There Are Mountains Beneath Us
Masterclass Fellowship with Odyssey Works
I followed Odyssey Works for almost 6 years before I applied to work with them. It was the right time after all that time.
I take my blindfold off and there’s a different person there…. So their name is Kristen and I feel a heart connection with them, like there’s something profound.
They show me to where there’s this hole dug in the forest and they say, “Do you know about how pine trees root?”
Tiu de Haan
Ritual Designer and Odyssey Works Participant
To be, we must shed
The premise of an Odyssey is that it is a profoundly transformational experience designed for one person. It is not created at the scale of humanity, but rather the scale of multitudes contained within a single person. Often people come seeking an Odyssey at a time of transition in their life. A time when what they are seeking and what is seeking them is swirling between the perceptible and the unknowable.
The participant for 2024, Tiu de Haan, found herself in that place. On the precipice of her 50th birthday, Tiu was needing to shed what had been - the narratives of herself she held so close, the beliefs of how her world worked - and to root into a new way of being.
Within the experiential development of the Odyssey, I designed and facilitated the inflection point - the point at which Tiu moved emotionally and spiritually from what was to what could be. This portion of the Odyssey took place in La Cude, an arboretum that had a space that invited guests to walk barefoot through a series of textures. Gravel, sand, mud, slate bricks, corks, fallen and moss-covered tree trunks. This barefoot trail - along with additional sensory deprivation measures - provided the backdrop for a sensory experience powerful enough to strip Tiu to just a body. To shed all that was and fully and wholly embody the moment between what was and what will be.
There are mountains beneath us
As the barefoot trail closed and I removed Tiu’s blindfold and headphones, there stood in front of her a hole in the earth and a shovel. While she herself had dug this hole earlier in the day, she had shed all that was before. What had been an arduous task earlier, was now an invitation. An invitation to step in, to root herself in a new of being.
As we gazed at the towering pines, I shared with her that in order to become the giants they were, these trees had to first drop a taproot into the ground. That the first step to extending to the sky is to root into the ground below.
Tiu stepped into the hole, the moist, rich earth reaching her mid-calves and gently steadying her into the earth…. steadying her into what will be.
And then I just stayed there, I reached up and I was a tree. I listened to the forest and I smelled the forest. And I felt this… It was like relief… What I’d been longing for is rootedness. That moment felt profound and so nourishing and so loving.
Tiu de Haan
Ritual Designer and Odyssey Works Participant