What is the Whirly Gig?
David Grove was investigating where attention goes during and after traumatic events and he started to find different ways that clients could re-access and reintegrate parts of themselves that had fragmented. He experimented with electric wheelchairs, spinning chairs, acrobatic hoists and other ways of asking a client to attend to their proprioception and answer the question: what do you know from this direction here? But what he really wanted was something that allowed them to choose their direction, to have 360 degrees of freedom. Together with Shaun Hotchkiss, he played around until he had the machine just the way he wanted it. Then it was all about finding out what happened next to clients when using this unique instrument.
Essentially it can be used as a spatial coach. David, and now Shaun, used the whirly gig for any symptom that doesn't respond easily to talking therapies or where a completely new perspective is required. It can be used by executive coaches wanting to plan their retirement, by people coming out of abusive relationships and wanting to leave their old identity in history and rebuild themselves, adults who've had parts of themselves fragment into space during childhood abuse, those wanting to loosen the addiction of obsessive thoughts - really anything that you can imagine might need a different approach.
The process is that you're invited to consider what you'd like to have happen. You're strapped securely into the seat so that your system doesn't need to stay concerned about safety. Then two practitioners will hold and move the machine and one will facilitate. They might ask - would you like to go this way, or this way or this way or this way and you can allow your whole system to guide you into which direction has meaning. They will move you very slowly so that you can adjust your movement or change direction. Usually, the client finds one position that is meaningful and downloads new insights and then the facilitator will gauge when it is time for a new direction. The techniques of Symbolic Modelling, using metaphor maps, Clean Space, Emergent Knowledge, and the Power of Six can all be adjusted and used with the whirly gig.