Neuro-Linguistic Programming Models Summary (10 of 14)

Rhythmic Learning

If you use the aural style, you like to work with sound and music. You have a good sense of pitch and rhythm. You typically can sing, play a musical instrument, or identify the sounds of different instruments. Certain music invokes strong emotions. You notice the music playing in the background of movies, TV shows and other media. You often find yourself humming or tapping a song or jingle, or a theme or jingle pops into your head without prompting.

Common Pursuits and Phrases

Some pursuits that use the aural style are playing, conducting, or composing music, and sound engineering (mixing and audiovisual work).

You may tend to use phrases like these:

• That sounds about right.
• That rings a bell.
• It's coming through loud and clear.
• Tune in to what I'm saying
• Clear as a bell.
• That's music to my ears.

Learning and Techniques

• If you are an aural learner, use sound, rhyme, and music in your learning. Focus on using aural content in your association and visualisation.
• Use sound recordings to provide a background and help you get into visualisations. For example, use a recording of an aircraft engine running normally, playing loudly via a headset, to practice flight procedures. Use a recording of the sound of wind and water when visualising sailing maneuver. If you don't have these recordings, consider creating them while next out training.
• When creating mnemonics or acrostics, make the most of rhythm and rhyme, or set them to a jingle or part of a song.
• Use the anchoring technique to recall various states that music invokes in you. If you have some particular music or song that makes you want to 'take on the world,' play it back and anchor your emotions and state. When you need the boost, you can easily recall the state without needing the music.

The (Accelerated) Learning Chain

This is a BIG subject. We’ll have a look at the basics.

Accelerated learning methods enable you to learn more quickly, efficiently, deeply than standard and traditional methods of learning and they also enable you to have better short and long term recall of the subject. It helps people integrate the learning better into their lives, thus making learning more worthwhile.

Does this sound like a good thing? It certainly does to me.

Traditional learning methods

Traditional methods of learning typically involve someone telling you something or you reading something and then you try to memorise it. They might tell you what it is and get you to repeat it for example. The problem with this method is that it takes a long time, you do not understand how to apply the knowledge straight away and before you have had time to do that you forget it.

Take learning a foreign language for example. I learned French by memorising a list of words. Say twenty at a time. It took ages and by the time I got to the twentieth word I had forgotten the first half a dozen and needed to go back over them. Even when I had committed them to memory I couldn’t use the words as I did not know how to put them into context. It was a very long process!

I only really began to master French when I went to France and immersed myself in the language and their culture.

In the case of traditional methods of learning, we normally use only a fraction of our in-built learning resources. Eg Reading a text book involves us only using our Auditory Digital resources and our sight. we may visualise the words in order to memorise what we have learned.

Using accelerated learning

Accelerated learning methods involve using many more of our learning resources and it can be done much more quickly.

For example:

Our online NLP training courses involve our students watching animated videos. This enables us to take advantage of our ability to easily remember pictures and associate them with concepts and ideas. They listen to the audio in the video, which also enables them to associate sounds to the pictures and the concepts, thus strengthening the learning and making recall easier.

We use examples of the use of concepts. This enables the students to relate the concept or process to real life, to things that they may have experienced in the past and they can visualise themselves applying it in the future.

There are exercises for the students to do. This enables them to get immediate practical use for the learning. It makes the learning experiential for them. This is a major part of accelerated learning.

We discuss in the videos how to apply the knowledge, what could go right, and what could go wrong. This enables students to review their own performance and learn from their mistakes.

The experience of applying the learning means that it is much easier to recall the subject in detail as we have mental pictures, sounds and feelings associated with or memories of the learning experience. The more sensory based information that we have, the more senses that we use in the learning the better the learning and the easier the recall.

So, accelerated learning involves using he senses of visual, auditory, and feelings, or touch. It means having experience of using the learning and it means practice in using it. It also means experimenting with it.

At this stage you might like to see how it works for yourself by picking one of our videos to watch. Make notes as you watch it, See yourself using the knowledge and then experiment with it.

You can probably now think of ways of using accelerated learning in your own environment for the benefit of your customers, patients or students.

Accelerated learning in Education

If you are working in education, then think of ways that you can incorporate the use of metaphors, different learning styles eg the 4-MAT system of learning. Get your students to experience the learning, give them tasks and exercises to do. Give plenty of examples.

