Contraindications for Symbolic Modelling
Are certain client populations not suited to Symbolic Modelling?
Clients who dismiss their metaphors as fantasy
How to work with someone who can develop rich metaphors for their desired outcomes but later dismisses them as only fantasy.
Fear of who I would be
‘A victim’ is a perspective on a situation which can develop into a perspective on life. The question is, do we also have the choice to be other-than-a-victim?
A New Year’s gift
A ‘thought experiment’ to appreciate more or to be more grateful for someone or something in your life.
The dieter’s paradox
A new study which concludes that weight-conscious individuals are likely to believe in “negative calories”. But do they really?
Thinking is simulation
Cognitive scientists believe the brain simulates experience from the past in order to make sense of the world today, how does that influences who we think are?
Fleeting sensations and embodied cognition
If bodily states infiltrate cognition so often, why are we so seldom aware of this phenomenon?
Real or symbolic, does our brain care?
My thoughts on ‘This Is Your Brain on Metaphors’ by Robert Sapolsky, Professor of Biology, Neurology and Neurosurgery.
Slow hunches and the adjacent possible
If ‘eureka moments’ are very, very rare how do we progress? Rather than leaps it seems we take the next “adjacent possible” step.
‘If only God would give us a sign’
The vital role of clients’ meta-comments (verbal or nonverbal expressions refering to what has just been experienced) in Symbolic Modelling. Published in ‘Acuity’.
Modelling the written word
How to model text with a clean and metaphor perspective.
Huh? – Shifting frames
We examine what happens when someone is asked a question within one frame and their answer appears to come from a different frame.
Clean Space revisited
With the benefit of hindsight and seven years of experience and experimenting, we thought it was time to revisit our first 2003 model.
Embodied Schema
Modelling embodied scema will give you something like ‘second sight’ into the organisation of a person’s psychescape (their interior, subjective world), leading to the more precise use of Clean Language.
Attending to Salience
What we pay attention to in a client session that: (1) guides our line of questioning, and (2) gives the session its sense of directional flow.
Vectoring and systemic outcome orientation
How excellent facilitators and therapists know how to navigate elegantly through a client’s information.
Maximising Serendipity: A systemic approach to change
A six-stage model of how to benefit by utilising unexpexted, unpredictable and random events.
Black Swan Logic
Exploring how ideas from The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb relate to working cleanly.
The neurobiology of space
Quotes from, and comments on, In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind by Eric R. Kandel
Outcome Orientation
How desired outcomes can act as “dynamic reference points” for each and every thing the therapist does and says.
Iteration, Iteration, Iteration
Explains why this special kind of nonlinear process is so important in therapy and coaching – and life.
Modelling Conflict
How to think about and model the systemic nature of this kind of relationship
Coaching with Metaphor
Together metaphor and Clean Language are ideal for working with out-of-the-ordinary problems and high-level goals. Published in Cutting Edge Coaching Techniques Handbook
How to do a modelling project
A summary of our 25 years experience conducting full-scale modelling projects.
Modelling: Top-down and Bottom-up
Examines two types of modelling and lists some principles for applying bottom-up modelling
Thinking Networks II
Part 1 of how to think about the emergence of networks,, what they look like, and how they evolve.
Paying attention to what they’re paying attention
How we came up with our ‘Perceiver, Perceived, Relationship between, in a Context’ model – and its multiple uses.
Coaching for P.R.O.’s
How to recognise and respond with Clean Language to a client’s Problem, Remedy or a desired Outcome. Published in ‘Coach the Coach’.
The Ethics of Change Work
John Grinder discusses what’s ethical in NLP and what’s not. We add our comments from a ‘clean’ perspective.
When ‘Where’ Matters
Once a space becomes psychoactive a person is ‘living in their metaphor’. A joined-up model of how David Grove’s work invokes the psychoactivity of spatial relations in therapeutic and in other settings.
Tangled spaghetti in my head
Making use of metaphor in counselling and psychotherapy. Published in ‘Therapy Today’.
Feedback Loops
10 principles to support you to think systemically rather then linearly – an advanced mindset for working cleanly with human self-organising systems.
When and How to Use ‘when’ and ‘as’
Investigating how ‘when’ or ‘as’ (and other words) can be used to enhance the effectiveness of questions by framing the context
Thinking Networks I
Part 1 of how to think about networks: their emergence, what they look like, and how they evolve.
Learning to act from what you know to be true
Guidance on what you can do once you acknowledge you have been self-deceiving
BIG FISH in a small pond
Scaling – How people use metaphor to assess the relative size or extent of an experience – how to model it, and what happens when you change the scale of things to come.
Self-Deception, Self-Delusion, Self-Denial
How we cling to misleading beliefs when deep down we know them to be untrue
Self-Organising Complex-Adaptive Systems
A preparatory paper for the facilitation over four days by the ‘Clean Team’ of a Large Group Metaphor Process for 80 members of The Findhorn Community
Clean Space
The first description of David Grove’s shift to a physical self-organising process. Published in ‘Anchor Point’.
Utilising autogenic metaphor
How to make use of your symbolic resources
A model of musing
How would you work with a client who says “”I want to stop going into blank”? Published in Anchor Point, 16(5).
Mind, Metaphor and Health
How to recognise and work within a metaphor to activate an individual’s personal healing process. Published in Positive Health.
The Magic of Metaphor
Learning to use your personal metaphors and symbols in order to read and understand your own symbology. Published in the ‘Carolyn Myss Newsletter’.
What is Emergence?
How to think in terms of ’emergence’, a fundamental feature of the dynamics of self-organising systems
Metaphors of Organisation – Part 2
Describes a new approach using client-generated metaphors to facilitate individual and organisational change. Published in ‘Effective Consulting’.
Metaphors of Organisation – Part 1
Describes Gareth Morgan’s use of metaphor to analyse and facilitate organisational change. Published in ‘Effective Consulting’.
Conversing with Metaphor
Teachers with exquisite rapport skills listen very carefully to their student’s metaphors, dialoging within the logic or frame of the metaphor. First published in New Learning, Issue 9, Spring 2001.
Metaphors in Mind: A case study
Using Clean Language to facilitate change through clients’ metaphors. Published in Anchor Point
Learning Metaphors
A practical approach to understanding students by noting and using their metaphors. First published in the SEAL Journal.
Modelling the structure of binds and double binds
Describes four ‘prototypical binds’, ‘double binds’ and a process for facilitating clients to transform their binds. Published in Rapport 47.
Clean Language Without Words
How to use your voice and body to utilise clients use of space, their body and non-verbal sounds. Published in ‘Rapport’
Introducing Modelling to Organisations
What is this thing called NLP modelling? A checklist of preparatory considerations and an overview of the five stages of a modelling project. Published in Rapport 40
Symbolic Modelling and the Emergence of Background Knowledge
How to model background structures using embodied metaphor schema. First published in ‘Rapport’.
Symbolic Modelling: An overview
The first article describing a new way to model subjective experience.
Published in ‘Rapport’.
The application of metaprograms in the classroom
Presented at the IATEFL Teacher Development Special Interest Group Conference, 1995. Published in Rapport, 37.
Less is More … The Art of Clean Language
Our first article about David Grove’s extraordinary innovation. Published in ‘Rapport’.
Vision is not black and white
How a case from Oliver Sacks’ An Anthropologist on Mars can enrich the NLP model, and an NLP perspective can make sense of the functioning of the brain. Published in Rapport, 34.
And … what kind of a man is David Grove?
Our first interview with David Grove, the creator of Clean Language. Published in Rapport.