Become Visible
This summer, we once again hosted an intensive seminar here at Dalslands Studio: ‘Hellwach’ – the further developed version of what began last year as ‘Inbetween’. A wonderful week with wonderful people, who explored new paths for themselves through close personal interaction.
As with Inbetween, the focus was on intensive, one-to-one coaching in small groups – led, amongst others, by Harald Karrer, a systemic coach and visual communicator who travelled from Vienna to take part. His approach is based on a realisation that has, for him, been almost life-changing: drawing, as he understands it, has less to do with art lessons than with reading, writing and speaking – an ancient human cultural skill that has almost completely fallen into oblivion in everyday life. Instead of documenting thoughts only after the fact, Harald makes thought processes visible in real time as they emerge: he structures conversations in real time, translates what is said into simple visual models, and in doing so makes differences, patterns and connections tangible that often remain unclear in language alone. He deliberately avoids pre-defined formats or standard methods – the work always focuses on what is actually needed at that particular moment. Step by step, a shared picture emerges that can be built upon, and a coaching conversation becomes visible, collaborative work on new perspectives.
This fitted in particularly well with our trip to the rock carvings at Tisselskog – Dalsland’s largest and most impressive prehistoric site. On around 50 rock slabs on the shores of Lake Råvarpen, there are over 2,000 Bronze Age carvings dating back some 2,500 to 3,000 years: boats, people, sun crosses, footprints and enigmatic serpentine patterns. People who knew no written language used images here over the centuries to convey what was important to them – the very same idea that Harald revisits in his work: that images can often reveal more than words alone.
This was complemented by tea ceremonies – once by the lake, in complete silence, overlooking the water – as well as coaching sessions in the heart of the nature reserve, where the forest itself became a conversation partner. All of this together made us, in the truest sense of the word, wide awake.
Just how profound such a week can be is illustrated by a haiku written during the seminar:
Grief allows you to see more deeply,
connects you even more closely to love,
and ultimately leads –
only to bring you closer to your true self.
