Beliefs play a huge role in the way we model and interact with our environment. Beliefs can be catagorised by 2 important factors:

1. Do and Don’t believe
2. Positive or Restrictive beliefs

Having written earlier about the way we use picture submodalities to “pigeon-hole” their meaning, it is possible to determine what the driving submodality is for beliefs you believe to be true and those you know are false.

Exercise 1

Think about something you know to be true. This might seem trivial, but try.

What did you have for breakfast this morning?

Notice where it is the pictures you make are, as you think about this question. Are they in colour? Are they close to you? Are they in focus? Are they moving?

Now think of something you know to be false.

“I had chocolate donuts with cornflakes on top for breakfast this morning.”

Again notice where the picture is in space, and all the submodalities above. Is there a difference?

Why do we do this distinct pigeonholing for different beliefs? Who cares! The important thing to remember is that this is (at least in part) your belief strategy. It is how your unconcious arranges ideas so you know quickly which one is true according to your model of your environment. Problems often occur when we have a belief in an idea that resticts our behaviour such as to prevent us from solving an issue. This is a restrictive belief, one that at some point was integrated as a good way to filter reality to construct our model, but now serves to restrict the models’ richness in its ability to mimic reality. How can we change this restrictive belief? Move the picture of course…

Now that we understand how it is we catagorise our beliefs, we can shift ideas that we want to believe in to the space and submodalities of those we know to be true to believe them, and others in to the submodalities we know to be false to view them as untrue.

If you would like to understand more about these concepts or would like to change a restrictive belief you have, then just call me on 0207 8714405 to make an appointment.

Drs Ron and Edie made an interview while I was up in Edinburgh, that has now been made available on the Meta-NLP website. Check it out

Many of the worlds greatest minds did “thought experiments“. Einstein was famous for them when he developed the ideas of general and special relativity. He would imagine riding on a beam of light, and then shining a torch at another person sitting on a beam of light. Would the torchlight strike the other person, or fall short? This type of experiment is impossible to set up, but in the laboratory of our mind, this type of visualisation is easy.

Everything around us started as just an idea in someones head. Their ability to construct their idea into physical space means that we can all use their idea, without nesseserily understanding the processes required to have imagined it in the first place. And these ideas evolve. One idea can be combined with another to create a synergy of ideas and ‘wham’ you have an continuously dynamic evelolution of ideas and processes.

So what does this have to do with increasing my IQ?

Well, while Richard Bandler was modeling some of the worlds greatest thinkers it became apparent that they all used simple visualisation exercise. By using this exercise regularly they were able to be more aware of their internal representations, and in so doing make better thought experiments. Research has shown that for every hour you spend doing the following exercise, you increases your inteligence quotient by 0.5 points.

Exercise 1

In a moment, close your eyes (because you’re going to need to read the remainder of the exercise first!) and be aware of any shapes or patterns you are concious of. When your optic nerve recieves little or no information, it begins to send ‘noise’ to your brain. As you become aware of the ‘noise’ it sets up a bio-feedback loop in your brain, and will begin to present more coherent visualisations. Vocalising (i.e. talking out loud about) the visualisations you are aware of can also help catalyse this feedback loop, if you are having trouble. At first it can seem very strange, as you might only be aware of a ‘light area in the top right’ or ‘a line along the bottom’. As you get better at doing this the visualisations will become faster, more complex and much more ’solid’. Your unconcious will then pick up on this new pattern and will begin to use it when nessecary. You might also find that your dreams become much more lucid and strange. This is a good sign that you are becoming better at this visualisation technique.

When I am asked how much I charge for the work I do, often people are rather begruntled that there is no definative price list that I can easily whip out. I currently use a “Charge by the Change” structure, which I believe is much fairer for my clients and for me. If I had a price structure that was based on a “standard session”, then it would be in my best interest to not only to keep the client in-session for longer periods of time but also to keep them comming back (as is the case with much of the therapy-industry). Likewise, if my sturcture were simply based on a set fee for each change then certain wealthier clients would feel they were getting something cheap, and less well off clients would struggle to pay. With a “Charge by the Change” structure we all win.

