Wu Wei: Directed Emptiness in Working with Metaphors

Preamble

Metaphors build bridges to other perspectives. That includes not only how we look at life but also how we experience it at physical and emotional level. Learning to use them enormously expands the possibilities of clients who feel afflicted by unsurmountable difficulties. They are powerful tools for working with injured soldiers who experience pain, with clients who lost perspective on life and for those for whom there seems no way out.

As is often the case, the topic and approach of this retreat may sound abstract but carries direct application for our work with clients. The structurally deeper we understand things the easier they get.

Introduction: The Metaphoric vs The Syntactic vs The Semantic

Changing the relatedness
Systemic Therapy does not address the substance of problems directly: Instead it assumes that the way things relate to each other filters how we see the world and that we unconsciously fill the form of our possible world under those filters with a semantic story.

We have practiced many ways to change relatedness. For example we have practiced introducing changes to how we relate to the problem, changing safety, distance, angle and autonomy, whether we phrase it as an action or as something that arises.

In this retreat we introduce a new class of variation in our relation to the problem by emphasizing the image generating side in us.

Image vs Structure thinking
In communications theory we distinguish several layers in which we deal with the world: semiotics, syntactical structure, semantics and practice.

In semantics we ascribe fixed characteristics, in syntactics we highlight the logical structure of relatedness and in semiotics we focus on what a sign may stand for.

We have previously spent a lot of time to practice usefully exploiting the difference between Semantics and Syntactics. This time we want to widen our view and explore the use of semiotic thinking in addition to syntactic thinking. We will productively combine the two.

When we construct images, we let plastic representations of the world arise. Images have a haptic, literally graphic grip on how we see the world. When our system recognizes something as a representation of a possible construction of the world, it can easily adopt that construction.

Then, our experience of the world can dramatically change. We may feel stronger, things hurt less, we see more options, we become more able to deal with dangers etc. Our inner system can organize around these representations, evaluating the world around along them.

An inner organization around mental images can be very stable and determine our experience of life for long times. However, in the right circumstances, inner images can become very mobile and abruptly change in creative irrationality, beyond logic, like dreams (or in animals brains).

If we give that transgressive fluidity a helpful direction, the inner system can reorganize itself around a new image and thus bring about advantageous perspectives of the world for us.

That is why it is very productive to familiarize oneself with the world of lucid images and learn to put them to good use.

Letting the Dream Arise – Aspects of Wu Wei

Images in Therapy.
Changing images to change experience is used in many approaches to therapy. Often, outer images of a system are used to provoke change within it. Constellation work and art therapy are prominent examples.

Less wieldy and easier to implement in small settings are inner images developed in a conversation. We can use poetic or vivid language to strengthen the image making side in our clients and encourage them to make graphic descriptions of the world.

Guided Emergence of Inner Images
Working with images requires us to embrace mindful attention and non-linear, poetic thinking, and to learn to receive and give impulses in their world.

We cannot dictate an inner image to arise and be accepted as representation of a perspective. We can build a space in which it becomes more likely to arise, and we can give impulses, ask or suggest. Directive thinking can and must support us in this, but it is unlikely to successfully run processes that disrupt the linearity of our assumptions.

Suggesting to or inviting our uncontrolled sides to change images in a helpful direction is the most poetic experience in psychotherapy.

When used to a more analytical and measuring point of view it requires much courage to entrust yourself to a mode of experience as fluid and seemingly without firm ground. Once it becomes a habit, it broadens the foundation on which to engage the world and adds many options to make the world easier to live in.

It is also a very pure joy.

Images and the Sticky Wind of Connection.
Dealing with something that arises in us and seems to have no substance but that, when its shape transforms, takes with it how we live the world, has long been a topic in Daoism and Buddhism.

In a Buddhist martial art for example we do not use our own strength. Instead we shape the field between us and the opponent to redirect the flow of energy we get from the opponent to our benefit.

This can happen as an active act, where we give an impulse that gives the system a nucleus of a new structure to adapt to, or as an act of mindful reception, where the reception gives space for the impulse to change its structure.

For such a structural change to happen, a particular kind of connection needs to arise between participants, that interlocks their unconscious systems. Such a connection, a „sticky wind“, is hard to control but experienced as joyful and haptic support. Under the label of pacing, or „establishing of a Yes set“ much of the work in therapy is concerned with establishing such a connection.

The inner posture needed to generate such a connection on the physical plane is very similar to the one needed to make metaphors work to change our experience in wider settings.

Wu Wei Attitude and its expression in practice
Images that pull our life perspective behind themselves, and their changes, will arise from our creativity. We can instigate them and make it more likely that they arise, but we cannot force or foresee them.

