Exploring Moving

[phil]

Some questions to start us off asking about moving through space:

When client is moving body or part of body:

'And [hand, foot, eyes, torso, etc] moving?'

'And anything else about moving [like that]?'

'And what kind of moving [is that]?'

'And where could moving [like that] come from?'

'And how old could moving [like that] be?'


When/As client is travelling through space:

All questions above and

'And [what's] happening between [gesture towards direction from] and [gesture towards direction to]?

'And anything else about moving between [gesture towards direction from] and [gesture towards direction to]?

'And where are you?'

'And where is [pronoun]?'

[Corrie van Wijk]

I think these are excellent questions, and I certainly cheer the idea of exploring this.

BUT: We need to ask ourselves why we are asking clean questions in the first place:

1. I think the process in clean space is different from using clean questions in Symbolic Modelling. You ask the client if there is a space that wants him or her to go to and then invite him or her to do so. You must be careful not to complicate that process too much by including the movement, unless you notice something that seems to make it more relevant than the space. But then you are doing Symbolic Modelling.

2. Clean Space is about exploring the perceptual systems of the client, moving from one space to another helps clarify where they are, what size or shape they have, what and where it's boundaries are. The movement itself seems less relevant to me.

3. The average client may get confused.

[Corrie van Wijk]

Movement modelling
Antonio Damasio writes in his book ‘Descartes’ error – Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain’ (1994): "Visualisations that are formed from the memory, are the result of the reconstruction of a temporary pattern (similar to a topographic map) in the old sensory cerabral cortex areas, initiated by the activation of dispositional representations elsewhere in the brain, e.g. in an association cortex.
In the motor areas similar topographic activities can occur, which then result in movement. The dispostional representations that underly movement are localised in the premotor cortex areas, basal brain nuclei en lymbic cortex areas. They both activate movement ánd interior visualisations of movements, but because we move so promptly, these visualisations in our consciousness are often masked by the realisation of the movements themselves." (my translation).

So, moving around in space is different from trying to remember a movement, which most likely will express itself by making it. So modelling the movement with CL seems to me the most appropriate thing to do.
If you want to use clean space moving around to find spaces with different (memories of) movements can be an option, although I’m not sure if this wouldn’t get mixed up with visual, auditory, etc. memories in that space. But then again, the moving to a space, or spinning around in a space, is different from the memory of a movement ín that space (‘What does that movement know?’).

[Steve Saunders]

So is this David's work being discussed or a new exploration triggered by space and moving work, belonging more to the section on "related approaches".

Now, a commentary on the exploring of the moving.

asking an "is happening between" is temporally illogical:

Instead:

and what WAS happening between ... matches a question being asked AFTER the event

or DURING:

and as you are moving, [is there anything else / what is happening ] as you are moving?

You may note that the emerging moving questioning was operating during the moving to elicit the moving knowing rather than "a posteriori" when the state is no longer the moving state.

The AFTER question form elicits via memory thereof (a different perspective), whereas the DURING form accurately downloads the knowledge coded in the moving between spaces.

Again, a recurring theme, I ask "WHY?" of the research. David did and I still do work to create new process or to vary processes for a purpose. The questions proposed seem to seek to explore the normal SyM directions in relation to a moving experience (metaphor: kind of, anything else about: context, come from: source, how old: source identity). The "and [] moving?" seems a null question, more an opening engaging to say hello to the moving component selected by F.

I feel there is no strategy or plan coming from the questions. Instead it is "groping in the dark". David said repeatedly that he never asked a question without knowing the answer beforehand. I believe he meant "the form of the answer / likely scenario".

The purpose of this work is to navigate to collect the disparate fragments of self and return them to the body (finger of God/Adam metaphor of David's) and to likewise return foreign bodies to their owners and beyond.

From this purpose, the strategies and reasons for the questions, the sequences, and the forms becomes clear. So I disagree with Corrie that these are excellent questions - they are without foundations and incorrectly pace the client experience.

I will offer an impromptu tutorial on this at the clean conference for anyone who actually wants to know what David's work was really about.

Steven

[phil]

The purpose, back in February, was to start us off asking about moving through spaceas it says in the post. Nothing grander or cleverer than that.

Seems to have worked.

There is no strategy intended for the questions as written other than exploring the subject - they are not a process, or sequence, per se.

I agree that, given the relevance issues which have blossomed since then, it probably does belong in related approaches, or given what you both said about the clean language style of the questions, somewhere related to that. I'll move it, though perhaps I should consult the membership first :)

[Corrie van Wijk]

Steve: "Relevance: So is this David's work being discussed or a new exploration triggered by space and moving work, belonging more to the section on "related approaches".

This is about your exploration of moving in relationship to clean space: I think what you are doing is movement modelling, which is similar to symbolic modelling and probably the clean questions for SyM will apply to movement modelling as well, like you state: "they seek to explore the normal SyM directions in relation to a moving experience.

Steve: " DURING: and as you are moving, [is there anything else / what is happening ] as you are moving?
You may note that the emerging moving questioning was operating during the moving to elicit the moving knowing [...] the DURING form accurately downloads the knowledge coded in the moving between spaces."

There is something about exploring moving while it is happening, probably similar to any other sensation being experienced. But what's the point of exploring the present, unless something is happening the client has to deal with right there and then? But you are already exploring this down the line.

So I disagree with Corrie that these are excellent questions - they are without foundations and incorrectly pace the client experience."

Phil's questions are excellent (I was trying to be constructive) if you are modelling movement, which you shouldn't do in a clean space process. And yes, they pace the client's experience, which they shouldn't: the whole point of clean space, I think, is to have the client intiutively find spaces. David always ordered to keep moving.
The same counts for yours, you shouldn't explore the movement itself in a clean space process. A space may perhaps trigger a memory of a movement, which then becomes part of the network an will play it's part in emergence, but it needs no other treatment than any other memory.