Use accelerated learning in Therapy

Get the patient to talk you through exactly how they are behaving at the moment. Walk them through the steps that they are using to get the results that they do not want. Then use metaphors to explain how other people do things differently and get successful outcomes. Follow this up with getting the patient to visualise themselves using the method that you are teaching them. Walk them through each step in their minds eye. Repeat this several times. Get them to visualise having success with the learning. This will anchor the learning deep inside their neurology.

Use accelerated learning in Sales

Use metaphors to show how the product of service can add value. Do you demonstrate your product? You should. Get the client to experiment with using the product. Make sure that they see the value and see themselves getting value from the product or service in the future.

We believe that any proven method that gives us an advantage in our lives is worth employing and so we use accelerated learning techniques in our NLP training courses, and NLP online training programmes.

The key underlying principles of Accelerated Learning are:

• Learning involves whole body and whole mind . . . and all the senses.
• Learning is creation and not consumption.
• Collaboration aids Learning, competition slows learning.
• Learning takes place at many levels simultaneously.
• Learning comes from doing the work itself (with feedback) and people learn best in context.
• Positive emotions greatly improve learning.

Benefits of Accelerated Learning with NLP

• Cut your training time by 20 – 50% without cutting critical content.
• Streamline your programmes and double their effectiveness.
• Help participants grasp technical and complex material more easily.
• Increase retention by creating vivid and memorable learning experiences.
• Reduced learner frustration.
• Making it easier for learners to “digest” content that is complex or theoretical.
• Making it easier for participants to master skills by providing increased opportunity for practice.
• Increasing retention by creating vivid and memorable learning experiences.
• Facilitating transfer of learning to the job by spending more time on application.
• Recall can be increased by up to 50% because individuals are more actively involved in the learning process.

Limitations of Accelerated Learning

Generally the more time that you spend learning the better the learning.

The principal disadvantage to such a widespread implementation of an accelerated learning curriculum is the degree of focus and coordination it requires of both students and teachers. Students do have such widely different talents and learning styles. To realistically, incorporate all of these learning styles in one group setting requires a great degree of supervision and individualised attention. Takes manpower, ie cost. We circumvent this by using our NLP e-Learning facilities that back up our live trainings and allow students to train at their leisure, as and when suits them.

Apposition (of Opposite)

While running our recent Master Practitioner training in Tampa, I was struck by the repetitious theme of the importance of Polar opposites.

I'm going to begin by saying this is a somewhat unusual topic and style for me. Chances are that'll be obvious soon enough. I'm usually primarily so strongly into having the freedom to choose from a wide range of options... that thinking in terms of absolutes typically calls me into vividly describing all the grays between black & white. I'm often the guy finding exceptions to the rules, that sort of thing. But I've been reminded of the value of polar opposites, and exploring outside our comfort zone can be very empowering, so... here goes an attempt to explore the value of polar opposites for both you & me.

And so as you read this article, for the sake of brightening your life just a bit, maybe sparking creative approaches to situations you're currently in... I encourage you to think about any unresolved situations or problems you may be currently facing. Just for kicks, try thinking through these situations again, from an opposite perspective. From whatever the opposite reasons would be. See where it might take you.

For example, when my training partner Doug O'Brien and I were teaching an NLP technique known as 'collapsing anchors', Doug shared an innovative twist he & one of his other associates (Kevin Creedon) had come up with, that makes the technique more effective. Collapsing anchors is a process that helps neutralize any negative feelings one may still experience from a previous memory. Some would teach it by having one 'balance' the negative sensation against a combination of very strong positive sensations.

With Doug's & Kevin's approach, instead of just balancing the negative emotion with a lot of positive ones, they would first ask their client "what would be the 'polar opposite' of the original presenting negative feeling." And they would use the positive polar opposite of the negative feeling, with which to balance out the emotions, and leave the client feeling positive (or at least, neutral). By using what the client says is the "polar opposite," the technique is experienced a lot more strongly.

I've been finding opposites important in other situations as well.

One student at our recent course expressed a concern that he had lost his ambition. He said he no longer has a particularly strong desire to be motivated, to be ambitious -- even though he still has a desire to have a desire to do so! Most would look at that presenting situation and presume the student had lost his motivation to move "towards" something. Essentially, the obvious clues all point to a diminished positive motivation. My first test with him was designed around painting more vivid pictures & ideas of what he said he wanted... but I didn't get a really strong response, so I didn't think that was the real challenge; thus I let that challenge float around my consciousness for a while.