Simply put, you pay for the change you want. If the change means a lot to you you pay more, in line with your financial situation. This is neatly put in to perspective with my current rate for smoking ceasiation. If someone wants to give up smoking the stucture is very simple: 2 months worth of cigarette money. The more they smoke the more of a habit they have. Likewise, the more they smoke the more they are spending on a habit they can afford. Charging 2 months worth of cigarettes not only fits the size of their habit, but also their pocket.

Obviously this system can be abused. People can lie about their income, or the value they place on the change. This causes one very important patterns to fail: They lose value, faith and belief that the work I do will have any effect at all on their ability to change in the way they want to. Belief plays a huge part in any theraputic work, no less than in Hypnotherapy. Often alot of the work a hypnotist does is already underway before they pick up the phone to call. I have recently encountered a spate of smokers who smoke rolling tobacco bought abroad. Their habit costs them a very small fraction of their actual income, and yet they smoke more than many packet-smokers. For this reason I have begun to introduce a minimum fee for smoking cesation, and any other change work I do. My time is as valuable as yours, no more; no less.

This pricing structure brings with it guarantee. I 100% guarantee all my work for 6 months, so long as my clients continue to practice the new patterns I teach them. That is my money-back guarantee. After all, if I stop you being phobic about spiders, and suddenly 4 weeks later, the phobia comes back, something is wrong. I am relentless with my work, and am committed to a change so long as my patient is also committed. If I can’t fix your change, I will give you your money back, or in the case of any quarrel, I donate it to a worthy cause.

Map < Territory

I was playing around with Google Earth the other day, and one of my kids came to look over my shoulder. She said “Where are we?”. As I began to zoom in to where our house was I realised that I was going to have a problem. We weren’t actually on the computer screen, neither were we even on the image. The image wasn’t even very high definition. I circled an area with my cursor and said (unconvincingly) “We’re here.” Boy, she was unimpressed. Any map is simply an interpretation of reality. It condenses what is really there into a form that makes it easier for the maps’ user to navigate across the terrain the map is made for.

We model reality in the same way. We create a map for our environment that is a usable approximation of reality, that we can use to navigate and manipulate our environment. It is rich in areas that are crucial to us, and deficient in areas that bear little influence on our lives. By approximating our model we distort, generalise and delete parts of the sensory information available to us. This means that my model of reality is distinctly different to everyone else’s, since I need and use different aspects of my environment to get what I need from it. I will distort, generalise and delete in different ways determined by my state and previous experiences. For example, if I were to draw a tree, it will be very different from what a tree-surgeon would draw, because his model of a tree will contain much more information, based on what his model needs to do his job.

In a therapeutic role this is very important. Often clients are stuck in a state because their model is deficient in a way that provides them with no means of solving the problem. Commonly the therapist simply needs to challenge the client’s model of the problem, for their model to become enriched. Obviously the way the model is challenged is very important. When we listen to the language a client uses it is frequently obvious by using the meta-model where their model is deficient, and how best to challenge it.

“Everyone thinks I’m fat.”

There are 3 meta-model violations in simply this one sentence, all of which a therapist could use to challenge their model.

1. Generalisation : “Everyone”… really? Even people you haven’t met? Do you really mean everyone?
2. Mind-reading : How do you know they think you’re fat?
3. Distortion : Do you think you’re fat? Are you actually fat? At what point do you stop being fat?

Obviously you have to be quite delicate about the way the model is challenged as you can appear to be pedantic or simply not understand or empathise with the client. I can think of no single sentence that does not contain a meta-model violation, even a sentence as simple as “The cat sat on the mat” contains several.

As with many things I try and explain simply, the truth is they are much more complex. For instance when you try and describe a concept, you draw from a model that is approximated, you use language which in turn is approximated, and further, your audience experience the process of learning about your concept by approximation. It is amazing that we even manage to communicate, let alone empathise with one another. We all tend to make the assumption that everyonelses model is the same as ours. This assumption alone can be the cause of more misunderstanding than any other.