Steve: "I will offer an impromptu tutorial on this at the clean conference for anyone who actually wants to know what David's work was really about."

I'd prefer if you were to give better arguments to claim to know what David's work was really about: I'm not sure if you really know what he meant: I find many examples that your observation differs from mine. How I try to deal with that is to find objective, neurobiological answers and how that knowledge relates to David's work, because I know that he always started from that or tried to relate his experience with working with thousands of clients to that.

Phil, I think this deserves a thread 'movement modelling' in the Symbolic Modelling section and another one (or into the emerging moving section) about the difference between cognitively trying to make sense of an experience in the past or making a plan for the future, and experiencing in the here and now, be it a movement or another sensation

And, to make life more interesting, a third one about the question: "What about experiencing the past or the future in the here and now?", which is obviously the case for any brainprocess, as Steve and I already discussed at the emergence gathering. As I said in the notes: the mind may have a concept of time, the brain doesn't. You wouldn't want me to have the title 'Clean time', so you think of a worse one.

[phil]

Phil, I think this deserves a thread 'movement modelling' in the Symbolic Modelling section
Good idea, feel free to start one.
and another one (or into the emerging moving section) about the difference between cognitively trying to make sense of an experience in the past or making a plan for the future, and experiencing in the here and now, be it a movement or another sensation

That one's a more universal topic - and very interesting - maybe start a thread in Other Topics?

My interest in movement came from watching Clean Space processes and wondering what happens between the 'spaces' as a client moves from one to another. Since their experience is different in each space, it begs the question 'what happens between?' As Steve says in a different context: to understand David's work, you look between the "dots" - I see a parallel here in seeking to understand a client's 'work' by looking between their dots.

The questions I posted were really a way of musing aloud as a result of that curiosity. I should perhaps have made clearer that I was only thinking experimentally and exploratively, rather than suggesting this as an addition to the Clean Space process.

Even experimentally, I agree that asking about the moving as it is happening (as I proposed) is probably not appropriate while new spaces are being sought - it would interrupt the process of finding the space 'intuitively' as Corrie called it and perhaps inhibit the birth of the network of spaces.

I was thinking more of doing so during subsequent transitions between previously visited spaces. When attention is directed to any part of a person's experience, that becomes a new node in their system. It might be interesting for the client to know about what happens in them and in the spaces between the places; at some level, perhaps similar to a 'what happens just before?' of CL?

I should make clear that in my map, the 'spaces' in Clean Space are 'places in Space', differentiated loci in undifferentiated Space. They are also nodes that are part of a network. The network resides in Space and is structured by links through Space, which sometimes are movements (e.g. walking between) or perceptual (e.g. seeing the other space) or even be a metaphorical link (e.g. 'there's a tunnel between here and there'). I repeat this not how it IS, just how I make sense of it for myself.

It's also possible to flip the network and say that the 'spaces' are the links and the transitions are the nodes, as James Lawley once pointed out to me. It would be interesting in an Clean Space exercise to first generate the network in the usual way then create a parallel network with the transistions as nodes.

Phil

[Corrie van Wijk]

Phil: "The network resides in Space and is structured by links through Space, which sometimes are movements (e.g. walking between) or perceptual (e.g. seeing the other space) or even be a metaphorical link (e.g. 'there's a tunnel between here and there'). "

I remember your saying at our first Clean Space retreat in Normandy (June 2003): "Movement is the language of space."

Walking, line of sight, gestures, metaphors may all express something relevant to the client (and which can be modelled in another session; the exercise sounds great).

"What happens in-between?" will only make sense to the client if he or she perceives it, but David would (as I said in the clean space-time thread) have treated it as another space, similar to he would take an "I don't know" for an answer, so then the in-between is just another space, which has a name, address and serial number.

I think this is about perceptual spaces, which may be adjacent or, like you say 'places in space', or 'spaces in space', which I think means 'systems in systems'. In mathematics it is represented by 'collections' (that's why I'm drawing circles all the time). Some nest in others, some are separate.

"And, when movement is the language of space, what kind of movement is that?"

What makes a person in one space decide to go to another space (o.k. the Maori guy tells you so in a very decisive tone, you know the chief doesn't like to be contradicted!), why that particular space, why that particular route, why walk?

[Corrie van Wijk]

Well, here it is: I think the equivalent question for movement would be: "What movement would like you to make it?"

Instead of a psycho-active space you get a psycho-active moving!

[phil]

Ah, that would be interesting to experiment with, along with other CL 'perceived-as-perceiver' possibilities: "What would movement like to have happen?", "Where does movement like that come from?", "Where is movement?", etc.

"If movement be the language of Space, move on..." NOT Wm Shakespeare!

*Aside* Has anyone done any Clean Space work with dancers? I am reminded of when I worked at Dartington College in Devon. The technical department used to refer jovially to the Movement* students as 'stick-insects'. This came about because of one occasion when a technician apparently entered a dance studio where a dozen or so students were silently standing stock still in various poses. Said technician spent a couple of minutes gathering some equipment from the corner then left the room carrying it, the students still motionless around the room. I imagine they were exploring space, 'THE space' as it tended to be referred to. Seemed strange to me then, not now!

* 'NOT dance!,' I was admonished once,'They're different...'

[Corrie van Wijk]

A good clean space question for C would be: 'And what does the space-in-between'' know?' or 'What do you know about the space-in-between?'

Of course, you would have a problem asking those dancers standing still!

[phil]

Yes - makes me even more curious as to how responses to questions to the space and questions to the movement might differ.

Phil