings of ‘not good enough’. They may not want to face facts about a relationship or other difficulties in their life. So, they keep the noise level high. It drowns out the nagging voices. Noise feels safe for such people.
It’s no surprise that people who enjoy their own company and seek solitude are ones who are most at home in silence.
To create a safe space in which you can, by your presence, soothe the soul of your client, bring silence into your life like it’s going to quench every part of your being. Watch your life change. And stand back and witness the miracles you see before you as you are fully present for those around you.
To ‘make silence feel safe’ for others, it needs to be safe for ourselves. If, and when, this becomes the cornerstone of your celebrancy (and life), then you have a celebrant practice that you can truly call heart-led.
Veronika Robinson and Paul Robinson are a husband and wife team whose boutique celebrant training Heart-led Celebrants attracts people from around the world. Heart-led Celebrants has earned a reputation for excellence in celebrant training, and those who are certified exemplify the highest standards in the industry.
Veronika is the author of many books including the popular Celebrant Collection: Write That Eulogy; The Successful Celebrant; Funeral Celebrant Ceremony Planner; Wedding Celebrant Ceremony Planner; The Discrimination-free Celebrant; The Five Elements; as well as the publisher of The Celebrant magazine. She loves her simple life in rural Cumbria where she makes time to walk in the woods and across fields, sit in stillness beneath starry skies, and walk barefoot across dew-kissed grass at sunrise. In her spare time she loves to read, listen to old records, and cuddle her cats.
Award-winning voice artist, Paul Robinson, has had a whole career centred around his voice and other people’s. He’s highly experienced as a celebrant, trained actor, drama coach, voice-over artist, singer, broadcaster, compère, and ventriloquist. Paul is an excellent communicator and teacher, and has a sixth sense about how to relate to individuals, groups and audiences.
