Submodality Change for Healing

Submodality Change for Healing

          Under the sessions “properties of mental images” and “videos in mind affect the life” we have already discussed about modalities and submodalities that influence our life and we have seen that by changing the submodalities one can change their mental states which creates moods, emotions, feelings etc. Submodality changing is one of the NLP techniques to heal phobias, hatred, love affections, negative emotions, distress etc.

          An NLP’er (one who is interested in applying NLP for life change) should always understand that application of any one of the technique may not be enough to heal or change a person (the client) from his problems. Note that in NLP we never use the term Patient for a person with problems or illness but we always use the term ‘Client’. Also the NLP’er should understand that the scripts of the NLP techniques can be modified and custom made to suit with the client’s ecology, culture and customs without altering the fundamentals and basic structure of the procedure. A script prepared for a person in the western culture will not be suitable for a person in the Asian culture. The script for a Brit never suit for an Indian.

          Please have a look into the above referred sessions to understand what are modalities and submodalities and you already understood that we are thinking based on ‘mental representations’ (images, pictures, sounds etc) we have in our mind. If our mental representation is an image of a very unpleasant life experience it will never create a pleasant mood in us. What will be the mental state of a girl, if a very clear picture of the crook who raped her, always flashes in her mind? Most probably she will be in a trauma stage unless mentally so healthy due to other reasons. No girls can withstand such a terrible memory. In NLP one of the effective therapies in such situations is the removal of such unpleasant and unwanted pictures from the mind. For this one of the effective method is changing the submodalities of the mental picture from mind i.e minimize the size, distance, location, brightness, sound etc and place a pleasant and positive representation (new image) in mind.

          The submodality changing checklist included in this session is very useful to mark submodalities of the present unpleasant representations and that of new positive representations and to identify critical submodalities. In column no. 1 you have to mark submodalities of the present unpleasant representation as it is. You have to ask questions to the client to know submodalities such as how bright, how far, what colour, any sound etc. You have to calibrate (carefully observe) the client while asking questions to make out the submodalities from the mental screen. In the second column you can mark the critical submodalities, the submodalities that affect the client most effectively. When you ask the client to make the picture very close and if the client show intense negative feeling means closeness increases negative emotions and hence it is a critical submodality in that particular case. Note that every submodality can make either a negative emotion or a positive emotion.

          Once you have noted the critical submodalities you should change it in the opposite direction, means, if closeness creates problem you have to ask the client to make the image far away. For that you may need to help the client to ‘swish’ the image ‘away’ from his mental screen. For every critical submodalities you have to repeat the changing exercise as above.

          Changing the submodality itself will change the mental state of your client however there is every chance to return the submodalities back again. To avoid it the best method is to place a new picture in the client’s mental screen. Say for example images of the loved one embraces, a saint blesses with courage, the God as one believe in showers powerful resources, etc. List out the submodalities of the new representation in the third column and note the critical submodalities in the fourth column. Adjust the critical submodalities so that the image will become a part of the mental screen of the client as the present reality.   

 

          The speed of changing submodality is very important to avoid the possible monkey mind (conscious) interventions! The influence of conscious mind adversely affects the change process (to practice NLP techniques you may needs to attend practical sessions of training programs).

          What we have seen above is just an example of how to change the submodalities of a representation systematically on a therapeutic point of view. I have explained it also to some extent in the session ‘change your mood with the NLP technique’.

Mental Processing of do's and don'ts

Mental Processing of do’s and don’ts

          The mental processing of words is a very interesting and sensitive subject especially the construction of negatives from positives. We know that the unconscious mind is a store house of all our experiences. It process all sensory inputs (images, sounds, feelings, tastes and smells) based on the meanings given by the conscious thinking process (remember that thinking is a conscious activity). Unconscious doesn’t give any meaning to the perceptual inputs.  And once your conscious mind have given a meaning, it will remain true for the unconscious until you will make a conscious change on it.

