Words That Touch: How to Ask Questions Your Body Can Answer - 12 Essential 'Clean Questions' for MindBody Therapists by Nick Pole

Author:Nick Pole [Pole, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857012920
Amazon: B01MZYUGWV
Publisher: Singing Dragon
Published: 2017-02-20T22:00:00+00:00

PART 3

THE PRACTICE

3.1 INTRODUCTION

I’m in Amsterdam with my friend and colleague, Peter den Dekker, qi gong teacher and author of The Dynamics of Standing Still (2010), an innovative introduction to ‘Zhan Zhuang’, the ‘Standing like a Tree’ style of qi gong. We’re watching a group of his students working together in groups of three as I introduce them to Clean Language. Some are bodywork therapists, some are not, and I’m wondering how Clean Language might help them. A woman calls me over; she seems to have got stuck. Her face is set in a heavy frown, and she says that she doesn’t think the Clean questions will work for her the way they worked for me when I demonstrated the process earlier. Her problem seems to be with the Outcome question, so I ask her what she would like to have happen. She says:

–To have a back massage.

And what would that be like, to have a back massage?

She thinks for a moment.

–No, actually I want an arm resting across the top of my shoulders.

And what would that be like, an arm resting across the top of your shoulders?

–Supportive (her frown has begun to soften slightly).

And is there anything else about supportive?

–It’s warm and comfortable.

And when an arm across the top of your shoulders is supportive and warm and comfortable, then what happens?

–Then I relax.

And is there anything else about relax?

–(She puts a hand on the centre of her chest) Then I feel more in touch with myself here.

Now her frown has gone, replaced by a look of gentle concentration. I slip out of Clean Language, to ask if she’s aware that there is much more colour in her face now. She breaks into a smile – so do I – saying that, no, she hadn’t realised that, but now she can feel it. And as she feels it, she says, she notices the warm feeling spreading through her shoulders, and a sense that they are already more relaxed.

This woman is an experienced bodywork therapist, but says she’s ‘amazed’ at how quickly her body has responded to just a few simple questions – amazed that she didn’t actually need a back massage or an arm resting on her shoulders to feel so different and so in touch with herself. Imagine if she had come to you for a bodywork session, how much more responsive to your techniques she might be after those few questions, compared to that frowning place she started from.

This woman’s experience encapsulates what this book is all about: how readily the bodymind responds when you communicate with it in language it can understand. Clean questions make sense to the bodymind and are by nature an invitation for the two sides of the brain to work together. They invite the left hemisphere to recognise that it needs the right hemisphere’s embodied intelligence, and at the same time they help the right hemisphere appreciate that language has a healing power of its own.

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