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Pointing: “The Metaphor We Have Been looking For”
We were a relatively small group this month, and it was nice to see those who did come along.
As I’d been in Sydney and able to attend the Practice Group there, I thought I would ‘borrow’ the ideas and bring them back to England with me. James Lawley was running the group there, and the topic was ‘Pointing’. He had already blogged about it, and this had piqued my interest. And what had piqued Jame’s interest was a book called Michelangelo's Finger, by Raymond Tallis. James told us that at last he had a way of explaining the perspective that we take during a Symbolic Modelling session: “It is the metaphor we have been looking for.”
Posted on 26 Mar 2012 by Marian Way in Practice Group
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As or When?
At our practice group meeting on Monday we focussed on the syntax of Clean Language and in particular, the use of 'as' and 'when'.
There are three parts to a Clean Language question. First of all, we acknowledge what the other person has said by repeating some, or all, of their words, prefaced by the word 'and'. Secondly, we pick out a word, phrase or gesture to direct their attention to and do so by saying, "And when... [client's word(s)]" or "And as... [client's word(s)]". Finally we ask a clean question.
Posted on 19 Oct 2011 by Marian Way in Practice Group
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Just Three Questions - and Similar Rules
We created the format for this month’s practice session by asking everyone at the start of the meeting, “What would you like to have happen?” And while some people said they would like non-specific practice in pairs, a few of us had read a note from James Lawley on the LinkedIn Clean Facilitators in Business group, in which he suggested some practice exercises from the www.cleanlanguage.co.uk website. He says:
“There is something about restricting practice to a specific skill that seems to accelerate learning. Counter-intuitively, creativity and learning often thrive on constraints. For a start, Clean Language is a itself a huge constraint on the facilitator. Often the bigger the constraint the more learning, e.g. see how long you can keep going using just one of the Clean Language questions.”
Posted on 25 Jul 2011 by Marian Way in Practice Group
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Objects as Symbols
Following on from Clean Constellations last month, we decided to experiment with a similar process, using objects (e.g. Lego bricks, Russian dolls, coins, stones) rather than people as representatives. Of course it then becomes a different process, but has the advantage that instead of needing a whole group of people to cooperate, it is possible to work 1-2-1.
We were using a cut-down version of Lynn Burney’s process; cut-down because many of the questions in large-scale constellations simply don’t work in a one-to-one context. We noticed that the client quickly became engaged with their landscape and that it was possible to add in regular Clean Language questions.
Posted on 21 Apr 2011 by Marian Way in Practice Group
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Clean Constellations
As well as our usual evening session, a few of us met all day for an extended practice group session, all on the subject of Clean Constellations. This was run by Jordan Collier and John Barlow, who had recently been on Lynne Burney’s 2-day Systemic Representations workshop and who wanted an opportunity to practise.
Clean Constellations combines David Grove's ideas on space, psychoactivity and emergence with Bert Hellinger's famous Family Constellation work. Using audience members to represent important elements in their life, the client takes a privileged position outside of their personal process where they can watch the drama of their inner patterns and outer relationships acting themselves out in front of them.
Posted on 21 Mar 2011 by Marian Way in Practice Group
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Working With Physical Symptoms
The topic this evening was ‘working with physical symptoms’. We agreed we would start by asking about the symptom and to develop this into a symbol / metaphor, and then to find out what the symptom (or the client) would like to have happen. We started with a demo, where the symptom was ‘creaky knees’, which reminded the client of a creaky ship.
She was able to use this analogy to draw some conclusions about the relationship between ligaments, muscles and bones. She then went on to establish that, as well as balancing periods of rushing around with periods of relaxation (which she already does), she will (a) note in her journal how her knees feel now when she is sitting, standing, kneeling and walking, (b) research into what else she can do to help her knees feel good (e.g. massage), and (c) check in with how she is doing in three months time, noting again how her knees feel when sitting, standing, kneeling and walking.
Posted on 21 Feb 2011 by Marian Way in Practice Group
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How Resourceful Are You?
Practice Group Report
Happy New Year! And welcome to Jenni, Jo and Pete, who joined us for the first time this month. The topic for the evening was Modelling Resources. This is a topic we explored in May last year - and was voted as one of the 'winners' of our poll (the other was working with symptoms which we'll explore next month). We started with a short discussion of what is a resource. I drew a quick sketch (right) to show the difference between a resource, a problem and a desired outcome and we agreed that we would keep one another's attention in the 'resource' box on the diagram. Working in pairs, we used the following as a starter question:
Posted on 17 Jan 2011 by Marian Way in Practice Group
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Modelling Time
Practice Group Report
This month's topic was Modelling Time, and we worked in pairs, starting each session with a Clean Set Up (devised by Caitlin Walker and Dee Berridge), which involves asking three 'starter' questions with two or three questions of each response. This helped everyone to discover what kind of session we'd like to have, how we needed to be in order to make it the best session it could be, and what we needed from each other.
(I've also started doing this Clean Set Up at the start of each of my coaching sessions and am finding it works very well to make sure that my clients get the kind of session they want.)
To model time, we used another activity of Caitlin’s which involves the facilitator putting the client’s attention on first the past, then developing their perception of the past with clean questions, then the same for the future, then for ‘now’. This proved to be a very interesting exercise.
Posted on 13 Dec 2010 by Marian Way in Practice Group
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