          Unconscious never give any meaning to a sensory input by joining words, sentences or images. Unconscious can’t process negative sentences by joining negative adverbs! Say for example ‘don’t worry’ is a common sentence we usually use to empower or strengthen our children, beloved ones, friends and students. The unconscious mind gives independent meanings to ‘do’, ‘not’ and ‘worry’. In the above sentence only ‘do’ and ‘worry’ have independent meanings. ‘Not’ have meaning only when it stays with a verb and the unconscious do not care about it. It gives priority to ‘do’ and ‘worry’ and will ignore ‘not’. Hence if you tell a child ‘don’t worry’ child’s unconscious read the meanings of ‘do’ and ‘worry’ and in effect you are trying to dig out ‘worries’ from the child’s memory! If you repeat ‘don’t worry’ many times the child become ‘panic’ assuming that there is something to be worried about!

         

          In fact don’t worry makes people worry more! So if you want to empower a person from a state of sadness or depression, never say ‘don’t worry’, instead say ‘be happy’. What will happen if you say ‘be happy’ instead of’ don’t worry’? Unconscious processes ‘be’ and ‘happy’. There is nothing to recall worry. Unconscious take ‘happy’ in its true meaning and the person will be in a state of happiness shortly on repeating it along with motivating talks. Most of us trying to cool down and encourage children who fail (!) in exams, games, sport etc with the common statement ‘don’t worry’ and I hope that now you understand what the actual result is. Their worry increases!  It is like pouring oil in the fire.

          Some kind people says “don’t worry I’m with you.” In fact they want to help the victim but the person in fact think that ‘I am a victim’, ‘I am incapable’ and ‘I will be failed’ and ‘I need help’. The person starts now worrying and it will affect his upcoming endeavors and its results and it also affects the person’s health.

          Now just analyze another kind of empathy ‘nothing will happen, take it easy’. In fact this is very encouraging and empowering sentence however if one yells it repeatedly, the victim’s unconscious process it as ‘will happen’! Instead you must say ‘everything will be fine, take it easy’.

          Do you like to recall any unpleasant or very bad images or other sensory representations of an experience again and again? Nobody likes to remember haunting memories. Why? because such memories will produce the same emotions again and again and your mental state will change. It will affect your physiology. This is the reason for phobias and traumas. The 'don’t' prefixes with worry, afraid, panic, shy, shame etc will put you into negative emotions instead of positive.

         

          Suppose a person is bitten by a poisonous snake. What will happen? People will say “don’t worry”. Some people say “go to hospital immediately, it may be very poisonous”.  Some other persons say “take deviation to avoid traffic block”.  Yet another express his empathy by saying “don’t worry, God is great”. In all these statements there are something to be worried like the hospital, the poison, the traffic block, will happen etc which are piloted or escorted by the word ‘worry’ and thus the heart beats of the victim increases and blood pressure boosts up. The venom pumps up through his blood circulation system very fast.   

          While bringing up children we put a number of restrictions on them as part of teaching the moral values. And these are mostly don’t do, don’t touch, don’t play, don’t talk, don’t see, don’t tell, don’t eat, don’t repeat and so on. We try to impose hundreds of ‘don’ts’ on our children. They are unable to hold these series of don’ts and their unconscious processes only the do and probably all your don’ts become do’s.

         

          What are the significances of the usages like do and don’t in NLP. In Neuro Lingustic Programming communication is very important and all the therapies are done through communicating with the conscious mind through the unconscious mind of the client and hence the knowledge of language processing is very important. Otherwise the therapy will be unsuccessful. To understand the problem of client the counsellor or therapist may needs to ask as many questions and at the same time to keep rapport with the client. The client should not be emotionally broken down while sharing his experiences with the therapist. We will discuss these things in detail in another session.

The Self Image Maker NLP Technique

The Self Image Maker NLP Technique

          I would like to remind you that using NLP techniques you are programming your brain through your mind both conscious and unconscious. Remember that your unconscious mind is a storehouse of all your resources, beliefs, values and experiences both positive and negative. One of the interesting presumptions about the unconscious mind is that it can’t manipulate the realities and can’t differentiate true or false! All such processing is the duty of your conscious mind.

          I will explain it with an example. Lightning and thunder is common in many part of the world. Every heavy thunder increases our heart beat. Why? Our unconscious believes that thunder is dangerous and to be scared. Now the interesting thing is that not only the thunder but all severe sounds pump up your heart beats. Because unconscious don’t know whether it is thunder or bomb! Even the sound of a train crossing in the opposite direction of the train you are travelling increases your heartbeat! Considering your frequent conscious reactions and thinking process about sounds, your unconscious concluded that every heavy sound is dangerous. Unconscious can’t discriminate whether it is a train, thunder, bomb or earth quake. All reflex actions are innocent reactions of unconscious without discriminations. If unconscious start thinking before taking action you can’t act upon life threats like fire, flood, accidents etc!

