Thirteen Days in Israel – Part V

March 11-13 – Our Three-Day Break in Nazareth

Many Westerners have such a skewed vision of Arabs. They are unbelievably helpful, generous, and very proud of their legendary hospitality.

After five days of intense work, we were happy to have a three-day break in the Arab town of Nazareth, graciously organized by our hosts, Silvi (Arab) and Varda (Jewish), two leaders from Beyond Words.

Some highlights: They took us for an incredible meal at an Arab restaurant. If you haven't eaten authentic Arab food, you are in for a treat. This was an upscale restaurant -- the kind of place you might find in New York or LA -- that served local fresh foods. I had a beautiful salad and a mouthwatering lamb dish, both of which were delicious.

We also went sightseeing and saw the Church of the Annunciation, a church built over the cave where Mary, while collecting water, received a message from God that she was going to be a mother. They had built a shrine around the cave entrance, which you could still walk past. The church was a grand structure with an enormous dome circled by giant stained-glass panels contributed by many different countries. All of the panels depicted the theme of the angel Gabriel coming down from heaven to tell the Virgin Mary that she'd been chosen to bear the son of God. I was dazzled by how different all the windows were, and how they highlighted the diversity of human beings and the human spirit in an exquisite way. The church was so different from any I have ever seen, and its breathtaking beauty made me cry.

Another treat during our three-day rest was our visit to a spice vendor. Like everything in Nazareth, it was in an ancient building. You went downstairs into this basement through an open door. When you step into the first of three rooms, your senses came alive. Every inch of the place was filled with spices, teas, dried fruits, nuts, and seeds. The vendor was a kind and open-hearted man who, like every Arab I met, was so generous and so eager to show us his store, and to offer us tastes and samples of everything. Many Westerners have such a skewed vision of Arabs. They are unbelievably helpful, generous, and very proud of their legendary hospitality. When you are their guest, they feed you and tend to your every need and make you feel honored and well cared for. Fiercely proud of their cultural tradition of hospitality, they want everyone to know that the terrorist-stereotype is not who they are.

We talked with him for quite some time, and he was happy to listen and to answer our questions. He told us about the spices and how he doesn't sell anything from other places, that everything in his shop was locally grown and made. I pointed to a small row of Coca-cola bottles on the shelf. "Except those," I said, jokingly. Oh no, he replied, those too. He told us that the women of Nazareth make a sweet, dark, brown syrup that is used to treat just about anything that ails you. On closer examination, I saw that these bottles weren't filled with soda pop. Of course, he gave me a bottle to try. "It cures everything," he told me.

Anna and I relished every moment of our break in Nazareth. This was the end of Anna's part of the trip. After our stay in Silvi's home, we said goodbye to Anna. I am always amazed at the healing power of rest and rejuvenation. I felt a great sense of renewal and clarity at the end of those three days, and was ready to forge on to the next group that awaited us.

Thirteen Days in Israel – Part IV

March 10-11 -- 2-Day Workshop in Nes Ammim

"You can't work on peace alone. You need your enemy in order to create peace."

Anna and I spent March 10 and 11 at Nes Ammim, a Christian kibbutz. We worked with a big group of Jewish, Arab Palestinian, Bedouin, and Druse women from all over the country who had done a lot of profound emotional work previously with the Beyond Words organization. Most of these women had worked with me in the past, so we were able to get to a deeper level right away. At this retreat were also Silvi, Nitsan, and Nurit, three leaders from Beyond Words.

Silvi became the catalyst for everyone's emotions on day one. Silvi, whose brother and brother-in-law had recently been killed in a factory accident, began expressing her grief and outrage. The factory where they both worked had blown up due to dangerous conditions that had not been addressed by the employer. She was in tons of grief, so I brought her out in the middle of the room, where she began screaming and kicking. The whole room exploded -- everybody was sobbing. It felt like an ancient wailing circle.

Afterwards, Nitsan came into an emotional place where she was kicking and screaming and saying that it was too much pain to bear -- all this pain happening all at once. I explained to her and to the group why it's not necessary to have a controlled process where everything is explained and understood. When we let our feelings take over, it gives everyone an opportunity to experience their deepest feelings. When this happens, it's as if there's pain that simply needs to emerge and come through the group. By allowing ourselves to be used that way, something gets processed in the room. It goes beyond one person telling a story and having it be tied up into a neat package.

Nurit said the experience in a moment like that is one of profound unity. Separateness melts away and we become one whole room, together. The entire group was mourning with Silvi, allowing the pain of the world to flow through them. In that moment, who's Arab and who's a Jew, who's a friend and who's not -- all separations melted away.

