weaving Voices 01.04.2025 issuu - Flipbook - Page 60
The impact of Nature
Our workshop took place in the middle of the Swedish woods right
at the start of summer. For a full week the majority of the participants
ate, slept and had their classes under an open sky, in the shade of
the spruce trees next to the peaceful lake. The fact that we spent
our workshop week in and with nature was not a coincidence, but
a conscious choice. The practice of kulning was intended for that
very arena, allowing messages to travel over vast distances through
forests, over hills and across lakes and open spaces. We wanted the
participants to get a real sense of the life of a ‘kulla’. What does it
feel like to be at the mercy of nature and its forces; to need to light a
fire to cook or keep the bugs away; to strip away the sounds created
by people and tune in to the sounds created by the forest? After all,
this way of living is a heritage we all carry with us. We kept in mind
this wish to help the participants tune into nature and their heritage,
when we created our program for the week. The result was a mix of
voice training, singing, body work, meditation and free time. Our
intention was to create moments, teacher-led or not, that would
inspire the participants to let go of the buzz of their busy everyday
lives and allow themselves to exist in a simpler context.
Though our proximity to nature was a conscious choice, we were still
surprised to see the extent of its impact on the group. Pretty soon
we were all running on what we named ‘forest time’, allowing things
to happen at a slower, less organised pace. When participants shared
their thoughts, texts and contemplations they often mentioned how
this slower pace helped them notice little details around them: a bird
singing, the breeze on their skin, their own breathing. It seems that
our senses sharpen when we are not subject to the many distractions
of our modern lives. A quote from Cleese’s speech is fitting here. He
talks about how easy it is to get stuck in the closed mode and says:
“Because, as we all know, it’s easier to do trivial things that are urgent
than it is to do important things that are not urgent, like thinking.”98
98 Ibid.
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