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						<title><![CDATA[www.cleanlanguage.co.uk - Blog]]></title>
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					  <title><![CDATA[Pointing Attention]]></title>
					  <link>http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/blogs/78/Pointing-Attention.html</link>
					  <description><![CDATA[Download a print-friendly version: 2012-04-05 Pointing Attention.pdf In a previous blog (24 Feb 2012) I explored the nature of pointing and its relevance to the perspective I adopt as a symbolic modeller. Below I will continue that exploration and widen the scope of how pointing is a metaphor for so much of what happens in Symbolic Modelling. Based on Raymond Tallis&#8217; Michelangelo&#8217;s Finger,[1] the following diagram summarises what is involved when a person (the producer) points out something (the pointee) to someone (the consumer) using their finger, or some other pointer. The dotted lines represent what the consumer has to do with their attention to be able to identify the item pointed to. I maintain that being able to appreciate another person&#8217;s perspective while maintaining your own requires a special kind of modelling skill. Luckily one that almost all of us possess innately. Symbolic ModellingPeople continually point to items in their inner world &#8211; especially through gesture, gaze and metaphor. Each time they do, a facilitator has an opportunity to adopt a &#8216;consumer of pointing&#8217; modelling perspective &#8211; something Penny Tompkins and I do continuously during a session of Symbolic Modelling. Thus:When the facilitator asks a clean question of what has been pointed to a switch occurs. Each clean question &#8216;points to&#8217; or 'point out' some aspect of the client&#8217;s metaphor landscape. The client now becomes the consumer of the facilitator&#8217;s pointing:Then it switches back, and so on. This very simple oscillation creates an iterative process that forms the spine of a Symbolic Modelling session. It is how we facilitate the development of the client&#8217;s embodied metaphor landscape.I know of no other method of therapy, coaching and the like where both the client and facilitator so consistently point to a single inner landscape &#8211; the client&#8217;s. If you are not trained in a clean approach and you are thinking this seems similar to how you facilitate, I haven&#8217;t made the distinction clear. In over 15 years of training this process I have never found anyone who can maintain the consumer- and producer-of-pointing roles consistently &#8211; without thoroughly retraining their attention.[2]Mind-body phenomenaTallis describes a situation where the producer points to something that is outside the visual field of the consumer, e.g. &#8220;He went that-a-way.&#8221; But he does not mention a similar but much more common case where people use their gestures and words to point to something within their body or their mental space. Pointing to mind-body phenomena happens all the time in everyday conversation. But we are so involved in the content of what we are saying and thinking we often have only the minutest awareness that we are indicating the location and form of symbols in our &#8216;psyche-space&#8217; (as David Grove sometimes called it). And the same lack of awareness goes for the recipient of the pointing too.A skilled clean facilitator can help amplify the pointing to and pointing out nature of a conversation. To do so they need to do two things: to create a &#8216;clean environment&#8217; &#8211; one with a low level of contaminants from their own inner world; and to ask about the spatial aspects of the client&#8217;s metaphors. (Most metaphors have an explicit or implicit spatial aspect, as long as your ears and eyes know what to listen and look for.)Then something quite fascinating happens. The client becomes aware they are pointing out things to them self. The client notices they are simultaneously both the producer and consumer of their own pointing:Gregory Bateson called this a &#8220;double description&#8221;. The dialectical effect is the inclusion of both descriptions into a transcendent third perspective. Just as depth perception emerges from binocular vision. I believe most gestures and movements of the body are not communication to another person, but aids to our own thinking process. By noticing how our inner world works we gain a deep insight into why we act and respond the way we do, and we start to notice choice points &#8211; places where our process could go in a different direction and result in a different outcome. Penny and I call this self-modelling.By now you 
may have figured out a fourth possibility that completes the set (a 
description of which will have to wait for another blog):





Producer:&#160;&#160; ClientConsumer: Facilitator
Producer:&#160;&#160; FacilitatorConsumer: Client


Producer:&#160;&#160; ClientConsumer: Client
Producer:&#160;&#160; FacilitatorConsumer: Facilitator