Later on, after hearing Doug remind me of his approach to collapsing anchors using polar opposites, I applied the same thinking to the student who'd lost his motivation to move towards various things -- and it instantly occurred to me that the student hadn't actually lost his positive desire for things... he had instead lost his emotional response to *avoiding* unwanted negative outcomes. He still had the positive desire for certain things, but he was no longer responding to attempts (by himself or others) to 'scare' him into doing things as a preventative measure.

He had decided, essentially, to no longer allow anything to stress him out. In NLP terms, he'd lost his 'away-from' motivating strategies. In more casual terms, he was still doing all the positive visualizing of his dreams, but he'd lost the proverbial fire heating up his rear end.

He did notice that there'd been changes in perception at some time in the past, primarily through the evidence that he just didn't seem to care to push his entrepreneurial dream forward in a prompt time frame, even though he wanted to.

But now that he knows how things have changed, he also has the tools at his disposal to fire himself back up again, and he can now more easily effect the kinds of changes he'd like to create in his life. Which is very exciting both for him and for us!

The insight gained from understanding how one's motivation strategy has changed, and how to adjust it appropriately -- is the difference between actually making dreams into reality -- and just sitting around and dreaming about doing so. It's fascinating: Sometimes we have to look in the polar opposite place from where we were initially looking.

So, ultimately, how can you use this discovery more simply?

It's great for understanding someone's intentions, values, and reasons for doing things. Here's a case in point: Let's say you're in the process of asking someone what's important to them (i.e., an NLP values elicitation process). You ask "What's important to you about X?"

If they say Freedom, it's just about guaranteed they're saying so because they fear the lack of it. They tell you what they want because there's been a time when they were without it, or there's been a circumstance where their freedom was challenged or withheld.

No one who's always felt fully free will notice that freedom is important to them. Only someone who fully appreciates freedom (because they've been without it for some period of time) will express to you that it's important for them.

No one who's always been treated with honesty is going to go out of their way to share with you how important honesty is. They're going to tell you that honesty is important because they've experienced a situation in their life when someone wasn't honest, and they felt violated and don't like to mistrust people. If someone will state that they feel honesty is important to them, it's almost a given that at some time in the past, and probably with something important, someone was dishonest with them.

So while I'm not saying it's always useful to look at the opposite of a preference or topic or challenge or problem... I do often find it useful in circumstances where optimal next steps are not obvious and optimal, to consider the polar opposite position next, rather than jump quickly to imposing our own intuition on a situation (valuable as we believe that may be!).

Perhaps you're not jumping into that new project because you don't want to try & then possibly fail. Sometimes that's because of a fear of failure. But if that doesn't ring true for you when you think about it... consider if it may be a fear of success! Sometimes people don't achieve success because they think others might then have too high expectations for them, from then on. And they think that would be too taxing or difficult to satisfy those higher expectations in the future.

Perhaps you're not getting closer to your new relationship partner because you think you don't think they're right for you long term... but if that doesn't feel like the right answer... maybe you have a history of preferring people that aren't right for you long-term, which gives you an easy out! In which case, perhaps you don't think they're WRONG enough for you, long-term, and it's not them personally you don't want, it's the permanent relationship?

Here's yet another example.

In teaching Lie Detection (which is actually teaching truth detection!), we typically experience 3 different categories of results through the training process. The category of those who are almost always accurate in truth detection (say, 80-100% accuracy), and the category of those who are almost always wrong (say, 0-30% accuracy), and then the category in the middle (40-70% ish). Paradoxically, the people who are almost always wrong... have a lot less to learn about truth detection skills... than people who are about half-right, half-wrong. Normally we'd expect people with the lowest scores to have more work to do. But that's not the case -- the people with the lowest scores already have most or all of the neural circuitry in place to get the wrong answer consistently. In which case we teach those people just to reverse their gut response, and they suddenly start getting the right answers consistently. (Some people actually do need to learn when & why to mistrust their intuition!).

And we can generalize from that response. When someone is experiencing a problem, the solution is often found in the polar opposite response, neurologically & behaviorally speaking.

