October 20th, 2008

Welcome to Carol, fresh from the recent Less is More training. As usual, we showed her our "This is the kind of group we want to belong to" metaphor and invited Carol to add to it. She added a stetch of a person being held in the palm of a hand (for support) and being tickled (for laughter). Carol said she also wants to learn through getting feedback from group members.

The topic for this meeting was suggested by Cathy, who was unable to be with us due to a nasty virus. We hope you are better soon, Cathy. Bad weather and bad traffic kept others away, so we had fewer members than usual. However, we decided to keep to Cathy's topic: creating methods for remembering the Clean Language questions... (we can always revisit this another time).

We took it in turns to discover:

• The memory strategy we use (for those who know the questions)
• A memory strategy that might be useful (for those who don't yet know them)

I discovered that I have the questions stored 'deep inside' me (chest area downwards) in a list. The questions I use most frequently (ie the developing questions) are at the top of the list and they come to mind first. Questions used least frequently are at the bottom. When I am working with a client, the questions I need to use are suggested by their metaphors. We agreed that this isn't really a memory strategy, since no effort is required to recall them - the questions are just there (even the ones at the bottom) and available for me to use at any time.

Julie developed a metaphor of a rainbow which she will keep in her visual recall area (up and to the left). The rainbow has four colours (left to right) with three questions in each section.

Lisa's metaphor is of an apple tree, with the questions written on individual apples. And Carol created a washing line with the questions hanging on cards from the line.

Juliet's strategy was auditory: she plans to gather tapes of sessions so she can listen to the questions being asked.

It was fascinating to discover different ways of remembering, and we had a good evening.

Our next meeting is on November 17th, when Phil Swallow will lead a session on Clean Space.