Clean Processes Using Space And Movement
I’ve been writing recently about the relationship between two subjects I’m passionate about – David Grove’s Clean processes, and embodied cognition. There seem to me to be two key connections:
Clean Language provides an effective methodology for noticing and exploring people’s unique and individual metaphors of movement and space, which often results in dramatic and transformative change (in coaching, changework and therapy)
In the last ten years of his life, David devised a variety of changework processes which explicitly use space and movement: Clean Space, Emergent Knowledge and the Power of Six.
So, what are these later processes? There’s a neat description of Clean Space here.
As Penny Tompkins and James Lawley point out, “The basic Clean Space process is remarkably straightforward. There is a starting process, three simple routines which are repeated over and over, and a finishing process. Facilitating Clean Space requires only six questions and four directing statements.”
It also requires some courage on the part of the facilitator… because your client is going to get up out of their chair and move about. OMG!
I’ve taught this process to dozens of coaches over the years, and nearly all agree it’s one of the move effective they’ve ever experienced for themselves. However, very few of them use it in practice. And the main reason they give is that it’s so weird, so off-the-wall, that they’re worried about how their clients will react.
If you’re in the change business, I’d strongly suggest you give it a try. Maybe not in your first meeting with most important corporate client – but with someone you know well, who’s likely to be up for it. Start small. Practice. Once you’ve started, see the process through to the end.
Make stuff happen, and watch your confidence grow.
And having said all that… as I started thinking about this a couple of weeks ago I realised that I don’t often use Clean Space with clients, either. My excuse? “I do almost all my coaching on the phone and skype.”
But I know full well that Clean Space works on the phone, too. The main problem I’ve experienced is making sure that the client doesn’t “cheat” but actually follows the directions and physically moves from space to space: imagining movement is very much not the same as actually moving.
Then, I predict, you’ll experience a different kind of problem: the near-miraculous synchonicities that tend to emerge. As Penny and James say: “The client is likely to discover deep significance in the coincidence of events and the location of objects… For example, a client who wanted to “discover his next steps” was being taken though the Clean Space process in a public park. He was standing in one of his spaces when he turned to see a workman in a pond pulling a “No Waiting” sign out of the water. As client and facilitator watched in amazement, wondering whether they should believe their eyes, the workman fished around under the water and brought a second “No Waiting” sign to the surface. The client exclaimed, ‘I might be able to ignore one sign, but not two!'”
I’d love to hear what happens when you try Clean Space: please comment below. Also, I’m happy to record a demo video if anyone would like to volunteer to be the client! I wonder if we could do it via skype video?