The next day at Nes Ammim, there was a Bedouin woman who had been frightened by the work of the previous day. We got her talking, and she ended up telling us the story of her life. She had been through hell. At 17, she'd married her husband, who was abusive and separated her from everyone she knew. Now she was in her 60s. It was amazing for her and for us, because she was someone who really hadn't had a voice. As she told her story, she started feeling so good. We could see her become empowered. We were all having so much fun listening to her, and she was hysterically funny giving us advice about sex.

In the afternoon session, the issues and involvement of the Arab women emerged. One woman was obviously having a hard time with the process, and was saying to everyone in the room, "Things are getting worse! Things are so bad for my children. They are suffering." She implored the Jewish women to go out and make different choices, take different actions that would make a difference in her children's lives. "Don't just hear me," she said. "Do something different." We all held her.

Another Arab woman, who had not been to any Beyond Words workshops for a while, stood up and expressed anger at Nitsan for the way she leads. I said to her, "You're angry with Nitsan, but you need to step into leadership. You have to be a leader." She said she was afraid, and explained, "I'm so sick of being outnumbered. I feel so alone." She said whenever she joined a group to do work on peace, "There's always two Jews to every Arab wherever I go. I'm always outnumbered." She started screaming at the other Arab women too. "Come stand with me! I need your help!" Silvi was sobbing, and said, "I've been waiting for you to come back here, sister." Then the Jewish women came and stood around to support the Arab women. It was another profound moment of connection, unity, and shared intentions. The Arab women were saying that they wanted to work together again and be part of things and there was going to have to be some way that they needed to do things differently together. They said they wanted to make things work. At least momentarily, it was a reconciliation between the woman who had now come back and the Beyond Words leaders.

Her message and that of the other Arab women came out loud and clear: Here's all our rage and anger and here's what made it hard for us. Here's what we need in order to continue this work. I'm so afraid to do it alone, I need your help.

When a group gets to places like that, what comes out is the need for help and mutual support. People who are working on peace can't do it without their enemies. You can't work on peace alone. You need each other. I can't do this without you, is the message. I need my enemy in order to create peace.

Thirteen Days in Israel Part 3

March 9 -- Silvi and Nurit's group in Zefat-Mgrar

"The Jewish women were saying, our culture and religion tells us we shouldn't be meeting."

On the third day, Beyond Words had arranged for us to work in this gorgeous, magical place called Zefat-Mgrar. It was an ancient Arab village, but now only Jews live there. In this beautiful place, you could still feel, in the walls and the ground, the energy and the presence of the Arabs who had lived here for centuries. Regardless of your political viewpoint, it’s unavoidable when you're in a place like this not to feel the conflict between the cultures, and to experience some sort of internal conflict as well. You come face to face with the history of this country, where people had to leave their ancestral homes and can’t return.

The place where we met had the feeling of a harem--a secluded house in older Muslim cultures where only women would live. There were stone passageways and big amazing stone rooms. Intricate and richly colored carpets covered the floors and there was a huge vaulted ceiling and windows high up that let in the natural light. It was a completely spectacular space.

This particular group was composed of about 15 women, extremely religious Jewish and Christian, Muslim, and Druze women. They have been working with Silvi (who is Arab Christian) and Nurit (who is Jewish) from Beyond Words.

One Druse woman had done Radical Aliveness work with me before, so she was very excited for Anna and me to get there. She started by talking about something that had happened to her at work, where she lost her ability to speak up for herself. As we listened to her and worked with her, she started feeling like she was having a past-life experience. She became frightened when she tried to describe the sensation of being strangled.

As I've mentioned before, in groups where intense energy starts moving and people are going to very deep emotional places, it's not unusual for one person's cathartic emotions to get things moving and serve as a trigger for others. This woman’s past-life experience brought up feelings in another woman, a Jewish woman, who was having trouble finding her voice. We worked with her also- helping her to move open her voice- she felt liberated and empowered in this process.

The religious Jewish women told us that in her culture it's highly unusual that they and other women would be involved in work like this. In fact, many of them did so in secret. "Our culture and religion tells us we shouldn't be meeting."

All the women really loved the work we did that day. They expressed to us that they were proud of the fact that they had become such an amazing group. With Anna and myself, and in their ongoing group work with Silvi, Nurit, and the Beyond Words organization, these women are bravely defying the oppressive aspects of their culture. I felt honored to support and further their efforts.

