What works well: Why I became a Green windows apprentice - by Jenna Frisch

After college, I started journaling. Everyday. I would write as a process of understanding myself better and as a way of saving my impressions of the world around me. I was living in Argentina at the time and there was so much I wanted to capture, to remember, as if writing letters to be opened by another version of myself in another time.

When I moved back to the States, my writing became infrequent for a time. I pursued other means of understanding myself, specifically studying plant medicine, movement and massage. At the time that I found Green Windows, I was six months into my studies in becoming a massage therapist with a focus on Eastern modalities. My teachers were training us to look for harmonies in the body, the things that were working well in our clients, instead of focusing on the seemingly hurt or broken pieces that were our clients’ major complaint. The belief is that by finding what is working well, and supporting that function, the body has more resources to heal itself.

When I found Peggy and the AWA method, I realized right away the natural pairing of what I was learning in school with one of the guiding principles of the AWA method: look for what is working well. I noticed that, in bodywork as in writing, this type of listening creates a safe place where one can reconnect. From here, we can go into the world a little stronger, more ready to adapt to life’s changes.

One of the first things I noticed about Peggy was her ability to reach into the depths of each person in a writing group and spark a match igniting a fury of inspiration, drawing out stories and characters and poetry that set free the writer in every person. The second thing I noticed was the diversity of the group. How rare that such an array of people could come together to create and share. And who was this woman who could speak to all of us? I had to learn more.  
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Building upon the common ground between my bodywork and writing practice, I direct a person’s attention towards harmony and what works to facilitate an environment that invites our most authentic selves to show up. In tuning our awareness in this way, we nourish ourselves and evoke what we wish to create. When we employ this way of looking for what is strong in a group setting, we begin to understand how Peggy can bring together people from such different backgrounds. ​

Still Peggy’s magic lies beyond the trust she has in the AWA method, or efficacy in facilitating it, but rests in her belief in and dedication to making this work accessible to each unique voice as fuel for radical conversations. Expanding upon Peggy’s example, I see that the unique voice can take many forms. I witness how the human body’s movement, like words, is a language expressing a unique story. And from my own experience of the creative flood after being in Peggy’s workshop, I realize that freedom of expression holds the greatest potential to liberate the human spirit, and it is precisely this liberation that drives me in all of my work.

- Jenna Frisch, Green Windows Facilitator, former Green Windows Apprentice.