What is the Kolo?

The Kolo: Women's Cross Cultural Collaboration (The Kolo: WCCC) focuses on intersecting women's collaboration, representation and advocacy for gender justice to halt gender violence internationally and nationally. The Kolo: WCCC promotes and provides women's trauma counseling, treatment with a feminist and archetypal perspective coupled with cross cultural practices that enable women in war torn countries, such as Bosnia, the Balkans and Sri Lanka to become self-sustainable in their communities. The Kolo: WCCC has two primary purposes- meaningful works:

• Women focused Trauma Counseling & Instruction to become a lay therapist/kolo practioner in their communities to treat trauma. The Kolo: WCCC provides in-depth psychological trauma treatment, domestic violence education, identification of and treatment for post-traumatic stress, including treatment for rape and torture victims.
  
• Cross-Cultural Gender Practices that include female and feminine perspective. The Kolo: WCCC facilitates collaboration between cross-cultural women's communities for development and implementation of gender equality practices and training in new technologies, women's rights, promoting women's solidarity and economic change. Advocacy and grassroots efforts with native local population, and extending to individual and private donors and interfacing with international humanitarian organizations.
  

The Kolo: WCCC corroborates with the guidelines found in the UN 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women with Danica Borkovich Anderson's clinical trauma treatment approached in the practices of Feminist Archetypal Psychology (FAP). The UN Commission has been mandated to regularly review the twelve critical areas of concern in the Platform for Action (PFA). The two thematic issues concepted from the PFA are in the Kolo: WCCC and in its two main activities: Psychosocial Education Conflict Evolution and Trauma Training: (a) participation and access of women to the trauma treatment, violence/conflict skills, and (b) information and communication technologies and their impact on and use as an instrument for the advancement and empowerment of women; and -women's human rights and elimination of all forms of violence against women and girls to include sexual orientation violence.

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Theory and Practice

The methodology involves making connections between psychology, art, and culture in the circle (or kolo in Bosnian). It is a scholarship approach involving a holistic practice of all fields of study. A feminist archetypal psychological approach that honors and respects the feminine is desperately needed in any violent situations. This approach was selected to determine any prevention and interruption of the generational aspects of PTSD and violence. Violence is gender based therefore a feminist issue and concern.

Psychology

Feminist archetypal psychology (FAP) includes all women, never excludes men and remembers the children. FAP helps heal the trauma and PTSD by incorporating the silent influences of remembering and reflecting of the lives of women, through women's visual art, poetry, stories, music and raising of children. Archetypal (symbols) help tell the whole-a story that tells of life and peace. Healing through the kolo-circle and symbols are excellent prevention and intervention tools in the treatment of trauma and posttraumatic Stress. What is needed are symbols that are not tainted with current cultural definitions which tends to incite violence and perpetuate the imbalance of power. The swastika is an example of a tainted symbol that once meant in Neolithic times -since 10,000 BCE a solar emblem. In Sanskrit the swastika means "so be it".

Trauma is an emotional shock that creates substantial, long lasting harm to a person's psychological development and process. My work in violence has shown how violence is about gender. Women, children and minorities are the majority for treating trauma. The victim often refers to feelings of being overwhelmed, helplessness, vulnerability, loss of safety and loss of control. The victim who is a child may have far more reaching severe psychiatric symptoms and/or may superficially appear symptom-free. Research suggests that the impact of trauma on a child may have life long psychobiological consequences. Just being female in today's world is a life of trauma.

Treating PTSD has brought forth the need for a vocabulary of traumatizing situations and events. What has occurred for traumatized individuals is a whole new landscape never described before in their life experiences. With the World Trade Towers in New York many are struggling for an expression of their trauma. Healing is allowed when this is done in a kolo-circle. Dale Spencer's book on "Man Made Language" describes how words are patriarchal and how many times women do not have their own language. It has been shown that intervention and prevention of generational aspects of PTSD can be found in the immediate through the sharing of their first person story or soon there after the development of a vocabulary that can describe what has happened to them. Having no words to describe the horrors of war can be found in symbolic terms. A symbol is what Carl Jung stated as a learning structure to deal with "what is known and not known" at the same time. The symbol helps to formulate expression and language to express the trauma.

