A Glossary of Commonly Used Laceweb Words

Written 1998. Last updated Feb 2007.

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Meanings of words in this Glossary are those used within the Laceweb and often differ considerable from normal meanings.

A far more extensive glossary of Laceweb terms (265k.) is contained in the Healing Ways Encyclopaedia

Any word italicised in the definitions are included in the Glossary

AGENDA

What may happen during our time together. It is a open shared broad understanding evolved by locals. It focuses on (i) sharing healing ways towards aspects of wellbeing desired by the locals (ii) exploring ways of extending the links between healers. It may be vague at the outset of the gathering and flexibly emerge from exchanges during the gathering.

CONSENSUAL EXPLORINGS

'Consensus' means that all agree on something. In 'consensual exploring' we are seeking what we share and understand in common. If a healing way 'works' for a number of people, it may be past on to others in the community as 'something that works. It may be added to healing ways used by the community. Consensual explorings may extend both the healing network and the number of healing ways. More people may become involved and share in knowing healing ways that work.

CONTEXT

A space rich with shared meanings (refer frame)

DISSOCIATION

It is possible to use our senses of seeing, hearing, feeling etc. internally - we can for example, see with our 'minds eye'. When we do this, we can do it as if we are looking normally out of our own eyes. When we 'dissociate', we take an 'observer' position so we shift our perspective to watching ourselves engaging in what is happening. This 'distancing' of ourselves may lower the intensity of feelings we experience.

EMPOWER

To enable people to enrich the range of healing ways they can use on themselves and others in self help towards wellbeing.

ENABLER - ENABLING

The enabler may assist local people share ways healing the mind, body and communal life. Enablers assist in evolving a shared healing context - for example, this is a time and place where we may respectfully help each other (self help) in sharing self healing. Locals determine if and when things happen and what needs are addressed. The enabler is a resource that may be used if the locals want their assistance.

ENABLING HEALING

Refer the terms enabling and healing

ETHICS

Moral principles and a moral code that may be used as a nurturing guide to conduct. The Laceweb's ethics have been evolving and being refined for over thirty years (refer Laceweb Ethics Statement at end of this Glossary)

EVOLVE

To unfold, open out, extend, enrich, unroll. Used (i) in talking about extending and coming up with new healing ways and how and when to use and combine them, (ii) in developing and finding new enablers and healers and (iii) in creating new links between small groups of nurturers.

EXPLORE

To seek to find out things. The process of discovering what works and what changes may be made to have something work.

FRAME

A frame 'sets off' and enriches a painting. Other things may be framed. A frame may help in establishing meaning. Suppose you have decided to have a few friends over to your place - We may set up a meaning frame as we invite people, e.g.:

'It's to dance. Bring your drums and food to share. We'll have a fire and catch up with what everyone has been doing.

A 'frame' may be an actual or symbolic border - an edge, setting something apart, creating a space (*), a place (*) and/or context (*). A frame can put a 'boundary on a context. This is a context of a 'particular kind'. This is what is going on. These concepts are described more fully in the Concepts and Frameworks section of Healing Ways Encyclopaedia - a glossary of 265k.

A frame can clarify the meaning of behaviour. For example, a person sees another jumping around outside in a 'crazy' fashion - clutching his shirt. Discovering that a poisonous spider has fallen down that person's shirt 'frames' what's going on, or more particularly, reframes (changes the frame) - it changes 'crazy' into 'self care'. Framing and reframing can be extensively used in healing.

FRAMEWORK

A simple structure that ideas and action can be added to - just like we sometimes use in building a house. Laceweb frameworks are a little bit like flat spider's webs. Anyone present at a healing context can add to the web. We all make it together. Enablers do not bring along fully made webs. All present help in creating the framework that meets everyone's needs.

HEALER

A person who heals.

HEAL

To do any nurturing thing that will increase 'wellness' - wellbeing - being well.

INTERVENING - INTERVENTION

To take healing action, to mediate

LOCAL-LATERAL

Linking is with local co-equals. It is a flat structure. This is why the word lateral, meaning 'sideways', is used. No one person is 'in charge'. Really, everyone involved energises what happens.