          Unconscious mind innocently react towards life experience without prejudices. That’s why little children believe what we tell them! Their consciousness has not developed much. Unconscious is like an innocent child. May be that’s why we refer unconscious as a donkey. ‘Self Image Maker’ is an NLP technique developed using the innocent reaction of unconscious towards the life experiences.

          Once again think about the statement we have discussed in our preliminary sessions “you are what you think”. It means the ‘process of thinking’ influence your life to a great extent and you think based on your beliefs, values and experiences. Thus your beliefs influence your self-image! If you can’t consider you as a gentleman how can you behave like a gentlemen. If you don’t believe that you have the right to be respected and that people respect you, you can’t behave like a gentleman.

          Now tell me the reason why a scoundrel does evil things.  First of all he believes that he is a scoundrel! Secondly he does not expect love or respect. It is not much difficult to identify a true beggar and a false beggar. A true beggar believes that he is a beggar and has the right to beg from the public. And he should also believe that in order to get the sympathy of the public he should begs politely. Whereas a false beggar curse you and behave unpleasantly if you reject any help.

          In ‘self image maker’ you are showing the unconscious mind a conscious positive mental image and telling the unconscious that replace the old image with the new! Forget the old person and accept the new. Now let us have a look into the steps to be followed.

1.     Hold both of your hands about one foot in front of you keeping both palms facing you. Imagine ‘old you’, the way you are today, in a typical scene in your mind. Put this ‘undesirable’ picture in a frame like a portrait and centre it in the palm of your left (less dominant) hand. Make sure it shows all your weakness and negative both physical and mental. It should be the ‘unwanted old you’.

2.     Now imagine the ‘new you’, the person you want to be, in a typical scene in your mind. Put this picture as well in a frame and place it in the palm of your right (most dominant) hand. Make sure it shows all of the new attributes (attitudes, behaviour and habits) you desire.

3.     Focus on the ‘old you’ for a moment. See the picture in black and white and dim (remember you don’t want it). Imagine the scene as being dull and undesirable and slowly shrinking in size.

4.     Switch your focus on the ‘new you’. See the picture bright and colourful with music and animation. Imagine this scene as being totally delightful and desirable and being to expand in size.

5.     Now ‘Swish’ the two images as follows.

As you are focusing on your left hand (the old you), quickly bring your right hand (the new you) and place it on the left facing you, saying ‘Swish’’’’’’’’ in a loud, firm and confident voice. You literally erase the old undesirable image with the one you really want.

6.     Repeat the exercise faster and faster, each time saying ‘Swish’’’’’’ with the affirmation that assuming that ‘I am changing’. Continue it until the old picture flash only a fraction of second and the new picture flash in and sustain with all the positive feelings. Later you can see only the ‘new you’.

This is a wonderful exercise to create self image as well as to help the children to create their positive images and stamp their goals in their mental screen. Practice it and see the change. Best wishes. 

Application of Anchoring

Application of Anchoring in

Personal and Professional Life

          We have already seen various steps to set an anchor. Anchoring can be used as tool for self help as well as a tool to enhance life change in others. And it is clear from our earlier discussions that anchoring is not something introduced newly but it is part of personal and social life that when we utilize it for a specific reason it becomes an intervention. Moon and stars are very common to us in the sky and babies like it. However when the mother utilizes such scenes to feed child daily it becomes an anchor. If you can be in a resourceful state while sitting in a particular chair it’s anchoring. In fact there is no specific power on the chair! Sometimes a specific song put you in a romantic mood, yes, it’s anchoring. In all these cases a mental state is being anchored with something. Now let us think of how we can utilize anchoring in our personal and professional life.

1.  If you feel too lazy and show no interest in doing things frequently and if you observe no physical problems or illness, it’s definitely an off mood mental state. If the state is repeated frequently it will affect your life. So what is the solution? Create an anchor for a resourceful happy state (a state in which you are able to access all your internal resources). When you feel mood off fire the anchor and you becomes resourceful.

