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Edward Chan, from Hong Kong, shares some of his experiences with using the OH cards…
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The first time I met OH Card was in a Couple Training course held in 1989. When I picked up a picture card and the tutor told me to associate with my own history, I said that the picture was in a misty way that I hardly match it correctly with any solid incidents happened in my life. Years after I still encounter some participants in our courses render the same comment as I did. I know the meaning of “rational.”
Being a tutor in social worker training courses, Mrs. Maria Kwong said that the faintness of the pictures is a very effective key to open the door of everybody’s interior world. It touches the field of feelings inside each person that helps to view the true self of each of them. When participant matches the picture card with the word card, it often brings a feeling of shocking on viewing oneself conception. Usually they find a deeper meaning of life for themselves by viewing the set of the cards, and the most important thing is that they find the path of hope in life. Mrs. Kwong always invites the participants to use their five senses to contact with the pictures. We hardly can know what happened in each of these participants in their lives after the training courses, but the fact is that most of them will buy one set of OH Card for their professional use.
Sr. Dominica Cheng, a spiritual teacher, often asks her students to describe what they saw on the pictures through their intuition with relationship to their experiences in their daily life. The “In and Out” traveling is very useful to achieve inspirations. Going in the content of pictures and coming out of it back to one’s life story in history, then stay away from the stories and go back to the content of the pictures in order to obtain more inspiration. The connection between the emotions begets from the picture and the actual life experience outside the picture creates amazing results. Here is one example: one picks up a picture card showing a man with a kid, the immediate connection she came out is the man is her father and she feels sad about her parent’s divorce. Coming back to the present life experience, suddenly she recognized the kid is her father – so weak and helpless at the age of 70s.
Sr. Cheng said that OH Card is a very useful instrument for spiritual guidance.
When I see the OH pictures today and still think that the card is misty, I know that I am on the way to know myself better.
Edward Chan
Hong Kong
Excerpted from original material for the book Strawberries Beyond My Window: Games of Association for Opening the Door to Creativity and Communication, 2nd German Edition, by Waltraud Kirschke.
The first time I met OH Card was in a Couple Training course held in 1989. When I picked up a picture card and the tutor told me to associate with my own history, I said that the picture was in a misty way that I hardly match it correctly with any solid incidents happened in my life. Years after I still encounter some participants in our courses render the same comment as I did. I know the meaning of “rational”.
Being a tutor in social worker training courses, Mrs. Maria Kwong said that the faintness of the pictures is a very effective key to open the door of everybody’s interior world. It touches the field of feelings inside each person that helps to view the true self of each of them. When participant matches the picture card with the word card, it often brings a feeling of shocking on viewing oneself conception. Usually they find a deeper meaning of life for themselves by viewing the set of the cards, and the most important thing is that they find the path of hope in life. Mrs. Kwong always invites the participants to use their five senses to contact with the pictures. We hardly can know what happened in each of these participants in their lives after the training courses, but the fact is that most of them will buy one set of OH Card for their professional use.
Sr. Dominica Cheng, a spiritual teacher, often asks her students to describe what they saw on the pictures through their intuition with relationship to their experiences in their daily life. The “In and Out” traveling is very useful to achieve inspirations. Going in the content of pictures and coming out of it back to one’s life story in history, then stay away from the stories and go back to the content of the pictures in order to obtain more inspiration. The connection between the emotions begets from the picture and the actual life experience outside the picture creates amazing results. Here is one example: one picks up a picture card showing a man with a kid, the immediate connection she came out is the man is her father and she feels sad about her parent’s divorce. Coming back to the present life experience, suddenly she recognized the kid is her father – so week and helpless at the age of 70s.
Sr. Cheng said that OH Card is a very useful instrument for spiritual guidance.
When I see the OH pictures today and still think that the card is misty, I know that I am not on the way to know myself better.
Lessons from the OH Cards
 I’m constantly reminded by the cards that perception is an interpretation, not a fact. The cards with their images and words are facts but what we see is up to us. Take the clown card. I had one client who drew that card and then gave herself permission to put a smile on her face even if she was not feeling happy. She told me that eventually the act of smiling would spread to her actually being happy.
Yet another client who had insistently reported that all was fine with her, she didn’t really need counselling. Still, every week she made and showed up for her appointment with me. In frustration I used the cards with the hope that they could help her to verbalize whatever was causing her pain. And she drew the clown card. Only then was she able to speak of the abuse she had suffered as a child by people wearing masks. These were not happy memories but a shift had happened and she was ready to work through her pain. We always used the cards after that in our sessions.
And then there was my handsome client who some perceived as arrogant and having everything he wanted in the world. Others claimed he had to be shallow since he seemed to enjoy a life without pain. He drew the clown card and the word card “NAKED.” Smiling, he nodded his head and commented without hesitation, “This is obvious. It is easy for me to be physically naked before others. It is much harder for me to be psychologically naked so I wear a mask.” All I could say was, “Wow!” We have our own answers inside us. And others, books, movies, and yes cards can inspire us to go within and rediscover our own truths.
