A Personal Account & Notes of the Clean Touch Workshop Day, London, September 2013

by Lara Just

I first heard about “Clean Touch” at the Clean Language conference and again in a recent Clean Language training course. “Clean Language” is a therapeutic technique with words, whereby the practitioner takes out as much judgment and interpretation as possible to stay predominantly with the client’s moment to moment experiencing.

When I heard about the September 2013 “Clean Touch” workshop, I was unclear what it meant. Having heard that it’s something to do with Clean Language, I still was not sure what it really meant – especially in combination with touch!

In my psychotherapeutic and coaching work I like to have an open mind to other holistic approaches using information from the body and our senses to enable change. Since I am passionate about mind-body therapies and include a number of ‘Clean’ approaches in my clinical practice – I was curious and wanted to know more!

And I was not disappointed! During the workshop, I had the privilege to experience an amazing and quite unexpected session for me. Below is a summary of what I feel the practical sessions were about:

• The “receiver” is in control to give permission for touch and the kind of touch (or not!) on her or his own terms.

This was a bit different to sessions at the usual body workers (massage, Reiki therapists etc.) where you ‘kind of’ let the therapist just work your body as they are trained to do. I often trusted they know best as experts, though wished they would spend more time on a certain area in a particular way. But even when you voice this, the wish may be granted in a different way; and not everyone feels necessarily comfortable to ‘demand’ exactly what you feel you need at that moment in time.

• The “giver’s” or “facilitator’s” skillful questioning (‘clean’ questions) can help reveal unexpected information that goes much deeper and beyond the physical experience.

 My body started literally ‘speaking’ to me… Areas of my body suddenly needed attention where I didn’t realize tension existed before. Rich metaphors came up for me, images and moving symbols that just made sense at the time.

•  The ‘clean touch’ process can be experienced as a light trance-like state (for both (!) ‘giver’ and ‘receiver’).

 This was particularly noticeable as time and space seemed to resolve for me in both roles (‘giver’ or ‘receiver’) a little like in a hypnotherapeutic state that I’ve experienced before but perhaps lighter and guided by the “receiver’s” own internal experiences.

• It’s a very ‘present’, collaborative, co-created and respectful fully in-the-moment experience.

At times the facilitator intuitively ‘knew’ what to do and with my guidance this was refined and developed and felt like a dynamic flow, like a co-created moment-to-moment unfolding story, though primarily led by the receiver.

I am happy to share a personal example (though be aware this may sound unusual or ‘strange’):

One of the metaphors that ‘opened up’ was that I ‘sensed’ and ‘saw’ a ‘brown sludgy knot’ under one of my left shoulder blades. Later a white greyish ball appeared on the other side. This white grayish ball then morphed into a big stretchy white smokey starfish, protectively wrapping its arms in all directions over my back, the left knot and certain organs (kidneys/adrenals) during this process.

It certainly helped my back tension at the time, but to this day I still don’t know if it was the physical working on the knot, the mental imagery of a starfish protecting and helping to dissolve the brown sludgy knot, the facilitator’s unwittingly healing touch or my own tapped-into capacity to self-heal…or a combination of all of the above and more…?

It may be a little hard to explain now, but when it happened it made a lot of sense, in a pure state of relaxation, comfort and curious wonderment when literally ‘watching’ a beautiful story like that unfolding with your ‘inner eyes’. Hearing other participants report on their own experiences, it became clear to me that it wasn’t so unusual and that each participant had very different but uniquely individual expressions of their experiences.

Likewise being the “giver” or “facilitator” was a very powerful experience. It felt like just watching my own body sensing and doing something nearly of its own accord- following the client’s needs starting to ‘see’ & ‘sense’ what was being described together with a powerful heat or energy flowing through me that I did not think was possible like this before. When I thought about it later I clearly could not have ‘perspired’ that much because of hard work as I literally just lay hands on with limited pressure! It was a pleasurable experience however to witness someone else’s metaphoric story unfold, and to work very respectfully and collaboratively with a person’s body wisdom and own healing processes.

It was great meeting so many other professionals from varied backgrounds and interests as a beneficial networking opportunity. I came away feeling quite “enriched”, and though a bit zoned out immediately after the exercises ;-), overall “strangely” relaxed and refreshed!

Thank you for this great experience, and I am looking forward to more workshops like this! I would love the idea of a practice group so that we can serve better our clients. I will continue to utilise some of these approaches, and continue exploring them for myself as well as some of my clients.

 

Lara Just is a Stress Management and Resilience Coach for individuals and groups working in London. Her emphasis is on creative heart-based approaches to change for improved mind-body health and wellbeing. She is a qualified psychotherapist, HeartMath® provider, clinical nutritionist and Reiki practitioner. She works with various mood as well as psychosomatic disorders (unexplained illnesses). She’s a member of the British Association for Applied Nutrition and Nutritional Therapy (BANT), is a member trainee of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) and is registered with the Complementary and Natural Healthcare Council (CNHC). For more information, see www.adadsu.com and www.yourfoodanalyst.com or contact her on 07791 991199 or lara@adadsu.com.