First, a postscript on Derren Brown’s “no-touch” punch, described in a previous post. At the end, when he punches the man from behind, he doubles over FORWARD, just as he did when Derren “air-punched” him in the lower chest from in front. If someone actually punched you in the back, your stomach would move forward (not back), and your upper body would move back (not forward)—the opposite of what he did, and a pretty obvious indication that no “energy” was involved, only hypnotic suggestion.

Now let’s take a look at tapping on the body, which is a method used in most “energy psychology.” Repeated tapping, or other repeated interruptions, definitely DOES work to reduce the intensity of a troublesome representation. The question that I want to explore is, “HOW does it work?”

“Energy psychology” says that it works by “rebalancing” or “unblocking” the “energy” in acupuncture meridians. However, I think it works by rebalancing attention, and changing the submodalities of the representation. . . .

Can you recall a time when you wanted to concentrate on something, but it was really difficult, because someone kept talking to you, or kept touching you to get your attention? It is very difficult to concentrate on something when you are repeatedly interrupted by other events. Other things being equal (which they never are!) stimulation in the present usually elicits a stronger response than an internal representation of a remembered experience. . . .

The senses differ significantly in the strength of their ability to capture our attention. Vision and hearing are “distance” senses (giving us information about events that are usually somewhat distant). Because they are more distant, we usually have some time to decide on a response, so they elicit a less urgent and more conscious response. Touch, on the other hand, gives us information about what is always happening very close to us on the surface of the body. So we are much more likely to respond immediately (and reflexively and less consciously) to a touch.

If you want to get someone’s attention at a noisy party, touching them on the shoulder or elbow usually gets their attention quickly, no matter how engaged they are in conversation. (And if you touch them in certain other places, it will get a response even faster!). Smell is more of a distance sense than taste, which will usually elicit a very rapid response, because that is something very immediate and important– particularly if the taste is unpleasant or disgusting.

So tapping on the body is definitely a way to alter someone’s attention. . . . Tapping around the eyes is even more attention-getting, because of the great importance that we place on seeing, and the potential danger of any touch that is near the eyes. . . . So here’s my hypothesis, which would be ridiculously easy to test. Tapping on the body (or any other interrupting stimulus) will interfere with fully remembering and responding to a traumatic event, a problematic belief, or any other troubling internal representation. Repeated interruption by tapping, or some other event in the present will result in changing the submodalities of the troubling internal representation in the direction of making it less impactful (dimmer, smaller, more distant, more dissociated, etc.) in the same way as the NLP phobia cure does directly.

One obvious advantage of tapping is that it can be done with minimal cooperation from the client–you don’t have to ask them about their images or tell them to see them dim, distant, etc. and this can be particularly useful when the client is already hysterical or otherwise difficult to communicate with. Another advantage is that you can teach someone else how to do it in a few minutes. . . .

Whether or not you already use tapping in your work, start doing some exploratory testing. Without any preamble (or discussion of “energy meridians,” or prediction that this will make a difference to their problem or other suggestion, etc.), ask your next client with a troubling internal representation to tell you about its submodalities by comparing it with a similar representation that doesn’t bother them. Then ask them for permission to tap them around their eyes while they think about the difficult representation, and ask them to report any changes in intensity or any submodality shifts that occur. . . .

If they have another bothersome representation of about the same intensity, do the same, but this time tap them on the wrist or shoulder, etc. If I’m right, tapping around the eyes (or other more sensitive or “personal” parts of the body) should be faster and more effective. Of course, hypnosis and all sorts of suggestions can be added to this, but if you want to do science, you test only one thing at a time, as cleanly as possible. . . .

The final test would be a carefully controlled double-blind study in which neither the tapper nor those supervising the test would know anything about the hypothesis being tested. This is the kind of basic research that could be done relatively easily and definitively under controlled conditions, and I am happy to tell you that a new NLP Research and Recognition Project is being launched to do just that, something that our field desperately needs to separate itself from all the superstition and hokum out there.

A couple of months ago I got an email from Scott Leese, who had attended one of our practitioner trainings 16 years ago, and is now a coach in California. At that training I had said something about how every culture has very beautiful traditions (as well as others not so beautiful!), and used the Navajo handshake as an example, something I had witnessed often during two summers on the reservation in the early 1950s. When two Navajos meet, they gently place their hands together and look each other in the eye, and silently sense each other’s state, both visually and kinesthetically, for some time. Scott’s email below, (slightly edited and approved by Scott) is eloquent, and is wonderful example of repeatedly offering someone a new scopes of experience, and new ways of categorizing them.

“We spend the 4th of July in Telluride every summer. This year we had a Navajo family move in to the campsite next to us. They had a son in his 20’s who appeared to have a lot of anger and history of violence (multiple scars on his hands and head and current black eye and scabbed knuckles from fighting). As he approached our site I reached out my hand and remembered you telling us how Navajos greet each other, by not shaking hands but just holding each other’s hand and just looking into each other’s eyes. Our hands and eyes met and I just held his hand still and stayed in that position for about 2 minutes. I could tell he just couldn’t believe that this white guy was greeting him culturally correctly. That instantly developed a deep rapport that led to hours of conversations about the struggles in his life. . . .

We talked about his life, why he gets into lots of fights, his drinking, his anger at the world, America, whites, etc. We talked about what were the things that he wanted his son to have in his life. What most impacted him was the idea that he was modeling what his children would learn, and that he can create a different path for his own two-year-old son. And that he had a specific mission in this world that he was here to do that transcended his environment. Connecting him with a sense that he was of value beyond his own beliefs of himself also had a great impact, and that his beliefs about himself could be changed easily and did not have to be formed by his environment–like finding a treasure on your own land when you had no idea it was buried there. His family (about 12 of them) just stood in (literal) jaw-dropping amazement that their son was talking so long to this strange white man. . . .