Dawn Brown, M.Ed. (Counselling) has over 20 years of experience as a psychotherapist, teacher, and trainer specializing in life transitions. In addition, Dawn is an international speaker and the author of That Perception Thing! She heads Perception Shift, a company dedicated to creating a healthy approach to living.
Excerpted from original material for the book Strawberries Beyond My Window: Games of Association for Opening the Door to Creativity and Communication, 2nd German Edition, by Waltraud Kirschke.
It was in fact Saturday – the day had come. And panic swept over me as I began asking myself, “What was I thinking?” I had sent out the invitations and now I had to show up. I continued to create internal dialogue around my lack of expertise in working with the cards. Until I thought, “Okay, what’s really going on here? What do I need to know to move through this?” And I pulled out my OH Cards.
One-Card Spread: Word (Expert) Image (#8 Hand Dealing Cards)
And I knew from this spread exactly what I needed to know in order to move through. In fact, I didn’t need to be an expert. We are each our own expert in receiving the insights available to us. OH is a powerful tool when we understand that the knowingness lives within us and these words and images help draw forth that knowingness by placing it before us using concrete images.
I continued with my plan for the gathering with my family. In attendance were probably sixteen or seventeen people, male and female, and of varying age groups. And we each held one question: “What do I need to let go of in order to move forward?” And the results were astonishing! In the normal comings and goings of life the people in this room hadn’t seen each other in a couple of years, but with the power of OH at hand each of us had been moved to very raw and vulnerable places. Even my grandmother, whose age is still in question, was available to what OH had to reveal to her. The evening went on with each of us exploring what was before us, what we needed to know, and discovering what forward moving action looked like for each of us individually.
Today, I’m most grateful for that then-dreaded day. I saw the power of OH.
Talisa Wisniewski
Chicago
Excerpted from original material for the book Strawberries Beyond My Window: Games of Association for Opening the Door to Creativity and Communication, 2nd German Edition, by Waltraud Kirschke.
“We Japanese are very shy, so that it is difficult for us to speak up.“ “We Japanese like sushi. Do people in Indonesia eat sushi?” These are typical phrases I have heard in intercultural exchange programs in Japan.
I have been working in the field of intercultural communication and have participated in many cross-cultural workshops and parties. On such occasions, many Japanese tend to talk not as an individual self, but as a “national” self. Once they recognize that they are talking with people from different countries and cultures, they begin to speak as if they are representing typical Japanese. It seems that their individual self-identities are absorbed into the group identity as “We Japanese.”
This “We Japanese” narrative makes it difficult to foster inter-personal communication. This narrative, popular among Japanese, would serve to fix the boundary between “We Japanese” and “You the other,” obstructing deeper mutual understanding.
The OH cards fully work to break the boundary fixed by the “We Japanese” narrative. I ask participants of diverse nationalities to pick a set of cards and to explain what they see in the set. Unexpected combinations of a word and a picture stirs up emotional reactions in one’s heart and facilitates lively and intimate communication among participants.
One can not help but being personal with the evocative power of the OH cards. I often witness that participants are even willing to voice their own thoughts and feelings and to listen to the others’ so that they can share their own memories, insights, and ideas among them. Their tales include stories of family, favorite memory from childhood, own dream and goal, daily routine, fear for the future, little fun in life: none of these stories are either abstract or stereotyped. Yet, their personal stories reflect their own national background and remain cultural/religious traits in one way or another.
Using the OH cards in cross-cultural activities helps us learn and appreciate our similarities and differences beyond the “national” or “cultural” boundaries. It also aids to develop a deep sense of empathy within a group through exchanging personalized vivid life stories to share each other’s rich experiences. For me, the OH cards are a tool to open a field where people can communicate with each other, free from fixed social categories and identities.
Megumi Shibuya
Japan
Excerpted from original material for the book Strawberries Beyond My Window: Games of Association for Opening the Door to Creativity and Communication, 2nd German Edition, by Waltraud Kirschke.
As part of my own personal development, I often work with ideas of my future self, my goals and dreams. One way that I have used the cards of association is to broaden my horizons. The cards give me a focus for exploring my options. Using a six-part storytelling structure, I can look at a goal from several perspectives, and then decide on one action to take as my next step. I use different decks of cards at different times, depending on which I feel drawn to. Sometimes I shuffle the cards and place them face down before choosing. At other times I like to see which cards I am choosing.
Sitting down with a broad goal in mind, I’ll draw a card that represents who I am as I undertake the journey from here to the place where my goal is achieved. This character doesn’t have to represent me; it doesn’t even have to be a person. Something in the card that I choose will present itself to me as that part of me that is making the journey.