The Meta Model was originally presented in The Stucture of Magic by Richard Bandler and John Grinder. This book can be very difficult to get hold of and quite difficult to read. Several developments have been made on top of the original work by Bandler and Grinder, much of which can be found in a DVD set by Michael Breen. This DVD set is very well presented and is easier to understand than The Structure of Magic. Byron Katie (a self made therapist) appears to have picked up on the meta-model naturally and uses it in her therapy with astounding results. You can find many of her public presentations on her site and on YouTube.

I am currently re-reading a book called “The potent self” by Moshe Feldenkrais. I wanted to share with you a very brief lesson Moshe describes in this book, where he is trying to describe the difference between intentional and parasitic movement. Intentional motion is where you are carrying out an intentional task, such as walking, eating or picking something up. Parasitic motion is movement which piggy-backs the intentional motion and bears no actual advantage to the intentional movement. Occationally parasitic motion can inhibit the intentional motion, but in this exercise we are just attempting to have acuity of sensation enough to (dis-)prove Feldenkrais’s contention.

With your eyes closed…

1. Open your palm infront of you, so your palm faces upwards.
2. Now rotate your wrist so that the palm is facing down.
3. Repeat this 10 or so times.

Don’t read on until you have completed the task above.

Now the eye-opener: When your palm is facing up, notice the tensions in you fingers. Now when you turn your palm down, notice that your fingers flex back to prevent them closing in towards your palm. Check this again for yourself now. This flexing of your fingers was not part of the original command “rotate your wrist”, so why did you do it? It is suggested that this secondary motion is a motion complementary to getting ready to pick something up, while it is not necessary for the intentional movement, the two motions are so commonly part of the same motion, your hand has learnt to do this instinctivly. Now try the exercise with a pen or cigarette between your index and forefinger. Do your fingers still flex the same way? Interesting. Since you already have the “I have something in my hand” signal coming from your hand, there is no requirement for the additional finger flex, and so it ceases.

This has many implications for body-work in general, and is not constrained to the hand. These types of observations are also prevalent in many of the tasks we encounter each day. See if you can notice some of them…

“..make the impossible possible, the possible easy, and the easy elegant.”  – Moshe Feldenkrais

Often when I am working with clients, and I am illiciting a strategy or pattern they will gaze off in to the distance searching for the answer to my question. They squint, and then their eyes open and they provide me with the answer. Other than the obvious eye accesing cue signals, there is another observation to be made.

“What were you doing just then, when you were trying to answer my question?”

“Oh I was looking for the right answer.”

You really have to listen to everything your client is saying, and take it as litterally as possible.

“What do you mean you were looking for the right answer?”

“Well I saw a picture of my car in my drive way. It was a sunny day, very bright. I then could see what colour it is.”

We make pictures in our minds eye all the time. Einstein used to do thought experiements where he would visualise a problem and resolve the issues within it. Pictures form part of the way we construct our model of the world so we can operate around it efficiently. I spoke with Viki Ross recently (Vixian Coaching Solutions). We discussed the inability some clients have to be aware of the pictures they are making. Often they seem to think the images have to be full on 100% real hallucinations, or that they don’t make pictures at all. Thankfully for the healthcare system this is not the case. She discussed a short exercise to make this clear.

Exercise 1

What colour is your living room carpet? What colour are the walls? What colour is your ceiling? Were you aware of making an image of your living room?

Now imagine that your living room carpet is purple, the walls are lime-green and the ceiling is orange. Does it look good?

How did you know if it looked good or not? You made an image. That’s the only way. You may not have been conciously aware that that is what you did, but I assure you that is how you did it.

Each picture we construct or remember carries with it a set of sub-modalities, that is qualities of the picture that in turn have an effect on how that memory/construct is understood by your unconcious. Examples of sub-modalities for images might include:

• Brightness
• Colour
• Tonality
• Movement
• Shape
• Frame
• Focus
• Distance
• Depth
• Number
• Size
• Position

Sub-modalities also exist for sounds and feelings, but the easiest to manipulate is usually the picture. There are many more submodalities for images, but let’s just play with three or four for the moment.

Exercise 2

Imagine a mildly upsetting event in your life. Not a trauma, or horrifying event, just something that made you feel mildly uncomfortable for a while. Ok, now be aware of how you remember the event, in particular the picture you make. There might also be some sounds or feelings associated with the event, but for the moment I would like you to be aware solely of the picture.