After some hours of conversation I said to him, “Look Fred (name changed), there is a specific reason God had us meet, and he cares for you so much that he made sure I drove 997 miles from Thousand Oaks California, so that we could talk. We talked at length about how his own identity will shape his mission in the world, and that his mission and identity will shape those of his son, and grandson and great-grandson seven generations down. I told him that he must be important in this world because of the distance I traveled and that this had been the most important conversation that I had all week in Telluride. ‘Now you tell me that you don’t have a special purpose on this planet?’ That is when he put his hands over his face and wept and walked away. He came back several times, but couldn’t speak without breaking up. . . .

I told him, ‘You appear to be someone who is wasting your energy on fighting people on the outside, when you should be fighting for yourself on the inside–someone so worthy deserves someone to fight for their survival.’ Then I anchored the feeling of him protecting his 2-year-old boy as a father into that same protection for himself on the inside. ‘You wouldn’t let some outsider come up and harm your son, correct? Then why would you let thoughts, patterns, and your own behavior harm that little boy’s father?’ Your little boy is going to use you as his model for the rest of his life to know that he was of value to you and to himself. He will forever either say, ‘I want to be like my daddy or I don’t want to be like my dad. You need to choose today, whom you will be to your son and whom you will be to yourself. Fred, we were supposed to have this talk, and you have a blank map to draw the journey of your life. Decide today that you will fight just as hard for the survival of yourself as you would for your son.’ Again he left weeping. . . .

Another part of this story was that I had been cooking a hamburger for myself on the campfire. His family was getting ready to have hotdogs for dinner. I asked him if he would be interested in some steak that I had that I wasn’t going to be able to cook since we were leaving the next day. He said he had no way to cook it. I told him that I would be happy to cook it for him and I pulled out this huge 2- inch-thick rib eye steak and started to cook it for him. He stood amazed, and kept staring at it, because again what I was doing didn’t fit into his old beliefs. Then when it was finished, he said, ‘Why are you doing this?’ ‘Doing what Fred?’ ‘Why are you eating a hamburger while you cook me this steak? Why?’ I said. ‘Because of my faith I do what I would want someone to do for me, and I want you to have my best.’ Tears in his eyes, he left again. . . .

We had to leave the next day, but before we left he came over and said that our talks had a deep impact on his life and that I was a blessing from God. So you never know, Steve, what bit of information you teach to someone will have an enormous impact on someone else’s life.” . . .

(The Navajo handshake was both a powerful nonverbal pace of Fred’s cultural tradition, and at the same time a complete pattern interrupt, because it was so incongruent with his expectations and beliefs about white people. However, the handshake was only an entry that provided an opportunity; Scott did the rest— exquisitely.)

In a previous article, I wrote about moving a representation to a location outside the head, so that it wouldn’t be distracting. In response to that, I received the following from Don Aspromonte, a colleague in Dallas, TX, who works with businesses internationally to improve sales and customer satisfaction, and author of Green Light Selling, a book that is based firmly in NLP communication processes.

“I read your piece about moving a representation in the head in your last newsletter, and it reminded me of a method I have used for many years. The first time I used this pattern for dealing with a migraine headache was in the early 1980’s with my sister. Based on what we were experimenting with in those days in NLP-land, I coached her over the phone to move her headache to another area of her head. This was not immediately successful for two reasons: random movement is less likely to work than moving it from/to a specific location, and ecology needs to be observed. We figured this out fairly quickly when I mentioned that we were not going to get rid of the symptom, we were just asking it to move to a different place. . . . Since migraine headaches almost always start in only one hemisphere, we began by moving it to the other side of the head. Once that is done, it can be moved up to a location a few inches above the head. When I asked her if she still had a headache she said, ‘Yes, but I can’t feel it.’ After a while she forgot that she had it. She is still successful in using this method and the frequency of headaches has dropped to nearly zero over the years. . . . I have used this exact pattern with many clients over the years and consistently received the same report, ‘Yes, I still have the headache, but I can’t feel it.’ I suspect there are many possible variations on this theme for others to explore.”

Many people who are tormented by internal critical voices would like to eliminate them altogether, because they so often make them feel bad, and interfere with their living in other ways. For thousands of years Buddhism and a number of other spiritual traditions have advocated silencing the internal “chattering monkey” as a path to reaching enlightenment or nirvana. In the 60s and 70s this prescription was a key part of many “new age” programs that have been very popular, such as Ram Dass’ 1970s book, Remember, Be Here Now, and Fritz Perls’ Gestalt Therapy based on awareness of the “here and now.” In its newest bottle this old wine has been called “mindfulness.”

As I write this, Eckhart Tolle is making immense amounts of money promoting this ancient idea in his book A New Earth, in his interview series of the same name with Oprah Winfrey, and in many other audio books and products. An indication of the extent of this industry is that an Amazon Search for Eckhart Tolle turned up 809 products!

What would it be like to have no internal voices at all? And what would the consequences of this be? Fortunately, we have a coherent first-person account of what it is like. In 1996, Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist who studied the brain, had a massive stroke when a blood vessel exploded in her left hemisphere, forming a large clot that pressed on her language area, eventually shutting it down altogether. Even though Taylor was a brain scientist, she didn’t immediately recognize what was happening to her. As her language and other left hemisphere functions gradually shut down, she intermittently entered a state that she described as “euphoria,” “nirvana,” and “La La Land,” in which she became less and less able to function. A dozen years later, after her hospitalization and recovery, she described her experience in a fascinating talk that you can view online at: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229

The following excerpts are from a transcript of that talk, which can also be found online at: http://blog.ted.com/2008/03/jill_bolte_tayl.php#more

“And I’m asking myself, ‘What is wrong with me; what is going on?’ And in that moment, my brain chatter, my left hemisphere brain chatter went totally silent. Just like someone took a remote control and pushed the mute button and—total silence.

“And at first I was shocked to find myself inside of a silent mind. But then I was immediately captivated by the magnificence of energy around me. And because I could no longer identify the boundaries of my body, I felt enormous and expansive. I felt at one with all the energy that was, and it was beautiful there.