2.  The same kind of anchoring you can utilize when you want to read something seriously or when you want to be in a learning state (to study something seriously). The anchor may be recall a memory of an inspirational speech or listen a recorded one, reading a specific paragraph from a motivational book, see a recorded visual, visualize a particular future happy event etc.

3.   When you feel totally disturbed and stressed and if a particular melody can make you cool play it and relax.  Thus that music is the anchor.

4.   You can create anchors for confidence state and utilize it while addressing the public (to get rid of stage fear) or facing an interview.

5.     You can become more powerful with your resources by stalking anchors every time you elicit it. In this way you can become a wonderful speaker forgetting all your earlier states of shy and stage-fear.  You can prepare children for elocution and make people wonderful speakers using anchoring techniques for confidence (eg. circle of excellence).

6.  You can empower children and those required with specific resourceful states by creating anchors for them and training them to utilize it. You can build anchors for positive states such as ‘keen attention’, ‘feeling comfortable’, ‘love and care’ etc for children.  You will be able to change states from fear to fearless, insecurity to security, disturbed to relax, stressful to cool etc using anchors with children.

7.  Teachers can use anchors to create various learning states in children such as curious, eager, interest, serious etc. Teachers can use different positions and places in the class room as anchors for various states. Say for example a particular side and position for important topics, another place for stories and another place for comedy etc.

8.     Anchors will make wonderful changes in your family if you can utilize for positive changes. You can create anchor for surprises, humour and anticipation with the entire family. If you are planning to go for a picnic trigger the anchor to make the family know it.

9.  Some specific music can be utilized to change the state of patients with mental illness and violence.

10.You can elicit particular emotional state on your client (patient) if you are a therapist by creating anchors. This will enhance your change process and counselling. Anchoring techniques can wonderfully utilize in NLP therapies to make the therapy the most effective.

Circle of Excellence (solution for stage-fear etc.)

Circle of Excellence

(Ring of Power)

I am posting this NLP technique presuming that you have already learned and understand the previous sessions of NLP online training program. One of the major advantages of NLP is that you can transfer your excellence from one area or field of life to another, from the past to the present or you can model the excellence of someone you admire to your life. NLP is a science of modeling excellence. It is very common among teachers and parents to remark about students that some of them are excellent in one subject but poor in other. In fact poor performance is only the present reality of that student. The students can copy their excellence in a particular subject to a poor one and thus change their performance in that subject.  If you are excellent in making tea why can’t you be excellent in baking cake! Of course it is possible if you can copy your excellence from ‘tea making’ to ‘cake baking’.

Our problem is that we never try to be aware of our actual potentials. We never try anything other than what we think as very comfortable to us or the one which is most important for our life existence. One of my friends lost his wife due to severe diabetics. Around one year she has underwent dialysis twice a week. Their children were working abroad. Anticipating the dialysis he learned driving at the age of sixty and bought a car. He resigned from his job. He appointed a servant to help them. Unfortunately after one year of dialysis and palliative care she died. Later his big problem was the cooking.  He doesn’t know even how to make a cup of tea. The interesting thing is that the man who learned driving at the age of sixty believes that he can’t learn cooking! Our belief has an important role in exploring our potentials or resources.

          Remember the NLP presupposition “People have all the resources they need to succeed and to achieve their desired outcome”. All our experiences and resources are stored in the unconscious mind and we can bring them up to the conscious to solve our current problems. ‘Circle of Excellence’ or ‘Ring of Power’ is one of such NLP technique which enables us to access these resources. This is an excellent technique to boost confidence level on occasions like public speaking, making presentations, facing interview, conducting meetings and training sessions, meeting higher authorities, stage performances etc. This is a wonderful NLP technique that can be used by persons of all age. The original script of ‘circle of excellence’ has been developed by the founders of NLP Richard Bandler and John Grinder.  If you have any doubt in understanding or practicing the steps stipulated below please do not hesitate in contacting me.

Steps to follow in practicing the circle of excellence:

1.     Identify a situation where your current or anticipated behaviour not provide you the desired outcome or result. Say for example public speaking.

