Thirteen Days in Israel – Part VII

March 15 -- A day with peace facilitators and social workers at Givat Haviva.

I have seen with my own eyes hundreds of ordinary people performing extraordinarily skillful acts of emotional healing.

I had the privilege of traveling to the community of Givat Haviva, where the Beyond Words organization arranged for me to work with some women at the Jewish Arab Center for Peace. It’s an inspiring place, having been established way back in the early 1960s with the mission of bringing Jews and Arabs in Israel closer together, and to help them achieve a mutual understanding of their cultures and concerns. What better place to do my Radical Aliveness work?

What was wonderful is that these dozen social workers were all studying post-graduate facilitation skills in a year-long course. So in a sense, we all went into the workshop with the same vocabulary and intentions. The leader of the school was quite nervous about bringing me in. But people who had worked with me in the past had recommended me highly.

First, I got the women into small groups and we did an ice-breaker exercise in which women in each small group shared with each other the messages they had received from their families, messages they had received from their culture, and talked about how these messages affected their bodies. This is generally a good one to get workshop participants talking, emoting, feeling, listening, and observing. It always opens up a goldmine of issues and gets energy in the room and in their bodies flowing freely. It’s like bringing an enormous pile of art supplies into the middle of the room -- it gives us lots to work with.

This is a good opportunity for me to offer a quick aside -- some background on what's really behind my approach. Yes, getting people into small groups is an ice-breaker. But here's why: All human beings have innate healing, intuitive, and empathic qualities, yet they don't necessarily know how to access these. For example, if I were to say to a perfect stranger, "Here, spend some time with this partner and really connect. Find out who she is and what makes her tick. Really relate to her," the stranger would look at me blankly and say, "I can't. I don't know what you want me to do." And yet, if you ask the same person a specific set of questions, and they know that everyone in the room will be disclosing at the same level of vulnerability and intensity, they will talk. They will listen. They will begin to feel camaraderie, or perhaps they will feel fear or grief or anger or shame or some other strong emotion.

The point is, this seemingly simple exercise gets ordinary, untrained people using quite advanced healing skills. Without consciously realizing it, real support and openness unfurls inside these small pods. They experience the sense of helping -- and asking for help. Simple? Yes. But flexing such healing muscles -- in a room where other small groups are doing exactly the same thing -- creates an almost magical atmosphere filled with emotional, electric charge that radiates out into a room vibrating with connection, support, and ability.

I love this basic exercise because it's a very real, hands-on way to show participants that they have masterful skills that come quite naturally. I love to support individuals to access their healing abilities. We have it in us ­– I have seen with my own eyes hundreds of ordinary people performing extraordinarily skillful acts of emotional healing.

Using their skills of listening, empathizing, supporting, and observing, every woman in that room readily saw that she already possessed leadership and healing abilities. So I got everyone started at a higher plane of confidence and connection than they entered with.

After the exercise, we started talking about what it brought up for people. It was beautiful. The women were willing to go to such deep and vulnerable places. For example, one of the Arab women got to work on the death of her brother, which she hadn’t opened up about publicly until then, and felt very relieved to do so. Another young woman had been sexually abused, and she had never told anybody. Everyone in the group was deeply affected by these and other stories. By the end, we were all were crying, feeling deeply, and really supporting each other.

What happens when you support this kind of process is that the energy moves around the room. One person opens up, and then another and another. It's like a charge that gets passed from person to person. When we open ourselves to our deepest feelings -- and those of others -- it creates spontaneous healing. The simple small-group exercise is invaluable in places where people desperately need healing, but don't know how to say it, express their need, or open up.

Afterwards, when they shared, the women were saying what a special day this was for them. Their director admitted she had been hesitant and protective for the students to have me there. She told me, “It was really an incredible experience to see how deep the whole group went.” She added that the work I did with her students was so profound and beautiful she was very happy she had taken the leap.

It was a lovely, lovely experience for me too.

Thirteen Days in Israel – Part VI

March 14 – A small Arab village

It's extremely difficult to get to your true and deep feelings if you don't feel safe.

In writing about the work I did in Israel, I've tried to be very sensitive to those people who sometimes had to overcome great obstacles and even put themselves in danger to meet with me and do our group process. In the case of the day I'm about to describe, I cannot name the small town I went to, nor name the Arab women from Beyond Words who invited me. It is such a small town that everyone who lives there is related in some way or another, either by blood or by marriage. With the villagers, our work would raise suspicions.

Following my three-day break, I went next to this small Arab village, where I met with a group that was mostly Muslim Arab women, with one or two Jewish women. These were all kindergarten teachers who had been working with two Beyond Words leaders for about six months.

The challenge with this particular group was that they all worked together at the grade school, and as mentioned, were closely related, which is not conducive to creating a safe setting for revealing and unleashing deep feelings. Imagine wanting and needing very badly to talk about a traumatic experience, or reveal a secret fear, or just unleash a raw emotion in such a setting. All of these women feared judgment, and they did not feel certain that everything that happened in the room would stay there. And of course, some of their secrets or stories would likely betray the confidence of another woman in the room.

I always learn from these kinds of challenges, but that doesn't make them easier! It was clear from the beginning that most of the women in the group felt unsure and unsafe. I finally ended up getting them in the flow and feeling their emotions by helping them move their energy in a way that felt less threatening and less personally charged to them. "Babies are completely free," I told them. "Be babies, and be wild." They were able to do that. With every group you have to find a way "in," and this exercise worked, more or less.

Although letting go like this was healing for many of them, the modest progress I was able to make with this particular group reminded me of the challenge we all face: It's extremely difficult to get to your true and deep feelings if you don't feel safe. In a way, the work the Beyond Words women and I are doing with all of these courageous people is helping them learn how to create safe spaces where they can release anger, fear, and other emotions. It's all about trusting your fellow man and being in community with others who are doing so too. That's how individual healing begins and spreads out into the community, one group at a time.

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