Jacob Lowen helped defuse a rather volatile situation among some Indians and Mennonites in Paraguay. As a result he came up with eight very helpful techniques for gathering information:

1. Create situations in which a given series of questions could appropriately be asked. 
2. Recount patterns and situations from other cultures. 
3. Self exposure: the investigator shared with the informant some aspects of his own culture or personal experience.
4. Direct discussion at some more distant part of the tribe, either in space or in time. 
5. Hold conversations with a whole group of people. 
6. Appeal to people having knowledge of things 
7. Assigning specific questions to individual Indians for discussion with their family or fellow villagers. 
8. Recording accounts of their own and other outsider's personal experiences and observations. 

Techniques 2 and 3 served not only as types of "pump priming" to begin discussions on the local situation, but they provided occasions for watching the informant's reactions which would indicate something of his values and attitudes. Often after the anthropologist had recounted the introductory stage setting, he would add, "that is the way we (or they) do it. What do you think about that way?" The informant would then give his evaluation of the situation and often added, "No, our people do not do like that, they...." Then would follow his version of the situation in his culture. It was interesting to note how freely the informants often talked after the investigator had been transparent about some more delicate aspect of his own culture. It permitted the informant to speak freely about their practices without feeling that he was being investigated in an area in which it would be easy to incriminate himself. As long as the informant would talk freely, the missionary investigators were encouraged not to interrupt with questions, but to note such areas in which they needed to ask more questions later. Only when the informant seemed to hesitate was the investigator instructed to try to stimulate further flow of information through a strategic question.