Kolo-Self Sustaining

Kolo Origins

The kolo is the circle that heals and supports solidarity amongst women. Drawing upon Bosnian preHerstory, and female culture aspects, art and psychology that clinically approaches Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, the kolo becomes a vehicle that promotes healing, support and peaceful collaborations. Group format has been extensively used in clinical approaches. The circle/kolo format draws upon psychological influences as well as the cultural factors.

The circle is known to be one of the primary feminine signs of early matrifocal villages such as Butmir and Old Europe. Marija Gimbutas, a classically trained archeologist in her research was able to discern "Old Europe" and to point to the civilization of the Goddess where the circle/kolo was consistently present. Gimbutas's work along with Patricia Reis, a psychotherapist of feminist archetypal psychology and author, Christina Baldwin's' work "Calling the Circle," and anthropologist Dr. Angeles Arriens have explored the circle/kolo feminine metaphysics.

Feminine metaphysics is activation of encoded potentials into "being" rather than "doing." Feminine metaphysics is the alchemical and spiritual cauldron of energies channeled and guided for peaceful harmony of all living things. Encoded potentials are the coiled mother mysteries, and bloodlines that contain all of our grandmother's life experiences back to the first mother. Encoded potentials are the wisdom of our ancient grandmothers that are ignited when women gather in a circle-kolo.

Bosnians are familiar with the "kolo" which translated means "to dance" or "to be in the circle." In the current context, kolos are often a tourism ploy that displays the array of ethnic regions found in the former Yugoslavia. Removing the modern overlays attached to the kolo by returning to the Neolithic and Paleolithic archetypal meaning of the word kolo, allowed the Bosnian women a sharing circle from which to experience their feminine solidarity and feminine humanity. More importantly, first person stories were shared within the kolo, which also allowed for the expression of feminine metaphysics. Christopher Knight researched memes, and determined that memes are "capable of evolution, " and of fostering "symbolic culture." Memes, (or what I term as instruction of feminine metaphysics and encoded potentials) then has its base in the immortality of whole sets of extremely complex memes-culture, constituting instructions shaped, not just by behavioral interaction between organism and their environments, and derived not from genetically based phylogenetic conservatism of the species, but shaped also through the relationship between these and a highly specific, rich and accumulating fund of collective wisdom or tradition materialized in technology, design, language, art, ritual and so on." (Knight, 1991) Feminine metaphysics are instructions-encoded potentials often expressed in universal language such as archetypes, dance, art, poetry or song. The most important feminine instruction in the Neolithic or beginning Bronze Age period was women bleeding together monthly. Women naturally came together in cosmic rhythm with the Mother Earth, and knew feminine solidarity. (Knight, 1991). What I am describing is the kolo.

The circle is a natural form and provides a structure for a source of sisterhood. It is a mode of communication of a communal community. It gives a new space of awareness for approaching the trauma suffered by Bosnians and for women globally. The circle is then the center. Center is "that which surrounds." Victims of trauma and those suffering from Posttraumatic Stress require a surrounding center and circle in which to recover. The aim is to employ and develop recovery life skills that prevent the intergenerational aspects of Posttraumatic Stress and to not perpetuate the violence found in our everyday world

A mother/woman centered (gynocentric) culture flourished between 6500 and 3500 BCE in Bosnia. Substantial evidence exists in the Aegean area, the Balkans, and in east-central Europe, what is now known as Butmir, Bosnia was once the place of a peaceful culture that knew no wars for thousands of years, no violence and had gender acceptance. Warfare was not endemic to these peoples.