In all of the places we went, the people were interested in the Radical Aliveness work and interested in going deeper--in being a part of a process and a movement. Mostly the thing that's amazing about collaborating with Beyond Words is seeing people coming from such different points of view--really wanting to be together, loving each other, bearing witness to others' deep work.

Noha had said at her college that there is intense political conflict, but when you get these people working with each other and revealing profound feelings and experiences, it starts to accomplish deep healing even around still-raw historic wounds. After working with fellow human beings in a room and feeling their fear, pain, and exaltation, they really can't look at so-called enemies in the same way.

This is a big part of the Beyond Words mission: to get these women in connection with each other, to really get to know each other and care about each other, and to move beyond differences of culture, religion, and politics. Only then can we find the place of commonality, where we are all human beings.

Thirteen Days in Israel - Part 2

March 8 -- Efy's group in Kfar Vradim

"One man cried -- and told me he hadn't cried in twenty years."

This was to be an all-day workshop with Jewish men and women who were studying playback theatre with Efy, in Kfar Vradim. Efy had been to Omega Institute and has worked with me and the Beyond Words group there. So Beyond Words helped her organize this big group of mostly women, and just two men, all Jews.

This was a fabulous group experience because all of the participants were involved with therapeutic theatre work, and all of them had done emotional work in the past, so we were able to dive right in.

When we work with groups like this that are very emotionally adept, I sometimes like to start with a mandala exercise. With this group, we created a big circle with everyone’s heads in the center, so they were arranged like spokes of a wheel. Anna and I got them all breathing and releasing simultaneously, kicking, making sounds. This exercise creates an energy flow that becomes palpable. When everyone is on the floor doing the same thing, it enables them to have a big emotional release and let go easily.

That was happening beautifully with this group. Anna and I walked around and facilitated, reading people’s energy. You kind of work the room, moving from person to person, helping them in places where they’re stuck to keep the energy building and building. It creates a huge energy field you can work with and move around, like a giant organism.

From doing this so many years, I can spot where energy is throbbing and wanting to break through. I look at the room and often pinpoint one person in whom the energy has built to such a pitch that when I work with that person, they will take the whole room with them. It’s as if that single person becomes the key that facilitates the entire group process.

In this particular group, I looked around the circle and, noticing one woman, I could feel there was something very powerful that needed to go through her. When I focused in on her, she quickly went to a very early place of needing her mother. I took her to an old and raw childhood trauma, where she re-experienced the loss of her mother when she was just a young child--and then she completely let go. Her cries and her pain, in turn, opened up the room. As often happens when one person really lets go and breaks through, a lot of people start feeling things at once. It feels like an electrical charge goes through the room and everyone feels the jolt and comes alive.

Sometimes it’s difficult to describe this work to those who haven’t done it. But the beauty of the Radical Aliveness process is that when you can get a group of people like this to experience deep emotions fully, without inhibition or censorship, they begin to feel things that they would never normally feel. Among this group, there was a beautiful Jewish man who finally felt grief he hadn’t expressed for many years. It’s much more unusual for men to be involved in this kind of work, particularly in their Israeli culture, so we were all touched by his vulnerability and openness. He got very radically alive, and told me he hadn’t cried in twenty years. Later he danced and said he also hadn’t danced in twenty years. And that is the beauty of this work, when we fully embrace our pain we also open to our pleasure.

Everyone was thrilled by what had happened that day. When we finished, you could look around the room and see that people were feeling their energy and were fully alive.

Following last weekend's "Resistance & Surrender Workshop

Dear group- sometimes I can't find words for my experiences in these groups. Something happens for me when a group explodes and everyone comes alive and the heavens open up and all the feelings come pouring through and there is healing and surrender and joy and pain and LIFE all the way without holding back and we are one and following the flow. It makes me cry just to write this. What we are capable of as human beings when we surrender to the full flow. Such healing, such wisdom and grace beyond words. So many images that stick in my mind- of aliveness, freedom, truth, discomfort, struggle leading to breakthroughs, courage, generosity. I know this is how life really is- I want to support that. Go out and be alive!

Thank you for this bliss I feel. Love ann

Thirteen Days in Israel - Part 1 - Part of a Series of Blogs on Ann's work in Israel

Thirteen Days in Israel -- Part 1

From March 7 through March 19, 2011, I traveled in Israel and Palestine doing Radical Aliveness group healing and coexistence work with Jewish, Arab Christian, Druse, Muslim, and Bedouin men and women. My workshop itinerary was organized by the Beyond Words organization, a group of multiethnic women working to bring about peace in Israel and the occupied territories. I’ve had the privilege to train these women in Radical Aliveness work at Esalen Institute here in California and also in Israel.