• Is the image bright or dark?
• Is it in colour or black and white?
• Is the image in focus?
• Is the picture close to you or far away?
• Is the image large or small?

Once you have listed each of these sub-modalities you can move on to the next part of the exersize.

Now think of an event that made you laugh right out loud. It just tickles you now thinking about it. Similarly write down the answers to the same questions, but for this memory.

• Is the image bright or dark?
• Is it in colour or black and white?
• Is the image in focus?
• Is the picture close to you or far away?
• Is the image large or small?

Ok, do you notice any differences? Hmmm, strange! Now what is really useful is that you can change the sub-modalities of a picture and it will have a direct effect on how your unconcious understands the construct. So what would happen if we tinker with the first picture a little? Let’s try that. Think about the first picture, but change the brightness so it fits your second picture. Now the colour/b&w. Now the focus of the picture. Now it’s distance from you. And finally the size of the image. Now how does that feel? Different? The same? Try playing with the other sub-modalities to see what effect they have on that first memory. If it makes it worse, put it back to where it was. If it makes it better, keep it like that. You will soon find that you are in the driving seat of your unconcious, and you can change the way you feel about almost any memory.

With my clients I am often able to almost see what it is they are looking at when they stare at their pictures. Most of the time I can easily and quickly dicern how far away the image is and how big it is. Other submodalities come from gaining rapport unconciously, but often these two submodalities are enough for me to help my client.

If you want to learn more about how sub-modalities or picture making can help change your life for the better, just contact me on 02078714405 or jonathan@entrance.me.uk. Happy picture making!

Often one of the first NLP tools practitioners are presented with is the “Eye accessing cues” model. This model outlines an observation made by Bandler and Grinder as NLP was in its infancy. Essentially they noted that as subjects were answering questions in which they used “visual” words, they tended to look up and either to the right or left. For example, in response to questions like “What colour is your car?” they would briefly look up, and then give the response “Blue”. Bandler and Grinder took this observation, and attempted to determine if there was a correlation between other directions subjects were looking in and the representation systems they were using in speech. While it was not a watertight conclusion, it appeared that more often than not the following eye directions could be mapped to particular representational systems:-

• Eyes Up Right -> Visual Remembered
• Eyes Up Left -> Visual Constructed
• Eyes Side Right -> Auditory Remembered
• Eyes Side Left -> Auditory Constructed
• Eyes Down Right -> Digital/Internal Dialogue
• Eyes Down Left -> Kinesthetic

“Kinesthetic” is a special case because it emcompasses feeling and gustoric sensation. Since to construct a kinesthetic process you have to use experience, it is recognised that every constructed and remembered kinestetic process is cued from the same eye access. Internal Dialogue refers to occasions where the subject talks to themselves. There is a special 7th position where the subject stares ahead and defocuses their eyes, this is mapped to the Visual Constructed cue. Here are some example questions that you would expect to produce the system accesses above:

• V-C “What would your living room look like if the walls were purple?”
• V-R “What colour are your mothers eyes?” 
• A-C “What sound would a monkey make playing a piano?”
• A-R “What is your mobile ringtone?”
• K “What was the last hot thing you ate?”
• D “When you are feeling unhappy, what do you say to yourself?”

The conclusion followed that for every time we are required to access representational system our eyes dart to one of these 6 positions. This is useful to the NLP practitioner because it can indicate to them which system a client is using to complete a particular task. This can in turn help them ask better questions and further help model the subject’s patterns or advise them to other systems they could use if the pattern is a problem for them. Unfortunately the way some questions are worded might require the subject to access a system not expected by the practitioner, throwing off any calibration. It is important in these situations to debrief and ask the subject what it is they saw, heard, felt or said to themselves. In an experiement made by Stever Robbins a subject was asked how many chairs they had in their living room. The subject moved their eyes down-right (K). Upon debriefing the subject it was discovered that the question resulted in the subject remembering being rocked in one of the chairs in his living room as a child, a feeling of comfort… and then he was able to answer the question.