“Then all of a sudden my left hemisphere comes back online and it says to me, ‘Hey! we got a problem, we got a problem, we gotta get some help.’ So it’s like, ‘OK, OK, I got a problem,’ but then I immediately drifted right back out into the consciousness, and I affectionately referred to this space as ‘La La Land.’ But it was beautiful there. Imagine what it would be like to be totally disconnected from your brain chatter that connects you to the external world. So here I am in this space and any stress related to my job—it was gone. And I felt lighter in my body. And imagine all of the relationships in the external world and the many stressors related to any of those—they were gone. I felt a sense of peacefulness. And imagine what it would feel like to lose 37 years of emotional baggage! I felt euphoria. Euphoria was beautiful—and then my left hemisphere comes online and it says ‘Hey! You’ve got to pay attention, we’ve got to get help.’  . . .

“So I gotta call help, I gotta call work. I couldn’t remember the number at work, so I remembered, in my office I had a business card with my number on it. So I go in my business room, I pull out a three-inch stack of business cards. And I’m looking at the card on top, and even though I could see clearly in my mind’s eye what my business card looked like, I couldn’t tell if this was my card or not, because all I could see were pixels. And the pixels of the words blended with the pixels of the background and the pixels of the symbols, and I just couldn’t tell. And I would wait for what I call a wave of clarity. And in that moment, I would be able to reattach to normal reality and I could tell, ‘That’s not the card; that’s not the card; that’s not the card.’ It took me 45 minutes to get one inch down inside of that stack of cards.

“In the meantime, for 45 minutes the hemorrhage is getting bigger in my left hemisphere. I do not understand numbers, I do not understand the telephone, but it’s the only plan I have. So I take the phone pad and I put it right here, I’d take the business card, I’d put it right here, and I’m matching the shape of the squiggles on the card to the shape of the squiggles on the phone pad. But then I would drift back out into La La Land, and not remember when I come back if I’d already dialed those numbers.

“So I had to wield my paralyzed arm like a stump, and cover the numbers as I went along and pushed them, so that as I would come back to normal reality I’d be able to tell, “Yes, I’ve already dialed that number.” Eventually the whole number gets dialed, and I’m listening to the phone, and my colleague picks up the phone and he says to me, ‘Whoo woo wooo woo woo.’ And I think to myself, ‘Oh my gosh, he sounds like a golden retriever!’ And so I say to him, clear in my mind, I say to him, ‘This is Jill! I need help!’ And what comes out of my voice is, ‘Whoo woo wooo woo woo.’ I’m thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, I sound like a golden retriever!’ So I couldn’t know—I didn’t know that I couldn’t speak or understand language until I tried.”

Notice that Taylor’s report shows how useful her internal voice was in understanding what was happening to her, and in urging her to get help. From “And I’m asking myself, ‘What is wrong with me; what is going on?’ ” to “Oh my gosh, I sound like a golden retriever!” her internal voice directed her attention in ways that probably saved her life.

Taylor’s report of euphoria and oneness is quite similar to the reports of some people who have used hallucinogenic drugs. Others have had similar experiences during epileptic seizures and other unique situations such as sensory deprivation tanks. Perhaps more interesting, the same kind of experience can be created without requiring a stroke, drugs, or extreme environments.

In an early NLP workshop, a man who had read far too many books about the importance of silencing your inner dialogue used his skills to do exactly that. For about an hour he experienced total internal silence—and total catatonic immobility. After he returned from this experiment, some exploration revealed that all his behavior began with some kind of direction from an internal voice, saying something like, “What shall I do next?” or “What’s most important now?” Without this voice, he was immobilized; he was “in the here and now” all right—just as many Alzheimer’s patients are—but he couldn’t get anywhere else, and he was totally incapacitated.

So while silencing your internal voices may be an interesting experiment, it has very significant practical drawbacks. Your mind may sometimes be a “chattering monkey” that criticizes and torments you, but at most other times it is a very valuable resource, one that probably no other animal has. Sometimes it just helps you remember addresses or phone numbers—an ordinary skill that can be easily “taken for granted,” until it’s no longer there! As Taylor discovered, this simple function can sometimes be very, very important. At other times a pair of internal voices might engage in a very useful discussion about the merits of what restaurant to go to, which car to buy, or whether to get married or not. Without those internal voices, you would be as helpless as Taylor was.

If we look a bit more closely at those who advocate silencing internal dialogue, we find some very interesting contradictions. One is that I haven’t heard of a single one of them who has volunteered to have their language area surgically incapacitated so that they could have Taylor’s experience. If nirvana is half as splendid as Tolle and others say, surely that would be a small price to pay.

One of Eckhart Tolle’s other books is titled, Silence Speaks, which indicates that for Tolle even silence has a voice! But more to the point, he couldn’t have created all those written books and audio CDs if he didn’t have an internal voice that he advocates evading or avoiding!

In simplified form, Tolle is saying, in words—and over and over again, “Words are useless; get rid of them.” If his statement were true, then it would be meaningless, because that statement is only a string of “useless” words, a logical paradox. Ram Dass’ book with the title, Remember, Be Here Now, is also an instruction with the same paradoxical structure—a rather large set of words that tells us to ignore words. Many people think that paradox is only of interest to philosophers and mathematicians, but it also occurs in many problems in everyday life that can have significant and troublesome consequences. In this case it results in millions of people spending tens of millions of dollars in a futile quest—using words (printed or spoken) to try to get rid of words.

Chimpanzees don’t have words (except for those who have been taught a few by psychologists) but most people don’t realize that if they got rid of words, they would become as limited as chimpanzees are. Tolle and others who advocate eliminating internal voices really should advertise it as a way to attain “chimpanzee consciousness,” “stroke consciousness,” or “Alzheimer’s consciousness”—and to be congruent they should do this without using any words! But somehow words like “enlightenment,” “the power of now,” “nirvana,” “unconditioned mind,” and other variations on that theme are much better for the marketing that maintains their employment.

By now it should be obvious that silencing all internal voices is a fairly drastic overreaction to a very limited problem. It is as if people said, “Some voices are troublesome, let’s eliminate them altogether, including the useful ones.” Some voices are indeed troublesome; what can we do to solve this problem without creating a much greater one?

