Keep the Change
Articles
Long regarded as a renegade form of psychotherapy, Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) has become a self-help tool that can change people's lives and beat disease.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming:
Neuro - our experience through our five senses.
Linguistic - language and non- verbal communication
Programming - ability to organize our communication and neurological systems to achieve desired goals and results.
Imagine talking to and negotiating with your immune system.
"Hey guys, this allergy's not cool all this sneezing and slobbering ... I don't like this situation I'm in. What do you say we change it?"
And you stopped snuffling.
What if good health or even achieving success were that simple?
Well, some say it is.
NLP is the study of how we think, how we picture what we think, what we say to ourselves and what we feel. This is expressed in our attitudes that in turn create habits and patterns of behavior.
NLP techniques are designed to retrain our brains to change undesirable behavior.
Beverly Martin, a South African NLP practitioner in the US, explains: "As human beings, we operate on our representations of reality."
As an example, she tells me about a woman in a bookstore reading a newspaper report about high pollen counts in the city. Even though there were no blossoms and no pollen in the store, her eyes were streaming and she began to sneeze. "The representation in this case is pictures of pollen laden trees - not reality itself." Another example that highlights this representation is that people who are afraid of flying don't necessarily have to BE in an airplane to get scared. The representation through pictures, sounds and feelings drives the fear.
Beverly also teaches NLP to individuals, therapists, health practitioners and medical doctors and was recently visiting South Africa to talk to other practitioners about her experience in coaching people who have suffered traumatic experiences. She says unlike traditional psychotherapy, which takes a long time and typically focuses on the problem, NLP is brief and focuses on the solution. Also, she says, "talking about a problem can actually embed it even further so using NLP, we prefer to focus on the solution."
Traumas and phobias can be created instantly, one exposure to an intense and frightening event is all the brain needs to create a trauma or phobic response. A capable NLP practitioner can help a client to undo the results of a trauma in a very short time.
The reason NLP works so well for victims of violence is that the brain is a quick leamer. Says Beverly: "If you are approached by an aggressor with a knife, your brain instantly lets you know this is not good ... Your brain instantly decides that it will assist you to not get into that situation again. So if the brain learns that quickly why would it take a long time time to get a new response when we want one?" Perhaps another case of human conditioning that there is no quick fix and healing is a slow process.
There is no magic involved. NLP offers ways of understanding how verbal and non-verbal communication affect the brain and how to harness what we consider to be automatic functions of our own neurology.
So, what happens in a session? A typical session appears mostly conversational, with the practitioner and client talking. The practitioner asks questions to elicit the structure of how the client represents their fear or traumatic event and then taking seps with the client to change those into more successful and helpful ones. A session may include having a client close their eyes and recall events, or focus on the future in which the healing has taken place. The trained practitioner has various "tools" that will help him or her to dissociate the person from the problem or the experience by painting an imaginary scene (like watching a movie of yourself) and that lessens the emotions or feelings that go along with that experience.
The practitioner aims to assist with the process rather than the content. It's quite interesting that one's subconscious is so alert and happy to spill the beans when called upon. And guess what?
It's not painful or uncomfortable and it leaves one feeling relaxed and empowered. You identify what you feel is a problem in your life and recreate a situation you would favour. And then you "anchor" change at a conscious and sub-conscious level.
It is not necessarily a one-session wonder (although many ailments like allergies and phobias can be treated with immediate effect in one session). It can take a few reinforcement sessions to be to get the full desired result.
NLP has come a long way since its inceptioo in the '70s when a psychology and a linguistics student, Ridlard Bandler and John Grinder, started conducting behaviour experiments on their fellow students. Based at the University of California in the stronghold of US hippydom, Santa Cruz, where wild parties and mind-altering substances were the order of the day, Bandler and Grinder took into account behaviour studies as well as psychology of the time before they came up with their own behavioural change technology. And so 30 years ago, NLP was dubbed the new psychotherapy. Now top motivational speakers like Anthony Robbins, Stephen Covey, executive and sports coaches, doctors and even educacators use NLP to improve their results.
What do the converted say? Marketing consultant Penny Jones uses NLP techniques in her work scenario. Her financial services company recently underwent a merger and Penny had difficulty negotiating with the company's new CEO. NLP master practitioner Denise Curnow-Baker was on hand to assist with the merger and, with her help, Penny managed to communicate her needs in a language that he could understand.
"I know now that in NLP there are three types of communicators - auditory, visual and kinesthetic. Denise showed me techniques that allowed me to speak the same language as the CEO and that ultimately got me what I wanted."
When a brain surgeon starts using NLP to help his cancer patients, then the rest of the medical fraternity should also take notice. Trained neurosurgeon Dr. Ian Weinberg noticed that he would treat a group of patients with the same prognosis the same way and only some would respond.
"I came to the conclusion that what made the difference was the patient's consciousness or mindset," he says. After this Weinberg started to study what other psychologists and doctors had to say about this mind-body interface.
"I knew about cutting up the brain but I had no understanding of the psychology of the brain." He completed an NLP course and combined the new skills with his knowledge of psycho-neuro-immunology (PNI) and NLP. PNI is a science that factors in your emotional state when assessing your health. "The mind-body, brain-immunity has been studied since the beginning of last century; it's basic neuron- anatomy," Weinberg says.
"Conventional medicine can't help you to understand what psycho-social situation may have contributed to developing a tumor, or a mindset that may have impacted the immune system negatively," says Weinberg. Dr. Weinberg has had some astounding cases where tumors have actually dissappeared prior to surgery when NLP and PNI are used to understand the patient's own strategies to disease and wellness.
NLP is not a diagnostic tool. You can't expect to be told what is wrong with you. NLP is based on the premise that we are 100 per cent responsible for our own well-being and takes the mind-over- matter theory one step further. You decide what it is you need to change to make your life more meaningful.
As we enter the Age of Enlightenment, mantras like "You can heal your life" are no longer the spewing of flakes. Now you can book a one-week meditation holiday with monks in Thailand, take an eco-tourism trip anywhere in the world and let's face it, even food has gone back to basics. This is not about wandering around the earth starkers and living off berries. This is about getting in touch with ourselves, reclaiming our personal power and waking up to our own potential. We have evolved, talks, and this is what we can do - we can beat cancer (so many people have), we can turn our lives around (so many people do) and we can change our reality. If we want to.
| Bev Martin, Inner Active Communications | |
| Phone: (503) 640-0753 Email: bev@bevmartin.com |
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