MAPS

We all make internal representations or 'maps' in our mind about what happens to us. We make our own 'representations'. We make, as it were, maps of the territory. And importantly, the map is not the territory! We would never make this confusion between a map and the chunk of land that it re-presents. And yet many people mistakenly view their map as THE TERRITORY - the Truth.

Probably you have shared an experience with a few others and then, when you have recalled it later, everyone seems to have a different version of what happened. Sometimes it is as if you we're all at different happenings. These differences tend to happen for a number of reasons. For example, different people may attend to different aspects of what is happening. Some people see more of what's happening. Others hear more of what's happening. Others may get more of a feel for what is happening. Some people are off in their heads and may know little of what is happening when they are standing right beside you! People may further filter what they attend to. For example, some people tend to filter for what is, for them, 'right' about what is happening. Others filter for what is, for them, 'wrong'. Clarifying each person's 'maps' can help untangle social conflict and assist us be more helpful nurturers.

MEDIATING - MEDIATION

To act as a go-between - as a peace-healer. The term is used to describe a form of healing therapy which has as a primary aim enhancing relationships between and healing a group of dis-eased people - 'mediation therapy'

MICRO -EXPERIENCES

People learn by experiencing a little bit of a healing way - hence the term 'micro', meaning small. Typically, once a person has experienced a number of little bits of a healing way, they may quickly learn to appropriately flow these bits together. Having personally experienced what the healing way is like may assist them to pass it on to others.

MODEL

A description of the key aspects of what to do and how to do it. It is like a cake recipe. It acts as a guide to action, similar to the small card-board houses architects make so we can see what the house will be like when it is built.

MODELING

Often local healers may have been using a healing way with no real idea of what they are doing - what the key bits are. Because of this, they may have little or no capacity to pass the way on to others. Some Laceweb enablers have an ability to 'model' another healers behavior. By 'unpacking' and making a model of what the other person is doing, the key bits may be passed on so that others may soon be able to use the same healing way.

NURTURING

Caring for and supporting another's self help towards wellbeing.

PLENARY SESSIONS

For most of the time at Laceweb healing gatherings people may be experiencing healing ways individually, in pairs, or in small groups. When all present at a healing gathering come together again it is called 'returning to plenary session'. Typically, these are useful times for all to share and compare understandings and experience.

PROJECTION

A process where a person claims that others have attributes and mental factors that are really in themselves.

RAPPORT BUILDING

People that are 'getting on very well with each other' are said to 'be in rapport' or 'have rapport with each other'. The natural tendency for people in rapport is to start 'matching' many of the other person's behaviors. For example, they may begin to speak at the same pace, intensity, and volume. They may stand or sit in similar ways and use similar hand gestures. They may have the same breathing pattern. There are simple things that people may easily learn to do to help in building rapport with others.

RECONCILING

It is a healing nurturing processes restoring and furthering a relationship when it is strained or has broken down. Reconciling is one of the aspects of mediating.

REFRAMING

Refer 'frame'

REFUGEE

A person taking shelter and protection away from danger and distress (taking refuge) away from their normal place of living - away from religious, political or other oppression and persecution - generally in another country.

REHABILITATING - REHABILITATION

Self help healing action towards wellbeing (being well).

SELF HELP

Laceweb action involves people helping themselves and each other

SENSORY SUBMODALITIES

Each of our senses modes (or categories, i.e, seeing, hearing, feeling etc.) have a number of sub-modes. Some examples of the visual sub-modes are colour, shape, form, saturation and location. Note that some sub-modes can have a range, such as distance (close-far away), and others are of an 'either/or' variety, such as foreground/background. They could be simply called 'sensory detail'. A number of healing ways make use of sensory submodalities

SOMATIC

From the Greek word 'soma' meaning body. For example 'somatic therapy' is a term used for therapies centred on the body. An example is the awareness through movement process called Feldenkrais.

STRATEGIES

Sequential bits of sensory experience which lead to varying outcomes ('excellent' through to 'poor'). People, without being aware of it, use hundreds of strategies every day. For example, (see a word in the minds eye) (get a familiar 'looks correct' feeling) may work well as a spelling strategy. (Hear a word) and (spell the word how it sounds) is generally a poorer strategy. The word yacht may end up being spelt 'yot'. Some strategies have more than two bits.