Next, I take a card that helps to clarify some aspect of the goal or dream. I’ve found that most often, it is a quality that I seek more of in my life that emerges, rather than a material objective. Even when the card that I draw doesn’t seem to make much sense, by giving myself permission to move beyond my objections to that card, I can usually see something of value there.
The third card I draw will speak to me about the obstacles that get in the way of me achieving the goal, and the fourth card, the helper or resources available to help me get over, through or around the obstacle.
Having found myself equipped to overcome whatever resistance there is to moving my life forwards, as I look at the fifth card, I ask what I will do, how I will respond to the challenge that I face.
The final card provides a framework for deciding on one action that I will take as I begin the journey towards my goal, or the next stage of it.
I often adapt this framework, but I find it a useful structure for focusing myself on the next step that I choose to take on this journey of my life.
Steven Weir
London, England
Excerpted from original material for the book Strawberries Beyond My Window: Games of Association for Opening the Door to Creativity and Communication, 2nd German Edition, by Waltraud Kirschke.
Using the SAGA and MYTHOS decks as a jumping-off point for creativity has proved itself useful time and time again. As a writer, there are times when the words won’t flow and the creative spark is lost. At these times when my creativity is blocked, finding my way back on course is not easy.
Drawing a card from one of these packs allows me to take a step back from the work I am struggling with, and to refresh my mind with the newness of the image I see before me. Even a card that I have drawn and worked with many times before will have new meanings for me with each drawing. The state of mind that I am in will influence the shades of meaning I see, reflecting itself through the subtle overtones of the story that emerges.
The imagery fuels my mind, allowing me to wander into new territories and across unfamiliar terrain. As I allow my imagination free reign to make the associations that it chooses, to see the past or the future through the eyes of the card, I am able, at that moment, to let my mind touch new depths, to discover new possibilities.
Although the story that comes to me from the card may have no clear link to the work I was doing, the process of working with the image changes my thinking so that I am no longer stuck.
As well as using the cards in this way for creative work, I have used them for problem solving. Here, in a similar way, the story that comes from the card or cards will usually have no link to the problem, yet by firing up my creativity, my field of vision expands so that new solutions come into focus. The solutions that emerge are almost a by-product of the story that’s formed. Tapping into the hidden reserves of creativity allows the options to flow, and as they do, solutions present themselves for consideration.
Steven Weir
London, England
Excerpted from original material for the book Strawberries Beyond My Window: Games of Association for Opening the Door to Creativity and Communication, 2nd German Edition, by Waltraud Kirschke.
 Richard Martin is a storyteller and English teacher from England who now lives in Germany. He travels all over the world telling his stories to all kinds of people.
I use OH cards regularly in school as a teacher of English as a foreign language and in my teacher-training workshops on using storytelling in the classroom.
I usually use the SAGA and 1001 packs. One of the strongest points about these is the impact of the pictures. They not only look “powerful”, they have the strange ability to suggest diverse ideas to different people and in combination with different cards.
I usually use them in small groups to generate stories – in the English classroom these can be the basis for oral and then written work which then can provide the opportunity to consolidate grammar. In my experience students really enjoy using the cards.
I do various activities with them, some I learnt in a short workshop with Moritz Egetmeyer, some I more or less invent according to the needs and size of the group. The cards lend themselves to many activities.
I think that every teacher should have a pack in their repertoire. They are so useful for when you cannot think of what to do, and the results are always first-rate – which cannot be said for many stop-gap activities! I have not seen any of the other storytelling cards on the market, but teachers in workshops who have always agree that OH pictures are simply superior.
For more information about Richard, visit his website, Tell a Tale.
Related reading: Storytellers Using OH Cards
Way back in October of 1999, Janine Moore’s article “OH Cards: The Game of Inner Vision” appeared in Connections Magazine, Issue 45. The full article is available now on the Positive Health Online website.
The article introduces the OH cards and suggests different ways to use them, but also gives us insights into the process Ely Raman went through to create the original OH cards, as well as information about his life.
From the article:
“If you need an ice-breaker in a room full of strangers, open up a deck of OH cards. According to their creator Ely Raman, ‘The cards will get people talking and you won’t be strangers for long.’ ”
“The power of the cards lies in their ability to tap into the unconscious and perhaps bring to the surface buried feelings and emotions.”
Lynda Gambee Henry and James Douglas Henry include OH Cards in their list of “Strategies and Resources for Nurse Self-Care” in their book, The Soul of the Caring Nurse: Stories and Resources for Reitalizing Professional Passion (download a PDF of the table of contents), published in 2004 by the American Nurses Association.
A contributor to the Child Therapy and Mental Health website posted a short article about using various OH genre cards in therapy practice with children. The article, “Associative cards,” was posted by blaxter on December 15, 2008.
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