Purpose of PointingTallis notes that pointing has two key purposes. First to rectify a perceived deficit in the consumer - we point out something they can't see or are not yet aware of and we &#34;understand that the other's comparative disadvantage can be set right&#34; (p.10). As a result we momentarily share a perspective and fulfill the second purpose: we &#8220;make a world in common&#8221; (p.132). Tallis suggests that the ability to perform this kind of mental gymnastics makes possible the kind of society only humans have:If one subscribes to the idea 
that language originated out of gesture, then pointing, as the most 
versatile of all gestures, and the one that seems closest to the 
primary, that is to say the referential, function of language, we may 
argue that it is crucial to the beginning of truly social being (of a 
kind unknown elsewhere in the animal kingdom), of a collectivization of 
consciousness upon which community, discourse, civilization and 
knowledge are based. (p. 131)The purpose of pointing makes sense when producer and consumer are pointing at different people, but what about, as mentioned above, when one person plays both roles? Then the client is, in effect, rectifying a deficit in their own awareness. They either become conscious of what before was tacit knowledge, or they have a creative insight. In so doing conscious and subconscious share (momentarily at least) the same perspective and thereby establish a different kind of relationship. Not Topdog and Underdog. Not Master and Emissary. Not rider and horse. Not adversaries, nor even allies. Instead they are co-inspirers &#8211; they form a Necessary Unity.[3]NOTES1. Raymond Tallis, Michelangelo&#8217;s Finger: An exploration of everyday transcendence (Atlantic Books, 2010)2. For a description of exercises using pointing see Marian Way&#8217;s blog: cleanlearning.co.uk/blog/discuss/pointing-the-metaphor-we-have-been-looking-for/These exercises could be extended by the producer pointing from different positions at different kinds of things using different parts of the body, with and without words.3. Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt Therapy, coined the phase &#8216;Topdog vs. Underdog&#8217; to describe a self-torture game that people play with themselves.Iain McGilchrist, The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (Yale University Press; 2010). For an overview see iainmcgilchrist.com and my three blogs on this fascinating book:cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/blogs/21/Ent-sprechen-says-it-all.htmlcleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/blogs/22/Mutual-gaze.htmlcleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/blogs/42/Balancing-brain-hemispheres.htmlHumberto Maturana: &#34;Co-inspiration arises from the conversations we have with each other that are conducted in mutual respect for the other and it provides for a manner of working together in freedom.&#34; oise.utoronto.ca/tlcentre/conf2004/process.htmlGregory Bateson, Mind and Nature A Necessary Unity &#8211; Advances in Systems Theory, Complexity, and the Human Sciences (Hampton Press; 1979).]]></description>
					  <author>James Lawley</author>
					  <pubDate>Thu, 05 Apr 2012 00:00:00 EDT</pubDate>
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					  <title><![CDATA[Making Complex Decisions Rapidly]]></title>
					  <link>http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/blogs/77/Making-Complex-Decisions-Rapidly.html</link>
					  <description><![CDATA[Download a print-friendly version: 2012-03-21 Making Complex Decisions Rapidly.pdf &#34;Complex Decisions: Difficult to Make, Difficult to Model?&#34; was the title of a talk I recently attended at the University of Sydney given by Dr. Michael Harr&#233;.[1] Harr&#233; presented findings from research on expertise, artificial neural networks and neuroscience into how people make rapid decisions in complex situations. The lecture itself was highly complex so I had plenty of opportunity to practice my skills in rapid decision making regarding what to pay attention to, and what to ignore (his differential equations, for example). Below are the key points I took away from the talk, followed by some thoughts on a new way I am trying to conceive of decision making. The first thing to note is that there are two kinds of &#8216;experts&#8217;. There are the ones we all think of &#8211; chess grandmasters, concert pianists, etc.&#160; And then there are the everyday Jill and Joe&#8217;s who do expert things like instantly recognise a face in a crowd or understand an ambiguous situation &#8211; things that even the world&#8217;s most powerful computers still struggle to do. Harr&#233; predicted that it could be 30-50 years before computers can do these things as fast as humans.Secondly, the complexity of a decision is first and foremost determined by the complexity of the context in which it is taken. Harr&#233; defined a complex decision as one that involves:No normative solution [i.e. no standard behaviour]No simple optimization of impact [i.e. the consequences are not fully known]Noisy or ambiguous information [i.e. it is not obvious what is important]Non-trivial contextual environments [i.e. no simple patterns]Little direct access to cognitive strategies [i.e. no known how to&#8217;s]So how do humans sum up a complex situation and rapidly decide what action to take?At a biochemical level it involves very large neural networks. Harr&#233; maintains that &#8220;fifty years of research shows that we don&#8217;t understand what neural networks are doing.&#8221;[2] Furthermore, experts make decisions faster and more accurately than models based on logic predict they should. So they must be doing something more than using logic.One way to find out what that might be is to compare experts with novices and average Jill&#8216;s and Joe&#8217;s.  Comparing experts with novicesNot surprisingly there are big divergences between how novices and experts take complex decisions. Novices can handle situations where they need to make sense of a small range of patterns, and people with skill levels between novices and experts can do the same for contexts with a more involved range of patterns. So far so linear. But the surprise comes with experts who can process situations with greater complexity than would be expected with a linear increase in skill. They are not just quantitatively better, it&#8217;s like they have made a leap to another level of analysis that enables them to do things the rest of us can barely imagine&#160; &#8211; without knowing how they are doing it.[3]By tracking saccades &#8211; rapid movements of the eyes &#8211; scientists can tell which part of a scene is being looked at, in what order, and for how long. Using the games of chess and Go as the context, researchers have discovered that: Amateurs only draw upon 15% of the contextual cues picked up by professionals.Experts&#8217; eyes gaze on the salient areas on the board more often and more consistently than novices.Experts have greater flexibility in the way they look at the game.So that&#8217;s what the eyes do, but what are people doing behind their eyes? Apparently we are highly selective in what we attend to. We do not take in the whole of a scene in one go. Instead we make sense of scenes by first recognising features like shapes, relative sizes, relative locations, and areas of high-density information (e.g. the boundaries between areas and the edges of things). For example, we use roads, rivers and mountains to provide perceptual and context cues from which we comprehend the whole scene. The multiple templates modelHarr&#233; proposes a multi-layer model. Each layer has &#8220;multiple templates that are decoupled from each other&#8221;. I doubt these templates are fully independent given that everything in the brain is connected to something else, so I assume Harr&#233; meant loosely coupled.As perceptual information is received by the eyes, key features are compared with a number of perceptual templates working in parallel. Matches and mismatches with each template are noted. When one of the templates has sufficient matches it crosses a threshold, becomes the dominant model and &#8220;a single perceptual cue&#8221; is passed to the next layer.  The partially processed perceptual information is compared simultaneously with multiple contextual templates also working in parallel. These provide more scene analysis. The process of matching or mismatching is repeated but at the level of context rather than perception.[4] When one of the contextual templates has registered enough matches, information is passed on for higher-order processing and for decisions about what action to take. The use of templates speed up processing because a feature can be compared with many template one once and it&#8217;s quicker to match a pre-existing template than to re-analyse the attributes of the feature each time.In sum, current ideas about how we take complex decisions, can be simplified as:Perceive local features &#8594; recognise context &#8594; global higher-order processing.Perceive global features &#8594; recognise context &#8594; local higher-order processing.Harr&#233; said we almost certainly do both and he thinks experts do more of the latter. Either way, it seems that we analyse a scene by simplifying the world into recognisable perceptual and contextual cues. In other words we are continually looking for structures and patterns in the environment that will cue us to the kind of context we are in, and hence significantly reduce the range of appropriate behavioural choices that are available to us.As with everything that happens in the brain, this is not a one-way process because the templates provide feedback which influences the processing at lower levels., e.g. how the eyes&#160; move. This is why people are so easy to fooled by with visual illusions &#8211; even when they know they are illusions. As long as the appropriate contextual cues are provided the template-matching process ensures that we see what we &#8216;should&#8217; see and not what another part of the brain knows is actually happening.[5]Evidence that matches our templates speeds up decisions, while counter-evidence slows it down. This means the more templates you have, and the wider range of templates, the more chances of finding a match. I suspect this is the basis of an expert player&#8217;s greater flexibility in the way they look at a game &#8211; an idea predicted by Gregory Bateson&#8217;s Levels of Learning theory.[6]&#160; In complex situations that require rapid decisions the lion&#8217;s share of processing seems to be associated with comprehending the context. Fighter pilots have to decide what kind of situation they are in before they do anything else. With todays technology, blowing up a house is a relatively simple matter. As we have seen so often in recent wars, mistaking the context costs lives &#8211; and usually civilian lives. This finding has huge implications for training therapists, coaches and other facilitators since they too have to take rapid decisions in complex situations.Harr&#233;&#8217;s multiple template model has parallels with Daniel Dennett&#8217;s multiple drafts theory.[7] I&#8217;ve long liked Dennett&#8217;s dangerous idea because it explains why we are rarely misled by words that have multiple meanings even when the correct meaning is not clear until later in the sentence (jokes are a deliberate exception). According to the theory of multiple drafts, we process all the meanings simultaneously. Eventually one of the resultant &#8216;drafts&#8217; has enough information to become the manuscript of understanding. The template metaphor keeps the multiple simultaneous processing part of Dennett&#8217;s theory and adds the idea that the templates are already there. We are not drafting meaning from scratch each time, we are attempting to match to previously learned schema.[8] This would explain how experts can analyse a scene so quickly &#8211; they are re-cognising it.Note, n this model, information is not &#8216;filtered out&#8217; to prevent overwhelm as is commonly suggested &#8211; instead it is &#8216;selected for salience&#8217;.[9]&#160; Salience refers to those features which have proven useful to notice in the past and therefore &#8216;stand out&#8217; from the rest of the context. Why do they standout? Because we already have a template for them!Do we really &#8216;make&#8217; or &#8216;take&#8217; decisions&#8217;?I am now going to go off on a side-shoot about how we conceive of &#8216;making a decision&#8217; (or as some Brits like to say, &#8216;taking a decision&#8217;).It is interesting to note that Harr&#233;&#8217;s research isn&#8217;t focussing on what we would typically think of as the decision-making process. It is attempting to understand how we make sense of what happens before we decide to embark on an action.The standard cognitive model of decision-making is:Input &#8594; process &#8594; decision &#8594; behaviourEverything between the input and the behaviour cannot be directly observed by an observer &#8211; and this mostly includes the decision-maker too. From an outside view it seems that at some point a decision is made and then acted upon. But I have a hunch that most of the time people don&#8217;t make decisions like that. Rather, afterwards, the change in behaviour leads us to assume that something was decided at some moment prior to the new behaviour. It seems self-evident that there is a before the decision and an after the decision &#8211; but is there? How much of that is our tendency, as Gregory Bateson pointed out, to &#8220;punctuate&#8221; the continuous flow of experience into beginnings, middles and ends, and neat linear strategies? A complicating factor arises because the decider not only has direct access to some their internal processing, they can also take a meta-position as if they were an outside observer. This perspective, too, is prey to the same desire to punctuate. Given that we are predisposed to think in this way, it means not all templates are equal, some that we have used successfully before get preferential treatment &#8211; and that makes it hard to think outside the template. If we ask, when precisely was a decision made, we run into a difficulty. Was it made when the decider noticed the signals that let them know they had made a decision? (Remember that your body is a context too!) We all know of situations where &#8216;decisions&#8217; are taken but not acted upon &#8211;&#160; so, did we really make a decision? And what about the situations where we make a decision and then change our mind. Which was &#8216;the&#8217; decision? Or consider those times when we have decided to do something and in the act of doing what we decided we unexpectedly do something else. James Hillman tells a lovely story in the Soul&#8217;s Code. It Is:Amateur Night at the Harlem Opera House. A skinny, awkward sixteen-year-old goes fearfully onstage. She is announced to the crowd: &#8220;The next contestant is a young lady named Ella Fitzgerald. ... Miss Fitzgerald here is gonna dance for us. ...&#160; Hold it, hold it. Now what&#8217;s your problem, honey? . . . Correction, folks. Miss Fitzgerald has changed her mind. She&#8217;s not gonna dance, she&#8217;s gonna sing ...Ella Fitzgerald gave three encores and won first prize. However, &#8220;she had meant to dance.&#8221; What decision was made when?Over the last twenty years I have had plenty of opportunity to model my clients&#8217; decision-making strategies. Their dilemmas are &#8216;complex&#8216; because there are no easy solutions and they potentially have great ramifications. I&#8217;ve watched how they struggle to &#8216;make&#8217; a decision and investigated after the event how the decision was arrived at. Rather than a decision being taken more or less consciously at a moment in time, the process seems more like a continuous &#8216;slider&#8217; that starts with a trigger and ends with behaviour. The decision-making doesn&#8217;t happen at any point. Either there are many mini-decisions, or there is a continuous flow of processing which leads to a new perception and new behaviour. I favour the latter idea.Penny Tompkins pointed out that my slider is itself part of larger context of trial-and-feedback, commonly known as learning. Thus is could be context analysis all the way up the cognitive hierarchy. What if, during the context analysis, multiple motor templates are simultaneously passed cues to be matched or mismatched? Each template could accumulate cues until one of them has seen enough to trigger al behaviour (see diagram below).We seem to accept this for &#8216;instinctive&#8217; behaviours, e.g. someone unexpectedly throws a ball at you, do you decide to catch it &#8211; if so, at what point? I suggest &#8216;the decision&#8217; is smeared across time from the moment we first see the ball to the moment it is in our hands. With more complex decisions we think that something extra has to happen. Clients who come to therapy in a dilemma about a decision often have been waiting, sometimes for years, for something to happen which means they &#8216;know&#8217; the &#8216;right&#8217; decision to take. But many decisions, especially ones with an ethical component are not amenable to this kind of thinking &#8211; neither choice is &#8216;right&#8217; and both are &#8216;wrong&#8217; depending on your viewpoint.&#160; However, while the uncertainty persists, it is a challenge for some people to change behaviour because that involves making a decision. Can you see the bind this creates? What often happens is they eventually &#8216;find&#8217; something that justifies them doing one thing or the other.To end on an encouraging note, Michael Harr&#233; said that &#8220;Expertise expands without bounds as far as we are aware.