NLP and Language
Neuro Linguistic Programming was originally created as the art of using linguistic programs (patterns of verbal and non-verbal language) to affect the neural system (the brain). In this sense, the use of language to affect what happens in another person’s brain is the basis of what we call teaching. Essentially, NLP proposes that
communications from the outside world are filtered through such internal checks as language, values, metaprograms (personality traits) and remembered experiences. Our brains filter the communications from others and then generate internal
representations (internal visual images, auditory sounds, kinesthetic feelings, olfactory smells, gustatory tastes, and auditory digital words).
These internal representations, and those generated by our own internal processing (our thinking), affect our general state of mind and our
physiological (bodily) responses. When I say “I bit into a juicy, ripe lemon today.” a listener will tend to make an internal picture of me biting a lemon, or feel what it would feel like to bite a juicy lemon.
Their mouth will then water (a physiological response). All this happens without the listener’s conscious intent, just as it happened to you right now, reading this.
The Milton Model
Negating statements such as, “Don’t think of a blue tree.” generate internal representations of their opposite. In order to understand the statement
“Don’t think of a blue tree.” the listener must first generate an internal representation (a picture) of a blue tree, to know what not to think of. In this way, a teacher who says “Don’t worry about the test on Monday.” generates a representation of worrying in the minds of their students. The words set up a chain of internal reactions in the listener before they can process the sentence consciously. Being an NLP trainer means being scrupulously “clean”
about using positive internal representations. That means being careful to say “Relax about the test on Monday.” If, on a rare occasion, you find that you have needed to deliver a negative representation in order to explain clearly what is to be avoided, a useful choice is to follow it with desired representations (eg “Don’t collapse the anchors before you get a positive test on the resource anchor. That is, always ensure you have a positive test first, and then collapse anchors.”)
Effective teachers select carefully which things they presuppose in their comments. For example,
the statement “How difficult was that?” appears designed to get the same information as “How easy was that?”. In fact, “How easy was that?”
presupposes that the task was easy, and elicits a totally different set of internal representations.
Since you need to presuppose some things in order to be able to talk, you may as well use the
opportunity to find useful presuppositions.
In the Milton model of language patterns used by Dr Milton Erickson (see Bandler and Grinder, 1975), NLP provides us with a comprehensive analysis of the way words affect internal representations. This ability of what we say to affect the unconscious responses of others is what has traditionally been called “hypnosis”.
Obviously, this is very different to the stage hypnosis you may have seen on television. A trainer would be well advised to keep becoming expert at the use of the “hypnotic” language patterns of the Milton model. Choosing to use positive language and carefully selecting the presuppositions you want are examples of the patterns that NLP has called the Milton Model.
Cause-Effect and Complex Equivalents The Cause-Effect and Complex Equivalence patterns, are two more examples of the Milton model. These patterns are used repeatedly by all effective teachers to “pace” (walk alongside) some experience their students know is true, and then
“lead” to an experience the teacher intends them to have. A teacher may say “We’re really moving through this stuff now; so we’ll probably finish it this afternoon.” as if the first thing was the
“equivalent” of the second. In this case the teacher paces the students’ belief that they are “moving through this stuff” and leads them to the new idea that they will finish that afternoon. A teacher may say “Once you have this practice with these language patterns, you’ll find they come into your mind naturally” as if the practice was the “cause”
of the “effect” of the patterns coming into the mind naturally. In this case they pace the students’
realisation that they are going to have practice with language patterns, and then lead them to the idea that they may find the patterns coming into their minds naturally.
Even very young children already know how to use such complex equivalent and cause-effect patterns to “hypnotise” their parents: “You love me, so buy me this new toy”. “It’s a lovely sunny day; let’s go to the beach”. Even apparently opposite concepts can be linked in this way, e.g. “The fact that you have doubts about this article means you’re checking out how these ideas will really work”. “If you’re sceptical about hypnosis, you owe it to your scepticism to find out more about how it works.”
An extension of these patterns is the Yes Set, in which a teacher stacks a set of agreeable propositions, and then adds a suggestion. For example: “You’ve completed learning about rapport, right? [trainees nod] And you found that got easier as you went, isn’t that right? [comments agreeing] And the same thing happened with learning about sensory systems? [agreement] So you can imagine how easy it will be to learn the Milton model.”
Nonverbal Patterns
The verbal patterns of the Milton model are augmented by its non-verbal patterns. One example is the Embedded Suggestion, where a section of the sentence is marked out by being said in a different way (perhaps in a lower tone of voice). An example would be “I wonder if you’ve noticed yet how you can begin to have fun using these patterns.”). The phrase begin to have fun will be heard by the person’s unconscious mind as a separate “suggestion”. You probably have already realised that, in the example just given, the possibility of the person beginning to have fun has been presupposed. This deepens the power of the suggestion. And of course you’re probably thinking by now that, by including this example here, I may be using the technique right now to remind you of your own ability to learn this pattern and use it easily.
