[Neurons] 2020 Neurons #47 NLP AS A META-DISCIPLINE

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall   

2020 Neurons #47

September 14, 2020

A Good Word for NLP series #5

 

 

NLP AS A META-DISCIPLINE

 

When NLP began and before it was called NLP, it was called Meta.  It was
called Meta from 1971 to 1975 before it received the new name,
Neuro-Linguistic Programming in 1976.  Why Meta?  Because of the central
role that "going meta" played in the formation of the new discipline.  While
it originally started as a Gestalt Therapy class and slowly morphed into
something else, it did so because the two founders (Bandler and Pucelik),
not understanding how the transformations were happening, asked Grinder to
come in and see if he could figure it out.  He enter the group seeking to
understand things from a structural point of view- from a meta perspective.
Then, as they stepped back again and again from specific experiences to gain
perspective on what was happening - the created a meta-model- the Meta-Model
of Language.

 

Actually, this fact that NLP is a meta-discipline is its strength.  This
also explains why so many people don't know what NLP is.  And why there's so
much confusion among them about NLP.  When asked to explain "what it is,"
they are at a loss.  They jump between various contents and miss the larger
picture.  There are people who say it is change work, personal development,
therapy, linguistics, hypnosis, communication, state management, etc.

 

Obviously, NLP involves all of that and yet it is more.  Because NLP looks
at the structure of experience and details how the structure of an
experience operates, it is a meta-discipline.  That's why NLP seems to apply
to nearly everything.  It especially applies to any human experience.
Because of that, we can look at any (and every) experience in terms of how
it functions in our thinking and feeling, and how we communicate it to
ourselves and to others.  No wonder then we can apply the communication
structural process to therapy, coaching, leadership, management, parenting,
teaching, consulting, sports, health, and on and on.

 

Any and every human experience has a structure and NLP is the study or field
of that experience.  The focus is on how it works.  And further, this
applies to experiences that are good and powerful and healing as well as
experiences that are bad, disempowering, toxic, pathological, and criminal.
In this, NLP can apply to just about everything.  But everything is not NLP.
Not everything is NLP, yet NLP, as the study of subjective experience from a
meta-perspective. 

 

When the Meta-States Model emerged in 1994, the role that a meta perspective
grew in understanding and application.  That's because the Meta-States Model
modeled the special kind of consciousness that we humans have- a
consciousness that is self-reflexive.  We do not just think, we think about
our thinking.  We do not just emote, we have emotions about our emotions.
The consequences of this is profound.

 

When you move above a primary experience of thinking-and-feeling, and
include it in your next thinking-and-feeling, you do several things.  You
set the frame for the first experience.  You create the category or
classification for the first experience so that it becomes a member of the
higher class.  You now move from mere thought to belief.  You move from
fluid thoughts to more stable thoughts that you "hold in mind" as your
meanings- your definitions, classifications, evaluations, values, decisions,
understandings, and on and on.  As you do this, you set in motion a higher
level "attractor" in your system of thinking-and-feeling.  Now what you put
at the meta-level becomes a self-organizing factor attracting to your
thinking, emoting, perceiving, remembering, imagining, etc. that very
factor.

 


What we discovered with the Meta-States Model is that it could explain all
of the hidden, invisible processes that made the NLP patterns work.  The
techniques of NLP, especially those that have proven dependable, work due to
the meta-level framing.  Sometimes this framing is explicit, yet most of the
time it is not.  Most of the time to identify the hidden structure, you need
to track out the meta-levels.

 

After the discovery of the Meta-States Model, Bob Bodenhamer and I remodeled
the time-line model of NLP, meta-programs, sub-modalities, beliefs, etc.
You can find these in Adventures in Time (1997), Figuring Out People (1997),
Sub-Modalities Going Meta (2002), as well as User's Manual of the Brain,
Vol. I and II.

 

Meta made the difference.  It was there in NLP from the beginning, but for
twenty years it was unrecognized and undeveloped.  The development of meta
came in 1994 with Meta-States.  To "go meta" is to step back and reflect,
now you can do quality control of your experience.  To "go meta" is to
transcend and include- transcend the immediate experience and include it
inside of a higher frame.

 

To "go meta" is to rise above your experience of fear, for example, and
include fear in the larger state of mindfulness, or courage, or
appreciation, or any other state that you would like to outframe the fear
with.  This is meta-stating.  Now, you have a subjective experience which is
richer and more profound that just fear- you have mindful fear, or courage
fear, or appreciative of the values in fear, etc.

 

              [for more, see Meta-States and/or Secrets of Personal Mastery]

 

 

 

 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Neuro-Semantics

P.O. Box 8

Clifton CO. 81520 USA

www.neurosemantics.com 

To unsubscribe, write to meta at acsol.net 

 

The stunning new history of NLP--- NLP Secrets.  

Investigative Journalism which has exposed what has been kept secrets for
decades. 

http://www.neurosemantics.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/NLP-Secrets-2_sml2.
png

 

 

 

 

 

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