The Power Of Metaphor E-Book

Michael Berman

• Herausgeber: Crown House Publishing
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 259

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 1999

Beschreibung

Packed with original stories and visualisations, this is a must-buy resource for teachers, trainers and therapists who are looking for new approaches to group work, or are simply story-telling enthusiasts. " An essential part of our professional development library and widely consulted" Fiona Balloch, Principal, Oxford House College, London

Leseprobe

I would like to thank my mother, Ketevan, and friends, as well as my Helpers in non-ordinary reality, for all their support and for helping me to make this book possible.

I would also like to thank everyone at Crown House Publishing for believing in the project. M.B.

With gratitude to all the people, places and stories that have inspired me.

Thank you. D.B.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Slaying the Dragon called Fear [Overcoming the Barriers to Learning]

The Eagle’s Gift [Rising above Self-imposed Limitations]

The Rainbow Bridge [Promoting Self-esteem]

The Road to Elfinland [Successes and Failures – Steps in the Learning Process]

The Book of Life [Taking Control of your Life]

The Healing Waters [Learning how to Value what We already Have]

The Standing People [Reconnecting with the Life-force]

Moontime & Sacred Space [A Time for Looking Within]

The Sun of Suns [Reconciliation]

Great Smoking Mirror [Leaving the Myth Behind]

The Stone People [Communing with the Record Keepers]

The Wildman & the Sea [The Circularity of Time]

The Dream Cushion [Differentiating between Needs and Wants]

To the Sacred Site [The Teachings of the Ancient Ones]

Conflict & Resolution [Be like the Wind … Let Conflict Blow Through You]

Moving On [Leaving the Past Behind You]

The Epilogue: God’s Story

Appendix One Exercises for Young Learners

Appendix Two An Analysis of the Language used in the Scripts

Bibliography

Copyright

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the following for permission to reproduce copyright material:

Kogan Page Ltd for permission to use an adapted version of Giant Steps taken from Tales for Trainers by Margaret Parkin.

Network Educational Press for permission to use an extract from Accelerated Learning in the Classroom by Alistair Smith.

Alawn Tickhill for the Tree Poems taken from a magazine called Medicine Ways issue 4.

Jessica Kingsley Publishers Ltd for The Healing Waters taken from Storytelling in Education and Therapy.

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc for The Great Smoking Mirror from Sacred Path Cards by Jamie Sams.

Roger Jack for The Pebble People taken from the collection Earth Power Coming published by the Navajo Community College Press.

Introduction

In this book you will find a collection of stories, ancient and modern, and journeys of the imagination that can lead you through the story that your life was meant to be.

Stories have always been a powerful tool for communicating information from one generation to the next and for educating the young. If they were not highly successful for this purpose, the art of story telling would not have survived.

Whenever people meet, stories are told and they have been told since time immemorial. Story telling is an oral tradition and because of the issues which have been worked through by the telling of the stories, story telling has contributed to the creation of the great epics of the world. The storytellers themselves have been described as the bridge to other times, and ancient teachings and the telling of the stories helps to keep these teachings alive. The children of future generations learn from the storytellers and apply lessons of the stories to their own lives.

The earliest stories were probably chants or songs of praise for the natural world in pagan times. Later, dance and music accompanied stories. The storyteller would become the entertainer for the community and the historian, musician and poet too. The oral tales that were passed on from one generation to the next by word of mouth included epics, myths, parables, fables, fairy tales and folk tales.

The art of story telling was particularly popular from around AD 400 to 1500. Storytellers would travel around visiting markets, villages, towns and royal courts. They gathered news, swapped stories and learned regional tales in the process. When popular tales began to be printed cheaply in pamphlets known as chapbooks and sold by pedlars, their popularity started to wane. With the advent of the mass media, the storyteller has unfortunately become more or less extinct.

Story telling is also an effective vehicle to deliver messages to the subconscious where the ‘aha’s of metaphor take place. It is our ability to make metaphorical connections that allow us to learn anything at all. When something new is like something we’ve done before, we take what we know from the first situation and transfer our knowledge to the new situation. Metaphor instils the learning of content or process on a very subtle, often subconscious level. When the subconscious is activated or accessed, the material enters the mind with no resistance. As a result, metaphors can effect dramatic change in an individual.