A second non-verbal pattern is even more challenging to diagram here in written form. It’s the “command tonal shift”. In English and many other languages, raising the tone of voice at or just before the end of a sentence suggests that the sentence is a question. I can say to you “Are you interested in learning this?”, and the sentence structure tells you it’s a question. But if I raise my voice at the end, I only need say “Interested in learning this?” and you will recognise that this is not a statement; it is a question. The opposite tonal shift, lowering the tone of voice near the end of the sentence, produces the effect of a command.
Imagine that we are sitting in a cold room, and wind is blowing through the door. If I say “Could you shut the door?” with a rising tone, my comment will sound uncertain or questioning. But if I say it with a falling tone, “Could you shut the door?” will sound quite emphatic.
As another example, consider: “I’m not sure if you’ll find these patterns easier now?”
Many learning suggestions you’d like to make to your students can be made elegantly in this way (O’Connor and Seymour, 1994, p 91).
No More Zits!
Another important part of the art of using language to generate internal representations is taking care, in teaching especially, to use language that does actually have sensory representations attached to it.
Here’s an example. If I say to you, “Draw me a diagram of a plant and label the main parts”, you probably could oblige me, because you have a representation of what a plant is and what a diagram is. If I say to you, “Draw me a schematic illustration of an electron multiplier”, you may not be able to comply. NLP Trainer Don Blackerby (1996, p 30-32) emphasises that the teacher’s aim is for every word they say to elicit a visual image in their students. When a word does not, he says it’s as if the teacher has said “zit” at that point. So my previous sentence could be experienced by the listener as “Draw me a zit zit of a zit zit.”
As a trainer, you have yourself created internal representations (internal pictures, sounds and sensations) giving examples of and explanations of a large amount of vocabulary which you use in your teaching. Remember that your listeners often have not. I have one videotape where an NLP teacher is explaining something to a school child, aged about 12 years old. The child asks her why, in a demonstration they have just done, the teacher pressed on the child’s knee. The teacher explains,
“That is what we call in NLP an anchor.” Now, the word anchor sounds like something this child will have an internal representation for. Unfortunately, the internal representation generated by this word is so different to the intended meaning that the child looks very puzzled. The teacher quickly explains
“Do you know what that is? It’s stimulus-response.
Another example would be… ” As far as I could tell, from the child’s perspective, the teacher just said “That is what we call in NLP a zit. Do you know what that is? It’s zit-zit. Here’s another example of a zit….” On the video, at this point, the child nods politely.
The fundamental difference between trainers who are described as “clear” and trainers who are described as “confusing” is that clear trainers are able to detect most words that their listeners register as a zit. As soon as they want to introduce that new word, the clear teachers create for their students a definition of it, and announce that they are doing so. The teacher on the videotape could have said “I pressed on your knee to connect that touch with the good feeling you had as you thought about that exciting event you were describing.
Later, I could press on that knee again, and it would pull you back to that good feeling, just as an anchor pulls a boat back to where it’s connected.
We call that kind of thing an Anchor in NLP. An
anchor is where one thing, like that touch on your knee, brings back the whole feeling of an
experience. Another example would be…” Clear teachers identify all the new words they will use in a session, and plan short definitions and examples for each. They emphasise these before beginning to use the terms in their teaching, because teaching, is, in large part, the art of creating new internal representations in the minds of learners.
Clear Explanations
Each explanation can be measured against two criteria for effectiveness. Firstly, an effective explanation will include only terms which are already understood by the listener. Defining an anchor as “stimulus-response” describes one new word using two other new words. This
demonstrates a failure of the teacher to “go into second position” with her student; to see the world through her student’s eyes and ask what will make sense to the student. In order to explain one concept, you will frequently find it useful to go back and explain two or three more basic concepts first, so that your final explanation makes sense. It can be useful practice to create a list of your favourite jargon terms and write explanations for them, designed for a person who knows nothing about your field. Next, test out your explanations by giving them to someone who actually does know nothing about it. Have them explain back to you what each of your terms means.
The second criterion for an explanation is that it includes at least one, and preferably two sensory specific examples. These examples will be taken from a context familiar to the listener. In talking to a child about anchors, I might say “You know some times when you just see the picture of one of your favourite TV characters in an advert; how you get back the feeling of excitement and fun that you have while watching the show? That picture is what we call an anchor. Just as a real anchor pulls a boat back to the place we want it to stay, that picture anchors you to the good feeling you got while watching the show. And sometimes when you smell the smell of popcorn, you get the feeling of excitement that you have at the movies. The first time you smelled the popcorn, you were excited, so now when you smell the popcorn, the feeling comes back. The popcorn is an anchor for the feeling of excitement.”
