I wrote my Morning Pages on the terrace surrounded by fresh and clean air. It is great to be in nature.
Each day we explore deeper layers of ourselves
Today in the morning session, Ebru brought up the topic of social prejudices against women. Each of us wrote a prejudice we experienced or witnessed on a piece of cloth. Then we wrapped that cloth piece on the body of Hazal. After a while, Hazal became like a mummy. Seeing Hazal all wrapped up with prejudices or stereotypes about how women should perceive their body, was an intense experience. As we freed Hazal from the cloth pieces one by one, each one of us made a wish about freeing society from these prejudices and giving women the possibility to claim their own body with their own choices. The latter part of the exercise eased the intense atmosphere.
In the afternoon, Aida’s session started by letting our bodies sweat out. Then she facilitated some games to enhance the trust and solidarity within the group. We further went into trios and each group chose an emotion and made a sculpture of this emotion using their bodies. The joy sculpture made by Nurcan, Kara and Ayşegül still makes me smile.
First experience then reflection
Each facilitator uses creative methods to enable a safe environment where our emotions and senses could be triggered so we could open ourselves up to new possibilities which are probably beyond our thinking, sensing and feeling limits. With this type of work, we really would like to go beyond our borders.
Between the exercises, we open space for discussion. We first experience through our bodies, then try to understand it with our minds. Luckily, we have a translator. During the discussions, Sibil is translating everything from Turkish to Armenian and from Armenian to Turkish, which is a big relief for us. In Şirince, we had difficulty expressing our emotions and thoughts in English. It is great to be able to speak in our mother tongue. Another blessing of this retreat is that we have a camera woman. Asya is documenting our process.