Working with them hence requires to work with different modes of thinking – to distinguish more directive from more mindful thinking that lets things emerge. To apply them as needed and combine them.

A few aspects shall be highlighted here.

Harder vs Softer Thinking and Speaking their variation.

In a „harder“ attitude, we divide the world more into objects to which we ascribe permanent features. In such thinking, we are confronted by these objects and our action is directed against something. In a „softer“, more mindful attitude, we live more in a world of impermanence and collaboration, where any aspect will contain its opposite in order to really be itself.

The Yin and Yang scheme represents these contrasting approaches.

Often we define actions and attitudes in a more confrontational way without noticing it. There are homologues to them in softer way of thinking that can be subsumed under the same name but function completely differently.

For example, we can speak arrayed against or aligned with another person.

We can suggest something in a harder way, as an argument for why it is logical and makes sense from our point of view. We can also view a suggestion as an impulse that reaches through the words to connect with the inner constellation of the client to build a different perspective.

On the physical plane, in softer mode the impulse goes through the hand to prompt the inner system of the opponent to redirect, rather than the weight of the hand pushing against the opponent’s structure. In verbal space, the impulse goes through the words to prompt a change of perspective, and does not produce it by the weight of the argument.

Similarly, we can ask a question to inquire about reasons and consistency, to verify and test. We can also ask a question to increase a sense of safety and authority and possibilities of new thinking.

Being „against“ as a condition is easy to grasp. Being „with“ is necessarily more fluid as it does not highlight borderlines. Any attempt to describe it can at best be an approximation, understood conditionally in a moment’s point of view.

The distinction between hard and soft appears at all levels. For example, when we listen, there are more active and more receiving ways to build a space in which transformation can occur.

When we speak, we can open the space of thought, for example through questions or concentrate it through direct suggestions.

Emptiness, Duality and Wu Wei

Closely related to the idea of softer thinking styles is the concept of emptiness (sunyata). In a mode where we refrain from assigning fixed characteristics, the meaning of any part of the system arises together with that of all other parts.

In daoist language we focus on a duality: one part needs to include its complement to be itself.

Respect for example needs a sense of direction and authority to be really respect, emergence needs an aspect of guidance in order to emerge somewhere, fluidity needs a direction in order to flow, mobility needs structures into which it jumps in order to be mobile.

An important duality in working with metaphors is the one between emptiness and direction. In Chinese that is called Wu Wei, directed emptiness. The emptier our mind is, the closer we are in contact at a non judgmental level. The more comprehensive the emptiness, the more likely structures transform and the more effectively the transformation spontaneously finds a desired direction.

Acceptance and trust, trust that the unconscious will guide us, that the change of the relation changes the substance, that the client’s images work best for him, that emptiness will find a good direction that we cannot even see yet, are fruitful challenges in working with images.

More generally, having enough variation to approach any mode in any mode and pair them in any mode with any mode, gives us a comprehensive balance a deep center, that can act and react appropriately in any situation.

Mindful attention and non-linear renewal, represented in the 5 animals scheme by the sea turtle and the phoenix, cogenerate each other. One cannot be without the other and generates the other. They are two sides of the same coin.

Appreciation

An important path to further a state of softer connection, of being „with“ is appreciation. Appreciation sounds like an obvious concept at first glance but becomes harder to grasp, the deeper one tries to understand them.

Appreciation can be directed towards a person, symptom or a mental inner part. One way to understand it is that it makes feel seen. Providing a sense of feeling seen can be done actively and in accepting way.

In more active manner we visit a part or person and share their perspective.

In a more observant, softer way, we do not focus on constructing inner parts. Recognition arises from freeing our mind from fixations thus removing obstacles for our uncontrolled parts to make connections beyond the logic we rationally see.

Each of these ways must contain elements of the other. Centering your mind without awareness that there is something else outside will not guide the unconscious to appreciating it. Seeing only the point of view of the other person will make you lose your own, leading to fixation and conflict, not recognition.
Figure 2: Acceptance Appreciation: making Space for Connection

The mind drops and focuses in the deep, giving space for the other to be touched. The other is scarcely determinate.

Thinking in images and Structures
To encourage the transgressive power of the mind ,daoist and buddhist arts use flowery language (the crane spreads its wings.etc).

To highlight the syntactic focus they also propose general pattens of change ( active, passive, combining, separating etc.) which the inner system can call up to develop images. Syntactic and Semiotic thinking are usefully combined to effect change.

Without such collaboration between the graphic and the structural, there will be no directed change. Dreams, good music events, etc can all produce very intense and in the short term liberating sensations and thoughts, but usually don’t effectuate permanent change.

