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Once the subject has been oriented to his time line, the therapist can then lead him to an example of one of the positive states from his childhood.The client is instructed to imagine himself floating out of the present, over the timeline towards a time in his youth when he experienced the positive state.
For example:
Now, Bob, I'd like you to imagine that you can float up out of the present and begin to fly over your timeline.Just become aware of what it would be like if you could really float up, out the present, and find yourself, floating over that long line of cards or lights or bumps or pictures that represents your time line....And as you float back towards a time when you were 5 or 6 or 10, some time in your childhood, I'd like you to find a time, a very specific time when you felt really good about yourself.Maybe you were proud, maybe you were happy, or maybe you just felt good for no reason.And even if it only lasted for a short time, for a minute, or a few minutes, go back to that time and remember just that part, the good part.
Most clients will not immediately remember a positive experience so language is included to allow for the unconscious to lead them to one.
And as you float back over your past, you may not be aware in your conscious mind of a specific example, but your unconscious mind knows the perfect time when you felt really good about who you are.And as you float towards your childhood, your unconscious can draw you to a place on the line, a feeling, or a bump or a brightness on the line that tells you this is the place.
The choice of the exemplar should be unconsciously motivated and its content need not be divulged to the therapist. The therapist still needs to know when the client has reached a proper exemplar.So, the client can be instructed to nod, or raise a finger when an example has been found.
And as you think about that positive experience, that time when you felt really good about yourself and allow your unconscious mind to draw you to that time, just as soon as you become aware of that time or that place or that bump, you can nod, just to let me know that you are there.
As the intervention is based upon a regressive access to powerful positive experiences, the next segment focuses on filling out a multisensory experience of the event.The whole experience should be sprinkled with appropriate verbal reinforcements that match appropriate changes in posture, breathing, and facial expression.
And as you wonder about the time that you've come to, you can begin to feel the feeling of the time and find that you can start to remember what it was.And as you remember that time and that place, you can begin to see what you saw, hear what you heard and feel what you felt.Step right into that memory.How did you hold your head then?Move your head into the same position.How were you breathing?Breathe as you did then.Good.What was your posture like?Move your back into the same kind of posture you held then.That's right.See what you saw, hear what you heard and feel what you felt.What were you saying to yourself then?Say it to yourself now.Who was there?What were they saying? What did you smell then?Breathe deeply and smell what you smelled.
This style of language can be repeated until the therapist has a strong sense that the client is deeply engaged in the experience.Full access will be reflected in postural changes, changes in breathing rate, head tilt and facial expression.Facial expressions may reflect either the relaxed symmetry of trance or some specific facial expression appropriate to the exemplar state.
When he is sure, he should refocus the client's attention on the elements of the experience and have him re-experience them.
As you once again pay close attention to what you saw and heard and felt, how does your posture change?How does your breathing change?And as you become even more aware of that time and place feel how your inner feelings add to the strength of that memory.
Now that the experience is peaking, the client is floated out of that specific memory but is instructed to keep the state.This effectively abstracts the state from the memory and makes it accessible for other purposes.In a sense, it becomes attached to the client, not to the memory.
Now, continuing to pay close attention to this feeling, this posture, this internal sense of feeling good about who you really are, begin to float up, out, and over the memory, keeping the feeling, keeping the posture, keeping the breathing. Staying focused on this feeling, float up and out of that memory, and begin to float over your timeline towards the present until you come to another example of a time in your teen years when you felt the same kind of feeling.You can even use this positive feeling to guide you to a time in your teens when you once again felt good about who you really are.And as your unconscious mind leads you to that memory, whether it is a picture, a feeling, a bump, or a glow on your timeline, you can nod, just to let me know that you are there.And keeping this positive feeling, and posture, and sense of who you really are, you can step into this new memory and begin to fully experience the best part.
Using the same pattern of language as in the first example, the client is led to fully experience the adolescent exemplar. It is similarly amplified, abstracted, and used to find a third example in adult experience.
In both new cases, the client is instructed to experience the "energy" of the previous experiences and to retain them in combination as they float over the time line.
Once the adult example is found, amplified, and abstracted, the client is returned to the present to experience "in the now" the abstracted affect, how it feels to feel good about themselves.
And now, continuing to pay close attention to this feeling, this posture, this internal sense of feeling good about who you really are, begin to float up, out, and over the memory, keeping the feeling, keeping the posture, keeping the breathing.Staying focused on this feeling, float up and out of that memory, and begin to float over your timeline towards the present.And remaining fully absorbed in this pleasant feeling, float over the present, and, keeping this feeling float down into the present, remaining fully aware of this posture, this feeling, this breathing.And now, in this present, fully enjoying this feeling, this posture, this sense of who you really are, you can look back over your time line and become aware of the bright lights or pictures or places that mark these experiences.And as you watch you can become aware of other bright spots woven through your time line which are other places and times when you had this experience, this feeling, this sense of who you really are.And you can become aware of a positive flow and current of this feeling and sense of knowing who you really are, pulsing and flowing through your time line, into the present, flowing, and swirling, and energizing posture, and feeling, and sense of who you really are.