Often, traumatised people are locked in on a simple two step sensory experience . People may learn healing strategies on how to interupt or collapse poor strategies.

THERAPY

Healing ways leading to wellbeing

TRANSFERENCE

Where a person shifts or transfers positive or negative feelings derived from elsewhere, on to another person or group

TREATMENT

Healing self help towards wellbeing.

TORTURE

To inflict mental and/or physical pain

TRAUMA

All the aversive experience that is the consequence of awful and dreadful happenings to self or others. It includes emotional and other mind and body pains and mindbody disfunction including for example, pervasive loss of energy and will, depression, social withdrawal and sleep disturbance. Trauma tends to be ongoing unless healing action interupts it.

TRAUMA SURVIVORS

People who have survived trauma (see above). They may have a number of healing ways that they are using to help them come to terms with their trauma.

VICTIM

A person killed or injured during some happening

WELLBEING - BEING WELL

The term 'wellbeing' means the state of 'being well' and includes mind, body, habitat, communal, economic, emotional, family, spiritual, environmental and agricultural wellbeing.

LACEWEB ETHICS

The following ethical frame-work is a model which may be used:

For enablers and nurturers:

to help others help themselves
to use the self help action model in supporting other people taking self help action in enriching wellbeing
to recognise the worth of each individual
to show respect for the integrity of others by responding to each person's unique resources and by appropriately recognising and responding to the differences among people
to be responsible for using their caring, sharing, playing, mediating and healing micro-experiences to increase people's knowledge, understanding, playfulness, welfare and happiness
to make - while using their micro-experiences - every effort to protect the wellbeing of those seeking their support
to use their micro-experiences only for purposes consistent with positive mutual outcomes
to show respect for the integrity of all non-human life and non-life forms - nurturing the land, air, rivers and sea

Personal Accountability

Enablers and nurturers:

to represent fully and accurately their own level of caring, sharing, playing, mediating and healing micro-experience, credentials and areas of competence.
to encourage the spread of humane and playful micro-experiences within the general community.
to accept responsibility for their work and its consequences
to use every endeavour to ensure that their support is used appropriately and ecologically
to make every effort to continue to expand the limits of their own models and maps of the world, and to increase their competence through new learning
to only make such statements and claims in representing his/her actions that are true and accurate to the best of his/her information
to make no statement or claim that gives false information about his/her actions or about actions of other Enablers and nurturers
to present the nature and purpose of their approach in language which can be understood and evaluated by other people
to openly and freely represent the nature of outcomes and processes used in self help action.
to offer referral to other enablers and nurturers should it become reasonably clear that the recipient of support provided by a enabler/nurturer is not benefiting from such support
to openly and freely represent the nature of conflicts of interest involving those for whom they provide support
to avoid exploitative relationships with others for whom they provide support

Recognition of Current Limits

For enablers and nurturers:

to recognise the current limits of their personal competence and of the caring, sharing, playing, mediating and healing processes, any other personal limitations and/or problems that might interfere with providing appropriate support to others.
to seek feedback from others qualified to give it, where such limitations or problems are suspected to refrain from further support where their own limitations or problems would interfere

Public Discussion of the Laceweb Approach

For enablers and nurturers:

to act publicly in ways aimed to enhance rather than detract from the community's perception of the humane, playful approach, its practitioners, or practices
to make any statements to the others such that they provide balanced representations of the playful humanity model and its limits. Such statements will be aimed to inform others about the principles of humanity and playfulness, and to assist others in making informed decisions and choices. While an enabler's and nurturers' personal standards and ethics are generally a private matter, the ethical standards of the humane, playful, together community take precedence insofar as they affect the public perception of the Laceweb Approach.

Respect For Other Lifeways

For enablers and nurturers:

to sufficiently understand the competencies of related fields to make appropriate referrals to other groups.
to show respect for micro-experienced persons in related fields by learning and aknowledging their customary procedures when interacting with them.

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