Colourful Images
One of the great simplifying aspects of working with images is that we can work with the image as representation of the perspective. In its simplicity it collects all the complexity of the perspective and we and do not need to work with the perspective itself. Introducing changes to the image is often much easier than introducing changes to the perspective.

When we develop an image, were free to use all sensory channels and all syntactic types of thinking.

We can make up pictures in haptic, taste, smell, visual and audio senses and their combinations. Music and voice, hapticity and temperature, color and shape, direction and movement are all fair game to establish a good connection.

Absurdity and humor ( Phoenix), curiousity and relations to a group (Dolphin), Beauty ( Sea Turtle), Strength, Freedom and Positioning to the outer world (Chameleon), Knowledge and Analysis ( Mountain Goat) are all variables we can change to achieve better fitting images.

Often it is helpful to look for metaphors of greater cooperation to overcome entrenched contrasts and conflicts.

Practicing Mindful Abilities:
We will practice them in this retreat in four directions::

1. Humility and respect.
   Images are tenderly sensitive. They belong to the client and his system has to organize around it. Humility, developing a joy that things move in the client, in his sphere not in ours, that the action is his, not ours, that our position is to help any process in the client along, not for him adopt our semantic solution, not our image but his, hence solution focused respect is basis of any space of interaction that lets images unfold and survive.
2. Guidance and Intiative

At the same time, to keep that space open, action and initiative are important elements even of a dream like world. Without them, order is incomplete. We practice to think in terms of actions and their consequences in a way that does not rupture the connection to our images. That applies to how we model for us our contact with the client.

3. Openness vs Concreteness

One very helpful decision we can make when working with images is how concrete or open, how complete or incomplete we leave them. We gain enormous degrees of freedom by varying concreteness.

4. Simplicity. Smart Dumbness

Similarly, it can be very liberating to be smart. It can also be very liberating to be too dumb to understand the complexities of a problem. You just do it…

We practice such smart dumbness.

5. Changing the script

At times we will make images more structured like in a story. It is very helpful to have plastic images of how syntactic structure comes about and changes. We will look for body images of syntactics.

Metaphoric techniques
Of course we also practice concrete techniques related to images. Some interventions run parallel to what we did before, with a greater emphasis on metaphoric language. We can find positive exceptions and think of miracles in terms of metaphoric images, too.

Some interventions are specific to working with images. They can be dreamily open ended and create safe spaces in ways different from before. They can directly invite changes to a narrative.

At the end of the retreat I want you to be able to:

Create a safe and creative distance to an event or thought by describing it as poetic metaphor. We thus open another channel to create a safe space for generative thought.

To ask for or suggest alternative images in open questions, letting the unconscious come up with alternative pictures that turn out to be more resourceful.

To ask for or suggest alternative images in more directed questions.

Resolved State

Miracle

Exceptions.

To ask for or suggest change in elements in open questions.

To ask for or suggest change in elements in directed questions.

To directly suggest changes in elements of the picture which can serve as bridges to different valuations of the situation.

If the metaphor involves a story, change elements of the story so as to invite a different valuation.

While working with images or stories be aware of syntactic and semiotic styles of thinking. Distinguish between semantics and them.

Exercises

General abilities

Humility: 30 percent of your objective

Group of three.

Take an example of someone in a bad situation, where you think she or he should change something in their lives. One person takes the place of that person. Try to explain her why she should carry out the changes you see helpful or necessary.

Now observe yourself. What changes if you only want the partner to change at a level of 30%. If you are happy if he only does 30% of what you have in mind and you want it at only 30% intensity and for the rest are prepared to accept whatever he does.

Partner: When is your coach more convincing? When did you feel more empowered? When did you have better ideas?

Observer: what did you notice in the conversation?

2. Simplicity.

Work in Pairs.

think of a problem. Now imagine yourself with so little intellect that you can’t even understand all the complexities of your problem. IQ 50? How do you look? How does your face look? Keep that face in mind.

Explain to your partner what the problem is with normal face.

Then try to explain it with the IQ 50 face.

In which do you feel better? In which is the problem more difficult. Where do you see more possible solutions where fewer? Where did you feel stronger ?

3. Concreteness variation
4. Initiative in contact.

Techniques

1. Elevator pitch.

Work in groups of 4. Develop an elevator pitch for a movie project. Take a fairy tale, ancient folk legend, etc. and develop a plot in a completely different setting (Modern urban life? 19th century countryside? Future?) that translates the old tale into its setting.