If you have ever tried to stop a critical voice, you know that it is extremely difficult—if not impossible—to do. In fact, trying to get rid of it draws your attention to it even more, and results in making it more powerful, and your unpleasant response to it even stronger!

It works much better to make peace with a troublesome voice, and educate it, so that it speaks to you in ways that are more helpful and useful, becoming a friendly and supportive ally instead of a cruel tormentor. How to do that—in a variety of different ways—will be the subject matter of the chapters to follow.

(This is a draft of an early chapter of a book in progress.)

There are quite a variety of “energy psychology” approaches being promoted as effective ways to change behavior. They include Roger Callahan’s “Thought Field Therapy” (TFT), directed at the “energy fields” that thoughts allegedly produce, and Gary Craig’s “Emotional Freedom Technique” (EFT), both of which use tapping with the fingers on “meridians” (or massaging them) to change the “energy balance.”

Here is how Gary describes EFT: “EFT is a new discovery that has provided thousands with relief from pain, diseases, and emotional issues. Simply stated, it is a unique version of acupuncture except you don’t use needles. Instead, you stimulate well-established (sic) energy meridian points on your body by tapping on them with your fingertips. The process is easy to memorize and is portable so you can do it anywhere.” It launches off the EFT Discovery Statement, which says that “the cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body’s energy system.”

Donna Eden claims that her “Energy medicine shows you how to understand and work with your body’s reservoir of electromagnetic and more subtle energies to increase your vitality, identify and correct energy imbalances that keep you from being at your best, and enhance your health and state of mind. Your body is comprised of centers of energy and energy pathways that are in constant motion, a dynamic interplay not only with other energies, but also with your cells, your organs, your immune system, and your mood. You will learn how to influence the flow of these energies by tapping or massaging or tracing specific energy points or pathways.”

Eden and Callahan both use “muscle testing” to determine the strength of the “energy field,” by asking someone to hold out their arm and then pulling down on it to test the person’s muscle strength before and after intervention. I assume that most readers of this newsletter have at least heard of these methods, and that some have also experienced them, or even taught them.

In this article I will be questioning whether “energy fields” exist or not. Even if they don’t exist, the idea of an energy field may be used to elicit changes. If anyone reading this has made useful changes in response to some kind of “energy work,” I think that is wonderful, and I certainly hope that you keep them. Now take a look at a Derren Brown video:

How did Derren do it?

Before reading further, notice your response to this demonstration. How do you think it works? Is this a convincing demonstration of an energy field, or do you have some other explanation? . . .

Derren’s demonstration is far more intense and impressive than any I have seen by Callahan, Craig, or Eden. Is he doing “energy psychology” or “energy medicine”? Derren himself is very clear in his introduction to all his TV shows that he is not. “I achieve all the results you see through a mixture of magic, misdirection, and showmanship. It’s not psychic.” Brown is a master of suggestion, both verbal and nonverbal/contextual, and his results are very striking (There are several others on youtube).

Let’s take a close look at the sequence of what he does in the video: First, notice the context. Derren is in a kung-fu dojo, where everyone has undoubtedly heard LOTS about “sensing energy.” Second, Derren asks the kung-fu master to demonstrate his “one-inch” punch that knocks the student down. If you watch closely, his punch is a lot more than its “one-inch” name. It is at least 5 or 6 inches—though still pretty impressive. Then Derren says, “I want to demonstrate something— something I do, that is similar, but non-physical. It’s easier on the knuckles. It just uses the mind,” setting up the expectation that what he will do is similar to what everyone just saw. He asks the kung-fu master to choose a different student. He thanks the student, says “Come stand here,” puts his hands on the student’s shoulders, and moves him and positions him carefully, a series of nonverbal commands to follow his instructions, followed by patting him twice on the shoulders, as if to say, “Well done; excellent,” validating his compliance. Then he rubs the student’s lower chest gently, and asks, “Can you feel that?” a conversational postulate containing the embedded command “Feel that.” Of course he can feel that; he has sensory nerves in his chest! What is he going to say? “No, I have no nerves in my chest; they were shot off in the war.” Then he makes the exact same movements in the air about a foot in front of the student’s chest. (These movements are now anchors for the feeling that he felt when they were made in contact with his chest.) Again Derren asks, “Can you feel that?” The student accepts the suggestion, and says, “Yes.” In fact, he CAN’T actually feel that, because his sensory nerves don’t extend beyond his skin, but he certainly can IMAGINE it in response to the embedded command, “feel that.” Now the student is set up for the final punch in the air, and he “feels” that and doubles over. Then Derren gives the student a series of three direct commands. “Stand,” “Stand,” “Stand,” and he helps him stand up. Then he says two more direct commands, “Breathe in,” “Out,” and the student continues to follow all these commands, followed by Derren’s saying, “It’s just in your mind.” Then Derren asks, “Can we do this one more time?” a conversational postulate indicating that he will repeat the entire sequence. He does this while holding the students’ shoulders in the same way that he did when he positioned him at the beginning, an anchor that elicits compliance again.(At first the student is not very eager to repeat this, but then he does agree, though not congruently.) Then Derren says, “This time I’ll stand behind you, so you won’t be able to see me or see what I’m doing,” implying that he WILL be able to HEAR him. Verbal implication is one of the subtlest kinds of suggestion; if you want to know more about this, check out my article on my website. Next Derren takes off his jacket and asks someone else to hold it for him. Is this irrelevant? I don’t think so. Taking off your jacket is typical when a man is about to fight or undertake an extra physical effort, a contextual implication that he will punch even harder from behind. If you want to know more about contextual implication, read my article here. Then Derren repeats the exact same motions and timing of the first two steps of touching the student’s lower chest, but with a slightly different word sequence. “You can feel that?” is an interesting combination of command and question (as is the tonal pattern), still containing the embedded command “Feel that.” Then he gestures in space in front of him, and again says, “You can feel that?” These are now visual and auditory anchors for what happened just before, when he punched the air in front of the student. Then he repeats, “This time I’ll be behind you where you can’t see me,” repeating the implication that he will be able to hear him. Then he goes behind him and punches in exactly the same way, and the guy reels away from that. Suggestion again, cued by the subtle sounds of his movements when punching the air.

