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All About Metaphor

1st Mar 2013 by Marian Way in Metaphor

If you’ve read Clean Approaches for Coaches, you’ll be under no illusion as to the importance of metaphor - in our lives and central to the process of Symbolic Modelling.

Here are a couple of videos that give a lot of insight into the importance of metaphor for understanding, communication, decision making, learning and invention.

The first is a TED talk from James Geary, author of I is An Other. Geary talks about Elvis Presley, Aristotle, the mathematics of metaphor, pattern recognition, cognitive dissonance, and more…

The second is a TED-Ed animation by Jane Hirshfield. This delightful animation brings metaphors such as ‘raining cats and dogs’ and ‘elephant in the room’ to life, as Hirshfield explains how metaphors help us better understand the world…

One of the great things about TED-Ed is that the animations and slideshows are accompanied by quizzes and additional resources. You can find the quiz for this video here. The additional resources are entitled Dig Deeper, and ideas include listening to the video again, or looking in magazines and newspapers for examples, as well as making up your own metaphors.

Photo by Johnson Wang on Unsplash

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About Marian Way

A highly skilled facilitator and trainer, Marian, who founded Clean Learning in 2001, has developed and delivered training across the world. She is the author of Clean Approaches for Coaches, co-author, with James Lawley, of Insights in Space and co-author, with Caitlin Walker, of So you want to be… #DramaFree.

Marian is an expert Clean facilitator, an adept modeller, a programme writer and an inspirational trainer. She has a natural ability to model existing structures, find the connections between them and design new ways for people to learn. Marian was a leading innovator within the Weight Watchers organisation, which included developing the “points” strategy, a local idea that went on to become a global innovation. She is a director of both Clean Learning and Training Attention CIC, world leaders in clean applications for corporate, educational and community development. She designs our programmes and workbooks, leads workshops and teaches on all our courses. She’s trained people in Great Britain, Russia, Sweden, Germany, Australia, Japan and the USA. Marian is also a recognised Clean Assessor.

All About Metaphor

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