From: lady@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Lee Lady)
Subject: Re: NLP
Followup-To: sci.psychology
Summary: You have to find your own way of visualizing
Keywords:  NLP   NeuroLinguistic Programming
Organization: University of Hawaii (Mathematics Dept)
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 1992 23:30:24 GMT


In article <17jvapINNbbd@smaug.West.Sun.COM> dab@ism.isc.com 
                   (David A. Butterfield) writes:
>
>I think that NLP does not rely on the ability to visualize, because
>you can apply NLP techniques using different senses than vision.
>However, most of the books and maybe practitioners seem to be strongly
>oriented toward the visual sense, probably because that's the sense
>they and most people find easiest to relate to.
>
>If you have a difficult time with visualization, try modifying the
>techniques to a different sense.  If one step in the technique says,
>for example, to imagine a picture of an object and then imagine the
>image becoming smaller or more distant, try instead imagining the
>sound of that object and making the sound seem softer of more distant.
>If you're a kinesthetic type, try imagining the "feel" of the object
>(however it is you, personally, experience thinking about that object)
>and then imagine the feel of that object becoming smaller or more
>distant from you.

The videotape from NLP Comprehensive on the Swish Pattern shows Connirae
Andreas doing an auditory swish.  The subject is a mother whose problem
is that a certain tone of voice used by her daughter drives her up the
wall.  (It is not obvious in the beginning that the tone of voice is the
main stimulus that pushes the mother's buttons, and Connirae explores
some visual images before they finally decide that the voice is the
controlling factor.)  I posted a review of this tape in sci.psychology
last year.  

That is unusual, though.  It's just about an article of faith in NLP that
the three representational systems -- visual, auditory, and "kinesthetic"
-- are equals.  But in practice, the visual is usually the crucial one
for most techniques, even for subjects who "can't visualize."  

And I think that eventually NLPers are going to realize that the
"kinesthetic" category is essentially of a different nature from the
auditory and visual ones and that there are too many diverse things that
NLP clumps together under the "kinesthetic" rubric.  

I thought that I'd got past the "I can't visualize" problem several years
ago.  But this summer, when I retook the NLP Master Practitionner
training in Colorado, I realized during the first week that I was in
real trouble.  Looking over the syllabus, it seemed that most of the
training was going to be about submodalities and even though I was very
familiar with much of the material and had successfully used it with
other people, I was discovering that I just couldn't do it for myself.

In a way, I could imagine seeing things.  But when people would ask me
"Is your picture in color?  Is it three dimensional?" I just had no idea.
My partners in the exercises tried giving me the stock answers:  If I said
"Well, my picture is very dim" they'd reply "Brighten it up."  If I said
"It's really blurry"  or "It's not very clear" they'd say  "Sharpen the 
focus."  But this really missed the point, which was that I didn't
actually see an image at all.  And when people tried to get me to change
the submodalities -- "Make it brighter, make it larger" -- I'd totally
lose my tenuous grasp [note kinesthetic predicate!] on the picture.

This is not that uncommon.  Here's a quote from Gerry Schmidt, who taught
the last three days of my training.  "I remember when Connirae and I were
first learning NLP.  She turned to me and said 'I don't understand this
submodality material at all.  Can you see any of this stuff?'  And I
replied  'No, I can't see anything either.'   But when we just went ahead
and pretended to change the submodalities, somehow it seemed to make a
difference."  

In article <1992Aug27.185854.28601@philabs.philips.com> ehf@philabs.philips.com (Eberhard Fisch) writes:
>
>   ...  unconscious level. In the books: 
>"Change Your Mind And Keep the Change" and "Heart of The Mind" Steve and
>Connirae Andreas address this kind of problem by saying "just pretend you are 
>doing it". I tried this approach and it also didn't seem to work.

When people told me "Just pretend," I didn't really know what that meant.
My way of pretending was to close my eyes and say to myself  "I'm seeing a
picture."   That didn't work for me at all.  

If I had myself as a client and were trying to teach me to visualize,
I'd say something like "Pretend there's a cat sitting on that chair
there."  ("Um, okay.")  "What color is it?"  ("I don't know -- I don't
really see the cat.")  "Yeah, I know you don't see it, but pretend you
do.  What color is it?" ("Um, it could be black and white.")  "Good,
it's a black and white cat.  [Notice how the teacher changes the verb
from "could be" to "is."] Now, what kind of cat is it?"  Etc. etc.  I
don't guarantee that this approach will work for other people.

Another idea it to look at something and then close your eyes, but
pretend your eyelids are invisible and you're still seeing it through
your lids.  

If you keep working at it, you'll find ways to improve your ability to
visualize.  I discovered last summer that part of my problem was that I
often couldn't relate to the way people phrased the instructions.  The
instruction "Make a picture of that person" didn't work for me, because
it would cause me to think of a flat picture in a picture frame.
Essentially what happened was that I was trying to visualize a picture
instead of visualizing the person.  An instruction that worked better for
me was "Imagine you're seeing that person now" or "Remember what that
person looks like."  

Or just ask "What does that person look like?" which will force me to
visualize.  (It's very difficult for me not to answer a question
someone asks me.)

--

Imagination is greater than knowledge.  -- Einstein 

lady@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu         lady@uhunix.bitnet
Newsgroups: sci.psychology,alt.sexual.abuse.recovery