Each time you ask someone to stretch their awareness of time and space you are inducing a light state of trance and each story that starts with “Once upon a time” provides an example of this.

A story can be called a metaphor if the listeners can relate to it and draw a parallel between the action in it and their own lives. It has been suggested that if a picture is worth a thousand words, then perhaps we can regard a metaphor as being worth 1000 pictures.

According to psychologists, our memories seem to work best when we can see things as part of a recognised pattern, when our imaginations are aroused, when we can make natural associations between one idea and another, and when the information appeals strongly to our senses. An imaginative story, rich in vocabulary, that appeals to the senses, which works as a metaphor, and is cumulative in nature, clearly fulfils all these criteria. Cumulative tales have definite stages and in each stage characters and activities are added on. The result is a rhythm and a repetition which is hypnotic in quality. This helps to induce alpha brainwaves and the optimal state for learning and remembering. The process can also bring about a form of regression to childhood days and recreate in us that emotional state of curiosity, which as adults we tend to lose.

It is emotions, not logic, that drive our attention, meaning-making and memory. This suggests the importance of eliciting curiosity, suspense, humour, excitement, joy and laughter. Story telling can provide an ideal means of achieving this.

If you’re shy at the thought of reading stories aloud, try the following: record the story and play it back for yourself; climb a hill out in the forest and read it to a tree or some kindly squirrels; or tell it to yourself in the shower or in your car. If you can tell a story rather than read it, this leaves your hands free to gesture, allows you to make eye contact with your audience and to calibrate for their responses.

An example of how story as metaphor can be used in an educational setting is presented below. It was designed for students of English as a Foreign Language about to embark on a course in the UK, to promote positive expectations.

The Learning Place This is the story of Alessandra, a young woman who leaves her parents’ home to make her own way in the world. She’s looking for something more than the familiar everyday routine of her family, the challenge of the new and unfamiliar. So she travels to the Learning Place, a special place visited by seekers of all kinds, in the land known as Dan Glen. She arrives in autumn, just as the leaves are beginning to change to colours of deep red, orange and yellow, and the trees themselves are turning within for the winter.

Alessandra’s feeling a bit nervous because she’s never been to Dan Glen before and doesn’t understand the language spoken there. So when she arrives and hears the people speaking so quickly, she gets frightened and thinks perhaps she’s made a big mistake. Many learners are based in the Centre besides herself and she notices they don’t appear to be afraid. In fact, they seem to be enjoying life to the full and this helps to reassure her.

Alessandra walks around the Centre feeling rather lost until she meets one of the welcome guides who helps new arrivals to feel at home. The guide’s name is Karelov. Karelov is a kind, gentle man who soon makes her feel comfortable listening to his native language. She’s surprised at how relaxed and confident she feels with her guide. Her understanding of the new language grows quickly, and before long she’s beginning to use the language too. Karelov recognises that Alessandra has all the abilities she needs to do very well.

With Karelov’s support and encouragement, Alessandra begins to open her mind and heart to all the new opportunities around her. Karelov spends many hours with Alessandra and the other new arrivals. He tells them lots of stories, he plays lots of games and listens with patience and interest. They all learn quickly without even realising it’s happening and Alessandra’s confidence quickly grows. She makes friends with the other new arrivals in her group and she recognises that their situations are similar to her own.

One of these friends, Eduardo, invites her to the annual festival of dance in Dan Glen. Karelov has taught them the traditional dances and they demonstrate their skills at the festival with ease and delight. Even the natives are impressed and congratulate them on the naturalness and ease of their performance.

During one of the breaks, a traditional dance instructor called Killjoy asks them how many hours and days they must have struggled to reach such a high standard. He can’t believe it when they tell him that it was no struggle at all and that they enjoyed every minute of it. He thinks they must be lying. Alessandra and Eduardo become a little confused and wonder if they did something wrong. They can’t understand all this analysis of their learning which just happened so naturally.

