About Clean Touch

What is Clean Touch?

Clean Touch is a process that invites a client to access their body’s wisdom through the creation of metaphor in a shared dialogue of giving and receiving touch.

Clean Touch has been devised by Jackie Calderwood and Jeni Edge as a way to share insights and techniques from their explorations of  how Clean Language, Clean Space and Emergent Knowledge might be integrated to enrich body-massage. Whilst Jackie and Jeni are both trained massage practitioners, Clean Touch requires no prior bodywork experience and is adaptable to a wide range of contexts and applications including one-to-one sessions, group work, personal development and enriching relationships. Clean Touch can be used alongside other forms of bodywork, therapy and expressive arts; and can be given and received without the need to remove clothing.

The Clean Touch Workshops:

The first workshop on Clean Touch was presented at the Clean Change Company’s International Clean Conference, London, 10-12th May 2013.

From this, we were  invited to provide individual sessions and two group workshops  at Caitlin Walker’s A Northern Taste of Clean, Liverpool, 28-30th June 2013.

Inspired by the enthusiastic response from participants at these events, we presented the first full-day Clean Touch workshop on Friday 27th September 2013 in Central London. A fantastic group of participants, some new to Clean and bodywork, others with vast experience, tried out some of our newest Clean Touch activities, generating hearty discussion about Clean Touch, how to introduce it to others and apply it in their own practices – which include psychotherapy, massage, shiatsu, yoga, nutrition, physiotherapy, work with children and students. A review and comments from workshop participants are published on this site.

We also led a workshop and worked with Clean Touch during the residential weekend workshop ‘Personal Presence in Community’, led by Jackie Calderwood and Rupert Meese in Leicestershire 25-27 October 2013. Further information online here.

By invitation of the York Clean Language Practice Group we held a day workshop, open to all, in York on Saturday 23rd November 2013. It was a lovely day with enthusiastic participants skilled in Clean Language, coaching, physiotherapy, and other practices. We introduced 2 on 1 facilitation for the first time in a workshop, with great response. See the feedback and comments for more information.

If you’d like to book a session, invite us to run a workshop for you, or hear about upcoming events, please contact us: welcome@cleantouchmassage.com

Foundational Principles: Metaphor and Clean Touch

The Clean Touch process draws on the therapeutic work of psychotherapist David Grove who developed Clean Language and Emergent Knowledge as a tool for working with his clients, and on Penny Tompkins and James Lawley’s development of Symbolic Modelling, and also Caitlin Walker’s Clean Set-up. Clean Touch is a developing model of how to apply these processes in the frame of bodywork.

A key principle is that metaphor has a fundamental role in the very essence of meaning and understanding:

 Gregory Bateson said… “Yes, metaphor. That’s how the whole fabric of mental interconnections holds together. Metaphor is right at the bottom of being alive.”

Fritjof Capra, Uncommon Wisdom: Conversations with remarkable people (1988) Bantam, New York [page 76-77]

            “Metaphoric images are … the poetic basis of mind, making possible communication between all people and all things by means of metaphors.”            

James Hillman, The Soul’s Code (1996) Random House [pages 39-40]

            “Metaphor is not merely a linguistic mode of expression; rather, it is one of the chief cognitive structures by which we are able to have coherent, ordered experiences that we can reason about and make sense of.” 

Mark Johnson, The Body in the Mind (1987) University of Chicago Press [pages xiv-xv]

To pay exquisite attention to the client’s emerging metaphorical landscape without judging or influencing the nature of the metaphoric space  is the premise of the ‘Clean’ suffix of David Grove’s work:

“The first objective is for the therapist to keep the language clean and allow the client’s language to manifest itself. The second objective is that the clean language used by the therapist be a facilitatory language; in the sense that it will ease entry into the matrix of experience, and into an altered state that may be helpful for the client to internally access his experience.

By asking clean questions we shape the location and the direction of the client’s search for the answer. In asking a question we do not impose upon the client any value, construct or presupposition about what he should answer. … The client is free to find an answer and may keep the answer to himself. It may not be necessary for the client to share his memories, thoughts or feelings, or express them to the therapist. In many therapies the object of asking questions is to gather information from the client. Using our approach, … questions are not asked to gather information or to understand the client’s perspectives. We ask our questions so that the client can understand his perspective internally, in his own matrix. … We want to leave our questions embedded in the client’s experience. If the client were to come out of [the] matrix to explain matters, a different environment would be created.

Our questions will have given a form, made manifest some particular aspect of the client’s internal experience in a way that he has not experienced before.”

          David Grove and Basil Panzer, Resolving Traumatic Memories (1989) Irvington [pages 8-10]

It is this metaphorical, information centred approach that has inspired the development of Clean Touch.  The use of metaphor enables the giving and receiving of touch to take place in a respectful way that honours the client’s individuality.  Client and facilitator create a unique experience in which the facilitator is guided in their touch by the client’s developing metaphor.

Developing a metaphor in conjunction with massage and bodywork increases the client’s awareness of their own body as well as their active involvement and agency in the session.  It facilitates the client in finding their own outcomes and solutions from a deeper embodied understanding of themselves.

For further information about Clean Language and the work of David Grove please refer to:

Penny Tompkins and James Lawley’s book ‘Metaphors in Mind’ and The Developing Company website http://www.cleanlanguage.co.uk/

Wendy Sullivan and Judy Rees’ book ‘Clean Language: Revealing Metaphors and Opening Minds’ and the Clean Change Company website http://www.cleanchange.co.uk/

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