Of course, I might be wrong, and it’s ridiculously easy to test this. Ask Derren (or anyone else) to secretly come up behind someone, in a very different context, and try punching the air behind him without any warning or set-up. I’d be willing to bet serious money that under double-blind conditions nothing would happen, and you can try this yourself, as I have. Last march I attended a two-hour presentation by Donna Eden and David Feinstein at the Psychotherapy Networker Conference, in which Eden demonstrated hand motions that supposedly weakened someone else’s “energy field.” Later at the evening presenter’s party, I came up behind Donna and made those exact same motions, repeatedly, but she showed not the slightest hint of feeling weakened, despite her supposed sensitivity to “subtle energies.”

James Randi (an ex-magician, who knows most of the tricks that magicians and scam artists use) has a standing offer of a million dollars to anyone who can demonstrate ANY paranormal phenomenon under controlled conditions (no suggestion allowed): No one has even been able to even qualify for the preliminary test under moderately controlled conditions. Randi’s site has a fascinating list of the applicants, AND a record of the negotiations with applicants about arranging the testing protocol. So the next time someone talks about “feeling energy,” “seeing auras,” doing “remote viewing,” or any other paranormal phenomenon, suggest to them that they try to collect Randi’s million-dollar prize. AFTER they succeed at that would be the time to listen to what they say, and learn what they do—not before. Even though I have no evidence that these kinds of “energy fields” exist, with appropriate suggestions, someone can be induced to make changes—hopefully useful ones. And there is still the question of whether tapping on someone’s body can be useful in bringing about change, something that I’ll discuss in a future article.

One technique I use a lot that has produced some results that are as dramatic as the Core Transformation process came from something a psychotherapist told me that sounds much like something Virginia Satir might have done–maybe I read it in one of her books.

In doing family therapy, she had a family where the impasse was between the father and his 17-year-old son. The father was a “strong” and stoical man, for whom expressing emotion was not an easy or desirable skill. She had the son go and stand behind the seated father and gently place a hand on each of his father’s shoulders in order to “feel and relieve some of the tension there.” Apparently this was of great effect in changing the relationship between father and son, so naturally it got me thinking.

As I have mentioned previously, the internal representations of problem people are rarely, if ever, radiating beauty and light. I’ll often ask what the expression on their face is, and what their posture is. Then I’ll ask the client to imagine walking behind that person and gently placing a hand on each shoulder and giving just a little gentle massage to loosen the person up a bit. As the client imagines touching the person, this also shifts the kinesthetic submodalities. Usually the representation itself changes, relaxes, or even starts crying.

For instance:

Client: “I feel criticized.”
Therapist: “What has to happen inside for you to feel criticized?” (Since criticism is a largely verbal activity. I could have asked, “And who criticizes you, and what do they say?”)
C: “I hear a voice.”
T: “And if that voice were a person, who would that be?”
C: “My father. My father was always criticising me; he had a horrible voice like that.” (Client has not seen father for over 14 years.)
T: “And if your father were in the room now, where would he be?”
C: “Standing right in front of me, really close.”
T: “That’s right. Now close your eyes. I want you to imagine walking around behind him and gently place one hand on each of his shoulders and whisper into one ear that is close enough to hear you, to ‘Relax now. . . all the way.’ . . . (pause) . . . Tell him it’s OK . . . it’s OK . . . and gently massage those shoulders; give him a moment to relax, all the way down now. . . .”

Try this now yourself; think of someone you felt inferior to as a child, and hold that representation in mind. Then stand up, go around behind them, and gently massage their shoulders and notice the difference. . . .

This is a nice maneuver that achieves several things simultaneously. Primarily it completely shifts the spatial orientation of the client in relation to the representation. Instead of facing each other in opposition, they become oriented in the same direction, with implications of alliance and cooperation. In addition, massaging someone’s shoulders and talking to them in this way presupposes a much more friendly relationship than criticism does, opening the door to a more understanding attitude.

One aspect of this is worth pointing out, as it isn’t always obvious at first. When you elicit a representation from a sitting client and then ask them to stand up, the representation tends to stay where it is in geographical space. A representation that is a negative artifact from childhood is often bigger, or higher up than the client, and because of this it often represents something more powerful than the client. However, when you stand up and massage someone’s shoulders, you are the same height, with implications of equality. And when you feel equal to someone else, you feel much less defensive and protective.

In my early daze, I would try to get the client to reduce the size of the representation, or “push” it further away. Invariably they would find some kind of difficulty. Then I chanced upon the move described above, which is much more graceful and effective. Essentially, this puts the client in control of the representation, and gets the representation to relax. The representation is exactly that–a representation of a part of himself, a bit of his own psyche that isn’t feeling nice.

This is a hugely powerful technique. I prefer to have the client remain sitting and do this in their imagination. However, it isn’t unusual for someone to actually stand up and go through the physical motions of these activities.

This is a selection from a rollicking and original new book: The Rainbow Machine: Tales from a Neurolinguist’s Journal, By Andrew T. Austin.

My colleague Don Aspromonte (who sent me interesting ideas about working with agoraphobia and migraines which I included in earlier newsletters) wrote me recently about his explorations into how we code our images of things in order to know which are ours and which belong to someone else. Here is what he wrote:

“Over the past 15 years I have asked many people to help me understand how they know they own something. I have suggested they use their car and a car belonging to someone else. I make sure they can picture each car clearly and in detail, parked side-by-side in a parking lot or in their driveway.

“Then I have them check all submodalities to find out if they can determine how they code for ownership. When they find differences, I have them adjust the submodalities until both cars are identical. And yet they can still tell the difference between the car they own and the other car that they don’t.

“Finally, I ask them to examine how the cars are related to the background, and the distinction is almost always quickly evident to them. In every case where the client was able to become aware of the distinction (about 95%) their own car was either hovering off the background and not connected to it, while the non-owned car was connected to the background, OR the reverse: their own car was sitting on the ground and the non-owned car was hovering.

