From: ehf@philabs.philips.com (Eberhard Fisch)
Subject: Re: NLP
Originator: ehf@oscar
Keywords:  NLP   NeuroLinguistic Programming
Reply-To: ehf@philabs.philips.com (Eberhard Fisch)
Organization: Philips Laboratories, Briarcliff, NY 10510
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 14:28:41 GMT


In article <1992Sep2.233024.24543@news.Hawaii.Edu>, lady@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Lee Lady) writes:

|> 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."  
|> 

I've just started to explore NLP and was beginning to get somewhat discouraged 
because of my "inability" to visualize. The fact that its not uncommon for  
people not to have highly developed conscious visualization skills (initially) and
some of these people have become effective NLP practitioners, is encouraging. 



|> 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.  
|> 

I assume you have tried this technique. How effective has this been for you and 
how long might it take to notice an improvement in visualization skills?

|> 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.)
|> 

To what extent can one actually develop ones visualization abilities? Is this a 
skill that gradually develops over time? Why are some people so much better 
than others at visualizing to begin with?


Eberhard Fisch
Philips Labs, NY
Newsgroups: sci.psychology