Welcome to this free NLP Ezine
Hi everybody, and welcome to "NLP: The Secret Science of Self- Empowerment." This Ezine is designed to bring to you techniques, theories and exercises from the fascinating field of Neurolinguistic Programming.
NLP offers fascinating concepts that can help you to develop better relationships with others and yourself - and focuses on bringing forth the unlimited powers of genius that lie withing each one of us.
About This Issue
NLP has revolutionized the way we look at how human beings make sense of the world. One of the discoveries it is most known for is eye movements as indicators of cognitive processes. In other words, we move our eyes in accordance with our thoughts, and more specifically, our eye movements are related to the representational systems (visual, audio, kinesthetic) in which our thoughts present themselves to our conscious self.
|
This Issues Article: Eye Movements - Indicators of Thought Processes
|
The next time you have a conversation with someone, pay attention to their eye movements. You will find that people's eyes are moving all over the place: up, down, left, and right, as they speak to you. Have you ever wondered why that is? I bet you haven't. I know I never thought about eye movements, until I sat in an NLP seminar.
The first person to suspect a connection between eye movements and thought processes was the American psychologist William James (Principles of Psychology, 1890), who noted that his eyes go upward and sideways when he visualizes something.
In the 1970s, psychologists like Kinsbourne, Kocel, Galin and Ornstein discovered a connection between eye movements and the two hemispheres of the brain. This motivated the founders of NLP, Richard Bandler and John Grinder (and their students) to take a closer look at eye movements.
In 1977 Robert Dilts, an early NLP student and developer, and today one of the fields foremost contributors worldwide, conducted extensive research in this area by measuring the eye movements triggered by a specific set of questions. The subjects of the study were asked questions that were designed to cover all types of cognitive processes: Visual, auditory, kinesthetic and emotional. Furthermore, questions were categorized into memory (non-dominant hemisphere) and construction (dominant hemisphere).
The experiment resulted in the discovery of the following eye movement patterns:
Eyes looking up and right: Constructed images and visual fantasies.
Eyes looking up and left: Visual memories.
Eyes looking to the lateral right: Constructed sounds and words
Eyes looking to the lateral left: Remembered sounds and words
Eyes looking down and right: Feelings, both tactile (touch, temperature, etc.) and emotional (happy, sad, etc.)
Eyes looking down and left: Self-talk, inner dialogue.
Eyes defocused, looking straight ahead: Quick access of sensory data, usually visual.
Eye Movements (or Eye Accessing Cues) Applied
You might be wondering, what good does it do me to know that my eyes move when I access memories and feelings or construct pictures and sounds inside my head? NLP has found many ways to use eye movements and we will be looking at some of them over the next few issues.
As a start, consider these ideas:
The next time you try to learn how to spell a word, look to your upper left and make an image of the word. This will make it easier for you to "see" the word the next time you needed the correct spelling. This won't work as well, if you make the image of the word while looking down. The place for visual memory is up and left.
If you are plagued by a bad mood, look upward. Why? Because that breaks you out of your gloomy emotions, which are connected to looking down. This by itself might not be enough to deal with severe emotional issues, but it can sure snap you out of average moodiness.
The next time you have a dentist work on your teeth, look up and visualize something. Better than looking down, where your kinesthetic sensory input is emphasized. By looking down you intensify your awareness of the drill grinding at your teeth, because that is the eye movement connected to kinesthetic sensations.
When you listen to music you like, you will automatically find yourself looking sideways, because that is the way you can listen best.
When you ask someone a question and they spend a long time looking down before they answer you, chances are they had reservations about giving you an answer. They first had to “discuss the answer with themselves,” before giving it to you.
It is important to notice that in some cases all accessing cues are opposite, i.e. up and left becomes visual constructed (instead of visual memory), lateral left becomes auditory constructed (instead of auditory remembered), etc. This usually happens in case of left-handed people, but not all of them.
Watching other people's eye accessing cues does not tell you what they are thinking. It does, however, tell you in which representational system they are thinking: audio, visual, or kinesthetic, if they are remembering or constructing something, and if they engage in inner dialogue, or self-talk.
References:
Roots of NLP, Dilts, R., 1983.
NLP Vol I., Dilts, R., Grinder, J., Bandler, R. and DeLozier, J., 1980.
All the best,
Christoph Schertler
NLP Trainer/Coach - Founder PEC, LLC
Christoph Schertler has published an ebook on how to use NLP to build confidence. The NLP Confidence Builder
contains over 100 pages of powerful NLP techniques and concepts that can help you overcome limiting beliefs and bring forth the life-transforming power of confidence from deep within you.
Christoph Schertler was recently published in "101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Vol. 2" alongside John Gray, Jack Canfield, Richard Carlson, Bob Proctor, Alan Cohen and many other leading Self Improvement experts.
Get your copy today:
About the Author
Christoph Schertler is a certified NLP Trainer and NLP Coach with a passion for helping others to empower themselves and bring forth their power and genius from within. He has trained with some of the biggest names in the field and is a firm believer in the transformational powers of NLP.
More NLP Articles
More information on Christoph
Schertler
More information on Neuro-Linguistic
Programming
A selection of NLP
Books
|
Has this Article been Forwarded to you? You can Sign Up for this Free NLP Ezine Here!
|
CONTACT US
Any suggestions or questions? Please feel free to
contact us at any time (Western Pacific Time Zone)
at service@pecoaching.com or ++1-858.240.2200
DISCLAIMER
The contents herein are solely the opinions of the editors, and should
not be considered as a form of therapy nor advice. There is no guarantee
of validity or accuracy. Personal Empowerment Coaching, LLC assumes no
responsibility for injury and specifically disclaims any warranty, express
or implied for any products or services mentioned. If expert assistance
or counseling is needed, services of a competent professional should be
sought. Copyright (C) 2006 by Personal Empwerment Coaching, LLC. Permission
is granted to reproduce or distribute this newsletter only in its entirety
and provided copyright is acknowledged.