At this moment Karelov and his partner Bella, who are also attending the dance, invite the young couple to join them in a dance for four. They tell Karelov about their conversation with the old dance instructor and Karelov smiles. He explains that unfortunately there are still teachers like Killjoy in the Centre with old-fashioned beliefs about how learning takes place. Killjoy, it seems, has forgotten that learning can be an enjoyable experience and that when people feel relaxed they can produce their best work. Alessandra and Eduardo realise from their own recent experiences that what Karelov is saying is true and a smile of recognition appears on the young couple’s faces as they join Karelov and his partner for the dance.

The next day Karelov announces to Alessandra and the rest of the group that their initiation is now complete. They have all mastered naturally and with ease a basic understanding of the language and they are ready to move on. Their understanding of themselves and others has grown and so has their confidence. The friendships will last, the pleasant memories will remain, and the ending is just a beginning. As Karelov concludes his remarks, he invites everyone to hold hands and to join him in a circle, a circle of strength and unity.

Alessandra has since become a fine teacher herself and Eduardo is now working as an interpreter. And we leave them to continue their journey through life, following easily and naturally the best guide of all – the Karelov who resides within them.

Each of the stories presented in this collection is followed by a script for guided visualisation. These can be used with individual clients and/or when working with groups. The rest of this introduction deals with the background to, and the benefits to be derived from, the use of this technique.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) has made us aware of the main Learning Styles – visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, olfactory and gustatory. But what about the use of intuition? Acceptance of intuition gives us greater access to information, augments the limited perspective of our five familiar senses, and prompts us to transcend our linear view of time and space. Intuition entails listening to the inner voice, and guided journeys provide a means of accessing this resource.

Arnold Mindell refers to ‘a world channel’ through which communication takes place in ways that cannot always be reduced to the physics of seeing, hearing, moving, touching, smelling or tasting. This offers further evidence for the case to be made for a sixth Learning Style, which is the subject of this book.

So what are guided journeys? Basically, they involve creating pictures in your mind while following a script. Although the form of the ‘journey’ is controlled by the script, the content remains unpredictable. The process is a means of moving what Carlos Castaneda called ‘the assemblage point’ and of entering a state of non-ordinary reality. What we call ‘reason’ is merely a by-product of the habitual position of the assemblage point. Dreaming (and/or visualisation) gives us the fluidity to enter into other worlds and perceive the inconceivable by making the assemblage point shift outside the human domain. It can be argued that the fixation of the assemblage point is so overpowering that it has resulted in us forgetting where we came from and what our purpose was for coming here. Guided visualisation can be seen as a way of reconnecting with what we have forgotten and can be traced back to shamanic practices in pagan times.

A shaman is a person who journeys to non-ordinary reality in an altered state of consciousness. This state can be induced by rhythmic drumming, fasting, spiral dancing or by the use of psychoactive drugs. The purpose of the journey may be to diagnose or treat illnesses, for divination or prophecy, for acquisition of power, to solicit advice or for contact with spirits of the dead. In a sense, whether or not shamanic experience is simply the product of the imagination is irrelevant, as this does not make the process any less real to the participants.

As so-called primitive peoples lacked our advanced level of medical technology, they were motivated to develop the nontechnical capacities of the human mind for health and healing. Moreover, the basic uniformity of shamanic methods practised by tribal peoples from Siberia to Australia would suggest that, through trial and error, they arrived at the same conclusions. Perhaps an evolution of human consciousness galvanised by common needs, ideologies, mythologies, or religious intents evoked a collective expression. These ancient methods have been time-tested. In fact, they have been tested immeasurably longer than the other therapies now in vogue. Techniques used by practitioners of NLP – the use of anecdote as metaphor to challenge clients, for example – were used by Native American storytellers enchanting their audiences round the camp fire with their tales of coyote – the trickster. And the use of hypnosis for healing purposes can be traced back to the trance work practised by shamans.

The ancient tradition of shamanism appears to date back to Paleolithic times. Europe has the oldest evidence – animal skulls and bones believed to be shamanic ritual offerings found at sites inhabited between 50,000 and 30,000 BC. The word shaman is derived from a word in the Tungusic language of Siberia, one of the areas in which the classical form of shamanism is found.