The Bosnians of this era were known for being the "cradle of spiral art." Arts, development of materials, religion was largely uninterrupted until the Bronze Age. There is a local census by archaeologists, such as Marija Gimbutas, that this was an indigenous culture and Old Europe was torn apart by the incessant wars and gradual socioeconomic change with the metallurgy that prompted the doubling of the populations and settlements. Very little is left and remembered of Bosnian Old in modern Bosnian life except that found in costumes, coffee cup readings, folk dances, embroidery and crafts.

By excavating the roots of Bosnian prehistory, and adding cultural aspects for treatment of traumatized individuals, victims are allowed to retell their 'story' that will then involve cultural healing symbols and directions that aim toward peacefulness. Bosnian Old Europe provides a wealth of symbols and helps build a vocabulary expression for traumatized peoples of modern day Bosnia.

Art provides another form to a needed vocabulary to those suffering from trauma. In situations of Trauma, most women and children think their pain is only theirs. Feminist Archetypal Analyst Patricia Reis states this as "privatization of Pain." Violence has victims and offenders. One offender trait is isolation. When victims tend to believe that their pain and struggle to overcome the trauma is highly private and personal and perhaps shameful, they tend to isolate from all others. This is how the violence cycle perpetuates and adds another generation of victims and offenders. By having the kolo, the group format the privatization of pain ceases and becomes public and connecting to the universal among themselves.

The kolo-circle is a therapeutic alliance to facilitate healing. Bosnian Old Europe symbols images (give form to) and relates women's experience that has remained silenced from all the incessant wars. Children's voices are best seen and heard in art as well. Art relates and negates isolation. Art can help explain relationships between what were Bosnian ancestor's images and current Bosnian reality of being war torn. Art from preHerstory and female culture can heal and integrate a women's experience into the culture today. Art can be the structure and order that assists the child who is trying to explore what really happened.

Women are ready to directly acknowledge their own feelings, ideas, and behaviors related to traumatizing events, once they have learned to identify and express various feelings through the kolo and its metaphysics activities such as art and dance forms. Art expressions and activities help the traumatized individual to understand that feelings are not action. This brings the recognition that people can have opposing feelings, and impulse-ridden behaviors used to keep their environment in turmoil will have developed some beginnings of control. In other words, feelings will not bring the war or traumatizing events back into their lives.

Summary

This approach has been used successfully in my clinical practice. A feminist practice was needed to seriously take the patterns we find in women's and children's thoughts and images into the therapeutic practice. By meeting the person's subjective feeling response to trauma and cumulative historical energy attached to trauma (living in a war-torn country) the kolo gives the victims validation of their feeling response and helps the victim interpret their life experiences. The war or violence images can become frozen and re-form constantly in cases of PTSD and trauma. It leads to the generational aspect of repeating the very same experiences generational. If images are given a meaningful dimension by naming them through the kolo, story, and art, then one can understand how and why certain images (flashbacks) move us in rote responses.

It is already there in artifacts, story, dance, dreams and art. Kolos allow for the necessary quest of interpretations that heal and direct individuals toward a more peaceful aim. The kolo helps the victims to separate what has been culturally imposed on them from what is natural to them. The kolos become self-perpetuating and not in need of a clinician once women realize they are the practioners and have the wisdom to heal in the first place.

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Kolos Stop Violence

Violence is not kept away from the privileged, famous or upper classes of a society. No one is untouched by violence. Social scientists, psychology experts understand that men of all ages and in all parts of the world are more violent then women. (Even statistics overwhelming point to this.) The kolo and FAP (feminist archetypal psychology) make note and use of this reality to approach and develop a clinical approach to trauma. Gavin De Becker noted this in his following statement: "When it comes to violence, women can proudly relinquish recognition in the language, because here at least, politically correct would be statistically incorrect." This not to blame or label men as the perpetrators. The kolo develops a skill that allows for individual accountability in a healing approach and not blame of a whole group or population. However, for treatment and for healing purposes the need to be aware of cultural reality and what makes it a reality guides women to their encoded potentials and wisdom in times of violence.