&#8221; It seems people don&#8217;t reach a capacity, they simply stop when they have enough.NOTES1 My thanks to Susie Linder-Pelz for taking Penny and I to the lecture on 13 Mar 2012. Harr&#233; has the intriguing title of Principle Investigator at Large, Centre for the Mind, Faculty of Science, and his work is funded by the U.S. Air Force.2 The next time you hear someone make a generalisation about behaviour from neuronal research, remember Harr&#233;&#8217;s words.3 My guess is that the difference is partly due top experts thinking systemically rather than linearly.4 Although Harr&#233; didn&#8217;t mention it, &#8216;context&#8217; is itself multi-layered. He mostly referred to the physical context. On top of that are many layers of social context. Think of how decision making is affected when preparing for the final hole of The Open golf tournament. 5 At a higher level I think this is analogous to &#8216;confirmation bias&#8217; and &#8216;the illusion of validity&#8217; &#8211; once we have jumped on to the island of conclusion we unconsciously favour information that supports our conclusions. And even when we know about confirmation bias we don&#8217;t think it applies to us! See my blog on Daniel Kahneman&#8217;s work: cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/blogs/61/6 For an appreciation of this influential theory, download Paul Tosey&#8217;s paper, &#8216;Bateson's Levels Of Learning: a Framework For Transformative Learning?&#8217; at: www.som.surrey.ac.uk/NLP/Resources/BatesonLevels2006.pdf7 For a summary of Daniel Dennett&#8217;s Multiple Drafts theory see our &#8216;Self-Nudging: unconscious decision-making and how we can bias our future self&#8217; at: www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/articles/312/For a description of what Cognitive Linguists call &#8216;image schema&#8217; and how they apply to modelling metaphors see our article, &#8216;Embodied Schema: The basis of Embodied Cognition&#8217; at: cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/articles/245/8 If I understood him, for implicit learning to take place Harr&#233; said we need: constancy, regularity, co-occurrence, and accurate feedback, all at multiple-levels. For more on &#8216;Feedback Loops&#8217; see our article at: cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/articles/227/9 For more on selecting for salience see our articles &#8216;The Neurobiology of Space&#8217;, cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/articles/196/ and &#8216;Attending to Salience&#8217;, cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/articles/234/
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					  <author>James Lawley</author>
					  <pubDate>Wed, 21 Mar 2012 00:00:00 EDT</pubDate>
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					  <title><![CDATA[Setting up Clean Space]]></title>
					  <link>http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/blogs/76/Setting-up-Clean-Space.html</link>
					  <description><![CDATA[Download a print-friendly version: 2012-03-16 Setting up Clean Space v2.pdf (revised 27 March 2012)When David Grove was developing Clean Space he was inspired by Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science.[1] Wolfram demonstrates how unexpected complexity can emerge from the iterative application of a few very simple &#8216;algorithms&#8217; or &#8216;routines&#8217; &#8211; sequences of instructions for performing a task that are part of a larger operation. Change techniques are typically designed to be followed step by step from start to finish. Their linearity and straight-forwardness is their attraction. Clean Space is not a traditional technique. It is an interesting mixture of following a strict formula and applying algorithms creatively in response to what is happening for the client in the moment.Clean Space draws on the original Greek meaning of &#8216;technique&#8217; &#8211; the method used by an artist. An artist may employ standard techniques but if they are to produce something original these cannot be applied formulaically. When Penny Tompkins and I produced our first model of David Grove&#8217;s Clean Space in 2003 we attempted to preserve the spirit of David&#8217;s innovation &#8211; the artistic technique as well as the technology. In our diagram of the model the circularity of the arrows between the core routines was meant to show that:Clean Space is not like a traditional technique: the steps cannot be predefined since neither you nor the client knows what will happen next. Each move is contingent upon what has just been said or done and on the logic of the client's information. How many spaces the client identifies, their location, the order in which they are located, the information emerging from each space, and the number of iterations are determined during the process.[2]Over the years however, Clean Space has often been presented as a linear technique: First do this, then this, etc. (I too have fallen prey to this over-simplification when time was short.) Having said that, I am still amazed just how much a person can get from being facilitated through even the most formulaic version &#8211; but sometimes I feel it loses something.This blog is an attempt to redress the balance by attending more to the artistic technique aspect of Clean Space. Rather than think of Clean Space as a linear process I regard it as a number (six as it happens) of interacting &#8216;set ups&#8217;. Each set up is designed to contribute to the overall aim of &#8220;encouraging the conditions&#8221; for creative emergence.[3] Or in David Grove&#8217;s words, for the space to become psychoactive and therefore your co-facilitator.[4] That&#8217;s as much as a clean facilitator can do. After that it&#8217;s up to the client&#8217;s system to do what it does.Psychoactivity occurs when the physical space is populated with the client&#8217;s symbolic content and those symbols give rise to reactions in the client&#8217;s mind-body. David was particularly interested in &#8216;network effects&#8217;. Once a critical number of symbols/spaces exist and relationships between them are established, &#8216;emergent properties&#8217;&#8211; features and functions that could not be predicted from the components &#8211; appear.At the first workshop on Clean Space David Grove explained how to start: &#8220;Encourage the client to write a mission statement or draw a picture on paper and then place it somewhere in the room, which sets up the observer, the observed and the space in between&#8221;.[5] David was obviously using &#8220;set up&#8221; to mean establish (make firm) and inaugurate (mark the beginning); and I&#8217;d like to think he was also meaning to provide or create an opportunity (as in &#8216;The player set up a goal-scoring chance&#8217;). However, reserving this term for the initial routine implies that the other routines do something else. I suggest that if we regard all of the routines as setting up something then our relationship to the process, the client and the space changes &#8211; hopefully in the direction of being more attuned to the spirit of the process.[6]In the following when I use 'set up' it will have all three meanings. Facilitators RoleMy job in Clean Space is to facilitate the client to establish a network of spaces, and when this becomes psychoactive to respond to whatever happens &#8211; especially the unexpected. Where it goes, nobody knows &#8211; that&#8217;s the nature of an emergent process.Since clients can lose track of the mundane when they are engaged in their symbolic world, it is also the job of the facilitator to manage the external context such as physical safety and any time constraints.&#160;Six Set UpsLet&#8217;s look at the function of each of the six set up routines:[7]StartingThis routine sets up the whole process. It provides the grain of sand from which the pearl of the network can grow. It establishes a location for the client&#8217;s written words or drawing (a reference point that David called &#8220;the space of B&#8221;); an initial location for the client (&#8220;the space of A&#8221; or &#8220;Position 1&#8221;); and a spatial relationship between the two (&#8220;the space of C&#8221;).The space of A situates the client&#8217;s initial response to what they decide the session is to be about (B). In addition, it opens a loop and establishes a place to come back to. I think of Position 1 as setting up a &#8216;control point&#8217; against which the effect of the process can be compared at the end.The time and attention given to this part of the process is vital. David called the extended version of this routine a Clean Start.[8] The questions authenticate the primacy of spatial relations, that slight adjustments matter, and that the client knows more than they know they know. Often within a minute or two the physical space starts to take on an extra dimension. It starts symbolising aspects of the client&#8217;s inner world.[9]Knowing from a New SpaceOnce a space exists the first thing to do is to establish a knowing at this space. When setting up the network it is important that the client remains for only a short time in each space. Initially, Clean Space is about working with &#8216;span&#8217; rather than &#8216;depth&#8217;. The general rule is, until a network is established, ask a maximum of three questions per space. My preference is for:And what do you know (from) there?And is there anything else you know from there about [gesture to statement or drawing]?And what could this space be called?These three simple questions invite the client to identify a knowing at this space, a knowing about the original grain of sand, and a name &#8211; and therefore an identity &#8211; for the space. Going through the ritual of these three questions whenever a new space is discovered establishes both the independence of the space and its inclusion in the network. Ken Wilber calls these &#8216;individual agency&#8217; and &#8216;communion with others&#8217;.[10]Locating New SpacesAs soon as a second space is established a simple three-point network begins to emerge. Thereafter each new space adds to the complexity and richness of the network. Each time a client &#8220;finds&#8221; a new space they further commit to the process. Although George Miller said we can hold a maximum of &#8220;7 plus or minus 2&#8221; bits of information at one time,[11] in Clean Space the equivalent &#8220;magic number&#8221; is more like &#8216;3 plus 1 or 2&#8217;. Once the number of spaces gets to 3, 4 or 5 most clients have to let go. They become active participators rather than conductors since despite being fully in charge they cannot control what is happening.While the client gets deeply involved in the content, as facilitators we need to keep thinking &#8216;space, space, space&#8217;. We need to listen and watch for cues to the emerging configuration &#8211; and support it to emerge. Spatial metaphors and little movements of the body are the raw materials of our trade. Even if a client does not physically stand in a space, if they mention it verbally or point to it nonverbally it exists. Our job is to put attention on that space so it can play its part in the overall configuration. For example, a client says &#8220;I am on the edge of something here. I can feel it. But if I step back [points behind] I&#8217;m outside its influence.&#8221; Even though the client has not physically stepped back to &#8220;outside&#8221;, that space now exists and needs to be acknowledged and incorporated. The most direct route is via an instruction:And go to (that space) outside.orAnd find a space that knows about outside (the edge).You don&#8217;t have to do this immediately but you can&#8217;t wait too long since &#8220;metaphors have a short half-life&#8221; (David Grove) and that space may lose its psychoactivity.[12]Relating SpacesAsking the following question multiple times from multiple spaces puts attention on the relationships between the spaces (the links rather than the nodes, in network jargon):And what do you know (from) here about there[gesture to location of one of the previously established spaces, and optionally use its name]? It also serves to check the &#8216;ecology&#8217; of the network from multiple perspectives &#8211; to ensure that all the spaces are involved and &#8216;have their say&#8217;.[13][Optional] Relating Spaces - Working with the NetworkIn some ways, all of the preceding routines are preparing the ground for another phase. Unfortunately, this part of the process gets dropped when time is short or a simplified version is being taught. Once a network is established then the client can move around it. The varying perspectives give rise to new insights, new connections and new effects. At some point the configuration of the network will likely take on significance. The client may well notice that the relative location and grouping of their spaces is far from arbitrary and itself contains symbolic information.&#160; Working at the network level the client can discover deep structures about how they organise their way of being in the world.It&#8217;s important to realise that the opportunity to &#8216;work with the network&#8216; can happen at any time after a second space is located. In general though, as more spaces are located and related the more likely the configuration of the network will start to become significant. Relating spaces is most often used in conjunction with another routine ... Returning to Spaces By revisiting existing spaces the client&#8217;s system updates itself with new knowings and further discoveries. Iterating around the spaces is key to both keeping the whole network alive and to maturing the changes that are happening. As small changes cascade around the network their effects are amplified and consolidated creating a contagion of further unexpected happenings and discoveries.FinishingAt some point the client is instructed to return to &#8220;from whence they came&#8221;, Position 1, the original space of A. Here the client can reflect on what has happened, the effects of that, and the effect of those effects. As T. S. Eliot so eloquently pointed out:We shall not cease from exploration &#8232;And the end of all our exploring &#8232;Will be to arrive where we started &#8232;And know the place for the first time. This is also a practical way to return the client and the space to the physical world.Clean Space LiteThe six set ups above do not map directly on to the headings of either of our basic or lite versions of Clean Space. This is because they are designed to be used as a guide for someone learning to facilitate the process, while the above are describing the general function of each of the routines. Our diagrams are two particular formulations out of thousands that the six set ups could generate.Another way to describe the Clean Space &#8216;lite&#8217; version is given below. Although it aims to be a minimal process it still engages all six set ups. It is a template for learning to facilitate the process which once mastered can be varied according to the particular circumstances of the client and the moment. Penny and I have documented many of the various &#8216;add-ons&#8217; and options available to facilitators in our article, Clean Space Revisited:[14]Startingi. Establish &#8216;B&#8217;, locate it and then locate &#8216;A&#8217; in relation to B.Knowing from a New Spaceii. Establish A (position/space 1), its relationship to B, and its name.Locating New Spacesiii. Locate another space (space 2).Repeat steps ii and iii for spaces 3, 4 , 5 and 6.Relating Spacesiv. (Starting with space 6) Relate the space currently occupied to some of the other spaces.Returning to Spacesv. Return to one of the other spaces. vi. Discover any new knowings from this space.Repeat steps iv-vi until spaces 2 - 6 have been revisited and their relationship with other spaces identified.[Optional] Working with the Networkvii. Use the client&#8217;s verbal or nonverbal metaphors for groups or configuration of spaces to work at a higher pattern-level of knowing.Finishingviii. Return to Position 1 and complete the process.Once you understand the function of the six set ups then you can utilise them as circumstances indicate. For example, if a person refers to a configuration or pattern after just two or three spaces have been established then you can build that into the creation of the rest of the network. Out of the OrdinaryMy last distinction between applying a formulaic technique and Clean Space relates to how we respond when a client does something &#8216;out of the ordinary&#8217;. In many techniques when a client steps outside the process it is seen as a problem and what happens is either ignored or made fit the technique. Whereas in Clean Space the unexpected is not a problem &#8211; it&#8217;s the process working. That is the purpose of all the setting up. By acknowledging and working with these surprising events the process transitions from a general format into something tailored to the individual. When a client picked up a post-it note she had written &#8216;fear&#8217; on, screwed it up, opened up a nearby garbage bin, threw it in and closed the lid, she was not screwing up the process. Quite the opposite. Whether the client was aware of it or not, she has just created a new space in that garbage bin. David Grove welcomed the idiosyncratic and he would have invited that space to be part of the emerging network &#8211; that was his artistry. NOTES

