Neurolinguistic Programming

by Kevin Hogan, Psy.D.

Level of NLP understanding necessary to enjoy this article: Master Practioner (One who has completed the equivalant of approximately four to six weeks of rigorous NLP training, or, approximately six months of practical application in the "real world".)

This article is NOT to be understood as offering modes of therapeutic application. What is written here is in the spirit of experimentation and fun. Indeed, some of what is offered here may someday prove useful in some contexts, but for here it is just for fun. Additionally, it should be noted that nothing here is new, nor is it truly "NLP". NLP has a few key set of applications that can be integrated in various forms to create new patterns, therapeutic modalities, persuasion tools and best of all, mind toys. Here are a few fun mind toys...

The key elements in various NLP patterns are the use of:

1. Time
2. Modalities and Submodalities
3. Strategies
4. Anchoring
5. Physiology
6. Altered States of consciousness
7. A "meta model" and its inverse, often called the Milton model.
8. MetaPrograms
9. Nested Loops
10. Reframing

These 10 elements can, and do, overlap each other, of course. Let us examine first the potential number of possibilities of creating future patterns. There currently are less than 300 recorded patterns in NLP. If each of the above elements only contained one possible use in a pattern, there would be 10x9x8x7x6x5x4x3x2x1 possible combinations. That is roughly 3.6 million possible patterns if each element only had a single digital use. (By the way, anything you devise, you will not own. None of the above elements can be owned. Long before Richard Bandler and John Grinder were born, all of these tools were in use by someone somewhere.)

Distorting time for various uses has been used for thousands of years. Hypnotists in the early 20th century popularized the notion. Over 100 years ago, Charles Dickens popularized using time to create personal change in "A Christmas Carol." Submodalities have been in use since the time of Aristotle. It was L. Ron Hubbard in 1951 that first popularized their use for therapeutic mode. Before Hubbard, submodalities were used in movies to create different looks and sounds in movies. Anchoring is certainly nothing new. Pavlov didn't even begin anchoring! Strategies came from recipes and rituals thousands of years old. Nested loops certainly were popular in the 1950's with soap operas but were in use in the movies long before that and indeed even the Bible uses webs in story telling that we would now call nested loops. The point is, that nothing here is owned or new. Anything you create is yours to use for free and free for others to use!

To play some mind games, there are two fun ways that I have discovered to utilize the elements of NLP. (There are millions of ways to have fun with NLP, but these are two easy to use games.) You can do it from a random application or you can do it from a point of purpose. In a random application you will simply pick two elements (or more, later) and see what you can do with them. In a point of purpose, you have a purpose and see how you can use two selected elements to meet the objectives of the purpose.

Imagine that you want to improve your communication with others. You roll your 10 sided dice and come up with a 5 and an 8. Physiology and meta programs. How can you mix these two categories of tools to possibly improve your communication with others? Let's brainstorm this again, with the traditional rules of brainstorming. (Accept all ideas as possible. No critical dissension.)

We could:

• Move our physiology toward or away from others.
• Use our physiology in a way that would represent each meta-program we have elicited in another person.
• Recall times when a certain physiology was useful for us in successfully communicating with others with certain metaprograms.
• Ask the other person to assume a position that would represent a specific meta program.
  • "How would you stand if you were dealing from an internal frame of reference?"
  • "How would you sit you were dealing from an external frame of reference?"
  • "How would you laugh if you were in uptime?"
  • "How would you lay down if you were inside?"

The possible questions are limitless in number. Most will mean nothing in practical application, of course. However, eventually you will brainstorm upon a useful possibility for practical application. If I lock you into a specific "answer", I do you a disservice. YOU consider the possibilities and see if anything is useful. It doesn't matter if you find something or not. It is however, worth your time to record your findings in a journal or diary. You never know when you may really hit upon something.

The other option of creating mind toys is simply take random combinations and consider what they may be applicable to in life. We roll the dice and come up with one and four. How could anchoring and time manipulation be useful when integrated?

• How would anchoring people to dates on a calendar they see each morning be useful as a motivational tool?
• How would time be used as an anchor?
• Could each hour be anchored to a specific idea or theme for motivation? Relationship enhancement?
• Could the second hand on a clock be used as a sliding anchor in some way?
• How could we anchor the second hand on a clock with gradually increasing happiness?
• How could we anchor positive events in our past to various tangible things we see in our home or office for happier living?

Many of these options will come up with relatively useless patterns. However, in the rough, there are diamonds and the diamonds are what you are looking for!

Once you have a possible diamond, all you do is create your pattern. Most patterns fit into one of a few simple formulas.