It's my obviously biased opinion that there's nobody better than an NLP Practitioner, Master Practitioner, or Trainer, to help us find methods or patterns to rewire our strategies for solving our own problems.

Just a thought. I hope this article has given you a completely opposite and highly useful perspective on something you're currently facing!

Problem Definition

Use ecology and as if to determine the problem

Problem Solving Strategy

Do you see the constant need for problem solving strategies because of perceived obstacles all around you, or do you see those obstacles as challenges to be faced in everyday life?

Our problems are man-made.  Therefore, they may be solved by man.  And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. --John F Kennedy

The chances are that your attitude to the problems we all face in our personal or business lives will very much assist in their resolution and the degree of success you achieve.  

The art of problem solving is something we all need to learn to keep us moving forward.

Focus on problem solving strategies

You have planned your work for the day, you have a target in mind for exactly what you want to achieve and then, out of the blue, an unforeseen event occurs that you view as a problem. 

It is quite easy at this stage to be irritated or angry, but the moment anger takes over you cease to be at your best.  

You immediately focus more on the problem and less on the problem solving activity that is now needed.

Recognise, firstly, that there is a problem and it needs to be resolved.  If you don’t, it will either get worse or reappear in a different shape.

It is good to have problem solving techniques at hand because, firstly, you know they will appear no matter how much you try to avoid them and, secondly, the sooner you get past them the richer will be your experience and the more confident you will be for the future.

Activity needs problem solving strategies

If you never do anything you won’t be troubled much by problems.  The more you get involved, the more you try to succeed, the more frequent will problems arise.  Consider them as stepping-stones to the next and higher stage.

As you solve them, the harder will be the problems.  Life is like that.  

But the more your experience grows, the better will you be at dealing with them.  

So at the outset change your attitude and view them positively.

What does that little voice say in your mind when you encounter a problem?  Does it say something like, “Why do I keep making mistakes like this?” 

If you allow it to do that, it will stay on the wrong path because it will focus on making mistakes.  

If you catch yourself using that sort of language, change it to something like:  “How can I find a solution to this?” or “What lessons can I learn from this challenge to make sure I am better equipped to deal with it next time round?”

Problem solving strategies and fight or flight

You probably know already about the fight or flight response that is deeply embedded within our psyche.  

What that means is whenever we perceive a danger – and for these purposes stress may be viewed in the same way – our body gets ready for emergency action.

So blood rushes to our major muscle groups and other organs that will be used to flee or to fight.  Consequently, the blood supply to the brain is reduced. 

When you think about that rationally, of course, it is the very time that the brain needs the blood.

If you find yourself feeling stressed or angry because a problem has arisen, try to stand back and rephrase your internal language.  

See it merely another challenge rather than a problem.  Replace emotive words with softer ones, take a few deep breaths and relax and let the blood flow to the brain where it is needed for thinking.

Sometimes we can sit around for ages fretting over the solution to our challenge, and the more we think the worse it seems to get.  If you find that happening, try changing your physiology.

Problem solving strategies and physiology

If you are sitting, stand up.  Take a few deep breaths. Walk around your home or office space.  

Stretch your arms.  Clap your hands. If you can do so without attracting too much attention, make an excited gesture. 

If you can escape from the building you are in, go for a walk.  If it can be a garden, park or countryside, so much the better.  

Any or all of these activities will oxygenate the brain and get you thinking more productively.

Problem solving strategies and reframing

Try to be grateful for the challenge.  Without them we cannot grow or expand our horizons.  Don’t make it worse than it is already.  

Try reframing it.  If you put an old picture in a new frame it can make the world of difference.

In other words, turn the situation around.  Consider how solving this challenge will make you stronger and better able to deal with future challenges.  

If the problem seems enormous, chunk it down and deal with it that way.

By “chunk it down”, I mean consider the various strands of the challenge and solve them separately.  

The human brain likes to break things down into smaller pieces and will often solve problems and challenges much quicker.

Be sure to spend less time considering the problem and more time thinking about the solution.  

Indeed, I suggest you spend only 20 per cent of your time on the problem which will leave you around 80 per cent of your time concentrating on the solution.

You can be sure that if the solution doesn’t come reasonably quickly, you are spending rather too long on the problem itself rather than focusing on the answer to it.

If you are still stuck, make a list of all the solutions there might possibly be.  You are looking for a hundred or so.  