1 See http://www.wolframscience.com/ for free online access to the whole book. .

2 See our original article: Clean Space:Modeling Human Perception through Emergence.

3 For more on &#8216;encouraging conditions&#8217; see chapters 2 and 8 of Metaphors in Mind: transformation through Symbolic Modelling.

4 For more on &#8216;psychoactivity&#8217; see my article: When Where Matters: How psychoactive space is created and utilised.

5&#160; My italics. As far as I know the first Clean Space workshop took place in Auckland, New Zealand, February 2002, see: The first Clean Space process.

6 My general use of &#8216;set up&#8217; is not to be confused with Caitlin Walker&#8217;s &#8216;Clean Set Up&#8217; process: Save Time, Temper and Tedium: 3 Simple Steps for Better Meetings.

7 The six set ups align with the Criteria for Competence for a Clean Facilitator (version 1.6) cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/pages/Criteria-for-Competence.html

8 For details of one version of David Grove&#8217;s Clean Start see: Emergent Knowledge &#931;K&#8482; and Clean Coaching: new theories of David Grove. Philip Harland has detailed many more options in The Power of Six: A Six Part Guide to Self Knowledge.

9 As a bonus, the client is likely to be developing their capacity for &#8220;symbolic sight&#8221; &#8211; their ability to intuit symbolic significance from apparently mundane events. See Caroline Myss books, Anatomy of the Spirit and Sacred Contracts.

10 Wilber, Ken, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, Shambhala, Boston, MA, 1995.11 See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two.

12 The space could also be acknowledged and incorporated with a question (see the Relating Spaces routine):
And what do you know from here about there [gesture to] outside?orAnd what does this space know about outside, [gesture to] there?