Although shamanic practice obviously varies from culture to culture, there are certain core elements that are universal. The shaman traditionally ‘journeys’ to one of three places – the Lower World, the Middle World or the Upper World. The Lower World is where the shaman ‘journeys’ to meet Power Animals or Helpers who often have healing powers. The Upper World is where the shaman meets Sacred Teachers who can help with philosophical questions. The Middle World is where the Shaman ‘journeys’ to see our reality in its non-ordinary reality form. For example, he/she might journey to the Middle World to gain a deeper insight into a relationship he/she has with someone in this reality. There are also shamanic journeys to the Land of the Dead to contact people who have passed on or to help the dying pass on.

The following descriptions of the Upper and Lower Worlds are taken from Soul Retrieval by Sandra Ingerman.

“The Upper World is experienced by some as ethereal. The lighting is often very bright, and the colours can go from blinding light to soft pastels, to grey, to complete darkness. In the Upper World I know that I am standing on something but am often unsure what is holding me there. I might come across a crystalline city with intricate buildings of chambers made of crystal and glass. Or there might be a lake to lie beside, or a city of clouds. Power animals live here, as well as teachers in human form who can offer wise guidance on human relationships.

“In sharp contrast to the non-corporeal Upper World, the Lower World is reached through a tunnel leading down into the earth. Although non-ordinary beings and occurrences are the rule here, the landscapes are often recognisably earthy: caves, seas, dense jungle, and forests. I can stick my fingers into the earth here. The beings inhabiting the Lower World are the spirits of plants and animals, as well as human spirits who are connected with the mysteries of the earth.”

Another form of journeying that is undertaken is known as a Soul Retrieval. It is believed that when one undergoes a traumatic experience such as a major operation, sexual abuse or bereavement, part of the soul leaves the body to escape from the situation. Soul loss, like its psychological counterpart ‘disassociation’, implies a splitting off of parts of the psyche as a result of trauma. The shaman will journey to find and persuade the lost soul part to return to the client to make the person whole again.

Michael Harner, an American anthropologist, has developed a practical form of core shamanism more appropriate for people living in the twenty-first century. The idea is that instead of turning to a shaman for help with problems, you become your own shamanic practitioner and ‘journey’ yourself to the different worlds for help or guidance. Michael Harner was responsible for setting up “The Foundation for Shamanic Studies” in the USA. This organisation runs training courses, carries out research, and offers financial support to the few remaining living shamans that can be found in remote regions of the world, to enable them to continue their work and pass on their knowledge to future generations.

Attempts to explain shamans and their cures have been numerous. Some scholars have drawn parallels between shamanistic healing and psychoanalytic cures and have concluded that in both instances therapeutic symbols are created, leading to psychological release and physiological curing. Several anthropologists, rejecting the theory that shamans are basically neurotics or psychotics, have suggested that shamans possess certain cognitive abilities that are distinguishably superior to those of the rest of the community. Other scholars simply explain shamanism as the precursor of a more organised religious system or as a technique for achieving ecstasy. What cannot be disputed, however, is the fact that its practice has withstood the test of time and that reputable psychologists such as Gagan are now incorporating shamanism into their work.

Whether we endorse it or not, shamanism excites our imaginations, resonating with the right side of the brain, where creativity, intuition, spontaneity, and even healing capacities are said to reside. DNA, the macro-molecule that defines life, has within it a natural tendency to trigger spontaneous healing. Avital means for mobilising this tendency is imagery, which is most beneficial when it evokes emotion to energise the image into healing action. Whether the emotion felt is positive or negative seems not to matter; rather it is the intensity of the feeling that gives it power to affect body function.

With ‘guided’ as opposed to the freer forms of visualisation used in shamanic work, the role of the guide is clearly crucial to ensure a successful outcome. The guide needs to be attentive to the timing of the group and respectful of everyone’s experience. His/her role is not to judge but to accept people for who and what they are. What is required is trust in the process and in each person’s ability to interpret their own experiences. Because imagery created during the visualisation process originates from within, the participants can usually grasp their implications without any need for intervention by the facilitator.

