DNA database

Big fuss at the moment about the possibility of having a database of everyone's DNA. Currently they have about 4.5 million out of a population of 60 million. If you get arrested, your DNA goes on the database even if you're never charged, or later found not guilty.

Lots of people say "if you're innocent you have nothing to fear, and plenty to gain by the fact that crime will be reduced".

My concern about it is this: there is an air of "infallibility" around DNA evidence at the moment, and it would be SO easy to fit someone up. Visit their house, get a sample of their DNA from their dustbin or their carpet, or follow them to the hairdressers... the police wouldn't find this too hard. Invite them to the police station for a chat, give them a glass of water, get the DNA off it.

So, you can end up back in the situation where, if some policeman decides he just "knows" you did it but can't prove it .... you could be wrongly convicted .... and policemen DO just sometimes get that "feeling" ....

World domination

. . . . A postscript to the Mytho weekend.

Last night, I was at an NLP group evening. We were being shown a particular therapy/facilitation process, and the exercise was to work with each other in pairs, on the concept of "having fun". To explore what fun means to us, and how we have it, and so on, using a fixed set of "clean" questions, and getting a start by picking a few photos from magazines . . . . . The "clean questions" are things like "what happens next?" and "is there anything else about that?" and "what kind of xxxx is that xxxx?"

Most people ended up with a bunch of concepts around smiling, silliness, naughtiness, connection with other people, and (I quote) "Italian men in tights". Plenty of fun. I've no objection to a bit of silliness or naughtiness.

However, I find it hard not to do Mytho, and I managed it, even using the "clean questions". And Mytho is a very directional process. It's not about feeling good or being happy. I spent a lot of time at Peta's weekend telling people that, just as it was told to me on my day 1. It's about taking action.

So we started from our funny photos and cartoons, and while the others were asking their clean questions and getting to "men in tights", my 5 mins of facilitation ended with the following exchange:

• Me "and then what happens?"
  
• Ans: "world domination".

LOL!

Another Mytho weekend

I spent last weekend assisting at a Mytho course run by Peta. She markets her courses using her branding of "Attraction Academy" -- in other words, relationship courses, particularly for people who aren't currently in one. But in reality, it's a Mytho weekend. There were five participants, and three assistants (myself, plus Debbie and Michael). And I had a very good time, and we did some good work.

Let me use the weekend as an example to illustrate Mytho, since I haven't "explained" Mytho for quite a while, and certainly not since I've been blogging online.

Each participant essentially goes through the same steps of the process. It starts with getting them to consider how they are when they are in a "good" state. A lot of the art of it is in getting the right "good" state though. If somebody remembers an experience (as I once had happen) where they were in a yacht race, and they won, there might be the state they were in before the start where they somehow "knew" they would win it, without knowing why; or the state they were in when they were totally immersed in sailing with no thoughts; the excited state when they first objectively worked out they were actually in the lead and likely to win; the happy state afterwards when they're being given the prize as a whole team .... Some states might be very focused and active, others might be blissed-out.

The process works by selecting in on exactly the state we want (this is where many people mess it up, settling for any apparently "happy" state), and then noting the body language, gesture, posture, and internal sensations that go with it. Getting the person to name the state, which has a powerful effect of putting it under their control. And then, in various ways, saying "show me again what you're like when you do xxxx". This introduces the idea that feeling that way, rather than being something that happens to them, is something they can do. Sneaky huh?

They sleep on that one, and then come back the next day for more exercises. The idea is introduced that this state could be "useful" for many things, amongst which might be flirting with someone, and making a decision about that person. There is an exploration of what they feel they wish to be doing in this state. All of this involves a lot of paying attention to their bodily signals and experience, which for many people is something they don't do very much.

On the Saturday evening is a movement exercise. Some call it "dance", but it isn't dance as I know it; there is no music. It's about moving in different ways, and I'm gradually "getting" more about how it relates to the rest of the weekend. One participant, for example, who is a barrister, and likes that because it involves debate against other people, didn't like it when the other person they were moving in the exercise with didn't "push back" . . . and this chimed with their relationship situation, where they were at a loss when they didn't have someone who would push back against them. (By contrast, my own preference in the movement exercise is to maintain the lightest possible touch, just fingertips, because I can feel more that way, rather than a crude test of strength.) I suppose, also, at a simple level, it helps the participants to get up and do a movement exercise with someone else, in front of an audience, if they suffer badly from shyness. Not that any of the ones on this course did.

On Sunday, now they've slept on it twice, the process completes, with various exercises to deepen the state, and their ability to get into it at will. It gets a little more tailor-made at this stage, and this is where the "frog" stuff comes in, as they adopt a "symbol" to which to attach the resources they've developed. If it's working, they all come up with an animal or a symbol, and then say (just like I did) "I don't know why I said that, it just popped into my mind".

For the barrister, I added another exercise that was not strictly on the agenda, but which I could see was required: "so what kind of situation used to knock you out of a good state?" Answer: when someone I'm with goes out for the evening, and I'm left on my own.... I get all needy, and it ends up driving them away .... Me: "okay, so we won't go there .... but from your good state, now, if you think about someone going out for the evening leaving you on your own ... how is that? What would you do?" Ans: "It's okay ... it's okay for me to be doing nothing...." which was a novel experience for her... because it needs to be state in which you just "don't notice" the bad stuff that you don't have to. (Whereas, as a barrister, I imagine you're focused on noticing the flaws in someone else's case ... a bit like being a software engineer, looking for the bugs in a system... essentially, a professional problem-noticer. Which may be less than ideal for relationships....)

It's like a first weekend's experience of skiing, or of playing a musical instrument, so that you get your first simple tune. It's a taste of it. Enough to know whether you want it. But then you have to start practising it every day. And there are a thousand more subtle things to learn: the theory, the history, and some more advanced skills .... lots of hard work .... and yet that first taste is enough to know. And so the participants leave, and I'd like to think that if some of them begin intentionally to adopt "that" state, they'll have more success with their relationships of all kinds...

(May I remind readers that I'd prefer them not to pass on the address of this blog to other people).