In-Depth NLP? depends upon communicating with the unconscious mind. The problems we have, stress, smoking, over-eating, failure to achieve our goals, etc are not a function of the conscious mind. After all, our conscious mind knows what to change, has probably known it for years, but somehow actually changing seems beyond us.



In order to help a client to change, whether we are acting as a coach, hypnotist, therapist, manager or just a friend, we have to hold the space for their unconscious mind to understand the change that they desire, and then for their unconscious mind to make the changes in their internal landscape that are required for them to truly change in reality. In order to do this, we need to be able to identify conscious versus unconscious responses.

The difference between In-Depth NLP and other more traditional forms of NLP is that In-Depth NLP deals with the unconscious mind. The first step in this process is to identify when the unconscious mind is speaking, to understand the language that the unconscious mind is using, and to be able to speak in this language in order to communicate with the unconscious mind.

UNCONSCIOUS COMMUNICATION

So what is the language of the unconscious mind? Firstly, the unconscious mind does not primarily deal in words. The unconscious mind deals with:

?Concepts,

?Spaces and spatial relationships,

?Physiology and state,

?Tonality,

?Eye movement, and

?Other non-linguistic concepts.

GESTURES AS UNCONSCIOUS COMMUNICATION

Do you know a person who ?speaks with their hands?? Their conscious mind is not telling them what gestures to make; the gestures are almost entirely unconscious. And yet, if you watch closely, you will notice a pattern in what they do. This is to say that they will consistently gesture in a certain way when they evoke a certain concept.

Let us say that they are talking about how they have been, and how they want to be. They talk about how they've been and gesture left. Then they talk about how they want to be and they gesture right. Then they repeat the gestures. While we may not know exactly what they are experiencing, we do now know that they unconsciously keep their current problem state on the left and the state they want to have on the right. So by gesturing to their right we can take them into that resource state on an unconscious level.

I have a treasured memory of a student I worked with in class. His unconscious mind was extremely demonstrative and consistent. When talking about a particular problem state he would indicate right, and when talking about a resource state he would indicate left. He did this so clearly and so consistently that the whole class was able to easily calibrate where he kept each. When I asked him (consciously) where his resource state was, he flatly said he did not know, stating, ?maybe my unconscious knows?. I pointed out that he was the only person in the room to whom his unconscious mind had NOT communicated the information!

CONCLUSION

Determining exactly when the client's unconscious mind is communicating (always!) and what it is saying, takes experience and skill. This can only be gained by training with skilled teachers and by practice, practice, practice. The rewards of doing so are immeasurable!

These are the skills we teach in our In-Depth NLP trainings in New York.