Managing the sense of 'busy-ness' that life can bring: using Clean questions to bring a moment of calm reflection and connect with w

I’ve recently started running Listening Space courses for parents in which participants are: introduced to models of human behaviour to help them understand their own thoughts and emotions better – such as Steve Peters’ Chimp Paradox experience powerful new ways of listening deeply to themselves and to others using Clean Language questions, and are given tools to help nurture healthy relationships within the family. I interviewed one participant, whose children are 8 and 6 ye

Over the past few years I have noticed that if I sit still for long enough to ‘capture the moment’, a poem appears.  And if I find myself gr

Clean questions can transform the way that you listen. One participant from a recent Listening Space course, Mark, describes how he found himself switching to a very different kind of listening as he used these questions in a conversation with his colleague, Anna. She was telling him about how she was struggling to make a decision about a promotion she had been approached to apply for. Rather than going into his usual ‘fix-it’ mode, Mark decided to just sit back and listen as

Taking time to reflect on what's important to you can be a great antidote to all the busy-ness of our everyday lives. This blog invites

Teenage life comes with its ups and downs, bringing with it emotions that can feel confusing and overwhelming at times. As a parent of a teenager it is easy to find yourself distanced and shut out when all you want to do is help to make things better. In this blog Mishtu tells us about the impact that using Clean questions has had in her relationship with her 13 year-old daughter, Anika, enabling them to communicate more openly with one another. Even from when she was tiny, A

A music teacher friend recently shared her experience of working with a pupil who has Asperger's syndrome and struggles to manage his em

I’d like to introduce you to Sophie – a mother of two young children; Ella, who is eight years old, and Sam, who is five. Having found herself getting run down by all the demands of raising a young family, Sophie decided to look for more constructive ways of managing her children’s more challenging behaviour. She came across Clean questions at a parent workshop and found that they had an almost immediate impact for her: Clean questions help me to know how to help my children.

I recently interviewed Annie Rappeport, a 32 year-old American PhD student, about her experience of chronic illness as part of a listening project for the International Listening Association. Clean questions were used to invite Annie to consider what has worked well for her in navigating the past six years of ill-health. It is hoped that her very eloquent and moving answers might provide a useful resource for others who find themselves in a similar situation and for the healt

What happens if we resist the temptation to rescue? If we are willing to sit alongside a person in their discomfort rather than go into ‘fi

Clean questions help to keep a conversation going without me having to think of clever things to say.

When someone is feeling tension all around the top of their body, how could just two simple questions be as helpful as a massage? Clean questions are a simple, powerful and respectful way of inviting a person to explore their experience. These questions, used with the exact words or gestures the person has used, help to keep the assumptions, suggestions and interpretations of the person asking the questions out of the way - leaving the person answering the questions free to d

The Listening Space can be used for joint exploration, facilitating two people together to explore an issue that is important to them. Wheth

There is an African Zulu greeting that people give when they meet one another: Sawubona. More than our traditional ‘hello’, this word literally means ‘I see you’. It is a way of saying, ‘I see your personality, your humanity, your dignity, your respect.’ The response to this greeting is Ngikhona: ‘I am here’. You are letting the other person know that you feel you have been seen and understood, that your personal dignity has been acknowledged. Inherent in this Zulu greeting,

Change the way we listen to ourselves and we make better decisions, imagine our future more clearly, and take more pleasure in what we do. Change the way we listen to others and we can understand and connect with them with greater richness and depth, to mutual benefit. Clean Language is a simple, powerful and respectful way of communicating and exploring a situation. At its heart lies a set of Clean questions combined with a person’s exact words only. If we remain curious and

Naoki Higashida's powerful description of living with autism is a salutary reminder that we should never assume to know what another per