2.     Break state (break state means you relax to your normal state of mind)

3.     Visualize a circle of excellence or a ring of power on the floor just in front of you. Make the circle of adequate size to step in, make it colourful and also give an auditory representation with a humming sound. You shall make the circle powerful one producing different sensory inputs.

4.     Recall a time you had those resources required for such performance. (Say, when talking to you spouse and children or when discussing with your friends.)

5.     Think of three different resources you had for a wonderful performance.

6.     Elicit one of the resourceful state (thinking of the event in which you performed well using the resource) and at the peak of the resourceful state, step into the circle of excellence. Experience as if you are reliving it now.

7.     Feel it kinesthetically and say an inspiring word such as ‘wonderful’, ‘excellent’ etc.

8.     Release the elicited feelings into the circle to make it more powerful and step out of the circle.

9.     Break state

10.            Choose a physical gesture (say, make a fist) and repeat step 6 and 9 long with the same gesture.

11.            Repeat step 6 to 10 with two or more events of resourcefulness. Remember that now you have a pool of resources in front of you which we called as the circle of excellence or the ring of power.

12.            Now step into the circle and re-access the resources and feel the resourcefulness.

13.            Test the resourcefulness by a trial performance of the ‘difficult task’ (say, public speaking) and feel the emotions as if it is happening now.

14.            Collect all resourceful energy and anchor it on your wrist or forefinger or somewhere else conveniently and step forward out of the circle.

15.            Think of a future situation. Assume the ‘ring of power’ in front of you and access the resources using the anchor and perform as if the event is happening now.

16.            Anchor the resource back again (stacking) on the same point. Every time you perform repeat the stacking of resources.

Make the New Year Meaninful

Make the New Year Meaningful

          It is New Year Eve and everyone in a celebration mood make a halt on anchoring techniques for a moment and think of something more relevant for the season.  The one thing everybody always forgets during New Year celebration is the ‘process of aging’. Biologically aging is a naturally occurring organic process. Psychologically it is the process of acquiring and stalking the required qualities (values, believes and knowledge) and life skills for a successful personal and professional life. Dear friend, it’s a fact that we are one year older in 2016 than we were in 2015.

          Look at the mirror and check how many (more) of your hair becomes grey. Check to what extent your skin shrinks?! Just ignore it, it’s not the body that makes you older but the mind. Keep your mind young and stay young.

The New Year tells you many things such as:

-         You lost one year from our life span

-         Your expiry date is one year close to you

-         You are one more year senior in the society

-         You suppose to acquire more qualities (strengths) of life

-         You suppose to acquire more respect from family and society

-         You suppose to acquire more experience in personal and professional life

          First three are naturally occurring phenomena and the last three are acquired qualities. The first three will happen irrespective of the last three. Aging will be meaningful only when all the six happens simultaneously. If the last three doesn’t happen your life is meaningless and the society and your family don’t change their opinion about you. Do you know their opinion about you? Don’t worry, we will find it using a simple exercise.

Based on the above you have to carry out two exercises as follows.

(1) First one is a family exercise. Sit together with your family including your spouse, children and parents as far as possible. Each of you should take a paper and make three columns for name of person, strength/qualities and weakness. Write the senior person’s name on the paper. Against that name each of the persons including whose name is written shall write the strength/qualities/positives of the person on the respective column.  In the next column write weakness/negatives of the person. No limit, fill it honestly. Now, write the next senior person’s name and repeat the exercise and continue until the evaluation of each person is completed. You may require more paper, doesn’t matter. Encourage everybody to right as plenty as possible. Now consider from the youngest to the eldest. Take the youngest one’s name first. Count which one is more in number whether strength or weakness. If the weakness is more the person must think seriously and make remarkable changes in his behaviour for the sake of personal, family and social life. Find which are the common weaknesses addressed by most of the members and take a decision to quit it in 2016.

(2) Second one is a personal exercise. Here is a table that enables you to evaluate your qualities, strengths and weakness. Fill in the cell as appropriate and take new decisions for a life change. Note that never take too hard decisions like ‘I will completely stop smoking from tomorrow’ instead ‘I will gradually quit smoking from tomorrow onwards’.  Means instead of the daily 20, you should reduce 1 each a day. 