The circle, the kolo is an ancient avenue once lived by Bosnians (from 5,000 BCE). The circle has no hierarchy (there is no head position) just collaborative places within the circle. It is one of the true forms of gender responsible leadership. The circle provides a safe setting for deepening women's awareness on all the issues before them. Being safe is a critical factor needed to promote the healing of trauma and for developing a language that expresses the trauma (s) experienced.

Kolo-Wombs- Women's Ways of Knowing

Women's ways of knowing are more magnified and amplified in intuitive arts and found in a very matristic approach that needs to be honored in women's lives. Kolos are uteri gatherings that promote solidarity amongst women. Through exclusionary practices such as menstruating together, being in menopause, being in solidarity with other sisters in retreats in study of women's spirituality, or issues a woman becomes intimate with her genius and what is meaningful to her.

Kolos are wombs that gestate and allow a full pregnancy for creativity and healing. Wombs as do kolos requires the exclusionary practices of women gathering together. Uteri practices amplify and magnify feminine metaphysical when practiced amongst women.

Times of seclusion such as being absorbed in a task like reading, dancing, art or small daily chores that take on a liminal essence allow her to face her feminine humanity with dignity, with prayer, with meditation practices that allows for clarity and a focus. Mother mysteries and mother blood lines are able to be magnified, then magnetized to the woman/women where they will experience synchronistic events continually and usually in archetypal or symbolic forms.

It is in the exclusionary and seclusion practices that archetypes and mythologies take on meaning and brilliance. Almost like a darkened theater that allows the celluloid images to become sharp the images are instructions of the mother mysteries and bloodlines. A part of feminine metaphysics that flourishes and flashes in a kolo is the storied instructions wrought from the archetypes and symbology appearing one's life. When shared within a kolo these instructions become crystal clear and can guide the woman towards her apprenticeship which allows her to live meaningfully.

The clustering of archetypes, symbols and mythologies is the definition of wisdom. We suddenly become aware or it dawns on us that we have gravitated all along to those storied instructions and in that moment we have become the practioner and we have found our apprenticeship. Service then becomes a sacred practice since service to oneself is a universal sign of love. All of this gestates within the kolo like a womb that is rich with nutrients and life giving blood.

Kolo Practioner Training

Becoming the Practitioner

Being in a kolo is the only way to become a practioner. All women are practioners due to having a uterus.

Activation of instructions

Kolos invite the activation of instructions and encoded potentials.

Mysteries and Properties of the Kolo

The kolo format consists of four avenues. The kolo can be tailored for children, women, and men or in combination. The time spent in each avenue is dependent upon the group only. The natural leader or leaders of each kolo is the eldest female participating. All decisions and directions are gathered in a communal fashion and not handed down by one individual. Since the kolo is the womb feeling safe feeling the cosmic rhythm is needed to evoke feminine metaphysics and activate encoded potentials.

First Avenue

The first avenue is trust. Concerns and issues brought up in this avenue center around the need for safety and security. Fear plays a predominant part. The element associated with trust is earth. For victims of trauma usually the ground shook from underneath their very feet. While this could be an actual reality of bombs and warfare, trust was torn away from the individual. The kinds of things an individual believed in before and trusted in to be the same are no longer valid. It requires a reclaiming of the individuals' symbols, which relate to their belief systems.

The aim for this avenue is to learn to edit the negative material from the symbol-belief, which then frees up expression. It is listening to their story and myth. In order to edit the negative material associated with the trauma required the facing of fears, insecurities and other underlying unpleasant feelings. It is reshaping the earth underneath their feet to support the individuals' recovery from the trauma. Drawing on Bosnian Old Europe prehistory helps reclaim positive beliefs systems that point to peaceful directions and deal with the life/death/life concept.

Second Avenue

The second avenue is remembering with the element of fire. This avenue involves "story" and "myth" with symbols. It involves the therapeutic container to express their stories and remember the trauma in a supportive kolo. Fire is a transformational element. It is by providing a global picture to others that explains what really did happen that creates a consensus and; produces a social order which gives the traumatized individual a clear map of their life. Creativity in art and images is done in this segment. Jean Houston, author and analyst wrote, "the icons of old are the codings of tomorrow. And tomorrow holds the promise of recovery of forgotten wisdom." Exploring Bosnian Old Europe icons, images and symbols in the kolo provide a base.

