Mindful NLP
Posted on 11. Mar, 2014 by rwalker in Articles
Mindfulness and the Mother of all NLP patterns
Mindfulness would appear to be the “big new thing” which is getting scientific backing. This despite it dating back to ancient practices over two thousand years ago, even before Buddhism, which adopted it. It is being promoted by a group at Oxford University as an antidote to stress, depression and addictive behaviours for example, and even for school children. But what is mindfulness, and what does NLP have to say about it?
Bandler once famously defined NLP as an attitude and a methodology that leaves behind a trail of techniques. The attitude is curiosity, and the methodology is modelling; “how come” and “what do I need to know to be able to do that?” A third element is that you are best advised to model excellent examples of what you want. This is why NLP is often called the study of excellence and NLPers remark, tongue on cheek, that “if it didn’t work, it’s not NLP.” So how about modelling mindfulness?
To model something, you get really curious about what ideas and concepts you need to adopt, what states of mind are essential, and what physiology might be critical. You then “try these on” for yourself, and see if you can repeat the behaviour you wish to model. The next stage is to check whether each element you have adopted is either really critical or superfluous to getting a result.
Ok, I’m not going to do a thorough modelling, but I am going to look at the key elements and compare them with how NLP works. Overdorff and Silverthorn once claimed that all NLP “patterns” (or techniques) can be grouped under one fundamental “Mother of all patterns.” This is described by Dilts et. al. (1980) in Neuro-Linguistic Programming Volume I in the following way:
“Resources are accessed and applied to the problematic or present state of affairs to help the individual, group, or organization move to the outcome or desired state.” This boils down to
- Associate into / connect with problem
- Dissociate from problem
- Identify and associate to resources
- Attach resources to problem state
- Test – does it resolve the problem?
- Future Pace – imagine future situations and apply the new resources there.
So let’s now look at mindfulness. What does it teach and what is it in essence? Here are some core concepts:
- thoughts lead to feelings and emotions
- you are not your thoughts
and core practices:
- stop what you are doing
- breathe consciously, and steadily
- focus on your breath – notice it wherever your can notice it best
- breathe out more slowly than you breathe in (eg. 11 seconds vs 7 seconds)
typical exercises:
- imagine searching for the location of feelings throughout the body;
- pay attention to those specific feelings, and acknowledge them;
- notice thoughts as they arise; witness them as a passive observer, typically watching them float by like clouds.
Core concepts of NLP which are totally consistent with this are:
- that you are in charge of your mind, and therefore your results
- thoughts and feeling states arise out of processing information unconsciously, and
- combine with physiology where relevant to create our behaviours and reactions.
Now let’s also refer to the “mother of NLP techniques” while examining the core practice of mindfulness:
- Stop what you are doing; from an NLP perspective we would say that yes, you should interrupt the current behaviour if you want to change it.
- Breathe; well, always a good idea! Breathe steadily and slowly is a well established physiological technique for countering anxiety.
- Focus on the breath; the change in focus to the breath is a kind of distraction away from the problem state, and so here we have the beginnings of dissociation.
At this point, there is no overt direction to seek resources. However, NLP teaches that feelings are greatly reduced by dissociation, and that repeated practice of interrupting the old problem behaviour followed by focussing on a new state will result in the new (desired) state being installed in place of the old problem state. Therefore you should expect to find that you get more resilient to the old problem situation, which is one of the stated aims of mindfulness.
Did you also notice the conditioned response – or “anchor”? If each time you go through the same ritual – starting always with focus on breath – then the ritual becomes associated with the new calmed state. The calmed state is subsequently automatically triggered with beginning the ritual, and becomes available as a resource. In the NLP sense, you “applied the resources to the problem.” When the resilience becomes automatic then you have essentially successfully passed the NLP “Test” phase for the new learned response.
The mindfulness exercise which teaches you to practice standing back and observing thoughts is an even more clear direction to dissociate from the current problem state.
I would suggest that the body scan exercise can be viewed as a clear direction to acknowledge the problem state at the outset. You can’t address something till you acknowledge it’s there, and all “healing” begins with this.
Can you see other opportunities for NLP techniques to improve your mindfulness meditations? I’m thinking anchoring (for the most profound states achieved), Swish (for outcome orientation), collapsed anchors for removing negative states prior to starting… perhaps you can think of others.
Evidence is mounting that paying attention to feelings is vitally important in other ways. Your feelings are the source of your motivations. The NLP model of behaviour has operated ion this principle from its very beginning, as has hypnosis, for that matter, but now psychology and neuroscience are also recognising the importance of inner drives.
Setting goals according to what you think you should do, or what you think will make you happy, runs the very great risk of not satisfying your unconscious needs. That is to say, we will find we don’t deliver on consciously set goals if they are riding roughshod over our true inner needs, concerns, wants or desires. Make friends with your feelings and you will understand more about what you really want to be, do and achieve in life.
As a parting remark on your health, the surgeon Dr John Sarno (The Mind Body Prescription, 1999) has shown how emotions directly relate to chronic pain, for example, and there is also a growing body of evidence relating emotional states to illness too (look up Dr Bruce Lipton, https://www.brucelipton.com/about).
So do I recommend mindfulness? Yes, for sure, but there’s no need to overcomplicate it to still get great benefits. And remember, coping is not the same as resolving things. By the way, here are some nice easy and free Mindfulness audio downloads:
Vermont University Centre for Health & Wellbeing
Christoher Germer PhD (instructor at Harvard Medical School)