13 I&#8217;ve just realised the similarity of this aspect of Clean Space with the &#8216;circular questioning&#8217; process of the Milan approach to Family System Therapy where family members are asked to comment on the relationship of other family members in their presence. See &#8216;Circular Questioning: An Introductory Guide&#8217; by Jac Brown, The Australian Journal of Family Therapy, Vol 18, No. 2, June 1997. Download PDF from www.anzjft.com/pages/articles/940.pdf.

14 See our extensive review and re-formulation of the process: Clean Space Revisited.]]></description>
					  <author>James Lawley</author>
					  <pubDate>Fri, 16 Mar 2012 00:00:00 EDT</pubDate>
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					  <title><![CDATA[The Point of Pointing]]></title>
					  <link>http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/blogs/75/The-Point-of-Pointing.html</link>
					  <description><![CDATA[Download a print-friendly version: 2012-02-24 The Point of Pointing.pdf After more than a decade of searching for a satisfying analogy that describes the perspective I take when I am symbolic modelling I&#8217;ve finally found one right under my nose. It is the simple and everyday act of pointing. It wasn&#8217;t until I read Michelangelo&#8217;s Finger: An exploration of everyday transcendence by Raymond Tallis (Atlantic Books, 2010) [1] that I realised just how much mental activity is involved in pointing. And the moment I understood what the recipient of pointing has to do with their attention I got excited.&#160; I thought: &#8216;That&#8217;s what I do. That&#8217;s how I model symbolically&#8217;.In this and other blogs I will explore the world of pointing and what it can reveal about the process of symbolic modelling. Today I&#8217;m going to use pointing to answer the final question from my previous blog (16 Feb 2012): What perspective (perceptual position) do I typically take during a symbolic modelling session? But before I do, let&#8217;s examine how pointing works and what both parties have to do with their attention during pointing.&#160;What is pointing?Raymond Tallis explains the four elements involved in pointing:There is the producer (the person doing the pointing); the pointer used by the producer (usually the outstretched hand and index finger); the pointee (that which is pointed out); and, finally, the consumer (the person for whose benefit the pointing is carried out). The producer uses a part of his or her own body to establish an axis that joins the producer with the item being pointed out &#8211; with the pointee. The consumer is invited to follow the virtual line with her visual attention until it reaches the pointee. (p. 7)The index finger is the canonical referential gesture that makes clear what is present in other, less versatile, modes of bodily pointing, using the thumb, the arm as a whole, the elbow, the shoulder, the head, the torso, the eyes and even the foot. (p. 11) What does the producer do?She has to be able consciously to use her body as a signal. This implies a special relationship to said body, one that is not found in animals. In addition, she has to have the capacity to be aware of another's (different) viewpoint. This is a necessary condition of her being aware that she is cognitively advantaged compared with the other person, at least with respect to knowledge of the object being pointed at. In addition, she has to understand that the other&#8217;s comparative disadvantage can be set right. (pp. 10-11)The pointer pointing something out to another is to amend a perceived deficit in their knowledge, or experience, or awareness. The usual, and fundamental, occasion for pointing is to correct a lack: to draw attention to something important or at least interesting the other has not noticed or cannot see. (p. 11)What does the consumer do?When you point something out to me, I do not consciously adopt the viewpoint of your body. I simply look &#8216;over there&#8217; to where you are pointing. But I can take this short cut only after I have already acquired the skill that enables me, as it were, to triangulate between you, the object and me. (p. 145)The consumer has to cast herself in her imagination out of her own body and mentally look along the line drawn in space by the arm and index finger extending from the producer&#8217;s body. The consumer, that is to say, has to put herself in the producer&#8217;s place.&#160; (p. 9)This is a rather remarkable thing to do. As a consumer, I momentarily adopt the pointer&#8217;s perspective, follow the direction of their pointing, identify what is being pointed at, and bring that awareness back to my own point of perception. I do not become the pointer. I do not &#8216;put myself in their body&#8217; as in an NLP second position since I do not give up my own perspective. Instead, I notice how the world looks from their vantage point, and use that to extend my sense of their world.By sharing their perspective my attention is drawn to the object of their attention. Aptly, the word &#8216;attention&#8217; comes from the Latin meaning &#8216;stretching towards&#8217;. Once I have stretched myself to what the pointer is pointing at, we can converse about it.The everyday act of pointing can be mapped on to the analogous act of modelling symbolically:






Pointing

Modelling Symbolically



Producer

Client



Pointer (body part that points)

Pointer (body part that points)



Pointee (item pointed to)

Symbol in client&#8217;s inner landscape



Consumer

Symbolic modeller





In a coaching/therapy context, clients are continually pointing to things in the inner world of their mind&#8217;s eye, ear and feeling. Through their gestures and their words they point out where symbols are in their metaphor landscape and what form they take. As a coach/therapist I am the &#8216;consumer&#8217; of the client&#8217;s pointing. The only difference with physical-world pointing is that I can never see, hear or feel what they are actually pointing at. Perhaps because of this, in traditional coaching/therapy the information provided by a client&#8217;s indicative gestures is almost completely ignored. I&#8217;m not talking about &#8216;body language&#8217; and the interpretation thereof. I&#8217;m referring to what David Grove called the client&#8217;s &#8216;choreography&#8217; &#8211; how the movement of a client&#8217;s body references the location and form of the metaphors in their symbolic world. Although I may not be able to see the symbols in a client&#8217;s private world, with careful modelling I can know where they are from the client&#8217;s perspective and attend to something like what they are attending to. What makes the perceptual position of the consumer of pointing so unusual is that I can share the producer/client&#8217;s perspective while retaining my own perspective. By unconsciously working out the trigonometry involved I intuitively understand the relative arrangement of the three points, and how the world looks different from each. As a symbolic modeller I bring that intuition into my conscious awareness and make it central to my modelling of the client and their landscape.Previously I had described my facilitator&#8217;s perspective as like being in the passenger seat of a car and being driven around an unfamiliar town by someone (the client) who is pointing out all the places they know, &#8220;Look, that&#8217;s where I went to school.&#8221; But in the car metaphor the consumer does not an independent location or volition. Whereas, the pointing analogy beautifully reflects the &#8216;split attention&#8217; required by a symbolic modeller: I can simultaneously know the client&#8217;s perspective and muse [2] on it from another perspective inside, outside or beside the client&#8217;s world. The triangulation involved in pointing enables me to engage in what David Grove called a &#8216;trialogue&#8217; between the client, their landscape and me.I am so excited about the pointing analogy because we instinctively know what to do when someone points and therefore it should be easy to do much the same thing during a client session. The challenge for the symbolic modeller is to maintain the &#8216;consumer perspective&#8217; continuously throughout the session. When you develop this skill it&#8217;s much easier to set aside your own landscape and instead commit to working within the logic of the client&#8217;s landscape. I shall continue extracting value from pointing and Tallis&#8217; book, but for the moment I&#8217;ll leave the last word to the Buddha who in the Shurangama Sutra says:It is like when someone points his finger at the moon to show it to someone else. Guided by the finger, that person should see the moon. If he looks at the finger instead and mistakes it for the moon, he loses not only the moon but the finger also. [3]NOTES1. Thanks to Judy Baker for pointing out the book to me.2. 'A Model of Musing: The message in a metaphor', James Lawley and Penny Tompkins,&#160; Anchor Point, Vol. 16, No. 5, May 2002.3. www.cttbusa.org/shurangama2/shurangama2_6.asp


POSTSCRIPT 26 Mar 2012: Marian Way has written an excellent description of a practice group activity based on the ideas in this blog. cleanlearning.co.uk/blog/discuss/pointing-the-metaphor-we-have-been-looking-for/ POSTSCRIPT 5 Apr 2012: I have written a followup blog, Pointing Attention.  ]]></description>
					  <author>James Lawley</author>
					  <pubDate>Fri, 24 Feb 2012 00:00:00 EST</pubDate>
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					  <title><![CDATA[What do you know about Symbolic Modelling?]]></title>
					  <link>http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/blogs/74/What-do-you-know-about-Symbolic-Modelling.html</link>
					  <description><![CDATA[Download a print-friendly version: 2012-02-16 What do you know about SyM.pdf

