“I always said there were six Clean Language questions, twenty years ago I said there were six.”
And, he said, a network with six nodes would become an active system, from which totally new information can emerge. That meant that in Clean Space, six spaces must be visited and their information fully drawn out. And that in turn meant six points of view should be included in this article. It was obvious!
He talked on, and on, giving more and more details of the process, the possibilities, and the patterns he was finding.
He was most excited by his “whirligig”. Instead of being able to walk about, subjects were strapped into a device in which they could be turned to different positions – upside down, sideways, wherever – as the exploration continued. The next version would have the person supported in a sort of duvet… or be suspended on a cherry-picker so it could be moved up and down, or from side to side…and he could measure their physical changes as they went…
And suddenly, we were heading back to the conference. I was trailing in David’s wake, trying to ask a few more questions… check details… and getting very little joy…
The facts, as I understand them, are these. David comes from New Zealand, and has European and Maori ancestry. He was working in business when he came across NLP in 1978. Then on one occasion he went along to an NLP business workshop to find it cancelled. The organisers persuaded him to join another group, and so David became interested in phobias and trauma.
He went on to work with NLP’s founders, to qualify as a Master Practitioner and to develop skills in Ericksonian hypnosis before walking away from NLP in 1981, during some of its darker days. He later took a degree in psychotherapy and eventually took a psychotherapeutic roadshow worldwide, demonstrating his “Inner Child” processes to a total of around 40,000 people.
More recently, Penny and James codified Clean Language and produced the book Metaphors in Mind (2000). And in the last twelve months, David has been working with new collaborators, too, developing Clean Space, Emergent Knowledge and Clean Coaching methodologies.
Jo Hogg, organiser of the Conference, has known David Grove since 1985. He’d put her in the whirligig during the Conference weekend.
“I certainly got some change from being in there that was not on any conscious level. Literally by being reoriented I gained a different sense of connection to myself. How that worked I have no idea. What he is doing is tapping into an unconscious process. Some belief change techniques work on a conscious level, you are getting insights. With this you don’t get any insights, but you get a change.
“His thinking about how change works is an all-consuming passion for him. His is a truly original thinker pushing the boundaries in the field. I feel honoured to know him.
“David has always been a law unto himself. Always inspirational - but he just does what grabs him in the moment. He is totally “in time” and caught up with the latest ideas that are firing his imagination.”
And now it was my turn to be a demo subject. “I’ll put you in the whirligig!” David suddenly announced, before wandering off and leaving me hanging about for an hour…
The device, mounted on a trailer behind his estate car, had a hard, orange plastic seat suspended in the centre of three steel circles. It needed to be “driven” by David and a friend. I was freezing cold, confused, and nervous, not least because NLP’s intellectual heavyweight, Wyatt Woodsmall, had just taken a turn himself and was witnessing the entire process with a running commentary from David.
The effect is very hard to describe in words. It isn’t about language; it’s about movement and physical sensations.
A particular orientation reminded me of the day after the London bombings when, in a spirit of “feel the fear and do it anyway” I had been dropped from a crane into a cargo net: “scad diving”. My body seemed to remember the whole jumble of emotions I’d felt at that time, all the fear and panic and stress of the previous day.
From there I was rotated into various other positions – upside down forwards, upside down backwards, looking out at the stars – before eventually being manoeuvred back to that “scad diving” position.
Wow, what a difference! This time I was filled with excitement and exhilaration, whooping with joy.
And once released from the device there was a peace, quietness, a sense of “You don’t have to do anything.”
David had to ask quite sharply, I think twice, for me to give some sort of verbal report to Wyatt. I muttered a few words. I have no idea if they made sense, and I didn’t care very much.
I didn’t care very much! About making sense! In front of Wyatt Woodsmall!
Why was that so exciting? Again, it’s hard to explain.
Imagine for a moment, if you can, what it would be like to live a life dominated by intense fear around other people. Whenever you were not alone, all that mattered was controlling your feelings and concealing their physical symptoms. How could you look normal in a party? How could you sound normal in a meeting? How could you have sex? Share a house? What about job interviews or exercise classes?
Now imagine that fear disappearing. The pressure lifting, the darkness clearing… breathing clear, fresh air… freedom…
For me, it was as profound as it gets. Released from my cage, over the next few weeks I discovered I could now take everything I’d learned in my personal development journey – NLP, hypnosis and so on – and easily make it work well for me.
But the adventure still wasn’t over. What about those six additional points of view? We heard from Jo Hogg and Neil Scotten above. Wendy Sullivan, Phil Swallow and John Farrell also agreed to chat. And finally…I interviewed Wyatt himself. I was excited, and I wasn’t afraid.
So, what’s the answer to the puzzle? What’s “really” going on in David’s latest work? Much as it pains the journalist in me to admit it, it’s to do with the fact that people don’t experience the world as it really is. Each of us creates our own reality, by filtering what’s out there through what we believe.
What I think David is doing is seeking change by working directly with the
reality that his clients experience on the inside, at the deepest level. Never mind that it’s not “true”, never mind it’s different to his and therefore seems wrong.
He’s working with that part of the client that expresses itself through symbols, dreams, physical gestures, movement, and metaphors. And using these techniques, that part can resolve its deepest traumas, find its own solutions – and live happily ever after.
[...] Six Degrees of David Grove by Judy Rees, Resource Magazine, April 2006 [...]