How to get what you want (without getting what you don't) using NLP

How often have we said things like:

• "It's my audition on Thursday. I'm terrified. I wish I could stay home!"
  
• "So why not stay home?" I asked.
  
• Part of me wants to sing, but part of me is scared I’ll make a fool of myself.

Neurolinguistic Progamming offers us tools to resolve these inner conflicts. These tools are taught in full on our NLP Courses in New York.

One NLP technique that is widely used for issues of this kind is the so-called Visual Squash. It works as follows:

Firstly we identify the two things that we want that appear to be mutually exclusive (i.e. we can't seem to be able to have them both)

1. We represent these parts as two different visual images, using the visual representational system
   
2. Now hold one image in one hand and the other in the other hand. Feel the weight of each image so you get a kinesthetic sense (in the kinesthetic representational system). The images act as NLP anchors for the state and feeling associated with the particular desire.
   
3. We ask one part what its intention is, what it wants for us when it wants us to behave a certain way, for example what do I get by singing? Perhaps pleasure.
   
4. Keep asking for higher and higher positive intentions until you reach a point where the positive intention is a very high level value such as "peace" or "happiness"
   
5. We then ask the other part for its positive intention for not wanting me to sing. Perhaps it wants to protect me. Protection brings safety and safety brings peace.
   
6. Building rapport between the parts is important. Our ultimate aim is to reintegrate the parts and resolve the inner conflict.
   
7. As the parts “negotiate” and reach agreement, we can encourage the hands to move together to form a higher, combined, new “part”
   
8. Integration occurs when the positive intentions coincide at the highest level and the parts can form a new combined part and can be brought back into the body.
   

The problem that sometimes occurs in running the traditional NLP Visual Squash is that the unconscious mind does not fully engage in the process, and no real integration occurs. Those skilled in hypnosis can see this by the way the client’s hands move.

When we are teaching the visual squash pattern on our NLP practitioner training in New York we teach our students to fully engage with the unconscious mind using hypnotic principles.

In order to use the Visual Squash exercise in hypnosis, we first induce trance. Given that the Visual Squash places the competing “parts” on opposite hands, and uses hand movement to produce parts integration, it makes sense to use a hypnotic trance induction that utilizes the hypnosis principles of arm catalepsy or arm levitation.

If arm catalepsy is used to induce trance, then the arms will already be under the control of the unconscious mind and the visual squash may be easier.

The trained hypnotist can and will see the arms move in a hypnotic manner, quite different from conscious movement, if the conscious mind is fully involved in the technique.

It is amazing how powerful a change can be when the unconscious mind is fully involved in the change process.

To learn In-Depth NLP take our In-Depth NLP course here in New York.

Shawn Carson is director IPH New Yorkoffering NLP training in New York, hypnosis, individual coaching, www.nlptrainingnewyork.com 212-714-3574 Melissa Tiers is an NGH certified hypnotist; hypnosis training in New York, hypnosis for weight loss, hypnosis to stop smoking www.melissatiers.com 212-714-3569