About NLP

Relevant LinksWHAT IS NLP?
If you need some more in-depth information, click on the webpage link listed below.
www.cleanlanguage.co.ukCLEAN LANGUAGE
The Centre for Symbolic Modelling, Clean Language and the Metaphor Therapy of David Grove.
www.cleanlanguage.co.ukCLEAN COACHING
For coaching in the south of england, click on the website address below...
www.cleancoaching.comEMERGENT KNOWLEDGE
The New Website that focuses on Emergent Knowledge. Keeping you upto date on the cutting edge developments.
www.emergentknowledge.comTRAINING ATTENTION
Applying Systems Thinking to Learning and Professional Development.
www.trainingattention.co.uk

In the beginning was the Meta Model. Richard Bandler and John Grinder's brilliant linguistic methodology for exploring and influencing a client's model of the world - in the direction of sensory experience.Then came the Milton Model. The linguistic art of utilising non-specific and conceptual experience for therapeutic ends.

The marriage of these two models produced an offspring: Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). The Meta and Milton Models seemed to cover the entire spectrum of experience: from small chunk to big chunk, from concrete to abstract. Almost all of what is currently known as NLP works with these two types of experience.

But what if there was another type of experience that was never coded by Bandler and Grinder?

Clean Language

In the early 1980's David Grove studied transcripts of celebrated therapists like Virginia Satir and Carl Rogers and noticed that they continually shifted their client's frames of reference. He realised that they were introducing their own model of the world by subtly rewording what the client was saying.

David wondered what it would be like to fully preserve and honour a client's experience with minimal interference by the therapist. He achieved this by identifying a number of very simple questions with a particular syntax and a unique delivery method. These questions contained a minimum of presupposition and were therefore called 'Clean Language.'

What he discovered was the more he used Clean Language, the more clients naturally used metaphor to describe their symptoms. When Clean Language questions were then directed to the metaphors and symbols, unexpected information became available to the client, often with profound results.

He found that the less he attempted to change the client's model of the world, the more they experienced their own core patterns, and organic, lasting changes naturally emerged from 'the system'.

Emergent Knowledge

A problem domain is defined when a client expresses a notion that they have a specific problem and they describe it with themselves as part of it. They are in a problem space, defined by a boundary. For this purpose it is called an egg-type problem.

In the course of a session, you may find that as fast as solutions are occurring, more problems are arising. The client is working within a boundary where problems and solutions are of the same type. These are egg-type solutions to egg type problems. The client needs to get out of that boundary to the solution space on the other side – the chicken solution to an egg problem.

If the facilitator works within the boundary of the problem domain, they will be able to access only egg-type solutions. Egg solutions will only solve egg problems: what is needed is a solution that encompasses all the eggs. This has to come from outside the boundary - a chicken solution or, in other words, an emergent knowledge solution.

Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is based on the idea of the observer. As a plane approaches the speed of light, time slows down and, depending on the observer, the perspective changes. Hence the placement of the questions in time and space are critical to the perspective of the client as observer.

To find the chicken solution, the difficulty is getting outside of the boundary the eggs are in. What is required is for the client to be pulled back in time and space or physically removed from the problem space. This is how Emergent Knowledge solutions work and the reason why they are so effective.