Where singles mingle

By Tanya Bricking
Advertiser Staff Writer

Members assemble for a group-hug session during an "Inner Fire" workshop for singles last month. Photos by Rebecca Breyer • The Honolulu Advertiser

Scott Shafer of Hawai'i Kai plays the drums with others during a retreat organized by Amber Ricci.

If you go ... Spots are filling up for the next singles' retreat (this Saturday), but call for availability at 550-0533. The daylong workshop costs $100. Information: www.innerfirehawaii.com

Ricci, a part-time nightclub musician, has witnessed the bar scene and seen the horrors it can wreak on relationships. So the Nu'uanu woman, who's also a part-time belly dancing, yoga and voice instructor, began inviting friends to get together for retreats to try to create more lasting connections.

Complete with breathing exercises, group drum playing and "blindfold" games, there's definitely a New-Agey feel to her daylong "Inner Fire" workshops. She assures people "there's nothing nude or sexual" about the retreats and they're a safe place to make friends.

"It's like summer camp for adults," she said.

Her workshops are like a PG version of the kind of singles scene portrayed on HBO's "Real Sex" documentary television series. She gets up to 20 singles together about once a month at a beachfront home and plays games like one that involves participants being blindfolded, shouting out: "I give myself permission to receive love" and getting hugs from the rest of the group.

That the workshop made him step out of his comfort zone a little is just what made it appealing to Skip Riley, a Honolulu maritime consultant in his late 40s.

"At this point in my life, I'm interested in meeting new people," he said. "I'm not a person who hangs out in bars, and because of that, I really don't meet a lot of people of the opposite sex. Your first feeling about this might be that it's a New-Agey thing, but it transcends that. In order for us to advance, we have to move beyond our boundaries."

Nothing to lose

Ricci has spent most of her life trying to do just that.

The 33-year-old daughter of a musician mother and Methodist father who left the ministry because he was gay, Ricci said she learned early on about the power of music and her ability to "bring out the fire in people."

Her seminars have a lot to do with acceptance of self-worth and love and extending the same feeling to others.

When she's not on stage impersonating Madonna or teaching people how to dance, she's a social butterfly trying to help people open up.

She invites to her seminars such speakers as Robert "Robii" Dotson, a Kahala Heights clinical psychologist who encourages people to study their personality type and how they best mesh with others.

"I want to turn people on to each other again," Dotson said. "Sometimes we forget how to get along with people."

Those who get the most out of the workshop tend to be into self-improvement, Dotson said.

Keeping an open mind

The workshop wasn't the sort of thing Kawika Eckart would ordinarily see himself attending, but it came at a time in his life when he's open to improving.

Eckart, 44, a recently divorced lifeguard from Waimanalo, said his party days are over, and he's looking for someone he can come home to and share his day with without the pressures of the dating scene.

"You need to be open-minded to attend the workshop and get something out of it," he said.

He liked the spirituality part of it even though he was uneasy about the part where strangers hugged him while he was blindfolded.

"I think everybody became friends by the end of it," he said.

Kapio Cullen, a Kailua single who has attended two of the workshops, also recommends it for people who are willing to try a new avenue for dating.

She says she'd love to be in a relationship, but attending Windward Unity Church regularly hasn't been the answer for romance, and neither has online dating. For the $100 she might have spent on something else, Cullen spent it to make friends at the workshop.

Although she hasn't found her true love on a retreat, she's been back because she met people there she likes to hang out with. Everybody gets a chance to talk, network, pass out business cards and make plans to get together again.

"For me, it's opened up a whole new world of friendship," she said. "For people who are a little skeptical, I think of it like: 'What have you got to lose?' "

Tanya Bricking writes about relationships for The Advertiser. Reach her at tbricking@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8026.