If you have got this far, chances are you already know what learning Metaphors of Movement can do for you, just in case - here is the information you need.
Metaphors of Movement explained
A problem with therapy is that often the client might as well be mute and not speak at all as the practitioner fits whatever communication is offered into their preferred model or frame of understanding. Meaning gets inferred upon the client’s reportage, and the client’s meaning gets lost in the frame. This reframing, no matter how artful and clever, will so often serve merely to negate the client’s experience for the duration of the therapy sessions. It is the precision that the MoM training model develops for the therapist that is often missing. Four things should be noted here. Most methods follow a pretty conventional format:
• Examples of the problem (what happens)
• Emotional responses to the problem (how we feel about what happens)
• The consequences of the problem (the effects of what happens)
• The diagnosis of the problem (what we call it)
But none of these explore the possible solutions that are inherent within the problem system. When a chronic client is caught up in inappropriate and self-defeating behaviours, outcomes are of secondary importance. What is important in this context is where and how they are stuck now. When you have four flat tires, where you want to go is irrelevant until you get the tires fixed.
Metaphors of Movement
The client does not usually have the resources or the ability to know what to do about their situation – that is why they are the client. As the metaphor is developed, clients will often discover their own solutions, which can be either specific external behaviours, or changes in attitude, etc. But when they don’t, then it is the therapist’s job, as an expert, to give appropriate, accurate and precise guidance. It is this precision that the MoM training model develops for the therapist.
In MoM, the metaphor is expanded only as far as is required so that the advice given by the therapist makes perfect sense to the client. The MoM model demands a high degree of creativity, humour, rapport, lateral thinking, and of course sensitivity to the client’s response to all of these. These key skills are essential elements in MoM training.
MoM training seeks to eliminate these mismatches. This takes rapport building to a whole new level – not only does the therapist pace and lead V-A-K modalities and sub-modalities, for example, but also the metaphorical identity of their experience. Examples of these can be found on the rest of the site.
MoM is a very practical methodology, often utilising drama, props and re-enactments. Clients and trainees of the process report that they find it practical, fun, effective, relatively fast, and most commonly, that it changes many of the accepted rules and practices of contemporary change work. The fact is: you will never hear language in the same way again!
Key Benefits
Metaphors of Movement has been taught across the world, including India, United Kingdom, USA, Poland, Sweden, Holland, Hungary, Israel and Japan.
Attendees have included doctors and psychiatrists, counsellors, psychotherapists, NLP practitioners and trainers, hypnotherapists, prison and probation officers, police officers, teachers, security personnel and business leaders.
• MoM takes the guess work out of change work. It is a precision tool to help you home in on the client’s exact stuck point and how they are maintaining their problem state.
• Unlike other approaches that are intrusive, or covert, or discursive, once you understand the client’s unique metaphors, MoM gives you and your client lots of room for creative engagement. How far you go with ‘directing’ is entirely up to you, your style, your comfort level.
• MoM is much more empowering and effective for the client. Once past the initial work of unearthing their metaphors and directing them, clients awaken to their own beliefs, metaphors and stuck points, which triggers a series of rapid, self-induced results. They get the ‘hang of it,’ and fast.
• The Metaphors of Movement models can be applied to both individual and corporate/organisation levels
Ready to ‘Embrace’ Change?
Let MoM help you learn another way to help chronically distressed, stuck clients.
Personal Change & Development
With the Metaphors of Movement models, you will learn not only how to uncover your own metaphors, but how to engage them at a physiological and neurological level —a completely new approach to overcoming stuck states and creating effective movement towards our personal goals.
You will never hear language in the same way again!
In change work and therapy outcomes and goal setting is largely just fantasy. The key to personal change is not to focus on the outcome or goal, but rather to face the reality of where you are right now.
This is what some workshop participants who attended the four-day program in Boulder, Colorado had to say:
“Andy’s MoM has infused me with new energy and perspective for the work I do. It has also given new life to the tools I already have.”
“Incredibly insightful and thought-provoking training. Andrew Austin is extremely entertaining, bold yet covertly compassionate, and skillfully models how to help chronic clients discover where they stand with their problems.”
Therapy & Healing
The Metaphors of Movement models can be applied to both individual and corporate/organisation levels.
Most contemporary analysis involves an exploration of four main themes:
• Examples of the problem (what happens)
• Emotional responses to the problem (how we feel about what happens)
• The consequences of the problem (the effects of what happens)
• The diagnosis of the problem (what we call it)
But none of these explore the possible solutions that are inherent within the problem system.
“After working with their own Metaphors of Movement through these models, the experience people generally tend to describe is a sense of being more “awake.” So often we do not pay attention to our own communication, using metaphoric words seemingly at random that are in fact incredibly rich clues into our internal experience and strategies for moving through the world. Through attending to what we are each already saying, and to the underlying metaphoric structure, suddenly the way we maintain our problems is revealed, and we have the choice to change.”
“Andy provided four days of enlightenment for me to discover how I can take the client’s language as clues to what is needed. I have new tools for understanding metaphors. Even how amazing movement allows those “Ahas” of change. Change is what I see and know—change in how/what moves the client in life.”
“This training has helped me have a completely different view of all the training I’ve had to this point. My view of the world and others has expanded where I can fit so much more into it.”
We deliver Metaphors of Movement training from beginners through to experts, book your course today