“What is really interesting is that about 50% of these clients experienced the object they owned as hovering while the other half saw the objects they did not own as hovering.

“I would guess I have done this about 100 times. The result has been startlingly consistent, and I have used this information to make an intervention, for instance:

“I first discovered this distinction when working with a woman who had a significant weight control problem. She told me that one of her problems was that she would eat whatever food was available during the family meals. As we got more detail about how she was thinking about it, we discovered that all of the food on the table hovered just slightly above the surface of the table, so it belonged to her. In her world the rest of the family was eating her food. That was OK with her, but by the end of the meal she had consumed everything that someone else did not eat.

“I worked briefly with another client who suffered from kleptomania–he often stole things that were not his. When he was in a store and saw something he liked, it would suddenly appear as if it belonged to him. We discovered that all of the objects in the store were initially resting comfortably in their natural position with respect to the background–they were connected to the background. Then, when he liked something, it would suddenly hover away from the background, and slightly nearer to him–much like the submodalities of a compulsion. He could not simply leave the store and let them keep his watch.”

Posted by: Steve Andreas in: Articles, New Product

(An excerpt from The Rainbow Machine, by Andrew T. Austin, ©2007 Real People Press.)

Miracle: “Specifically: An event or effect contrary to the established constitution and course of things, or a deviation from the known laws of nature; a supernatural event, or one transcending the ordinary laws by which the universe is governed.” – Webster’s Dictionary.

I cannot help but wonder how different world history would be if Jesus had gone around boasting of his miracles. I can picture it now, Jesus by the river with his friends, regaling them with the Lazarus story for the umpteenth time, or showing off how a mere crucifixion was no match for His superior talents. The follow-up to that whole set of events might have been very different indeed. There is a certain wisdom in all holy books about keeping quiet about miracles, that really should be paid attention to.

For many in the healing professions, performing the apparently miraculous is a common affair. It is, after all, what one is paid to do. As a staff nurse in neurosurgery I had a patient with a rare condition known as a syrinx. Essentially a syrinx is a fluid-filled cavity within the spinal cord that enlarges over time and can result in devastation to that part of the spinal cord and nerve roots. Imagine a bicycle inner tube bulging through a split in an old worn tire.

A 40-year-old man had undergone various neurological investigations including a spinal tap that had unfortunately resulted in a syrinx. Repeated attempts at treating this condition had failed, and his situation was looking grim.

When I came across this gentleman he was ashen in colour, agitated and very angry. I wasn’t sure of his understanding of what he was facing or what he was experiencing, but it did not take great sensitivity to realise that it wasn’t positive.

“How you doing?” I ask him.

“Fuck off!” he growls angrily.

“No,” I replied, evenly, “I’m not fucking off. What’s up?” I ask innocently.

“What’s up? I’m going to be fucking paralysed, that is what’s up,” he sneered.

“And how do you know that?” Now I am aware of how terribly annoying this last question can be. NLP practitioners who have recently learned the meta-model tend to ask this much too often, and not always with any thought to why they are asking it. However, on this occasion I knew exactly where I was going.

This is the sort of situation in which a colleague of mine looks around on the walls, and says, “Let me see your fortune-telling license,” to draw attention to the fact that the person is making a prediction about the future without being suitably trained and qualified.

“What?!” My patient growled, clearly annoyed at both my continuing presence and the nature of the question. As a health care professional involved in his care, I really should know more than I appeared to know.

I asked again, “How do you know that you are going to be fucking paralysed”? His eyes go up and to the left, then up and to the right. Then back up to the left again.

“There are only so many times that you can put a patch over a punctured inner tube. When a patch doesn’t work, you can only put so many patches over the top before you ruin the fucking thing. That is how I know!” It was obvious that he had a very clear representation of this.

“I think you are wrong on that,” I say quietly. “An inner tube is not a living thing. It is black, dirty, and dead. Have you ever actually seen a living spinal cord?” I asked, as I gestured up to his right. His manner changed dramatically. Now he was attentive and curious, instead of angry. I really didn’t think it was going to be this easy.

I sketch it with my hands. “A spinal membrane is a living matrix. It lives. It is a good healthy colour, even when damaged; under a microscope the cells look beautiful. That is why I think you have the wrong picture.” I move my hands out, as though enlarging the picture.

“Shit!” he says, a better colour coming into his face. “I had never thought about it that way.”

“That’s right,” I say, “you didn’t” and quietly walk away.

Before my long shift was over, this man was eating again and laughing and joking with the staff. Eight hours later his syrinx was found to have mysteriously vanished. Eight hours was all it took! It is a testament to the healing ability that is latent in every living organism. I cannot really claim any particular credit for this minor miracle; after all, I was simply applying something I had been taught (Heart of the Mind, chapter 20). But at the time I was excited. This was amazing, and I just had to share it with the other staff.

A word of advice–don’t ever do this with nurses; they simply do not understand, and always love an opportunity to ridicule the strange man. Teach what is possible, but don’t claim credit for making it possible; that is bad medicine. Since this lesson, I have also learned that the best NLP masters rarely ever mention NLP when they are working out in the world. They just do it.

The Rainbow Machine includes creative episodes and thought-provoking ideas on topics including overeating and eating disorders, ADD, PTSD, rage, depression, schizophrenia, obsessions, compulsions, bedwetting, anxiety, smoking & addictions, dying, emergency room situations, self- esteem, critical self-talk, use of drugs, narcissism, hoarding, hysterical paralysis, agoraphobia, phobias, and much more. We think all NLPers, and anyone interested in personal growth & therapy will want a copy.

The strongest form of behavioral metaphor is an event that is a part of real life, what might be called “living metaphor”—a compelling and unquestionably real experience that becomes a prototype for a new category. All the historical life-changing “imprint” experiences—both negative and positive—that affect people strongly are familiar examples of this. The experiences that Milton Erickson often arranged for his clients created prototypes for new understandings in the same way. A number of these were presented in my article “Creating an intense response.”