The unconventional nature of shamanic journeys could be off-putting to certain clients, whereas guided visualisation is more acceptable and has a wider appeal. Moreover, it can be used in a variety of settings – by teachers in classrooms, by trainers in seminars, and by therapists with groups or individual clients. Guided journeys can also be popular with children. They often have imaginary friends they talk to and find it relatively easy to move from one reality into another. Here is a sample script that can be used for this purpose.

Meeting the Inner FriendClose your eyes and concentrate on your breath moving in … and … out … of your nostrils. And as you continue to breathe in … and … out of your nostrils, imagine that you’re on a path in a very thick forest. All around you are beautiful green trees, and you walk down this path towards the sound of water. You come to a small stream, and you walk over to the stream and look at your reflection in the water. (Pause)

Soon you feel someone else standing next to you, and you feel completely safe. You see another reflection next to yours in the water – perhaps an old, wise person, an animal, or an imaginary being – someone you feel is your friend, someone you have known a very long time, and someone you know you can trust. Your friend invites to you to follow across a small bridge that crosses the stream. You follow and find yourself climbing a hill that leads to a cave. Your friend enters the cave, sits down, andinvites you to follow. You enter the cave and sit down, and your friend begins to tell you about yourself. (Pause one minute.)

You may have a particular question you’d like to ask your friend, and you do that now. You listen carefully to the answer. (Pause one minute.)

Your special friend tells you that you can return to the cave whenever you like. He or she will always be there waiting for you, to help you with anything that you need. You thank your friend, walk back down the path over the bridge, looking once again at your reflection in the water. You notice how you feel as you walk up the path, out of the forest, and become aware of sitting here, fully present. Count to three to yourself, slowly open your eyes and stretch your arms and legs. Welcome back!

People are most receptive to right-brain insights when the body is relaxed and the mind free from internal chatter. Moreover, brain research confirms that as stress increases, the ability to learn decreases so establishing the right kind of atmosphere is clearly crucial. It is suggested that the scripts are read with a musical accompaniment to help produce conducive conditions. You can make use of the Baroque music that Dr Lozanov recommends for the Passive Concert in the Suggestopedic cycle. The beat per second paces the brain into a slower frequency alpha range of 7 to 11 cycles per second.

When words and music are closely associated, both are lodged in the right hemisphere of the brain – where metaphors are understood and emotions realised. A funeral procession would seem incomplete without Chopin’s Funeral March or the slow movement of the Eroica. Such emotional reinforcement is required because in our day-to-day lives our deepest feelings become somewhat inaccessible to us. Our highly successful adaptation as a species depends upon our being able to suppress or repress immediate emotional responses. Music can also bring groups of people together. Anyone who has played in an orchestra or sung in a choir knows that the process helps to facilitate group feelings of togetherness.

You will find that affirmations have been built into the scripts for visualisation or included in the form of poems and chants. Our world is full of affirmations – “Have a good day” or “Enjoy your holidays”, for example. We affirm because we like to wish the best for others and an affirmation ‘makes firm’ the things we want. It is a suggestion, a prediction, a blessing and well-wishing. And the more we affirm goodness in others, the more likely we are to find it.

Affirmations can be described as ‘brain convincers’ as they can be used to counter the little voice which comes with limiting self-beliefs. They can confuse and contradict our internal belief systems and displace negative and limiting attitudes with more positive ones. A changed image can lead to a changed behaviour and this is why affirmations can be such a powerful tool. The way the process works is explained in the following quote taken from Higher Creativity by Harman and Rheingold.

“Since the mind also operates by the process of inference, the mere creation of a mental image, similar to the real object, will cause it to react as if faced by the actuality. The image of an imagined object has mental effects that are in some ways very similar to the image of an object that is actually perceived…. If one is able to imagine something to be true, part of the mind appears to accept that imagined outcome as reality.”

It has been established that positive reinforcement and carefully chosen words can actually change the structure of the brain. An amine called serotonin plays a critical role in self-esteem. When there is immediate positive reinforcement, serotonin is released simultaneously into the brain and intestines inducing a sense of well-being and security. This feeling coincides with the chemical conditions for enhanced neural networking and higher order thinking.