Penny Tompkins and I were modelled during an Advanced NLP Modelling Seminar run by&#160; Inspiritive. On the first day participants learned how to set up and maintain a &#8220;know nothing modelling state&#8221;. This method of &#8220;unconscious uptake&#8221; and sufficient exposure to exemplars (excellent models of the skill to be acquired) are the only requirement for this kind of implicit modelling.For the next two days the participants maintained that state while observing us using Symbolic Modelling as&#160; a change process with clients. They were not allowed to ask any questions and we could not comment on or explain what we were doing. Day four was more of the same except the participants had a go at reproducing our behaviours. They were not trying to consciously do the process but instead just let their unconscious minds &#8220;blurt&#8221; out the questions. By now they had seen 16 demonstrations each lasting between 30 and 60 minutes. The final day consisted of more demonstrations by us, more of them blurting, and a final session where participants could assess how much they had acquired explicitly&#160; by answering questions about our process. I devised a series of questions which I thought would provide feedback to the participants, and us, about what parts of our model they had acquired and to what degree. I only had time to ask a few of the questions but I thought the complete list would be useful for anyone learning how to do Symbolic Modelling.The aim of the questions below is not to get the &#8216;right&#8217; answer because you have been told it or read it, the aim is that the answers come from your observation of live demonstrations, video and audio recordings, and transcripts. Actually, aim goes further than that. We expect that your answers to the questions will give you feedback about the model of Symbolic Modelling you have constructed in your own mind-body system. The next step is to get feedback on how much of it you can do. [One way is through an assessment process.]The first set of questions have answers from our (Penny &#38; James) observable behaviour:1. What questions do we ask most frequently?2. Does this frequency change depending whether it is:&#160;&#160;&#160; - at the beginning&#160;&#160;&#160; - in the middle&#160;&#160;&#160; - towards the end&#160;&#160;&#160; of a session? (If so, how?)3. What are we doing with our gestures and lines of sight?4. What are the common forms of syntax of our questions?5. What kinds of information do we ask about most?6. How do we know when to ask a question?7. Under what conditions do we usually ask (i.e. what typically triggers us to ask):a. And what would you like to have happen?b. And what would [symbol] like to have happen?c. And then what happens/what happens next? &#160;&#160;&#160; - at the beginning&#160;&#160;&#160; - in the middle&#160;&#160;&#160; - towards the end&#160;&#160;&#160; of a session?d. And that's like what?&#160;&#160; &#160;e. And does X have a size or a shape?f. And what happens just before ...?8. What question most commonly follows a 'where' question?9. If we could only write down two things from the client&#8217;s information, what would they be? &#160;10. What do we not&#160;do?The following questions require &#8216;reverse engineering&#8217; &#8211; from external behaviour to internal process11. When we appear 'lost' and don't know what to do, what do we commonly ask?12. What are we aiming for during the: &#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; - Beginning&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; - Middle&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160; - End&#160; &#160; &#160; of a session?13. What are we attending to during the pauses? 14. What are the key frames we hold during the session? 15. How would you describe the perspective (perceptual position) we typically take during the session?While these questions relate to Symbolic Modelling, if you extract the format you&#8217;ll see how they could become fairly generic and apply to many situations where you want to test your knowledge of a model of facilitation.]]></description>
					  <author>James Lawley</author>
					  <pubDate>Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:00:00 EST</pubDate>
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					  <title><![CDATA[The chaotic nature of the reorganization process]]></title>
					  <link>http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/blogs/73/The-chaotic-nature-of-the-reorganization-process.html</link>
					  <description><![CDATA[Download a print-friendly version: 2012-02-15 Chaotic nature of the reorganization process.pdf


I was asked a fascinating question:I &#34;get&#34; the emergent, bottom-up nature of this work.&#160;And it is foreign to me, as one of the things I value about traditional NLP has been its directive nature at the level of process.&#160;I tend to have bought into that early Richard [Bandler] and John [Grinder] routine about if people are paying, then we would be well off to help them achieve some measurable outcome.&#160;I believe that clean work does achieve outcomes.&#160;And I like how it leaves that responsibility in the client's hands.&#160;So I guess I just have a lot to learn about how to get myself out of the way and let clients use this sort of facilitation.&#160; It appears that part of the &#34;emergence&#34; is coming to recognize patterns and meta-patterns and how they relate to one another, how they relate in space, as well as how they repeat over time and what keeps them in place repeating, or what allows them to reorganize.&#160;I am curious about the chaotic nature of this reorganization process.&#160;For example, what expectation do we have that a new organization is likely to be &#34;better&#34; than the old one.&#160; It seems to me that there are many ways to be organized, and that many of them might well create pain and only a few create improved circumstances.&#160; So by what principle do we expect that emergent reorganization will create a desired result rather than a less desired?&#160; I presume that there may be hypothesized some whole-ism principle.&#160; The body-mind does appear to try to heal many things with time.&#160;But I am very curious about how this works.&#160; And how reliably it can be counted upon.&#160;And in what circumstances?&#160; All?&#160; I replied:I too am curious about the process of change and the chaotic nature of reorganization. I don&#8217;t profess to understand it &#8211; but that doesn&#8217;t prevent me from attempting to work with it and from having a few hallucinations about how it works. &#160;First, I think you are wise to consider the possibility that a change may not be beneficial. It is a bit heretical in some quarters and I think every facilitator of change has a moral responsibility to consider it.I can think of four ways that emergence leads to improvements &#8211; given there can be no guarantees, especially, as David Grove used to say, &#34;sometimes it gets worse before it gets better&#34;: 1. As you say, there may well be an impulse to systemic wholeness.2. Also, the client's system reacts&#160;(particularly through their body)&#160;to everything that happens. By them and us calibrating the reactions (which are too fast to be under a client&#8217;s conscious control) we can both be steered in a beneficial direction.3. The client has conscious awareness of what is happening and can explicitly or implicitly guide the process.4. Lastly, the logic of the client&#8217;s metaphors will often provide a direction.Working with the process is a bit like the blind leading the blind. Luckily most clients seems to have something akin to blindsight &#8211;&#160;the ability of some people who are blind to respond to visual stimuli without having any conscious visual experience. Clients&#160;can know things without knowing how or why (sometimes called tacit knowledge). One of the most important knowings is the sense of what is in their (and others&#8217;) best interest. I&#8217;ve lost count of the number of times a client has said something like &#8220;I don&#8217;t know why but this just feels right&#8221; or &#8220;It&#8217;s not what I expected and it seems to make sense.&#8221; These kind of meta-comments are music to my ears. In 15 years of using Clean Language and Symbolic Modelling as a change process we have seen a lot of people and their landscapes change. While each change is unique we have developed a nose for noticing the potential for a valued change. When there are signs that something is afoot or a&#160;small shift might be about to happen, we invite the client to attend to that ... and to stay there ... and to find out ... what happens next.&#160;(We call this maximising serendipity.)When a change occurs it either happens&#160;spontaneously without conscious aforethought&#160;(it appears to happen of its own accord), or is&#160;proceeded by a conscious intention (e.g. &#34;I'm going to move that barrier out of the way&#34;). From the clean facilitator&#8217;s viewpoint this distinction is irrelevant. (Most clients aren&#8217;t interested in how the change occurs, but of they are that is something for the facilitator to attend to.) Either way we follow the white rabbit &#8211; where she goes, no one knows. But one of three things is likely to happen:- The change starts a contagion which creates a new or reorganized metaphor landscape.- It goes nowhere and has no discernible effect on the status quo. That doesn&#8217;t mean nothing has happened. Sometimes a person will need to &#8216;go round the loop&#8217; a number of times before something new happens. And, how the system maintains the status quo is itself valuable information. We never presuppose that change is better than staying the same. - It invokes doubts, concerns, or fears or some other problem reaction. This is not a sign of failure &#8212; quite the opposite. It indicates the client&#8217;s system is revealing more of its complexity and acknowledging its &#8220;current reality&#8221; (Robert Fritz). This increases the chance that when the client&#8217;s system does reorganise, it does so in a way that takes into account more of the dynamics of the system. As Ken Wilber would put it, it will be more significant, i.e. more than relief of a symptom, more than a remedy. Rather it will be a generative change&#8212;a robust, resilient change that keeps on giving.]]></description>
					  <author>James Lawley</author>
					  <pubDate>Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:00:00 EST</pubDate>
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					  <title><![CDATA[Anchoring symbols in space]]></title>
					  <link>http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/blogs/72/Anchoring-symbols-in-space.html</link>
					  <description><![CDATA[Download a print-friendly version: 2012-02-14 Anchoring symbols in space.pdf