Over the course of working with eight different groups arranged by Beyond Words, there were giant feasts put on in my honor with more food than I could possibly eat. There was a Jewish man who cried for the first time in 20 years, and a Bedouin woman who had never shared with anyone her heartbreaking story of being ostracized by her tribe, standing up to her husband, and struggling to survive without any help. People from diverse religions, cultures, and political backgrounds screamed at, sobbed with, and ultimately embraced one another. During the last days of my trip, the kibbutz where we were working was hit by mortar fire. As I huddled in the bomb shelter, Layla, one of the Bedouin women we had been working with before the bombing, came into the shelter and said, “What are you so afraid of? If today is your day to die, then so be it. Come on!” I started laughing and left the bomb shelter with Layla to finish our work. As we drove off to meet the other Bedouin women who were waiting for us, I realized Layla was right. We’re not finished with our work yet -- but we are getting closer.

March 1, 2011—Noha's College in Mgrar

"There was an Arab man who lit up the room -- a big juicy man."

My colleague and fellow Radical Aliveness facilitator on this trip was Anna Timmermans, from Holland. The first place the Beyond Words organization sent us was my friend Noha's college in Mgrar, an Arab village. A lot of Westerners are unaware that there are many pockets of Israel populated almost exclusively by Arabs. They call themselves Palestinians, because Israel was known as Palestine before it was renamed. Noha’s college is a satellite of a Jewish college, and the first college in her village. It trains graduate students who want to be teachers and different types of therapists.

This first workshop group comprised mostly Arabs and a few Jews, all studying drama therapy. Through the coordinating efforts of Beyond Words, Noha invited us to her school to introduce the Radical Aliveness work to these future therapists. Noha was the first woman in her village to drive. Now she's running this amazing college.

Because these workshop participants were already adept at emotional work, it was easy for Anna and me to get them to come alive. The most interesting thing that happened in this group? There was an Arab man who literally lit up the room the second we saw him -- a big juicy man. The Arab culture is incredibly alive and full of passion, but when an individual shows his emotions, it’s looked upon as a weakness. This is especially true for men.

We started with an exercise I often do with new groups, in which we break them into groups of three and they ask each other questions about what messages they got from their family, from their culture, and from the other culture. Then in turn, two partners repeat the answers of the third one back to him or her, and that person is asked to focus on what’s happening in his or her body.

When this large Arab man listened to his own words reflected back, he was aware that he felt the top part of his body a lot, but couldn’t feel the lower parts of his body. We started by getting him hitting The Cube -- a gigantic fabric cube the Beyond Words women had sewn together for me, stuffed with foam. (Throughout this trip, The Cube became a major character, traveling with us all across Israel and Palestine, crammed into back seats, often on top of an unlucky passenger, pulled over by some cops, kicked, beaten, and beloved.) We watched in awe as this man, whose energy filled up the whole room, went wild on The Cube. He was so powerful and full of energy and willing to let it out.

After he had been hitting for a while, I asked him to start kicking The Cube. He was hesitant at first, and we had to encourage him to keep going. What came out was that he said he was afraid of his aggression, and felt that he couldn’t be trustworthy if he were to get in touch with all that trapped energy. He said he feared that he would do things that were against his religion and culture. I explained to him that if we don’t get in touch with our blocked and frozen energy and let it flow, then it will either come out in unconscious ways, or we will have to be in constant control to keep it from coming out -- and that will compromise our aliveness. When we’re afraid of feeling all our energy, we sometimes act inappropriately. This man understood, and then he really came alive. Everyone was encouraging him, especially the women.

Afterwards, the women in the group were crying, "I want my father to do this work, I want my brother to do this, I want my husband to do this!" They were so unbelievably moved and touched that an Arab man would be expressing himself so fully, that he could be so vulnerable, and that he was talking about his feelings and using his energy in such a powerful way.

This experience supported our knowledge that real power comes from the place where we become vulnerable and claim all of our energy fully, without controlling it.

That evening, Noha took Anna, Nitzan (also from Beyond Words), and myself to her house for a feast in our honor. One of the things you discover about Arab culture, and about which they are deeply proud -- and rightly so -- is their incredible hospitality. They welcome you into their home whether they know you or not. They give you all their food. When you are in an Arab culture, you can be sure that you’ll be taken care of and treated as an honored guest wherever you go.