Tag Archive for 'NLP'

NLP as Alchemy?

Alchemy as

A metaphor for NLP

Think of Alchemy as something which is not just for transforming base metals into gold; but for transforming ‘base’ emotions as well.

NLP as Alchemy

Think of it as a metaphor for all the different ways that inexplicable beneficial  change can happen in your life …

  • An easy solution to what seemed to have been an insoluble problem
  • A change of perspective that opens you to possibilities you could not have considered before
  • A chance encounter that becomes your turning point; life-changing in every way!
  • Someone mentoring you towards unconsidered excellence, when once you had thought that no one could, or that no one cared
  • Kindness towards yourself, after a lifetime of blaming and shaming

Maybe you learned that Alchemy was a precursor to modern science and that nothing it proposed has any serious scientific basis. There’s another perspective that recognizes Alchemy as a metaphor for unaccountable transformational change, the inexplicable dynamics of unconscious transformation.

Neuroscience has barely scratched the surface. Yet there have always been ways to access  the seemingly miraculous

  • To design your own emotional states and engage brand new combinations of emotion at will
  • To help others effect positive critical change for their, and others’, maximum benefit
  • To focus like a laser beam
  • To expand your own and others’ conception of what is possible
  • To learn in ways that are simpler, more effective, and faster than what you previously considered possible

As magical as a cell phone, a microwave, an artesian well, an organ transplant, a solar powered automobile, a kind word between previously mortal enemies..  would be magic to someone who had never encountered those things before.

But once they do, they are no longer magic, just a part of the ongoing miracle of living.

  • How would it be if you learned choose your emotional response to anything at all?
  • How would it be if you could tap into your boundless capacity for creative thinking, and know that you can solve any problem that comes  your way in a fashion no one may have encountered before?

Too much to consider, even as a  possibility? What if that were a choice you could actually change, if you wanted to?

NLP or Hypnosis

Is NLP Hypnosis?

Milton Erickson, who was a truly brilliant hypnotherapist, and one of the main inspirations for the original developers of NLP, said “We all walk around in a trance of disempowerment.” The implication is that our work as facilitators for personal change (for ourselves or for others) is to change that to a trance of empowerment.

Milton Erickson

Milton Erickson

Does that mean we have to be hypnotized, that we have to be in another sort of trance, to be ‘empowered’, and to live and operate at our best?

A trance of disempowerment is when you’re running on instinctual impulses, reactions, and habits that are unconscious and unconsidered. Now, running on habit is not always a bad thing. Imagine having to drive a car with the same conscious deliberation as when you first started driving! Fortunately your body (and your unconscious mind) have taken over, and look after many of the activities associated with driving. The same is true with everything we learn; especially our communication styles and our emotional responses. Perhaps we get into trouble because we never had to take a driving test for our emotions in the same way we did for a car.

The point is that you can learn to avoid emotional collisions, incogruence, and unhappiness. But there are a few things you will need to learn. You have to develop an emotional intelligence which parallels the intelligence of a good driver.

Emotional intelligence isn’t really intelligence in the cognitive sense. It is an inner transformation that has tempered and matured your emotional reaction to things so that you are more truly responsive (rather than merely reactive).

Understanding the nature of hypnosis is a key. Any effective learning environment (including the therapy office) has lots of hypnosis going on – inducing a receptive mental state, wonder, images to reinforce new ideas, repetition, minimal distractions, not to mention (hopefully) the clarity and eloquence and likability of  whoever is doing the teaching. It’s not ‘formal’ hypnosis, but it’s still trance.

A trance of disempowerment

is sedative, dulling, tending towards unconscious repetition, whereas a trance of empowerment allows you to gain access to your ability to discern, to navigate your state of mind. A lot of the misunderstanding of hypnosis stems from a misunderstanding of this distinction.

A trance of empowerment

is not being unconscious, or being asleep, it is a lively conversation between your conscious and unconscious mind, in which the two are congruent and aligned with each other. Incidentally it’s the opposite of ‘mind control’ ( a trance of disempowerment) and very similar to meditation practices of the highest order.

So, is NLP hypnosis or not?

Yes!

Because you can use it with or without ‘formally’ inducing the a hypnotic state. NLP is simply the most effective way of utilizing  your natural ability to learn. I say the best way, because anything that comes along that you discover to be a helpful addition, you absorb into what you are already doing. If what you are already doing is already part of the eminently flexible discipline of NLP, then whatever you add to it can become part of your unique synthesis.

NLP Practice or Praxis?

NLP alchemyThat’s why I like the word

PRAXIS

It means practice + action.

What works best for change to happen is the application of new ideas pointing towards new possibilities.

When you first learn to ride a bike you may fall off. There is an equivalent for anything that you are in the process of learning; NLP, or hypnosis, or writing.

So you practice. Later you may become  a champion, refining your ability to ride, you may still fall off from time to time, but you are now at a different level.

You make distinctions that a beginner cannot appreciate. Your work is now to ride further, or faster, or longer, or with greater pleasure, or towards a different goal.

You are now engaged in the praxis of riding a bike.

Praxis is more than repetition. It is learning + action.