What characters do you develop? What are their motivations and goals? What are the difficulties? How do the mechanisms of the fairy tale translate into the modern world? How do the moral insights vary?

Present your pitch to the other groups, without telling them what tale it is based on. Let them guess what fairy tale the plot was based on.

2. Safe observer, autonomous decider with metaphors.

Work in groups of 3.

a. Client describes a problematic situation for himself. With good pacing Coach values the suffering.

Steers client to phrase your physical symptoms as things that you or parts of you do and achieve. ( Give echo, give product information).

With good pacing coach explores what would provide a sense of safety for the client today. What would make his observer position more secure? More or less distance? More or less protective matter? More or less size?

Invite client to look for metaphors that express the sense of safety. Would a protective animal come? would they rest comfortable somewhere? Would they be well hidden in a tree?

Coach at all times observes and asks if there is resistance? Does the metaphor need to be amended or completed? How does the client react to the change?

b.

Introduce the possibility to influence the safety features yourself. Find a metaphor for the ability to change the setup into a safer direction.

How does the body react to that authority. IS it easier or more difficult? is there acceptance or resistance? How are they distributed?

c. As above, try it with yourself.

3. Metaphors for the problem in the body.

a. Work in Groups of 3

Client describes a problematic situation for himself. With good pacing and valuation for the suffering, coach asks client to observe the physical reaction to the problem.

Steers client to phrase your physical symptoms as things that you or parts of you do and achieve. ( Give echo, give product information).

Value the quality of the achievement with gentle sense of humor.

Now, with good pacing, typically a lot of patience!!!!!, develop a metaphor for the client’s physical reaction. Who does he become, when the symptom happens?

Describe the Metaphor physically – what posture do you assume? How does the voice sound?

Value how well you do what the posture expresses.

Coach at all times asks if body reacts positively to changes tried out.

Is there any change at the end in the relationship of the client to the problem? Has it become bigger or smaller? Closer or further away?

b. As above but do it with yourself.

4. Problem construction with metaphors – the relationships to others.

a. Work in Groups of 3

Client describes a problematic situation where he a relationship to someone else is burdensome . With good pacing and valuation for the suffering, coach asks client to observe his actions in the relationship.

How does he act? What does he do or avoid doing? How does he construct that problem ( Give echo, give product information).

Value the quality of the achievement with gentle sense of humor.

Now develop a metaphor for the client’s behaviour. Who does he become, when the symptom happens? Who do the other people become? How is their interaction? How is the relative size, strength voice etc?

Describe the Metaphor physically – what posture do you assume, how do you move? How about the other person? How do the voices sound?

Coach values how well you do what the posture expresses.

Coach at all times asks if body reacts positively to changes tried out.

Is there any change at the end in the relationship of the client to the problem? Has it become bigger or smaller? Closer or further away? Is it easier or more difficult than before?

b. Do it on your own/ with yourself.

5. Relationship to yourself and metaphors.

Proceed as in one or 2. Observe your own reaction to your problematic reaction. What is your attitude towards your problematic posture and behaviour? Are you happy and content? Are you angry and disappointed?

Find a metaphor for your attitude and interaction with yourself. Who do you become when in interaction with yourself. How do you sound? How big are you?

Do that both with a coach and with yourself.

6. Looking for improvements.

Procede as before.

With good pacing, consider exceptions when things were less bad.

How does the picture change? How does the relationship to the image/ symptom change? Does its meaning change? Is it easier for example to see deeper lying, benevolent motives behind it?

Use the changes to the image as an invitation to a dialogue. Verify with client each time, if further steps are needed. Ask for authorization at each step. Value each response. Change the environment around the image or the image itself.

fast progress: Invoke a miracle. how does the picture change in a miraculous world? What happens on the way to it?
Without naming the alternative as improvement, ask what could be different in the image or what else the image could be. Look for less confrontational scenarios.

Physical

Tai chi 2.1. with hand of partner.

Observe your reaction esp around touch zone. Is there resistance/ contraction? ( if not partner press harder)

Try finding an image for your reaction. How does the image change, when it works better? What could an image of more cooperation be?

2. Raise the hand with metaphors.

Let the arm rise and sink with different metaphors, more active and more emergent.

A wave carrying the arm up and down, balloons inside the arm rising and sinking, a crane lifting them etc.

Observe the degree of relaxation in joints and muscles.

3. Peng Lu JI An ( Teil 1. )

Partner gives clear impulse to the shoulders. Raise arms to let it wash over the shoulder ( Peng), then disappear and guide it with you downwards through disappearance (Lu). Empty Mind into the Center and ground, take step forwards with opening push (An) into the system of the partner.

Decision and Autonomy