I am just getting home from a weekend in Hamburg. It’s funny to me what a relief it was to arrive back on the grounds of the Seminar Haus even though I was only gone for the weekend. I am tired and relaxed from my weekend and in the kitchen drinking some tea.
I traveled to Hamburg to attend another healing seminar led by my friend Olaf Cobus and his colleague, Lore Bergmeier. Together they make a great team. It was the fourth seminar in a series of five. The theme for this weekend was… “Loslassen” which is a German word that means “let go” or release. It was a powerful workshop.
We began the seminar with exploring the idea of holding on to something. We each were given a pillow and were invited to hold onto it the way were holding onto something… anything in our lives. We were asked to get comfortable with it and find that special posture, that special way we were kept “it” ours… perhaps we may even feel the need to hide it or protect it. Or maybe, we had more than one thing to hold on to… and if so, we were encouraged to grab other pillows, blankets etc. And then, once we had fully appreciated our pillow and our experience we were asked to consider, like apples on a tree.. how ripe was the “apple” that we were holding on to? Was it time to let go?
Lore compared our life journey to a boat floating down a river. The scenery is always changing. She said there are times in life when we are called to hold onto something and it is ours to hold. And then the scenery may change and it is no longer there… and often rather than let the boat move on and allow the scenery to change we reach for a tree on the side of the shore and try to stop time and stop the scenery from changing. It never works, but there we are left grasping and clinging trying to keep what was ours.
Later in the day we did movement work with Olaf. His work is very different from anything I have experienced so far on my healing journey in alternative medicine and healing work. His work encourages you to be in your body and pay attention to things… you never really considered paying attention to before! My favorite exercise of the day was when he had us experimenting first in our own bodies, how it felt to let our feet and hands guide us in movement throughout the room…listing to our hands and feet… not our brains! As we became more comfortable with that, we found a partner and explored being in our own space in our own body, but also being connected to that person. Feeling their energy in relationship to ourselves. We experimented with how far we could go away from that person and still feel connected to them and when we needed to draw closer. And then we moved to the idea of group… feeling ourselves, knowing that our partner was there and also being aware there was a group there. It was lighthearted and fun and a playfulness fell into the group.
I was glad to see in myself growing the possibility that I could feel me in relationship to someone else and a group. The exercise had me feeling safer within myself… actually being able to feel me and be conscious of myself in relationship to others. It was particularly interesting for me when during the exercise I was partnered with a man. I was so nervous. I wasn’t sure I could do it. My partner was someone that I have some relatedness to so we could laugh about it as I shrunk at the idea of letting my guard down and being open in relationship to him… I just didn’t feel safe. And then Olaf coached us. He suggested that my male partner take a supporting role… and that I be in charge. And I was amazed at what a difference that made. I felt much more at ease in being there and playing with moving hands and feet with him and we both noticed a dramatic difference in the lightness of the energy between us as we did the exercise.
The day was good and hearty and long. I spent the night in Hamburg and today made the somewhat long journey back to remote Wettenbostel. And now, like a slow-moving boat… I can feel something shifting in me in its wake. Something new is letting go like waves rumbling deep beneath the surface. I am feeling the flow and the changing scenery of the passages of my world. Tired and grateful for the nourishment of my time in Hamburg.
Gypsy Woman 