I Ching is a creative method for using the ancient archetypes to explore the way our minds work. Through this activity the student-oracle learns how to influence their friends. And they also increase their ability to help people make decisions and choices by establishing a positive “rapport” with them.
Levels: Intermediate and upper intermediate; the activity is also good for advanced learners if prompts are used more creatively.
Language goals: Learning how to make suggestions, give orders, talk about future events, ask who-questions and paraphrase sentences.
Communicative and NLP goals: Learning how to establish “rapport” and how to use the Metamodel interview to get information about the interlocutor.

Group activity

Instructions:

 

  • Arrange students in groups of five

  • Each group chooses a friend as the “oracle”

  • Each student, except the oracle, must think of at least four situations for which he needs some advice

  • The oracle asks each friend to think of a question in mind, then takes six coins in his/her cupped hands, shakes them, and lets them fall at random on the desk; then he/she pushes the coins into a vertical column

  • Each student asks one question at a time and, after the oracle has delivered the answer, they write an account of how the oracle comment may be helpful to them.

Instructions for the oracle:

Tails represents receptive energy and is called a "yin" line.     –   –

Heads represents active energy and is called a "yang" line.  ——

The lower three coins refer to the combination of yin and yang lines on the left hand side of the chart.

The upper three coins are matched with the combination of yin and yang lines at the top of the chart.

The box where the two lines cross contains a phrase which is the answer to the friends’ questions .

The Chart on the next two pages presents  the sixty four most common situations we can face in our lives.

First spread the coins  like this (on the left):

Then align them like this (on the right):

Click on the buttons on the right if you want to download the divination charts!!! 1st chart and  2nd chart

 

 

Another group activity

Levels:

Intermediate, advanced

Instructions:

 
  • Students work in groups as in the previous activity
  • Each student asks the question and waits for the oracle’s answer
  • Since the oracle is rather laconic (as usual!), students try to elicit more explicit responses by using wh-questions and strategic expressions like the ones listed below
  • The oracle answers again by adding details or paraphrasing what he (she) has just said.
Suggestions:

The activity can be adapted to more advanced learners if you “casually forget” to give them ready-made prompts. However  Witch Hazel has listed some useful expressions just to make life easier for your students…  ;-)

Prompts:

  • What do you mean by that?

  • When will that happen? Could you be more precise?

  • How long should I do that for?

  • How long shall I wait?

  • Who’s that person?

  • Where will that take place?

  • Can you give me more details?

  • Tell me more!

Remember the only forbidden questions start with why!!! You’ll ask me: “Why?” I can’t answer… You’ve just asked a forbidden question!!!

Witch Haze's footnote.: I was joking!! Go to NLP footnotes and will discover WHY!!!

 

I Ching may help everybody to establish “rapport”.  Rapport is the basis of relationship and communication, it is the “good feeling” you get when you are in tune with another person. To help establish rapport students (in particular the oracle) should stay close to each other (but not too much…) in order to establish eye contact, then they should follow the other person’s breathing rhythm and “mirror” his or her movements and voice. “Mirroring” means to imitate  in a natural way, e.g.. with  respect and without any intention of teasing . “Pacing” means checking if the other person is following you and, if they aren’t, mirror them over and over again...

Language is usually imprecise and not only oracles’ language! When speaking we unconsciously delete part of the content of communication for a number of reasons: we take for granted that the listener knows what we are talking about, we suppress part of our thoughts because we feel they would be somehow disturbing and, finally, language itself is an imprecise medium and tends to distort the message… By using Meta Model we can reconstruct the information in its entirety. How does it work? That’s very simple… it looks like that game we used to play when we were children: the person who wants to get more information has to ask questions which generally start with a wh-pronoun. The only forbidden questions are those ones starting with WHY. You may ask: “WHY?” because those questions do not elicit the truth but only lead to justifications,  generalizations, distortions, elisions… exactly what you want to avoid. After all, WHY is exactly what we are aiming at; it would be too easy to hit the target with only one direct question, don’t you think so?

Besides, making students ask and answer wh– questions is a very useful language activity...

 

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