Don’t consider them at this stage.  Just write them down as fast as you can think of them, so matter how silly they may seem.

When you have compiled a list of at least a hundred, then go through them carefully and look for the most promising and realistic ones.  Then apply the best ones. 

Problem solving strategies and anticipation

The advantage of this exercise is not only may it enable you to solve this problem, but it will also give you ideas for the future and enable you to anticipate further challenges before they happen.

You will feel now, I hope, that there is more than one way to experience a problem.  It can be viewed as devastating or an opportunity to excel. 

Try thinking of it in that light the next time an obstacle crosses your path.

Rather than worrying about how you are going to make ends meet this month, concentrate instead on how you will be able to make more money.  

There are plenty of articles on this website that will help you do that, and they won’t cost you a penny.

When you have defeated your problem or challenge – or however you like to describe it – take a little time to celebrate.  

We don’t do enough of that.  We spend too much time moping about our perceived failures and not enough time enjoying our successes.

The problem solving activities on this page should help you change your entire attitude.  

In future, concentrate on the challenge and think of the benefits that will come your way when you overcome the problem.  

Not only will you have greater experience, but you will have more resources for overcoming greater challenges in the future.

The D.V.P Pattern

Distill an idea to only a slogan, add in vision to feel high, add in also passion to turn it into a common goal with your life

Self-Esteem Quick Fix

If you suddenly feel a burst of self criticism and feel lousy about yourself, it is a sign of negative reinforcement that will eventually become a very low self esteem, maybe even a permanent one.

This exercise will stop the flow of negative images and at least for the present will guide your mind back to the right tracks:

Step 1:

Let’s start by creating an image of you as if you see yourself from the outside. Just for a few moments, try to imagine what would you look like if you saw yourself standing or sitting there, next to your computer, staring at the screen. Imagine the clothes you are wearing right now, the color of your hair and eyes, the facial expressions, the posture, the general look of you in a dissociated image. 

Step 2:

Adjust that image to present a positive look, even mildly positive. Ignore the little flaws that normally would catch your eyes in the mirror, and see the big picture, you as a whole person, sitting there on the chair, looking at these words, feeling some sort of serenity even just a little bit, it will grow stronger in a few moments. 

Keep adjusting the image; play with sub modalities - make the image brighter, make it larger, play a quiet song you like in the background (only in your mind), make your image-self smile softly, enlarge any of your strong and positive characteristics. 

The idea in step 2 is to maximise the positive points in you and minimise the negative ones. Keep working on that image, changing small details one at a time to make it a beautiful positive and accurate representation of who you really are.

Step 3:

Exaggerate. 

We are all doing it in the negative side of our lives, making every little flaw a huge setback, a zit becomes a huge sign saying "look at me", the few cellulites on our belly makes us believe everyone are starring at our fat-self. Of course it’s not real, so why not doing it for our own benefit? Exaggerate the positive sides of you. You have blue eyes that everyone adore? Make them brighter and larger. You like your nose best? Focus on it. You have a great sense of humor, imagine how good you’d feel having other people smile from your words. 

Make it big, sensational and positive. There is no one way better, just play with it.

Step 4:

Make that image more powerful by comparing it with the image you made in step 1. You can tell the differences because you did a lot to change the image. What is the difference in feelings? Where are those feelings located? Compare the images and approve to yourself that the second image, the more positively powerful one, is the one you’d like to keep with you today. 

Comments:

This is not a one-time-fix exercise. You will want to practice and play with this short by powerful exercise as many times as you need. It is especially useful when you want to lighten up your day, maybe after an emotional event, a time when you feel down and want to cheer up. It is a simple but useful way to make you feel good, for a change.

The Smart Eating Pattern

With the holiday season almost here I thought it would be useful to share with you a strategy designed to help you make smarter choices about food. The majority of people I speak with already know what healthy eating is, they understand that certain foods are likely to create weight increase. They also know that the issue is how much you eat.

So how come people don’t just change their eating habits?

I have already spoken a little about how we might use food as a coping strategy to deal with emotional issues however sometimes there is a habit aspect to consider too. When you are in a restaurant choosing your food from the menu how do you make your choices?

Connirae Andreas decided to use NLP to model the difference between naturally slim people and those who have weight issues. They noticed some specific differences and from this came up with what they call “the naturally slender eating strategy.”