Notice that these examples need to be described with enough sensory information so that the listener creates internal images, sensations and sounds. It is not enough to say “You know how sometimes something present at the time of an event reminds you of the feeling you had at that event? That’s an anchor.” In this case, the listener
would need to create their own sensory examples of “something present”, “an event” and “the feeling you had”. An effective example fills in the details;
it’s like a story of the event. I could even say “I loved watching the Star Wars movies. They were so exciting! When I even hear the music from the start of one of those movies, my heart starts to pound. For me, that music is what we call an
“anchor”. It connects me back to the feeling of excitement, just as an anchor on a boat connects the boat back to a particular place.”
Notice also, that in our examples I have given a rationale for why the jargon word (anchor) has been chosen. I say that an “anchor” in NLP terms is similar in function to an “anchor” on a boat. This helps the person to build links from our new set of internal representations (anchors in the NLP sense) to familiar ones (anchors on boats).
Here’s another example: The Milton model itself is a list of language patterns and the names of these patterns come from linguistics. Some of these jargon names make sense immediately, such as a the “mind read” pattern. If I say “I know you can understand this.” I’m using a mind read, and this terminology is used in everyday English. Some of the names of the Milton Model patterns, such as a
“lost performative” do not immediately make sense though. I could explain that “A lost performative is a statement where a value judgement has been made, without it being clear who has made this judgement. Examples would be where I said ‘It’s good to study NLP language patterns’. In that sentence, I’ve claimed that study is ‘good’ without saying according to whom. The person making the value judgement is not mentioned in the sentence.”
This explanation is passable. But notice how much clearer it becomes when I build links from the actual term “lost performative” to previous ways the person will have used those two words (“lost”
and “perform”): “A lost performative is a statement where someone has performed a value judgement, and the person who performed the judgement is lost; which is to say, they aren’t mentioned.
Examples would be where I said ‘It’s good to study NLP language patterns’. In that sentence, someone has performed a value judgement that study is
‘good’, but the person who performed the judgement is “lost”. You don’t know, from the sentence, who they are. They’re the lost performer of that value judgement.”
Reversing The Milton Model To Get Specific In going beyond zits, and giving specific examples of new concepts, notice that I am doing the opposite of what I was doing by using the Milton model patterns above. The Milton model is a way of talking very vaguely. When I say “Once you
have this practice with these language patterns, you’ll find they come into your mind naturally”
I’m talking very vaguely. This generalised way of talking is useful when I want to encourage my students to just unconsciously accept the
suggestion I am making. When I want them to have a clear conscious understanding of what I say, I will do the opposite. I will talk very specifically, and encourage them to think specifically. If a student says “I had trouble understanding grammar at school, so I’ll find learning language patterns hard”, the student is now using the same Milton model pattern (cause-effect) to hypnotise themselves into being unable to learn.
In this case, I can challenge the student’s pattern, saying “So you think the trouble you had learning at school might mean it’s hard to learn here. How specifically would what happened at school cause you to have difficulty now? By challenging the Milton model pattern here, I encourage the student to get more specific about their fear and challenge it. This kind of challenge is called in NLP a
“metamodel” challenge (Bandler and Grinder, 1975).
In the same way, if a student creates unhelpful presuppositions, I can use a metamodel challenge to these. If a student says, “How hard will the test on Monday be?” they have presupposed that the test will be hard. The metamodel challenge would be to say “When you say that it sounds as if you are expecting the test to be hard. Can I check how you know it’s not going to be easy?”
Summary
Training involves the art of creating useful new internal representations in your listeners. I have discussed several ways to do that here, including
♦ taking care to describe the positive results you want,
♦ using cause-effect statements to connect pacing statements to suggestions,
♦ using voice tone changes to generate
embedded suggestions and command tonality,
♦ explaining all new terms in words understood by the listener and with sensory specific examples.
♦ Challenge less useful language patterns that students make by asking metamodel questions that say “How specifically did you get to believe that?”
Exercise 8.1: Creating Useful Internal Representations
For each of the following statements,
1) Identify what is presupposed (what internal representations does the person need to make in order to understand what you have said?) 2) Write a second statement which deals with the
same content and yet creates more useful internal representations
♦ Tell me when you find the work too hard.
♦ Who didn’t do their homework?
♦ I hope you don’t do as badly as my last class.
♦ Let me tell you the biggest mistake here.
♦ This session we study the really confusing parts of NLP.
♦ What did you find most confusing this session?
♦ What worries do you have about doing this?
Exercise 8.2: No More Zits!
Identify ten core terms for your field.
For each of the terms,
1) Identify which other terms need to be known
1) Identify which other terms need to be known