Vicky, if I had the money to go to Colorado, I'd participate there!
Here in Copenhagen I had 3 participants for the first workshop in 2007, 12 for the next one in 2009 and 20 for this one. It's so great that it's growing a little every time.
Here's one of my experiences:
In the Special Message Exercise I drew the name of a woman. When I asked a helper to come, a horse showed up. The horse was white with little grey spots, and it felt female (I argued a bit about this with my interpreter – apparently my interpreter want horse helpers to be male (??), but this felt female
)
The horse took me to a place that I perceived as an American ranch (that I’ve only seen in movies). I wondered about that since it was a typical Danish name, but I assumed it was probably my interpreter overlay. This place was very big with a lot of horses there, and there was a big farm. The woman whose name I had drawn, greeted me. I noticed she was dressed in clothes that seemed to be from the 80’s. She was a sturdy woman with a very firm handshake. I perceived that she was in her 40’s, but that she had been ten years older when she died. I felt that she had died from too much alcohol. She absolutely loved to ride horses.
When I asked for a special memory, I got the impression of a communion/confirmation (I’m not sure what the right word for that is in English? In the Danish church we are baptized as babies, and then at 13-14 y.o. we confirm our Christianity at another ceremony which we celebrate with a big party with our family afterwards.)
I asked about her personality and got an image of a woman licking her lips in a very sensual way. This surprised me because that’s certainly not what I expected from this sturdy, horse riding country woman. I also got that she was a bit “worn out”. I asked for a personal message, and I got “don’t be so hard on your mother – she really loves you”.
Now it was time for debriefing, and it turned out that the person who had put that name in, was a very good friend of mine, which I kind of suspected while doing the exercise. (I don’t know anything about her family, though.) She told me that the name belonged to her aunt – her mother’s sister.
When I mentioned that my helper was a horse and what it looked like, her jaw dropped! “That’s my horse!” she said. I had no idea she had ever had a horse. (She showed me a picture of the horse the next day, and it was indeed the horse I had seen.) I told her about the farm with all the horses that kind of reminded me of a ranch, and she told me that right next to where her aunt lived (a big farm that fit my description), there was a riding school that very much resembled an American ranch. Her aunt loooooooved to ride horses.
My description of her looks fit, and the firm handshake made my friend laugh. Her uncle (not the aunt's husband, but she was there and laughed about it) once commented on my friend’s very soft handshake and told her the importance of having a firm one. When I mentioned having seen this sensual woman licking her lips, I got another laugh. My friend said that her aunt was really sexy and flirtatious.
The age didn’t fit. She had died in her mid 30’s (but perhaps what I perceived as “ten years older” was really “ten years younger”). But she had indeed died from too much alcohol.
About the communion/confirmation my friend had to check with her mother because as far as she remembered, he aunt had already died and didn’t attend. Her mother told her, though, that she was still alive then, but didn’t attend because she had been drinking too much which had made my friend sad.
So that memory wasn’t exactly a happy one, and it may not have been accurate, but I later found it interesting that the memory brought forth by the person whose name I had submitted for the exercise, was from my own communion/confirmation.
There were other little details that did and didn’t fit, but most of it was pretty accurate.
Love,
Anja