Third Avenue

The third avenue is gestation/awareness with the element of air. Along with the oral traditions of myths of Bosnian Old Europe and the stories of traumatized individuals expression and extending vocabulary of the trauma involves dance and the body in this avenue. A kolo is a circle of connections and a dance of life. Folk dances found in Bosnian culture allows for the psychological healing of severe conflict by noting how connected we are to all. Dance is symbolic behavior acted out. The movement of dance and consciousness of the body helps produce a unified symbolic meaning.

Padma Menon, choreographer from Amsterdam and a kolo member, activates the properties of the third avenue through her body and art in dance (see her list of performances). She also teaches a workshop entitled, "Dancing from the Feminine." These workshops for women offer a unique approach to discovering and nourishing the feminine being. The kolo, is the circle or to dance. The aim of this avenue in the kolo practices is to choreograph and express your life story in dance with a mystagogue kolo advisor. The "Dancing from the Feminine" workshops offer Padma's twenty-five years of experience in dance and her search for seeking a sense of "well-being" through movement, specifically through Indian dance forms. Padma teaches dance as a form of personal expression- spiritual not in the sense of religious but as in finding a way of expressing the life of the spirit, of one's essential being.

For many years, kolo avenue three mystagogue Padma Menon has been consistently working on a way of addressing the manifestation of women in an essential way in movement. She is an exponent of the Kuchipudi style of Indian dance which itself gives a very central place to the portrayal of women. Since then Padma has studied a variety of other disciplines and forms of movement including Yoga, martial arts and modern western dance. She is also a student of Vedanta philosophy from India and even in this she addresses the need for embracing the unique and special experiences of women in spiritual practices and thinking.

The aim of the classes is to become aware of our body, and equally importantly to be able to express ourselves through movement. It is both a journey from the inner to the outer Universe as well from the outside to the inside. Indian philosophy believes that everything that is in the outer Universe is manifest in the microcosmos of our bodies. Understanding and finding our own divinity as women is also understanding the Universe around us. Indian dance has many ways of opening and respecting the female body. It is also a dynamic and physical form, where one finds power and strength.

The classes use yoga as a way of warming up and connecting body and breath. They then teach the basic movements from the Kuchipudi style and develop towards storytelling from mythology. There are also sessions with personal guided improvisations to explore how the Indian forms influence the body in a personal way. For example Padma uses the Goddess vocabulary from the traditional dance forms as a way to explore the "divinisation" of our bodies- a way of empowering ourselves through our own wholeness and not through any external energies.

If you are a woman:

• seeking to find a way of being connected with your self and your body
  
• seeking to find self expression through movement
  
• seeking to be in touch with your feminine energy and its character through movement
  
• seeking to understand and explore your womanhood as it resides in your body and in your breath
  
• seeking to open yourself to new expreriences
  

then "Dancing from the Feminine" workshops are for you.

Fourth Avenue

The fourth avenue is integration with the element of water. Integration of the four avenues allows one to experientially realize how we are all connected. The focus is integrating the elements of trust, remembering and awareness in the kolos. Intuition is sharpened and respected which heals and allows for recovery skills. Integration allows the individual to gather new material, develop new coping skills and strategies.

Courage is needed to follow through on intuition in life's decision. Determinism to make sense out of past trauma, move from unwarranted fears and not remaining a victim is derived from integration. It is seeing all the subtle signs, codes of violence and its cycle. There is a universal code of violence and the energy of violence moves through our culture. With the support of the kolo, direction impels the individual to practice safety and feel more secure. Discernment of when, where and how survival skills are needed is another outcome of integration. Bosnians know there are plenty of reasons to fear people from time to time. The question is when are those times? Psychologically, it is very important to not throw out survival skills but only know when to use them. It is survival skills that protect us from violence.