The latest Dwelling workshop

I love offering this workshop!  It gives me joy to see participants open to receive insights into who they are – see their Home.  I give the workshop in my home, my embodiment of my Home – we built our home to share; this too is fulfilling.  I make lunch, bring them tea, support their work in any way i can. I’d be completely fulfilled if i can serve in this way every day.

I’ve been offering this workshop for over 20 years, yet, now that i’ve completed writing Dwelling, i have more insight into our basic human impulses, and can ask more useful questions to spark participants knowing who they are. 

On one level, the work is simple – participants listen to and take in a poetic image, and draw their response.  We then discuss what came up for them as they drew, and the group shares what they see and their response.  The simple act of drawing with pastels on newsprint, and just drawing while trying not to think – let deeper impulses rise and express themselves – is transformative. 

During the most recent workshop, it took one drawing for a participant to open to a part of herself that had been dormant since childhood!  Her workshop opened door after door into herself, as was the case for the other participants. 

I began the workshop feeling a lot of fear and finished the day knowing great things are in store for me. Bill’s gentle presence and inquiry during the workshop both encouraged me to dive deeper into myself and offered me the container to do so. I have been on a journey of self-discovery for many years, sometimes in extreme fashion, and I am gratefully surprised to have rediscovered a part of myself so sweetly and simply in the process Bill offers. I recommend this for anyone seeking to know themselves more deeply including who they are and what they want to be and create in their lives.

Jenny Lewis

I give participants homework before the workshop, and ask them to read Dwelling; all to begin their opening into the work before we meet. 

We begin the workshop with lighting a candle and sitting with its silence.  A candle offers the simplest door into spiritual realms where our Home resides. 

I then read “A Seed for Dwelling,” the beginning of the poetic exploration of Home in Dwelling, to set the stage for the workshop.  And then they draw! 

This work can go on for days – my lifetime! – and, i’ve created a series of explorations that open their door into Home in one day.  

We end with participants drawing their response to a Rumi poem which has the line, “Let the beauty you love be what you do.”  That impulse is the core of Dwelling.

The next Dwell to Live workshop is scheduled for March 16. If you would like to sign up, please get in touch with Bill Hutchins, bill@heliconworks.com, or to learn more, visit our workshop page on the Dwelling website.