How do I structure my time as a space holder?
If you’re a coach, healer, facilitator, or space holder, you probably already know: it’s tricky to figure out how to best structure your time while honoring your needs and serving your clients.
Our culture teaches us that the more available we are, the more valuable we are.
But real service does not come from constant accessibility. It comes from tending to your own cycles, energy, and nervous system so you can show up fully, generously, and wisely.
In this post, I walk you through how I structure my time, how it’s evolved through different phases of my life, and some visionary ideas on how we, as space holders, can better think about structuring our time.
The unique time challenges of holding space
Holding space is not like other kinds of work. It’s not just about showing up, delivering a task, or completing a checklist.
It’s relational, emotional, energetic, and often invisible.
Your time is not just hours on a calendar. It’s tied to your energy, your care, your cycles, and your capacity.
Because of that, the unique challenges we face as space holders — emotional labor, invisible prep and recovery, nonlinear energetic cycles, and the constant balancing act between client needs and our own — greatly impact how we need to structure our time.
When we build our time structures with these realities in mind, we can eliminate copying time structures that were never designed for us, like rigid corporate schedules, and instead create a foundation that supports both our clients and ourselves.
How I’ve structured my time through the seasons
Over the years, I’ve moved through many phases.
When I was an engineer working a full-time job and teaching yoga on the side, I squeezed client work into small chunks between meetings, nights, and weekends. I was burning the candle at both ends, driven by passion to make it work.
When I left my 9 to 5 to work for myself, I had total freedom. I met with clients all throughout the day, whenever they wanted to. I drifted, floating between time zones as I traveled around the world. I discovered that too much flexibility leaves me unmoored, and intentional structure was not a cage but a kind of liberation.
Now, I’m running two businesses while farming in the summer and traveling in the winter. I have gentle containers to support each piece, and it helps me sustainably do everything I do.
But at all points in my journey, I didn’t want to work in or on my business for more than 30 hours a week.
What works for me
Structuring time doesn’t mean forcing yourself into a rigid schedule. It means creating intentional shapes and containers for how you want to move through your days, weeks, months, and seasons.
In each of these phases in my life, I’ve built structure by first asking myself soft, honest questions like:
When do I want to be available for others? When do I need to hold space for myself?
What are the natural rhythms of my energy, creativity, and focus right now? How can I work with them instead of against them?
How will I make room for spaciousness for recovery, transitions, and the unexpected?
Then I adjust my client scheduling software and calendar to match my answers above. It’s really that simple, the trickiest part is being honest with yourself.
Once I acknowledged the bigger season and responsibilities at play in my life, it was extremely helpful to think in percentages.
These are the percentages I’ve worked from in order to have enough time for each area of my business, while still having a life:
If you are newer in your practice: You might be spending about one-third of your working hours in client work, one-third in marketing and outreach, and the rest split between administration and business development. This is a time of experimentation, planting seeds, and inviting in new relationships.
If you are more established and have a steady or heavy client load: You might be devoting the majority of your time to space holding, with smaller but still essential pockets for marketing, systems, and creative growth. This is a time of tending, harvesting, and sustaining what you’ve built.
These are simply gentle guidelines I’ve returned to when I felt lost or overwhelmed over the years.
I recommend asking yourself, “What percentage of your energy, attention, and care is needed right now in each part of your work?”
What becomes possible when you find the right structure for you
When you find the right structure for you, your energy, attention, and care are directed toward what matters most.
You stop ending the day wondering where the time went.
You feel okay leaving things for tomorrow, knowing you focused on what mattered today.
You create space for the non-work things that nourish you… slow mornings, time in the garden, unhurried meals, creative play, walks without a destination.
You realize that right-sized effort builds a business you can sustain for years, not just months.
You become a living example for your clients, modeling what it looks like to work in a way that honors capacity, care, and liberation.
We can’t hold space well for others if we’re abandoning ourselves.
How you structure your time isn’t just about personal productivity and efficiency. It’s about breaking free from the linear, extractive models we’ve inherited and building liberatory ways of working.
This is cultural and relational work. It’s how we start building a world where care, rest, and sustainability are not afterthoughts, but the foundation.
Finding the right structure for you is totally possible.
Your clients are navigating these same challenges too. Want to explore this more deeply, for yourself and your clients? I invite you to check out the Holistic Time Practitioner Certification. We start July 31, 2025.