Here's another of my posts from the no-longer available archives (date unknown, but sometime between 2003 and 2005):A participant observed that the second part of the full syntax of Clean Language &#34;anchors them to a specific point in their space/time continuum.&#34; I thought that was an interesting statement and below I investigate the 'anchor' metaphor in relation to a client's metaphor landscape.The 'standard', 'full' three-part syntax is (there are many variations):1. And [client's words].2. And as/when [client's words that reference a part of their experience],3. [Clean question about that experience]?Prototypically, an anchor fixes a ship to a particular area relative to a point on the seabed. So there are at least three things to consider: What is being anchored (the ship)?Where is it being anchored to (the point on the seabed)?And how is that relationship being maintained (the chain between anchor and ship)? I think Bob is saying that what gets anchored is the client's attention. It gets anchored to the location of the symbol referred to, within their metaphor landscape.&#160; And I guess that is because the landscape is of their own creation and relates to their purpose for therapy or coaching, and it is their interest that keeps their attention from wandering off. Another way to think of this is via the Perceiver-Perceived-Relationship model. In this analogy, the ship is the symbol, the anchor is the point of perception of the perceiver, and the chain is the relationship between &#8211; the client's attention or interest.Now let us use the metaphor to ask: What anchors a symbol to its location in a metaphor landscape?I suggest that the symbols and their spatial relations are usually held constant in relation to: (i) The location of client's body; and/or (ii) the surrounding environment.(i) enables the client's attention, but not their body, to move. This means it is possible for a client to examine their Landscape from different 'points of perception'. Either one perceiver can move around the Landscape, or the client can take the perspective of any number of perceivers located at different points in the Landscape. And there are several clean questions which can be used to invite them to do one or the other, e.g.:And what would&#160; [name of perceiver] like to have happen?And where could [name of perceiver] be [perceiving word] that from?In (ii) the Landscape is not anchored to the body but to the physical environment. David talked of &#34;nailing the client's history to the floor&#34;. This enables the client to physically move around their virtual Landscape, gaining different perspectives as they go.(A combination of these two is possible, and I think we have enough to contend with as it is!)But, I hear you wonder, what is the equivalent of the ship, anchor and chain in these two cases? My first thought is that in (i) the client is so familiar with certain symbols being in certain places &#8211; in relation to their body and in relation to each other &#8211; that it would look, feel and sound wrong if they were in a different place. Thus the whole landscape gets anchored to the client's body position. And, having committed to the metaphor of perceptual space sufficiently, it logically follows that if the landscape doesn't move, then 'they' in the form of their attention, can. For example, many people have a habit of gesturing and looking to their left or right when they access the past or future. Or maybe they gesture in front and behind. The point is that they have a strong sense of where these concepts are in relation to their body. Once this is established it is a small step for them to follow Tad James' Timeline Therapy command to &#34;Float up above your timeline and float back over your past.&#34;In situation (ii), once their landscape is established as having a certain spatial relationship with the surrounding physical environment, it is easy to see how the client can effectively 'leave the landscape where it is' and physically move to another location.Or they can use David Grove's Clean Space process to build up a network of physical spaces first and then notice how their body reacts and the thoughts that arise in those different places. Clean Space is a more generic form of Robert Dilts' spatial sorting techniques such as laying out a timeline on the floor, walking along it, and stepping off the line to a meta position.&#160; Or the Gestalt therapy technique of moving to another chair and playing the other person in the relationship.In the first case, the body's natural sense of where things should be maintains the configuration of symbols relative to it; and in the second case, once a symbol has a physical location it has a certain independence from its creator.&#160; 
In both cases I think the anchoring helps to create a psychoactive effect &#8211; the client and their body spontaneously reacts to what's happening in their metaphor landscape as if it were real. Another way to look at what is happening is to use Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner's idea of 'conceptual blending' (see The Way We Think). This model suggests that our mind is able to blend the perception of physical space and imaginative space into one seamless experience enabling us to move between the two worlds and utilise characteristics of each.&#160;&#160; &#160;&#160;&#160; &#160;Further reading (articles by Penny Tompkins and myself):When and How to Use 'when' and 'as'The PPRC Model: Paying attention to what they're paying attention-to When Where Matters: How psychoactive space is created and utilisedClean Space: Modeling human perception through emergenceAnd Spatial Sorting by Robert Dilts and Judith DeLozier in their Encyclopedia of NLP. ]]></description>
					  <author>James Lawley</author>
					  <pubDate>Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:00:00 EST</pubDate>
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					  <title><![CDATA[What is self-modelling?]]></title>
					  <link>http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/blogs/71/What-is-self-modelling.html</link>
					  <description><![CDATA[
Download a print-friendly version: 2012-02-13 What is self-modelling.pdf

Below is a post of mine from December 2003 that was lost when the original cleanforum.com was hacked. I thought it was worth posting it again. What is self-modelling? For me, the client self-modelling is a subset of Symbolic Modelling. While self-modelling is fundamental to Symbolic Modelling there are plenty of other ways to self-model.&#160; It is also quite possible for Symbolic Modelling to support clients to make the changes they want without the awareness that they are self-modelling. Generally though, the more a client is aware they are self-modelling the better.Ernest Rossi puts it in wonderfully simple terms when he says Symbolic Modelling &#34;helps people learn how to facilitate their own creativity in solving their own problems in their own way.&#34; Words in this statement which refer to self-modelling are: &#34;learn how to facilitate their own creativity in solving their own problems in their own way.&#34; The facilitator's job is to &#34;help people&#34; do that.In my words, self-modelling is a process whereby a person constructs a model (in the case of Symbolic Modelling, a metaphor landscape) of the way their system operates and in so doing provides feedback to the system from which it can learn. In this way self-modelling is beautifully recursive: the output from the process forms the input from which the system generates more output etc. As this happens the client has signals/responses about the model they are constructing, its: accuracy / relevance / usefulness / significance / etc. These signals also provide feedback and help the person self-correct (i.e. self-adjust) so that their model improves / is honed / develops / progresses / (insert the client's metaphor here).It's very much like learning to ride a bike &#8211; wobbling is a necessary part of the process of learning how changes in the body result in a more or less advantageous outcome.So self-modelling is a way of self-learning: The self is learning about the self from the self and through that very process the self develops, which then requires further self-modelling/learning and so on.I prefer 'learning' to 'problem-solving' because it covers a wider range of contexts, but I think the process is much the same whatever we call it.The following is an example of self-modelling and the effect it had. A friend discovered (in about 15 minutes of being facilitated to symbolically self-model for the first time) that she had a general direction to her life &#8211; straight ahead on a path. Although she was happily moving along her path, she noticed there were always three boxes off to the right which followed her wherever she went.&#160; When she explored the boxes she discovered that they contained her desires for singing, writing stories and illustrating.&#160; She realised that while she continued on her current path these desires were not being satisfied and that they were not going to go away. Through the process of exploring this state of affairs the boxes moved onto the path with her. That was two years ago.&#160; Since then, she has dabbled with story writing and illustrating, but the significant change came when she took up singing lessons, joined a gospel choir, and gave her first public performance.&#160; Now one day a week she is a back-up singer. &#160;This story illustrates how learning from self-modelling and acting on that learning can have a significant effect on a person's life.&#160; Through the process she gained a clear understanding of a pattern in her life (that she had been ignoring those desires) and how she would like that pattern to change.&#160; As often happens this was enough to set in motion a series of changes which means she now says &#34;singing is the most stable thing I have ever done in my life&#34;.Many types of psychotherapy and learning involve some form of self-modelling. What makes Symbolic Modelling different is the use of Clean Language and the explicit aim to facilitate self-modelling.In its simplest terms, self-modelling is what the client does, facilitating the client to self-model is what the facilitator does, and both of these together form the Symbolic Modelling process. Historical note: I first heard the term 'self-modelling' at the London NLP Practice Group in the early 1990s (Penny and I have written an article about the group.) Michael Breen was presenting and when he said &#34;All modelling is self-modelling&#34; it blew my mind. That statement rolled around my brain for several years before I 'got it'. When Penny and I started to model David Grove it was a big surprise to us that he was actively facilitating his client to self-model. At least that is our description. David never liked that metaphor &#8211; he preferred his own ever-changing way of describing what he was doing.]]></description>
					  <author>James Lawley</author>
					  <pubDate>Sun, 12 Feb 2012 00:00:00 EST</pubDate>
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					  <title><![CDATA[Imagine Your Life in Full Color]]></title>
					  <link>http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/blogs/70/Imagine-Your-Life-in-Full-Color.html</link>
					  <description><![CDATA[Download a print-friendly version: 2012-02-11 Imagine Your Life in Full Color.pdf