Movies and plays are stories that are dramatized and intensified behaviorally, so that they become vivid opportunities to watch others deal with important life issues, “step into their shoes,” and create understandings by identifying with the characters’ situations, feelings and responses, and learn from them.  Although drama is an example of the “as if” category, creating a “not real” situation that we can observe safely, a viewer often “loses themselves” in the drama, and may recall it later in a way that is just as intense as if it had been a real situation.

Virginia Satir, one of the greatest family therapists who ever lived, often posed family members in “tableaus” showing how they were stuck in stereotyped hierarchical interactions with each other, sometimes using ropes to show how they were tied and entangled. Then she would untie them and ask them to interact in different ways to dramatize new possibilities. Satir’s “family reconstruction” process used group members to dramatize a client’s family of origin, so that the client could empathize with the difficulties that their parents faced while growing up, and realize that the parents’ difficult or abusive behavior toward the client had little to do with the client, and a lot to do with their parents’ history, a very useful recategorization.

Ed Jacobs has developed an approach called “Impact Therapy,” using chairs, drawings, and simple props to create vivid experiences that nonverbally illustrate relationship principles and dynamics. For instance, to dramatize the role of alcohol in a couple’s relationship, he will hold a large whiskey bottle or a six-pack of beer between them, and asks them to notice how difficult it is for them to contact each other fully with this obstacle in the way.

Danie Beaulieu, a colleague of Jacobs, and author of Impact Techniques for Therapists, has a powerful method for working with someone who feels a lack of self worth because of having been abused physically. She will take a twenty-dollar bill out of her wallet, hold it out in front of her, and ask the client, “How much is this worth?” The client says, “twenty dollars,” a little puzzled and intrigued by this question and its too obvious answer. Then Danie will spit on it, crumple it up, throw it on the floor, grind it under her heel, and kick it around. Then she will point to the bill, and ask the client, “Isn’t that how you feel sometimes?” an invitation to the client to fully identify with the abused bill on the floor.

Then she will pick up the bill, smooth it out gently, hold it out again, and ask, “How much is it worth now?” Of course the client says it is still worth twenty dollars. The contradiction to their belief that past abuse results in a lack of self-worth is too obvious to be mentioned. Then Danie will offer a very useful post-hypnotic suggestion or “future-pace.” Continuing to hold the twenty-dollar bill in front of the client, she says, “Whenever you see a twenty dollar bill, you can remember this.” Then each time they see a twenty-dollar bill they will be reminded that abuse is irrelevant to their self-worth.

A number of common metaphors equate life with a card game. “It’s (not) in the cards,” “It’s (not) a big deal,” “He was dealt a good (bad) hand,” “You have to play with the hand you’re dealt,” etc. When Danie wants a client to access their personal strengths and capabilities, she uses a cheap deck of cards in the following way:

“Ask your client to recall a time when he felt successful or satisfied with some aspect of his life, and to describe a personal trait he used to create that rewarding situation. If the client responds, “perseverance,” ask whether he used an ace, a king, or a queen of perseverance to succeed. Then select that card from the deck and write ‘Perseverance’ on it with a bold felt-tip pen. (Bold is important: you want to make this a statement of strength, not a tentative, penciled-in suggestion!) Continue to elicit other traits and assets that have helped your client to succeed in the past—for example, self-discipline, generosity, technical ability, humor, family support, the caring of a special friend—and repeat the process of selecting and labeling appropriate cards. This exercise, in itself, will help your client identify and recognize resources he may have forgotten he possesses.

“When you’ve accumulated at least five strong cards, present the cards to your client, one by one. Explain that he still holds this terrific hand, chock full of talents, emotional strengths, and self-knowledge, and that he simply needs to play it in the situation he now faces. Encourage him to take some time to look at his cards and take in his triumphant array of aces, kings, and queens. This in-the-moment act of “holding a strong hand” can help a client move from merely intellectually appreciating his strengths to viscerally experiencing himself as a winner. Give him the cards to take home as reminders of the inner resources that have served him well in the past—and will again.” (excerpted from Impact Techniques for Therapists)

Using cards that are powerful in a card game (not ones, twos, or threes!) accesses the client’s power in a way that words alone can’t. Putting the cards together in a “hand” strengthens each of them by association with the others, implicitly creating a category that might be described as, “I am a capable person.”

When someone is grieving over a death in the family, Danie will set up a row of paper cups, with the name of each person in the family written on one of the cups, with the dead person’s cup at the beginning of the row. At the end of this row she also places cups with the different significant areas in the client’s life written on them: work, friends, hobbies, other major activities. Then she will give the client a pitcher of water, saying, “This water represents your energy level (implicitly indicating that their energy is limited). I want you to pour water into each of these cups to show how much of your energy you are giving to each person, and each activity.”

As the client approaches the first cup representing the dead person and begins to reach out to pour water into it, Danie reaches out and silently turns that cup upside down, indicating nonverbally that the dead person can no longer receive any energy; what has been going to the dead person needs to be given to the other family members and activities. Small dramatizations like this are emotionally powerful, and they stick in the mind as vivid prototype experiences that are difficult or impossible to forget.

Danie’s book, Impact Techniques for Therapists is a wonderful resource for innovating in ways that directly affect clients nonverbally, available new or used from Amazon.

In addition there is a great DVD demonstration of Danie using three different evocative methods with three different clients, recorded at the Milton Erickson Brief Therapy Conference in 2007. I have already watched it many times, and I need to watch it many more, in order to catch the subtleties of how Danie asks questions as she uses these methods, It is available from: http://www.ericksonfoundationstore.com/search.asp
Search for product ID # IC07-CD5-DVD

*This article is excerpted from Six Blind Elephants: understanding ourselves and each other, volume II: applications and explorations of scope and category, chapter 10, “Metaphor.”

You can observe the complete process of guiding an Iraq Vet in resolving PTSD, along with many companion issues, in just four sessions totaling 9 hours. The program is divided into 13 segments of streaming video that you can watch at your own pace, whenever you want to, as often as you want to — no time limit.