They noticed that people with weight issues were more likely to focus on the flavours of the food, what looked or smelt good or that they felt drawn to. As I’ve often mentioned in earlier blogs they probably spent more time thinking about the food before it arrived than they did when eating it.

People who are naturally slim are more likely to first check in with their own body and see how they feel. Are they hungry or not etc. When looking at the menu choices they will project their experience into the future, how will that food feel in my stomach? How will I feel later? They will recognise if a food will make them feel bloated later and reject that food. Although they may consider the flavours of the foods they are equally concerned with how they will feel physically after eating the food.

Connirae also discovered that people with weight issues may have become desensitised to how their bodies feel. This led them to explore how people can reconnect with their own responses. By reconnecting to our own responses we will be more likely to notice what foods make us feel good physically rather than being drawn to foods that give us sugar highs. Mindfulness could be one route to making that connection with your own responses.

Boundaries Installation

Respecting boundaries between you and your client. Part 1. Have you ever commented after a session with a client I seem to have taken on my clients headache or I feel drained and not in such a good mood, though the session went well and my client is pleased? 

Why do some therapists feel in such a good state after their client has left, or at the end of the working day and others don't? The difference - Our Personal boundaries and state. 

In this article we will explore what these boundaries are, how they can seemingly merge with our clients and how to discriminate between our clients boundaries, state and our own. 

What are Boundaries of the Self? 

Our boundaries are the relational aspects of ourselves that let you know when you are you and not someone else. They can be either the contextual or physiological cues that let you re-enter yourself, you, who you are at the deep core. 

Have you ever had the experience I sound like my mother/father or That was not a behaviour of mine but that of my friend or colleague, it wasn't me? Perhaps it was just a simple gesture, phrase or facial expression that you know was uncharacteristic of who you are, something that took you out of your self and into someone else. It can be known as Second Position Modelling' or Deep Trance Identification'. 

Children and impressionists are very adept at this skill; they are able to mimic another's behaviour. However, unlike a child an impressionist will have created contextual cues to know how to enable him/her to return to themselves. They can be as simple as when on stage I can be whomever or when I walk off the stage I give myself a shake and return to me. These serve as contextual cues and anchors. 

This skill in children is not learnt but is inherent in our neurological makeup. In Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) this mimicking is called Modelling or going to Second Position'. 

Some therapists, like the impressionists, are adept at Second Position'. Their ability to step into another's shoe and experience what the client is experiencing; as the adage gs Don't judge another until you have walked a mile in their shoes! 

In NLP the Second Position is the perceptual experience from another's position or point of view, as if you were experiencing what they are seeing, hearing and feeling. These are also known as Perceptual Positions' or as Gregory Bateson stated in Steps to an Ecology of Mind', Triple Description'. Triple Description is the ability to describe any interaction or scenario from three points of view or three positions', which are: 

First Position: The position from your own perspective, that is, You, I. 

Second Position: The position from another's perspective, that is Him, Her, Them 

Third Position: The position of the observer, observing the interaction or scene from the outside. 

Triple Description

Triple Description allows a therapist, during a treatment, to gather information from more sources than using only one of these positions would allow.

It is interesting to note that the suffering of traumatic incidents (mental or physical) generally levitates people to occupy the Third Position so as to disassociate themselves from their feelings of trauma. This enables them to remove the pain. A successful intervention will normally allow the client to re-associate back into their First Position with a new set of skills and abilities for having resolved their trauma. For example, in some physical therapies there have been many reports of clients releasing' emotional trauma when the physical trauma is resolved. Mind and body are relational. 

Second Position is an extremely useful tool in gathering information about a client and is commonly known as empathising' with the clients situation as if' you were them; but it is not just a cognitive process. Second Position can highlight possible causes of trauma to the therapist that the client is unaware or unwilling to talk about. 

Those who naturally gravitate towards Second Position will generally find themselves in the caring professions such as counsellors, psychotherapists or other therapeutic occupations. However, it is important to note that having the ability to take a good Second Position ds not automatically render someone a good therapist. If they are unable to successfully use the information gained to help their client then Second Position becomes a redundant skill. 

It is vital that therapists utilising Second Position learn to reject this position safely after a treatment. 