Similarly, many people who hear about Eye Accesing Cues believe that it can be used to determine if people are telling the truth or lying though their front teeth. The premise goes as such: If you ask a subject “Did you see the football game last night?” the subject’s eyes should dart up and to the right if they remember having seen the game, and up and to the left if they are about to make up the football game entirely and lie like the cheating adulteror they are. Unfortunately this does not hold together quite as well as you would have thought. What if they remember the great feeling they had as a goal was scored? (K). What about if they listened to the game on the radio? (A). Or, what if they were thinking about the result of the game and what that means to their team position in the league? They might go to the visual constructed system, throwing off the interviewer who will have ticked off the deception box. Only by further questioning and debriefing can the interviewer be truely sure that they were reading the right signals.

To complicate matters, certain people switch there constructed and remembered sides, inversing the pattern from left to right. This tends to be the case with left-handers, but can also be true of right-handers. Also it is not uncommon for subjects to switch sides as they switch context or state. This means that continuous calibration is essential. 

As well as switching sides it is common to switch representational system preference with state and context. I may use  the visual system predominantly when I am painting, but might use the kinesthetic system when listening to music. Many practitioners will state that they favor a particular system, or even go so far as to say they are a “visualiser”-type. This is a falsification. Approximately 70% of people have been shown to prefer using the visual system under most circumstances, but to say you restrict your representational system to visual-only under all conditions is untrue. We absorb and record every event we encounter with every available sensory system, however we will favor a particular system depending upon our state. This does not mean, however,  that the other systems are dormant. Quite the contrary.

Stephen Heller, in his book Monsters and Magical Sticks, also draws our attention to the internal and external representation systems, further complicating the accessing cue model. His suggestion is that for each state or context, we have a prefered system to recall/construct (indicated by the eye accessing cue) and a system prefered for expressing the experience or construction (the system used in speech). So while I might say “I can see what you mean” I might look to the side, meaning that while I actually made some use of my audititory system, I used the visual system to express it. This can be very useful in a theraputic setting.

In business, Eye Accessing Cues can be used very effective in gaining rapport (or losing it) at an unconcious level with a client or colleague. A good example of this is when making a presentation. Given that any audience is going to have a spectrum of representational preferences, and you will have your own, it is important to pay equal attention to each of the representational systems in your speech to assure you gain rapport with every person in the room. For instance, rather than saying:

“I would like to see if we can look at this problem in a different way. If we can get a little more perspective maybe we’ll be able to see the bigger picture, and understand where we are losing sight of our goals.”

could be better phrased as:

“I would like to see if we can sound out some new ideas. Maybe if we can get a better feel for our problem we can understand it better.”

This will ultimately mean that more people will associate and empathise with the way you describe your presentation. If you were to stick solely to a single system you could expect a single proportion to commit their full attention to the presentation. And using your own system preferences will gain rapport with a marginally larger group of people. There are obviously many other factors that are important in a presentation that fall outside the context of this short article, but representational systems can play a larger role that you would imagine.

Accessing systems can also be useful when resolving conflicts in a team or group. Consider the following argument:

P1 “I just don’t see where you are going with this. Let’s just focus on the real problems.”

P2 “Well I feel you don’t understand the situation properly. It is hard for me to understand the problem completely.”

P1 “OK, but I am trying to see it from your point of view, and it’s just not clear.”

P2 “Well, how do you expect to get a feel for the problem, if you won’t get to grips with the real issues?”

Hmmm. These two appear to be using different systems to explain the same problem. If P2 were the NLP practitioner, they might try to resolve the issue by changing their external representational system to fit P1 (Visual).

P1 “I just don’t see where you are going with this. Let’s just focus on the real problems.”

P2 “I can see what you mean. Could you define what your looking for so we can clarify the issues.”

P1 “OK, well, the way I see it, we need to put the whole project in to perspective so we can shed light on the HR department.”

P2 “Great. Let’s map out what the HR department need and see where it goes from there.”

That’s better! Try it for yourself. Listen to the radio presenter on the way to work. Listen to the next presentation you attend, and determine which systems they are using. It’s important to observe before drawing conclusions or confirmations. Eye Accessing Cues can be immensly powerfull when used properly, and misleading if you choose to close your focus on all the signals you are receiving.