[Neurons] 2009 Meta Reflection #9

[L. Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2009 Meta Reflections #9

March 2, 2009

 

NLP ON STEROIDS

 

 

I'm always surprised when people are surprised to discover that NLP is
essentially a communication model.  There's one question that stumps the
majority of NLP people.  It causes them to either go-blank and enter into an
unconscious state of stupidity or to begin a career in stuttering.  The
question is, "What is NLP?"  Ask most NLP trained people and their eyes
either go into a state of dread, or a zombie state, or an aggressively
hostile state, or initiates a flow of gab that will last for hours.  Okay,
well maybe I'm exaggerating a bit.

 

The other day someone asked me what NLP is and I answered as I usually do
very succinctly, "NLP is a communication model."

"A communication model?  That's what it is?  Are you sure?  That's
disappointing; I thought it was something much more powerful and dynamic
than that!"

 

"Yes, I'm sure.  And actually that's what makes is so incredibly powerful!
NLP arose from the communication distinctions in Transformational Grammar
that John Grinder brought to the language patterns that Richard Bandler, as
a young collage student, happened upon in the therapeutic languaging of
Fritz Perls and then Virginia Satir."

"I don't get it.  How is that incredibly powerful?  It sounds like you're
talking about therapy or psychology or linguistics or something academic
like those topics.   What's so incredibly powerful about NLP if it is just a
communication model?"

 

I then asked, "You really want to know?" and when I was convinced that he
did, I began an extensive explanation.  I explained that NLP arose as a
Communication Model first by identifying the specific language patterns of
Fritz and Virginia because when Richard was fooling around and repeating
those patterns with a "class" he had put together, and surprisingly, people
got better.  They made changes in their thinking and feelings and that
surprised him.  He didn't expect that. 

 

Once Richard told me that when he first picked up a book on Gestalt therapy
and read about people hallucinating their mom in a chair and yelling at her,
or becoming the different facets of their dreams, "Okay you dreamed about a
yellow cat clawing out her eyes.  Become the yellow cat.  Be the eyes."  he
thought that this was great stand-up comedy stuff.  He thought that maybe
the books were really joke books.

 

Yet yelling at invisible people in chairs and becoming the bits of your
dreams led people to work with the constructions of their mental maps as
"maps" and recognizing that somehow the language patterns were facilitating
generative change, Richard asked his linguistics professor about it.
"What's the power or 'magic' in these linguistic patterns?"  John Grinder
didn't know, but was also fascinated that the questions and directions that
Fritz used could be that powerful.  So with his background in the Cognitive
psychology model of Transformational Grammar (TG) that Noam Chomsky had
created, John related the communication patterns and they eventually (with
their group) created "the Meta-Model of language in therapy"-the
foundational NLP model.

 

They created this with a small group of a dozen people (Robert Dilts, Judith
DeLozier, Leslie Cameron, David Gordon, Terrance McClindon, Frank Pucelik,
Byron Lewis, etc.).  Together they began playing around with the verbal and
non-verbal facets of communication.  Those were the "Wild Days of NLP" as
Terry McClindon related that beginning in his small book by that title.

 

NLP, as a Communication Model, powerfully provides a detailed way to
identify the structure of our experiences.  Certain premises determined
this: There is a structure or form to our experiences.  Identifying the
dynamic structure enables us to change our experience.  Sometimes it is in
changing your words that the experience changes- this is what both Fritz and
Virginia did a lot.  Sometimes it is in changing the non-verbal gestures or
tones that changes the experience.  This is what Virginia did with her
"communication postures" (stances) and family reconstruction exercises.

 

Another premise within all of this is that the component pieces of our
communications are also the component pieces of experience and personality.
We create our reality by our inner communications-how we talk to ourselves,
make pictures in our mind, step into our mental movies and re-experience
them again, use these communications to keep experiences with us, etc.  What
this meant is that the NLP Communication Model is at the same time a
description of human functioning-how we operate, how we construct our
reality.  Now are you beginning to understand the power in this mere
communication model?

 

Ah, and that was a major contribution to psychology.  Actually, NLP didn't
create that, it was already in the air, in fact, it was part and parcel of
the Cognitive Psychology Revolution that George Miller and associates and
Noam Chomsky had been creating.  Dated from 1956 the Cognitive Psychology
model was changing everything during the 1960s and 1970s and giving
psychology a whole new focus.  And NLP was just one expression of it.  This
explains why the NLP modeling focus relied so heavily on Miller, Pribram,
and Gallenter's 1960 work, Plans and the Structure of Behavior where they
got the TOTE model and enriched it with the representational systems.

 

This led to using the Communication model of how we humans function (think,
feel, represent, go into state, create meaning, anchor states, etc.) for
modeling experience.  The idea was to use the finer distinctions of
"thinking" (the representational systems and their cinematic features, the
meta-modalities that they mis-labeled as sub-modalities) to find the code
for any experience.  And along the way they added the meta distinction in
the Strategy model, but it was mostly a small little addition and poorly
described.  Later Robert Dilts mapped it out further when he started
thinking about some of the levels that could be meta to a strategy (beliefs,
values, identity, mission, spirit).

 

It wasn't until 1994 when I was modeling resilience that the full role of
the meta-levels became evident (Meta-States, 2008).  That's when I first
identified the distinction between a primary state and a meta-state and
began mapping out that distinction.  This introduced the Meta-States Model
to NLP, it introduced Meta-State modeling (in the book, NLP Going Meta) and
it modeled the special kind of consciousness that human beings have,
self-reflexive consciousness.  While NLP had modeled consciousness and
especially representational consciousness (what and how we represent
information using visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc. modalities), NLP had
never mapped out the recursive nature of "mind," our self-reflexivity.
Meta-States did that.  And in doing so, Meta-States put an already very
powerful communication model on steroids.

 

That's what a NLP trainer told me several years ago.  After reading the book
Meta-States, he wrote and told me that "NLP on steroids is the Meta-States
Model."  When I asked him about that, he went on: 

"What Meta-States has done for me is to give me the ability to use NLP
mindfully, intentionally, and with awareness of what I'm doing, when I'm
doing it.  Now I understand how the magic works.  Your article about the
layers and layers of frames as meta-states in the 'Phobia cure' pattern
finally explained for me how that pattern releases a person's phobic states.
My internal image is that NLP is a strong and powerful body builder;
Meta-States I see as Arnold Schwarzenegger."

 

Try that one on- Meta-States is NLP on steroids!  Knowing and being able to
use the meta-stating process regarding how your mind jumps logical levels
and sets up layers of thoughts and emotions as your frames-of-reference
which then become your higher frames of mind (or beliefs) enables you to see
meta-states everywhere.  This opens your eyes to how Meta-States describes
the "magic" of NLP and especially how it creates transformations in human
reality.  So for some real power, add Meta-States to NLP, shake well, and
then stand back - far back.  It's going to rock your world!

 

 

 

Meta-Coaching Modules I, II, III and IV --- Grand Junction, Colorado

            I: June 11-13

            II June 14-16

            III June 18-25

            IV June 26-29

 

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L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

International Society of Neuro-Semantics

Meta-Coach Training System

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