Yin & Yanguage

This last weekend, I participated in Kathleen Radebaugh’s Yin and Yanguage: A Metaphorical Exploration of Creative Process.

I didn’t know what to expect, exactly. But I know Kathleen pretty well, so I knew it would be heartfelt and probably about deep change, or the beginnings of deep change.

From a selfish perspective, I also hoped it would involve her telling stories and putting me into trance. She’s great at these two things. More about that later.

The theory or history of how this class was developed is easy to describe: Kathleen is an NLP Practitioner, she’s done extensive work with Steve Gilligan and his Self Relations/ deep trance work, and she’s the third biggest fan I’ve ever met of David Grove’s Clean Language, Clean Space, and Emergent Knowledge. Add in Kathleen’s bend towards deep change and her recent explorations into her own masculine and feminine sides, and voila, you have Yin and Yanguage.

But what do you actually do in this class? That’s a little more difficult to describe.

Before we get to that, let’s talk results. The classes are purposefully small, so there were 3 of us participants. By the end of the class, I had more awareness of the balance in my own life of yin and yang (there’s not much, thanks for asking!). One participant had started to rewrite his life purpose, which has been the same for over 20 years. The other participant realized she had a limiting belief about flow and productivity being exclusive of each other, and she had started to revise that belief. None of us were thinking much about any of those things when we arrived.

These changes occurred in a 3 hour class.

Next, let’s talk metaphor and trance. I would lick the word crumbs off Kathleen’s fingers, she’s such a masterful storyteller and hypnosis guide. Kathleen is an accomplished novelist and storyteller – of both the literary and the vernacular kinds. And she’s spent years actually practicing hypnosis. The thing we all think of doing when we’re taking the NLP Practitioner series of classes – “hey, I could record my own voice and then put myself in hypnosis,” – she actually did that, over and over, enough that she achieved the outcome of those trances, within a year: she successfully sold her Florida house in the midst of a housing bust, got rid of most of her possessions, and moved to Austin.

Add those skills to her latest passion: David Grove, Penny Tompkins, and James Lawley’s work. She’s only taken a day class in these topics, and she is indeed “self taught.” But she doesn’t just sit around and read books. She uses what she learns to practice on herself and anyone else she can get an audience with who really wants personal change. She’s self taught in the way that means “she actually taught herself” instead of “she has no clue what’s going on because she’s only read books.” (As a side note, she does have immediate plans to take classes with the wonderful, talented, and informative Penny and James in England.)

So, you can tell I understand what she’s up to, mostly. Or at least I have a map of it :)

Besides understanding what she’s doing, I also happen to think it’s a very powerful class for personal change.

I’ll attempt to describe how the class actually works. Everyone arrives and mills around and says hello to each other. Kathleen welcomes folks and issues a simple set of instructions involving a box, a number, and you doing some writing/ drawing or something of that sort. You do some arranging of those items per her direction. Then, Kathleen uses her magical powers of metaphor and deep hypnosis to take you into trance while you create something -- anything. The class oscillates between creating in trance and arranging in space, creating in trance and arranging in space.

This class is not for people who prefer lengthy descriptions of why they’re doing something. But, if you want to spend a few hours with that dear friend, your right brain, knowing that any response you have is just right, this could be the class for you.

That’s a bit of a lame description, isn’t it? Let’s see….maybe something metaphorical...

Imagine yourself walking in a beautiful, verdant forest where you feel perfectly safe and fully at peace. Take a moment to look around and notice the bark on the trees, what’s beneath your feet, how the sunlight is coming through the trees. Every leaf, every bug buzzing across your path, every forest bird call, even the sunlight dappling through the forest canopy, and the sound of your own footsteps reminds you of your innate ability to create, and create you do.

When you work with your life issues, goals, dreams, and blocks in that space, so much can happen.