The low-down on Neuro-Linguistic Programming

Taken From Here

"Whether or not you think you can 

  or you can't...you're probably right" 

  Henry Ford

I've been really really excited about writing this post, as NLP is an approach to psychotherapy, personal development, and communication which absolutely fascinates me, and after reading this it may fascinate you more!

So, what is "Neuro-Linguistic Programming"?

NLP, or Neuro-Linguistic Programming, is the art and science of excellence, derived from studying how top people in different fields obtain their outstanding results. These communication skills can be learned by anyone to improve their effectiveness both personally and professionally. It is directly applicable to a diverse spectrum of fields such as communications, business, sales, education and therapy

Beginnings of NeuroLinguistic Programming
NLP began in the early 70's as a thesis project in California. Richard Bandler and his professor, John Grinder, wanted to develop models of human behavior to understand why certain people seemed to be excellent at what they did, while others found the same tasks challenging or nearly impossible to do.

Inspired by pioneers in fields of therapy, personal growth and development, Bandler and Grinder began to develop systematic procedures and theories that formed the basis of NLP. They studied three top therapists: Virginia Satir, the extraordinary family therapist, the innovative psychotherapist Fritz Perls, and Milton Erickson, the world-famous hypnotherapist.

Their goal was to develop models of how it was that these people got the results they did. They sought to identify and model the patterns that produced these results. These three gifted therapists were quite different personalities, yet Grinder and Bandler discovered some underlying patterns that were quite similar. These patterns became the underlying structure of NLP, with names like: meta-model, submodalities, reframing, language patterns, well formedness conditions and eye accessing clues.

The phrase "Neuro-Linguistic Programming" describes the process of how personality creates and expresses itself. Put simply, we are all made up of a neurology that conveys information about our environment to our central neurvous systems and brains. Since we are also meaning creating creatures, we translate theseperceptions in our brains into meanings, beliefs and expectations. As we continue to grow from a rather "critter brain" baby into a more complex adult human, we tend to filter,distort and magnify the input we get from our environment such that it matches the elaborate program we evolve to explain our life experience.

NLP in other Therapies

Taken From Here

Today, NLP has grown in a myriad of directions - hypnosis and behavioral personal change work, structures of beliefs, modeling personal success and systems of excelence and expertise, business coaching and sales training.  In fact, in my last job in advertising at Starcom MediaVest Group, the company ran a 4-day NLP course which offered managers and directors useful tools to improve their communication, confidence, and management skills. Some have taken it in spiritual directions, assisting in alignment of personal behaviours and beliefs with a "higher purpose" and connection to the Divine. 

It is rapidly growing in the field of personal health (the area I want to go into!) with its strong foundation in how the mind influences behaviours and feelings in the body.   Public speaking, stage fright, parenting skills, allergies, phobias, trauma...the list of areas where training in Neuro-Linguistic Programming and individual therapeutic work with NLP practitioners is endless.

In the next few posts I'll be walking through some tools common in NLP to improve performance at work and in your own personal health and wellbeing.  

If you're interested in using NLP in a practical sense, this is a great place to start 

Until next time...

Our Emotional Brain

"When we direct our thoughts properly, we can control our emotions." W. Clement Stone - Businessman, Philanthropist & Author of Success System That Never Fails 



Hi all!

Today I'm going to delve deeper into our emotional brain and how it drives our behaviours and bodily feelings.  

Psychologists define emotions as a combination of cognitions, feelings and actions [source: Kalat]. Put simply, 'emotions' incorporate feelings, but also how we process and respond to those feelings.

This is possible because every time we have a thought, the brain produces a chemical, which travels down into the body.  Emotions are the effect of these chemical messages travelling through the body.  

If you are currently experiencing stress, anxiety or fear, you body is likely to contain high levels of adrenalin, cortisol, and Norepinephrine.  This is known as the 'Fight-or-Flight' response, and is great for if you need the body to "fight" or "flee" from perceived attack, harm or threat to our survival.  In this scenario, 'Fight-or-Flight' is useful.  However, chronic stress causes adrenalin, cortisol, and norepinephrine to run through your body constantly, which causes the de-regulation of cells, and our primitive bodies just aren't designed for this long-term.  Sit back for a second...Is your heart rate faster than usual? Are you breathing at a quicker rate than normal? Do you feel tense.  If so, this is effectively your brain telling your body that you are stressed or anxious, and your body is literally reflecting your mind!  

Don't worry, there's a flip side, and its important we adopt this for our health and wellbeing.  When experiencing happiness, joy, love, fulfilment, the list goes on...the brain releases chemicals into our body that have the complete opposite effect.  Dopamine  (known as the love chemical) is released, enabling the body to experience pleasure.  In other words, when you do something good, you're rewarded with dopamine and gain a pleasurable, happy feeling. This teaches your brain to want to do it again and again. Serotonin is also released, and is associated with memory and learning.  These positive emotions are critical in allowing the body to repair itself.  Next time you're feeling comfortable, or happy, take note of your pulse - does it feel more normal? does your body feel lighter? has your breathing rate normalised?

Well I hope you found this interesting,

Until next time, 

Adam

Did You Know that our Brain is in Fact Plastic

Taken From Here

“I saw people rewire their brains with their thoughts, to cure previously incurable obsessions and traumas.” Dr. Norman Doidge

In my last post I discussed the power of positive-thinking (or affirmations) and how this has a decisive impact on our physiology. A couple of you wanted to understand how this works.  Well, let me tell you.

It all comes down to Neuroplasticity, which is the brain's ability to reorganize & re-mould itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. Since its discovery, this has had stress reduction, well-being, & health groups, very interested.

Taken from Here

What does this mean for us - The Basics

The adult brain contains over 100 billion neurons, give or take a few. To put this into context, that matches the estimated number of galaxies in our whole universe. Given we only use a few thousand of these repeatedly every day, there are literally billions of unused neurons we which can utilise.  This gives us the incredible ability to create completely new personalities, observe different outcomes, and completely change our condition of living...as long as we make the conscious decision to do it. It blew my mind too..

The reason we feel the same emotions & experience the same outcomes day-in day-out, is because we're firing the same neural pathways over & over again, over & over again, over & over again. This is where we can get stuck in this loop of self-limiting thoughts or habits, which recharges the stress response we experience on a daily basis and effectively moulds our personal perception of reality. 

Dr Caroline Leaf, estimates that "87% to 95% of the illnesses that plague us today are a direct result of our thought life. What we think about affects us physically and emotionally. It’s an epidemic of toxic emotions…"  

Consistent affirmations (said in a congruent way) is just one way of breaking that loop, by using new neurons in our brain to observe a different outcome, & to positively affect your physiology & mindset. Dr. Joe Dispenza, Neuroscientist, speaker on What The Bleep Do We Know, and a bit of a hero, claims "The one thing I noticed about people who had changes in health had changed their thinking...Our thoughts have a direct connection to our direct level of health."

To conclude

I'm not saying that using our infinitely powerful brains will cure all our physical difficulties, but by learning the discourse of stress symptoms and illness we can discover what is being suppressed or ignored in our emotions, and how this is influencing our health & well-being. From this viewpoint we can observe a clear two-way communication going on between our body and mind that affects our physical, mental & emotional state. 

Affirmations (some good ones are listed in my last post) & meditation are both ways that help us deepen this understanding.  So be more kind to yourself and try using some affirmations, you may find it works wonders!  I've attached a great little bonus tutorial for you on Neuroplasticity, which really gives you the low-down on this truly fascinating phenomenon :

Next time I'll be looking deeper into how emotions effect us and how we can affect them.  

Over & Out,

Adam