It begins with a simple piece of paper: flat, nondescript, lifeless. You might fold it in half, and in half again — repetitive motions that shape a two-dimensional rectangle into a three-dimensional crane, frog or other whimsical creature. Origami, the Japanese art of paper folding, draws us into mindfulness, a state of embodied flow.

Studies by the University of Tokyo show that practicing origami for 15 minutes daily reduced anxiety and increased feelings of well-being. The repetitive motion, as well as the wonder of creating something pleasing, generates the same kind of relaxation response as deep breathing or guided meditation. It soothes the nervous system, drawing people into a rest-and-digest state, where all healing takes place.

“It calms people down. They’re sitting in one place. There’s nothing else required — just their breath and the paper,” says Bonnie Cherni, creative director of Epic Origami. “You regulate your breathing better because you’re just doing calming, repetitive, eye-and-hand movement. There’s a stillness in folding with yourself and folding with others. It can be a very serene meditation.”

Photos courtesy of Epic Origami

Epic Origami, based in both Boulder, Colorado and Hawaii, displays larger-than-life origami installations, usually built from metal, throughout the world. The team recently returned from a two-and-a-half-month stint in Tokyo, Japan and has exhibited locally in Denver International Airport, the Museum of Boulder and Boulder’s Dairy Arts Center, the latter of which showcased a 7.5-foot origami dragon in 2019. They also teach workshops for kids, adults and corporations seeking team-building activities.

“They see the installation, and that gets them fired up about origami,” Cherni says. “They’re showstoppers. Usually, when you see an origami crane in someone’s hand, you don’t turn your head, like ‘Whoa, look at that,’ but when you see a 4-foot elephant, that’s really exciting.”

Epic Origami employs the ancient art form to mitigate today’s over-reliance on modern digital devices, drawing people in through verbal instruction.

“It’s leveraging that oral tradition. It’s not a screen you have to read. You don’t have to get into an app. You don’t have to read a book. It’s a person telling a person,” she says. “There’s a huge amount of introducing children back to real life and to the textural, kinesthetic part of feeling the paper in your hands. It has a very human element; we go back to human interaction. Our workshops are known for giggling.”

They start with forms that take less than a dozen steps to ensure the process is fun, rather than frustrating.

“People fold a few steps, and they get big results, and that encourages them,” Cherni says, adding that paper is less intimidating than art supplies like paint, so it circumvents any bad memories people may hold around art. “It’s almost like magic, so people get the impression that they’re creating a magic trick, and magic doesn’t usually happen with AI — it’s usually a human doing magic for another human. The paper was flat, unrecognizable as anything, and then you transform that paper like magic with your hands, and you get a little creature that can look at you. I think it’s reflective of creation. There’s this feeling that you’re the creator. You progressively keep folding to the point where it stands, and that’s why we call it Epic Origami. It’s kind of an epic moment.”

Origami quiets people’s racing minds and bodies, whether they have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or are just indoctrinated by society’s norms of doing things faster and faster. Cherni has taught kids who didn’t want to sit down or do anything “brainy,” but the creatures they could make out of paper motivated them.

“One kid will do it and then the other kid will do it, and then they all will start feeding creatively off each other,” she says.

It’s also unifying, in that people of all backgrounds and beliefs can come together and literally be on the same page. And that, in and of itself, is calming.

“Origami combines creative meditation with what might be called ‘yoga for the hands.’ Folding — one of the simplest acts — holds astonishing power to bootstrap forms, stories and even entire worlds from scratch. It’s like watching a universe spring to life before your eyes,” says Jean-Baptiste Labrune, a professor Cherni taught origami with at the University of Colorado Boulder and a research affiliate at the MIT Media Lab in Massachusetts. “This process of re-creation echoes how our own cells evolve, heal and grow — through micro folding. Bonnie Cherni’s macro folding explores this further, scaling the millennia-old art into human-sized sculptural artifacts. Her works invite us not just to fold with our hands, but to step into a landscape shaped by the gesture, crafting a new kind of wellbeing and aesthetic horizon.”

There’s a reason origami has persisted for thousands of years. The delightful practice combines focused attention and creativity, offering easy access to a sense of calm, presence and connection to ourselves and others.

Kimberly Nicoletti
Writer
kimberlynicoletti.com