"In all living creatures, from snails to people, knowledge of space is central to behavior.  As John O'Keefe notes, "Space plays a role in all our behaviour.  We live in it, move through it, explore it, defend it."  Space is not only a critical sense but a fascinating one because unlike other senses space is not analyzed by a specialized sensory organ.  Because we do not have a sensory organ dedicated to space, the representation of space is a quintessentially cognitive sensibility: it is the binding problem writ large. The brain must combine inputs from several different sensory modalities and then generate a complete internal representation that does not depend exclusively on any one input. How, then, is space represented?" In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind, Eric R. Kandel, Norton, 2007

‘Meta comments’ are those verbal and nonverbal expressions which comment on what is being or has just been experienced. These ‘about-the-now’ comments can range from fully conscious and explicit to the completely unconscious and implicit. They are much more common than you might expect. Find out how to recognise and make use of them in your facilitation. 

A joined-up model of how methodologies derived from the work of David Grove invoke the psychoactivity of spatial relations in therapeutic, as well as in other settings. Once a space becomes psychoactive a person is effectively 'living in their metaphor'. Then, when something changes in that perceptual space (often spontaneously), more of their mind-body is involved. This usually produces a more embodied and systemic change.

Our aim is "To get you to think networks. It is about how networks emerge, what they look like, and how they evolve. ... Networks are present everywhere. All we need is an eye for them."

Extended quotations about Experiential Constructivism from Fritjof Capra, John Grinder & Richard Bandler, George Lakoff & Mark Johnson. Plus recommended reading.

This paper was written in preparation for the facilitation by the Clean Team* of a Large Group Metaphor Process at The Findhorn Community during 13-16 January, 2003. The paper's aim was to raise the Team's awareness of:

• the key features of self-organising systems
• how these might manifest in a community setting
• how this knowledge can inform the way we facilitate.

* James Lawley, Penny Tompkins, Steve Callaghan, Wendy Sullivan, Phil Swallow, Caitlin Walker and Marian Way.

This is the second part of a two-part article:

Part 1 explained that underlying every theory of management or organisation is a metaphor. It described eight commonly used metaphors and Gareth Morgan's method for analysing and facilitating organisations to change.

Part 2 shows how Symbolic Modelling uses client-generated metaphors to facilitate individuals to understand and change themselves and their organisations.

A report in English on a French NLP Congress in 2001

How is it that sometimes people want to change, try to change, and may even make changes, yet they end up repeating the same old patterns? They are in a bind. This article describes four prototypical binds; defines double binds; and summarises how to transform binds.