Debbie Happy Cohen, has written and beautifully illustrated a new Kindle ebook, IMAGINE Your Life in Full Color: 12 Ways to use Art in the Mind to Supercharge Your Goals and Empower Your Dreams&#8230; Not Someday, but NOW! The book is an inspiring story of how Debbie had an idea, ran with it, and created something that perfectly expresses who she is. On top of that, this book has the potential to galvanize those of us who want to learn from what successful people imagine in the private, inner sanctum of their mind and body.While reading Penny Tompkins and my book, Metaphors in Mind, Debbie was particularly struck by the story of how I used a highly published author&#8217;s metaphor to motivate myself to complete our book (see pages 236-7). For this author, publishing was like &#8220;leaving footprints in the snow&#8221;. I 'borrowed' this metaphor and made it 'real' by placing sheets of white paper between my bed and my computer. The homemade 'snow', including the crunch it made when I stepped on the sheets, got me in the habit of writing first-thing in the morning. I did this every day for two weeks until I no longer needed the paper to create the images, sounds and feelings. 'Taking on' this metaphor helped motivate me to complete our book. Debbie takes up the story:Well, I really liked the idea of modeling a successful author&#8217;s metaphor, but I didn&#8217;t like the idea of leaving footprints in the snow (way too cold for my tootsies!). I began thinking and wondering about a metaphor for successful publishing, one that would resonate better with me. A few days later, I was having lunch with Rev. Edwene Gaines, whose book The Four Spiritual Laws of Prosperity has been, for years, a publishing success. I asked her, &#8220;When you are successful in publishing, IT&#8217;S LIKE WHAT?&#8221; For Rev. Edwene Gaines successful publishing was like &#34;walking through a jungle&#34;. Debbie was so inspired that she decided to produce a book &#34;success metaphors&#34;.&#160; She found out that most of the people she interviewed did not know their success metaphor consciously, but when they did they were delighted to discover it. Debbie's book summerises her interviews with twelve people who are highly successful in their own field &#8211; everything from film making to dog-whispering to parenting. She facilitated each person to identify and elaborate their metaphor for success (using some Clean Language, but not exclusively). Her intention?That by using my example as a model, you&#8217;ll be able to digest each person&#8217;s metaphor, their mind-art, to make the fulfillment of your own goals and dreams more tangible and compelling. Ultimately, my hope is that you&#8217;ll be inspired to both envision and take new steps toward fulfilling your heart&#8217;s deepest desires and your soul&#8217;s highest aspirations.How do you take on another person's metaphor? Debbie was kind enough to include a few of my hints in her book:When attempting to acquire another person's metaphor first &#34;try it on&#34; like a beautiful piece of clothing to see if it fits, feels right and resonates. Imagine living life through this metaphor. Do you like what it gives you?&#160;Notice there is a difference between unfamiliar and uncomfortable. The metaphor will likely feel strange because it is new &#8211; that's its purpose! But that is different to being uncomfortable.*Over the next few days and weeks be aware of the effect the metaphor is having on your behavior and your attitude to life. It may take a while before it seems natural and becomes a part of you. If the metaphor mostly works for you but there is a piece that doesn't feel quite right, then amend or change that piece until it's just right for you.However, if the metaphor doesn't work, set it as side and go find another.Congratulations to Debbie for turning an inspired idea into a beautiful reality.(* I was introduced to the subtlety of this distinction at a Richard Bandler workshop.)]]></description>
					  <author>James Lawley</author>
					  <pubDate>Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:00:00 EST</pubDate>
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					  <title><![CDATA[Leading the witness]]></title>
					  <link>http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/articles/blogs/69/Leading-the-witness.html</link>
					  <description><![CDATA[Download a print-friendly version: 2012-01-14 Leading the Witness.pdf In a series of classic studies, Elizabeth Loftus (rated the most eminent female psychologist of the 20th Century by the American Psychological Association) and her colleagues demonstrated just how vulnerable witnesses are to leading questions. The results were summarized in Use Your Head: The inside track on the way we think by Daniel Freeman and Jason Freeman (John Murray, London, 2010, pp. 67-68, my italics):For example a video tape of a car crash was shown to several groups of people. When members of one group were asked, 'How fast were the cars going when they collided with each other?', their average response was 31.8 miles per hour. A different group were asked, 'How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?'. These participants reckoned the cars were travelling a full 9 miles an hour faster at 40.8 miles per hour. Each group's estimate of the cars' speed was heavily influenced by the particular verb used in the question.Similarly, when the questioners mentioned a stop sign, many of the participants remembered seeing it - even though no such sign had appeared in the video. Asking 'Did you see the broken headlight?' was much more likely to elicit an affirmative from the participants than the more tentative 'Did you see a broken headlight?'. And groups who'd heard the incident described as a 'smash' were far more inclined to agree that they'd seen broken glass than those for whom the incident had been described in less loaded terminology (again, there was no broken glass). Bear in mind that Loftus's experiments were carried out in a psychological laboratory. If people are so suggestible in a lab, one can only imagine how they are likely to perform in the intense atmosphere of a courtroom [or a police interview]. Moreover, many eye witnesses manage just a fleeting glimpse of an incident - it's not something they were expecting, after all. And where a weapon was used in a crime, it's often this feature of the incident that - for understandable reasons - drew most of their attention. (This tendency is known as 'weapon focus'.) This is not to suggest that eyewitness accounts are inherently unreliable - indeed, some studies show that people are often very good at remembering aspects of an incident that they see very clearly and face on. What they tend to be less proficient at is recalling peripheral details (a face seen in profile, for example, or an accomplice standing off to one side). And sometimes, of course, it's these peripheral elements that are the most important to the outcome of a case.These experiments further confirm that even a single word can make a big difference to how people recall events, reason and make decisions (see my blog Metaphors we think with for more scientific evidence). While these experiments were based on observing 'external' events, I suspect that the principles equally apply, if not more so, to 'internal' events. This is why we recommend facilitators stay ultra clean when a client is attending to experiences:- inside their private metaphorical world- inside their body- core to them (e.g related identity and who they are)- related to much younger, child-like metaphors- triggered by abuse or trauma- of a spiritual or religious nature- that are vague or ill-formed senses.There is also much to be learned from the different ways we respond to the center and the periphery of our attention. At times it seems like there is a parallel between 'weapon focus' and 'problem focus'. People can become hypnotised by their problems, or to use a different metaphor, magnetically pulled to focus on them.On the other hand, a person may only &#34;manage just a fleeting glimpse&#34; of a symbol on the periphery of their landscape or a change if is small and unexpected. We often say in our trainings that it's more important where a question directs a person's attention than which question is asked. We add that how long the person pays attention to any one aspect of their landscape is also crucial. Hence participants who are facilitating someone to develop a metaphor landscape will often hear us whisper in their ear &#34;stay there, stay there&#34;. This is our way of giving coaching in the moment and guiding the facilitator to increase what David Grove called &#34;the dwell time&#34;. That is, to attend to one aspect for longer, often much longer, than the person usually does.One of the great values of Symbolic Modelling is that we can facilitate a
 person to pay attention to those fleeting glimpses and peripheral 
details in a clean and naturalistic way. The primary clean question for 
doing this is:And when [symbol/event 1], what happens to [symbol/event 2]?David
 Grove occasionally used this question in his early 'child within' phase (up to 
the early 1990s) but not very often. We refer to this 'specialised' question 
several times in Metaphors in Mind (see
 the index on page 311). However, in the last few years Penny Tompkins and I have been trying 
to give this question more&#160; exposure. In our current trainings we have upgraded it from 'specialised' to join the exulted ranks of
 the 'basic' clean questions. 'And when ..., what happens to ...?' is such a versatile question. It can be used for example to invite a person to:Be
 simultaneously aware of aspects of their inner world that are 
separated in space &#8211; and time &#8211; and thereby widening the field of 
perception to include more of the person's experience (e.g. in Stage 3 of Symbolic Modelling Lite, Developing a Desired Outcome Landscape).Consider
 a relationship between two aspects of a landscape (an attribute, 
symbol, relationship, metaphor, pattern, etc.). If both aspects are within
 the current perceptual event this question tends to bring forth causal
 or contingent relationships. Otherwise it invites the awareness of 
relationships across space and over time (e.g. in Stage 4
 of Symbolic Modelling Lite, Exploring the Effects of a Desired Outcome Landscape).Discover what happens in one part of a landscape when there has been a change in another part (e.g. in Stage 5 of Symbolic Modelling Lite, Maturing Changes).I've
 also used 'And when ..., what happens to ...?' to good effect when working with couples and in groups to 
invite those present to consider their response when one person does or 
says something.
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					  <author>James Lawley</author>
					  <pubDate>Sat, 14 Jan 2012 00:00:00 EST</pubDate>
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