Setting and Utilizing Anchors to Change a State (mood)

Setting and Utilizing Anchors to Change a State (mood)

          In the previous session we have seen the importance and uses of anchors. Using anchoring technique people can easily change their moods. We have seen in the previous session about changing the sad mood into happy. For that one should recall a past event that produces a happiness state. So the person is anchoring the happiness state with that particular memory by repeatedly re-living in it. In a similar way you can anchor your favourite resources.

          Being in a resourceful state is very important to lead a progressive life. Some people experience lack of resources or inability to access resources to perform tasks as and when required. An inaccessible resource is not at all a resource. Say for example you have very nice voice and you know music and have the ability to sing but when the orchestra starts your sound gets stuck at your throat. You can’t perform the music with the orchestra however your performance in the bathroom is wonderful. The ability to sing is your resource but you have no confidence.

          Some people can prepare a speech very well. They can train the children for elocution. However they can’t speak. In front of the audience they are unable to utter a sentence correctly. Their knees shiver. Throat dries. Word breaks. They have the resources to speak. But you are unable to perform because you have no confidence which is one of your primary resources.

Anchoring a Resourceful State

1.     Take a deep breath and relax.

2.     Think of one of your favourite resources say ‘confidence’.

3.     Recall an event in your life where you had managed it with full ‘confidence’.

4.     Re-live the experience as it is happening now. Associate yourself into the experience. See what you saw, hear what you hear and feel what you felt.

5.     Elicit submodalities for visual, auditory and kinesthetic modalities and at the ‘peak’ of each make a ‘soft firm fist’ (anchor) and hold it for ten to fifteen seconds.

6.     Release the anchor (fist) and simultaneously get rid of the re-lived experience.

7.     Break state – look around and take a deep breath.

8.     Repeat step 3 to 7 several times (at least five) carefully.

9.     Break state – take a deep breath and count the living things around.

10.Fire the anchor (means make the ‘soft firm fist’) and notice what happens. The resourceful state (confidence) and the associated emotions and feelings must come back. If not, repeat step 3 to 7 until the resourceful state gets anchored properly.  

          The anchor created as above can be used at any time when you are in an unconfident state. This is just an example of creating an anchor. Setting an anchor for self or for others in normal conditions is very simple if you know the steps to follow. However when a person is not in a normal condition such as depressed, panic, anxious etc. setting of anchor is difficult because they can’t think like a normal person. When they start eliciting something positive, probably negative things starts interrupt it. Sometimes their mind gets blocked. Sometimes unwanted or phobic thoughts come. The monkey (conscious) jumps here and there! In all such cases you can’t create anchors so simply. First of all you should change the mood or the state of the person and then create the anchor.

          The anchor (fist) we have created above is kinesthetic in nature. Even though anchors related to all the senses are useful to change a state, kinesthetic anchor can be used as a switch easily. Especially it is very useful in mood changing and healing interventions. Say for example when father touch a child on a particular point frequently and talk to him in such a way to get him cool. Later just touching on that particular point without speaking itself is understood for the child.

          From a mother’s kiss on the forehead of a child everyday just before leaving to the school remind the child that his mother loves and cares. There the kiss is an anchor. The husband’s emotional hug reminds the wife that he loves her very much. A counseller or healer or therapist can create kinesthetic anchors on their client to elicit particular emotions as and when required as part of therapy (we will discuss the application of this in detail in another session). 

Creating Kinesthetic Anchors on Others or a Client

1.     Chose a point on the client’s body, say the forearm for better, to set the anchor

2.     Hold the forearm with your right hand in such a way that you can use your thump freely

3.     Ask the client to elicit the required (positive) emotion experienced as part of a related (positive) event

4.     Let the client to feel the emotions as if it is happening at the present moment

5.     Instruct the client to let you know, somehow, the beginning of reaching to the peak of emotion (point 1)

6.     At point 1 you start pressing your thump with less intensity to the high so that at point 2 the pressure will be the maximum

7.     Let the client to release the emotion slowly and subsequently you shall reduce the pressure. The intensity of pressure at point 3 should be the same that you have produced at point 1

8.     You have to spend at least 15 sec for processing anchoring from point 1 to point 3

9.     Do not remove your hand so that the anchoring point will not be changed, else you have to mark the point with a pen.

10.                        Repeat step 2 to 8 several times