Third Position is a vital skill used by Doctors and Surgeons - they would not want to be feeling the same pain as their patient when operating! Other professions that use Third Position include Soldiers, Dentists and Negotiators. 

First Position occupations can include dancers, body-workers, athletes, martial arts and company directors. Though it is important not to generalise, as each role when performed successfully will involve a healthy mix of the Triple Description utilised during certain operations or phases of its role. Each context will propose what perceptual position to occupy more than a particular profession. Take a moment and consider a time when you had a successful intervention and notice which of the positions you occupied. Was it First or Second Position? Maybe it was all three. In which sequence did these positions occur? Compare the difference to a time when perhaps it was not so successful or that you felt drained afterwards or had a headache etc. What is the difference between these two treatments? 

As human beings, we share the same neuro physiological makeup. We have a nervous system that continually processes information between ourselves and our environment. This information is reduced to meaning, that is, the cognitive understanding of our world around us. Our personal history is created through the extraction of meaning from experience in how we talk about and interact with the people around us and yourself. 

Though we share the same world, we see and experience it differently to each other. We agree upon generalisations to create mutual agreement with which to allow communication and socialisation to happen. These generalisations are limited by the environments we occupy in our lives. Some generalisations apply cross- culturally; we share the same meaning e.g. when our lips are stretched into our cheeks, our teeth showing and a glint' in the eye, we share the meaning of this by translating it internationally as smiling' and in turn can relate this to the state of happiness'. Experience is terminated at the production of language and meaning. The sharing and occupation of the same world and similar experiences allows us the ability to understand how someone else may feel if we were in their shoes. We are able to empathise, communicate and build relationships from this. 

The commonality of experience and the ability to go to' Second Position (empathise) allows for the creation and expansion of our map of the world; we are thus able to create a fairly accurate understanding of someone else's circumstances. 

The physiological considerations of Second Position involve the matching and mirroring of another's physiology (posture and gestures), breathing and vocal qualities (volume, tempo, pitch and words). 

Therapists can account for symptoms such as headaches, tiredness etc. after a treatment through the over extension of Second Position with a client. The therapist without knowing, takes on the clients position or state, and captures their trauma. This trauma is then reconstructed within the therapist (i.e. headaches, tiredness etc). The value of Second Position is realised when a clean re-entry into First Position is achieved. 

The inability to either occupy First Position or cleanly step out of Second can lead to stress and illness in the therapist. This can sometimes result in the Therapist changing their profession, where the successful utilisation of the triple description (i.e. all three positions) could have prevented it.

Consider this case example:

David enters the room; his mood is calm and relaxed. Michelle is in the room suffering prolonged acute back pain. She is tense, quiet, frustrated and upset. David naturally enters into Second Position with Michelle and his state begins to change. He finds himself beginning to feel a little tense and tired and ds not know how to change his state. Michelle leaves the room and David is left feeling down with a headache coming on. 

The converse can also happen and if the therapist is not feeling well, but the client is happy, then the happy client can leave the treatment and start feeling down without knowing the cause. The value of Second Position lies in having the sensory skill to notice when there is a change in state and having the ability to shift back into First Position, back into You'. 

Second Position as a Bowen Therapist is extremely valuable as it can highlight symptoms within a client that the client is either unaware of or do not wish to discuss. This in turn enables the therapist to make a more structured and appropriate diagnosis, leading to correct treatment. 

The simplicity of changing state and moving out of Second Position arises from mismatching the other persons physiology, vocal patterns and then shifting to the posture/s which are your first position. 

It is important for a therapist to have the skill to a) notice (sensory acuity) when their state has changed and b) know how to cleanly shift out of Second Position. 

When you are next with a client, look at your posture and listen to your voice, are you matching or mirroring them? What state are you in before your client arrives? 

What can you do to maintain your state and get back to First Position? Do you have any rituals you perform or perhaps can you think of one which can help you re-enter First Position? 

Some people may just take a deep breath and fold their arms or sit back in the chair, others may think of a particular memory that lets them know they are themselves. 

In the next article "Triple Description" we will provide actual steps for you to learn the skill of Second Position and deepen your rapport including: 

• How to successfully create a Triple Description 

• Learn how to deepen rapport with Second Position 

• Create anchors' to access First Position anytime, anywhere 

• Use intuition through Second Position 

• Know when, where and how to use Triple Description for a successful and vitalising treatment.