Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Micro Submodalities

An interesting point arose on our recent trip to Atlanta to attend John Overdurf's master practitioner.

I discussed with John the fundamental difference between techniques such as EFT, where change is tracked through "client experience", and NLP where change can appear to be all or nothing. By this I mean that typically in EFT some client experience (such as their subjective level of discomfort with a particular issue on a 1-10 scale) is tracked. As the discomfort goes down, the client is made aware that progress is being made on the issue. In NLP we might work through a particular pattern with a client, and check, ie test, at the end to make sure the change has taken.

John's view was that both were fundamentally the same, and that it is the NLPer's role is to track the client's changing experience either way. In short that the client's state is ALWAYS in motion either way.

I absolutely think that John is correct, however it got me thinking about the nature of certain submodalities that change in an analogue way that can fairly easily be tracked over time by the client. Let's call these "micro submodalities". If we identify these submodalities for the client then the client's conscious and unconscious mind can communicate via changes in the micro submodality. NLPers will recognize this concept from some versions of the 6 step reframe.

A great example comes from the interaction of symbolic modeling and EFT. By using clean language and symbolic modeling to identify a clear representation of a kinesthetic feeling (size, shape, location, color, etc). Then as we "tap" on the issue, the size, shape and location of the feeling will likely change, indicating to the client that change is occurring.

More on this topic later!

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