It should be pointed out that not everyone will be willing to share their experiences in a group, especially if they are relatively new arrivals. If this turns out to be the case, there is clearly no point in forcing them to do so. As a follow-up to the visualisation, the participants can be invited to produce a piece of creative writing based on their experiences. Those members of the group who were reluctant to share their journeys with their fellow group members will probably feel more at ease when it comes to writing about them and in this way they will have the opportunity to take part in the process. Other forms of follow-up work could include drawing, painting, dancing, or singing. Expressing and communicating are ways of imprinting the information in our memories so it is helpful to follow imagery work with a verbal and/or nonverbal mode of expressing what we have experienced.

As a result of recently acquired knowledge of how the brain works, we now know that an experience with a powerful attachment to emotions or feelings is more likely to be retained in the long-term memory. By inviting the learners to attune to their feelings during visualisation, we can ensure this has a better chance of taking place.

If any of the participants seem to be a bit ‘spaced out’ after a guided visualisation, holding the neuro-vascular points on the forehead (the emotional stress release points halfway between the eyebrows and the hairline) will stimulate the flow of blood to the front part of the brain. This will activate the area of the brain that we use when making decisions, away from the back brain which relies on old memories and past experiences, thus helping the subject to regain control. If difficulty is experienced in finding these points, placing the fingertips of both hands on the centre of the forehead and simply massaging from the centre to the sides, can also have a beneficial effect.

A number of factors contribute to the way in which an individual approaches learning experiences including environmental, emotional, sociological, physical and psychological. The visualisation presented below can be used to stimulate participants into thinking about their preferred patterns of learning. It is taken from Accelerated Learning in the Classroom by Alistair Smith:

“As you listen to the music, I’d like you to relax. Feel the soles of your feet on the floor, settle down and prepare to enjoy a journey. You may close your eyes if you wish. Breathe deeply. As you listen to the music, relax from the top of your head to the soles of your feet. Enjoy the feeling.

“… Pause … We are about to begin a journey to explore how you enjoy learning best. When we return you’ll know allyou need to know to help you begin to learn successfully.… Pause … As you relax your eyes and your mouth and your ears and your neck, continue to breathe deeply and enjoy the music.

“Take yourself to a place where you enjoy learning. Enjoy the sights and sounds of being there. As you continue to relax and listen to the music, enjoy the sounds as you learn successfully. Whether your place is light or dark or warm or cool, you can feel success as a learner when you are there. When you are being even more successful as a learner enjoy the experience, continue to relax, asking yourself ‘What is it that is making me so successful here? Is the learning fun? What is making it fun? Is it useful? In what ways is it useful?’ … Pause … As you continue to relax and see and hear and feel yourself being a successful learner, how are others helping you be successful? Breathe deeply, listen to the music … And as you enjoy being in your perfect learning place, ask yourself ‘What’s the best time of day for me to be learning?’

“As you enjoy the music and continue to breathe deeply you may like to think a little more about how you learn best … what sort of things do you enjoy doing as you learn? Think of the subject you learn best. What is it you do in that subject that helps you more than anything else? And as you continue to breathe deeply, enjoying the music and your successes in learning spend some time there … Pause … before preparing to come back with all the secrets of your learning successes. And as the music fades and my voice rises, be aware of being back here (in the classroom) and of the others around you. Gently stretch out as the music stops.”

As well as there being different Learning Styles, there are also Intelligence Types to consider. Howard Gardner, an educational psychologist at Harvard University, has gathered evidence to suggest that there are at least eight different types – linguistic, mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinaesthetic, musical, interpersonal – the way we relate to others, intrapersonal – our talent to self-evaluate, and naturalist – our ability to classify and categorise. Boys, being later developers linguistically, grow up with an emphasis on doing rather than talking. The result is that they tend to have an underdeveloped interpersonal ability. It is often the case that they are discouraged from discussing or being open about feelings, and their world is more likely to be hierarchical, action-focused and competitive. Guided visualisations using relaxation techniques to appropriate music can help to develop interpersonal intelligence in such cases.

Our fast-paced, time-segmented daily lives make it difficult to be fully present at any one moment. We’re always thinking about what’s going to happen next and there is no time for quiet or reflection. The use of guided visualisation enables us to step outside this web we weave ourselves into and to reconnect with our inner resources.