Four days with Orly Avineri on Whidbey Island

Up to this point I had only taken an introductory 3-hour workshop with the amazing Orly Avineri. So having the opportunity to spend FOUR whole days with her was too good to pass up. My definition of a workshop with Orly can be summed up as a guided experience in connecting with others who are seeking a deeper exchange. 

Basically, in all of us, it comes down to the small holes in our hearts that need tending in order to heal. Holes created by loss, by self-doubt, by neglect, by feeling invisible. The holes eventually heal and scar over. These scars are okay, let them be. They represent what we've been through, what we've survived and they add a lovely texture to our lives. They remind you that there's a soft fragility to life underneath the rough exterior.

Under Orly's gentle guidance, total strangers spent four days together laughing, crying, supporting, advising, holding hands, and sharing feelings long suppressed and happy to be released into the world. It was a nice break to be real, to not worry about what others might think and there was nothing to worry about because the seven feminine souls gathered there were not judgmental or easy to take offense. We were there in a common purpose...to have Orly help us through the nervousness of the new, to gently coax out the unspoken and to open our eyes to new ways of seeing the world and what was right in front of us.

Our tribal natures were given permission to speak, to tell the stories that others wouldn't listen to or had grown tired of repeatedly hearing. Orly helped us practice the art of connecting by:

Listening.

Really listening and not thinking about what your response would be while others were speaking.

Speaking.

Telling stories, telling truths, telling hurts, telling fears.

Sharing.

Little gifts of food, pieces of nature, bits of handmade art and most of all, an openness of spirit.

Touching.

Holding hands and connecting through intertwined fingers that would express what was hidden inside. Fingers covered in glue, color stained with dyes and embellished with dots. Fingers pulling thread through a layered package of heart renderings. Fingers peeling open the layers of bundled juiciness.

Moving.

A walk to the woods with an envelope filled with fabric, rusty bits and paper with inky foreign words soaked in vinegar, buried in the earth and left overnight to gather energy. The next day evidence of that energy was revealed through the rusty printing embedded in the cloth fibers.

The highlight of the weekend was the most destructive. It was okay to be aggressive, to rip, to tear, to leave edges ragged, to leave only the book cloth spine tenuously connecting the front and back covers. The threads used to sew the page signatures together became expressive dangling lines. Every little bit from the deconstructed book was laid out in an orderly fashion for review of all the rich texture that was hidden when the book was whole.

The process of assembling the final art pieces was dependent on taking the time and attention to look at each piece individually and to consider how the placement of each added piece was informed by the previously placed element. It's kind of a wonderful analogy to how each of us are somehow influenced by those who went before us. Traits, habits, DNA, idiosyncrasies, all related to those bits of our predecessors, passed down through generations. But it's also good to discover that we have a choice as to how much control the influence has in our lives.

These are the final pieces I assembled.

Under the Pine

Love and Friendship

Fishing for Answers

Spinal Branching

Swallowed Words

Winged Love

This workshop was so different from others I have attended due to the nurturing communion that was encouraged. This is how I would sum up my experience with Orly and the five other lovely souls who shared a piece of themselves so willingly...

Bits & pieces
Of life
Scattered around

Hold one
In your hand
Turn it over

Look
Really see
All its sides

Every angle
Opens another door
To explore

Keep moving
Don't stop
To analyze

Assigning meaning
Confines freedom
To discover the unknown.

Thank you Jane, Susan, Cat, Denise, Wendy, and most of all, Orly for making my first visit to Whidbey Island and my first full workshop so special.