You’ll see how to help someone resolve flashbacks, nightmares, rages, grief, perfectionism, anxiety, hypervigilance, and the internal critical voices that trigger many of these — as well as work with the impact of these problems on relationships at home and at work.

Most work with complex PTSD is very slow and ineffective for two reasons. Usually there are many different issues that need to be teased apart and dealt with in very different ways, and most therapists don’t have dependable ways to resolve each of them. Although this program is primarily directed toward therapists, those suffering from PTSD can benefit from seeing how much can be accomplished in a short time.

Watch samples from these sessions on YouTube.

Purchase this program for yourself at ReleasingPTSD.com for only $195.
Satisfaction guaranteed 100% money back within 30 days from purchase.

Benefits

Most therapists never show any video of what they actually do, or at most show brief highlights, and we are left wondering what actually happens in sessions. Nowhere else do you have access to complete video of what a therapist does with a client from start to finish.

The sessions are divided into 11 useful segments, each focused primarily on one issue, making it easy for you to find or review exactly what you want to study.

The work is efficient and focused — so it’s interesting all the way through, as you watch the process unfold.

Convenience. The program is “cloud based,” so you have access to the program wherever and whenever you want, and watch as many times as you want.

You’ll see how to follow the client’s needs and leads, and how to choose and adapt interventions to assist someone with PTSD make a full recovery in a short time.

Each video segment has a written introduction and commentary to help you understand how Steve is thinking about the process and what he is doing.

And at the bottom of each video is a comments section so you can ask Steve your questions.

About Steve Andreas

Steve Andreas has been at the forefront of brief therapy developments for more than 25 years. Many of the processes demonstrated here were developed by Steve and his wife, Connirae, while others are adapted from processes developed by others in the field. Steve and Connirae are authors of 7 books teaching brief therapy processes, and editors of many more, as well as numerous articles and blog posts.

Purchase this program for yourself at ReleasingPTSD.com for only $195.
Satisfaction guaranteed 100% money back within 30 days from purchase.

To give you an overview of the program, here’s Steve’s introduction to the first video segment!

Tara is a very intelligent and competent young woman who served a year in Iraq from November 2005 to November 2006 when she was 25. She was lieutenant in charge of 133 soldiers in a vehicle maintenance and repair platoon stationed 18 miles south of Baghdad in the “red zone,” under constant threat of attack 24/7. One man got up during the night to go to the bathroom, and while he was there, an incoming mortar shell took out his bed. The platoon’s job was to maintain and bring in disabled or damaged vehicles and get them running again. The constant danger resulted in generalized anxiety and hypervigilance, a useful adaptation to the situation in Iraq, but a habit that she couldn’t shake after her return. Since many attacks occurred at night when there was relative quiet, she became particularly anxious with silence.

After returning to the US, Tara was diagnosed with anxiety, mood disorder, PTSD, and minor TBI. She had nightmares and flashbacks daily, some including the smell of rotting bodies, and she would wake up from nightmares covered in sweat. These became somewhat less frequent over the years, but she still had nightmares/sweats a couple of times a month when I first saw her. She had frequent road rage when blocked in traffic, a dangerous situation in Iraq. When her vehicle was blown up by an IED, she realized that empty plastic Mountain Dew bottles had marked the location of the IED, so if she saw a pop bottle at the side of the road in the US, she panicked. She still slept with a loaded 9mm handgun and an extra clip on the nightstand near her bed, and a loaded shotgun nearby.

Tara was taking two medications for her PTSD: Buproprion HCL, an antidepressant, 150 mg. twice daily, and Clonazepam, a tranquilizer, 5 mg. “only when I have massive anxiety attacks.” Tara was also taking two other medications (unrelated to her war experiences) to support her recovery from recent surgery in which she donated a kidney to her younger sister. (Cyanocobalamin, a vitamin B 12 precursor, 1000 micrograms daily, and Gabapentin, 300 mg.)

Since Tara lived almost 150 miles away, we arranged that she would drive up with her husband BJ on Saturday morning, and we would have a session Saturday afternoon, and another session on Sunday morning. We met for two such weekends, in early April and mid-May 2013, a total of four sessions totaling almost 10 hours. Other than a brief exchange of emails, I had no other contact with Tara before our first session.

Besides the cameraman, the sessions on the first weekend were attended by Tara’s husband, BJ, and a colleague of mine, Frank Bourke, a clinical psychologist who is directing the R & R project researching rapid PTSD treatment using NLP principles. Frank had made the first contact with Tara by telephone, and put us in touch with each other. Frank attended the first weekend of my work with Tara, and he sometimes made comments or asked questions.

In the first session I begin by describing how I work, and gather information to find out what changes Tara would like to make. She first mentioned her anxiety and negativity — constantly planning for possible problems or dangers. Next she said that she had friends who had died, and third, she talked about her anger and rages, which she said was her biggest problem. When I asked if there was any other problem she wanted to change, she said, “When I think of stuff that’s bad, and that I went through, or saw, or helped with (on the edge of tears) I want to cry, but I don’t want to be crying. (Her voice breaks.) I don’t want my voice to be doing what it’s doing right now.” To summarize, she mentioned four areas: anxiety, grief, anger, and traumatic memories — which is usually the major focus in treating PTSD.

When I asked her where she wanted to start, she chose her anger. As we began, it became clear that a big factor in her exploding into rages — and sometimes destroying furniture — was the very rapid tempo of her internal critical voice, so we went to work on changing that, which also played a major part in triggering her hypervigilance.

Who can Benefit from this Program

Psychologists, counselors, therapists, and coaches who have clients with PTSD, a tremendous resource that can speed up the effectiveness of your work immensely.

NLP Practitioners: Even if you already know some of these methods, you can observe the finer points: how to follow a client and sequence interventions and how to adapt methods to fit the individual.

Those with PTSD will find this program useful to see how much can be accomplished in a short time with someone trained in these effective methods.

Purchase this program for yourself at ReleasingPTSD.com for only $195.
Satisfaction guaranteed 100% money back within 30 days from purchase.