Throughout, certain phrases and cadences are repeated and come to serve as conditioned stimuli which evoke the state originally discovered as memories.In each iteration, the affective state is joined to others in a complex conditioned evocation that may be attached to various circumstances in the client's life.You will note my preference for the phrase "who you really are."In my practice these words are marked out with special emphasis.
Once the state is established in the present it can be projected into the future.As part of my personal preference, I emphasize the image of a dynamic flow of energy and light. This image begins as an energic flow proceeding from the exemplars, but is quickly transformed into an underlying theme of the client's life.In so doing the whole timeline is in a sense reframed by the sense of a positive living energy that has always been there even if it went unnoticed.
And as you continue to watch, and feel, and experience the flow of this living energy that flows from the place before the day that you were born, through every moment of your life, you become more deeply aware of this posture, and this feeling, and this breathing, and the energy that flows through the heart of center, in the middle of the place that says who you really are, and become aware of it flowing into positive, sober, and creative futures.
Typically, the entire scheme is repeated for each kind of experience, self worth, learning easily, flow state and personal direction.Each is combined with the others in the imagined flow of energy from the past, through the center of their being and into the future.By connecting the states into one experience, the client gains access to a generalized positive sense of empowerment, potential and hope.By connecting this experience to the image of a flowing stream the individual client may project upon it appropriate images of positive destiny and personal efficacy leading to good things.He is no longer a victim but a participant in a positive future.
Having linked the feeling to the possibility of positive futures, the entire scheme can be applied to the planning of a positive future, disempowering triggers, and other possibilities.One profitable use is to send the client to their first drug experience armed with the newly constructed sense of "who they really are" and, stepping into the event, discover how they would react differently if they had felt this way at the time.A similar use can be made by fully accessing the state, placing the client in a series of trigger situations, and allowing them to describe how they respond, feeling as they do now.
Once established, the Feeling Toned Vector becomes a positive tool for accessing many resource states.When the client is taught to access it for herself, it will often streamline, becoming a relatively automatic resource.
Further uses arise from the standard discussions of timeline patterns in NLP that include re-imprinting and changing personal history (James and Woodsmall, 1988; Dilts, 1995, 1993.)
A more general approach to the problem of futurity may be provided by a simple meditation.The following example is exerpted from the book, Strategies of Genius, Vol. 3 by Robert Dilts. The entire meditation can be read there.The meditation is presented as an Ericksonian installation of some of the thinking patterns of the mechanical genius, Nicola Tesla.In the author's experience, using it with substance abusing clients, it has been found to produce positive states of relaxation and the empowerment of possible futures.
In the context of the Jungian psyche, the free-play of imagination and dependence on unconscious process encourage the formulation of the same kind of archetypal direction.Though less powerful than the FTV, the meditation has proven itself very useful.
The setting for this meditation includes a brief explanation of who Tesla was, what he invented and the nature of his creative genius.It also suggests that the client use the meditation as a means of thinking about some problem, project or dream by relating it to one of the broad expanses of future possibilities offered in the meditation.
The meditation opens as follows:
Place your body in a comfortable and relaxed position.Sit in a posture and physiology that would really support your ability to dream.If your physiology were able to put you in a state in which you could really let out the dreamer in you, how would you be sitting?What direction would your head be tilted? Where would you be breathing?What kind of muscular tension would you feel in your body?
What would be the quality of your internal voice if you were really able to dream? Would it be excited and whispering? Or would it be just sound?Maybe it would be encouraging or questioning.Or maybe it would sound very confident. Tune your internal voice to a quality of voice that leads to your dreams and points you towards them.
Like most NLP-based interventions, this one makes use of full sensory imagination. Rather than command or demand, it suggests that the client imagine what would happen if they could relax, let out the dreamer, etc.Moreover there is already significant ambiguity and sufficient options to overload the critical conscious faculty.
Having established the conditions for a physiological state consistent with light trance, it moves the subject into a world of harmless speculations; speculations so broad that there can be no objection, just a pleasant dream.
And then you can begin to visualize a special kind of dream. A dream for the planet.If you could make a beautiful dream for the planet, what would it be? And since it is just a dream, you needn't worry about whether it is possible or practical.You can dream freely.If you could dream up your own version of a utopia, what would your vision be?How would technology fit into this global dream for the planet?What would happen to war?How would your children be educated? How would people of different parts of the world communicate with each other?In what ways would we use the tools that we have in the service of the planet, and of the people on it, in an ecological and creative way?
Following the confusing and ambiguous language of Ericksonian hypnosis, the meditation provides ample opportunities for embedded commands and makes special use of the well formedness conditions for setting goals.
The word dream itself is sufficiently ambiguous that it gives rise to images of personal hopes, actual nocturnal dreams, and idle speculations.Each is a legitimate interpretation.The multiple possibilities embedded in the word open the individual to all of the interpretations and moves him now to speculation, now to personal hope, now to a semi-conscious reverie.
Embedded commands make special use of linguistic polysemy, the capacity of words to have multiple meanings within any linguistic context.In the example above, the underlined words, when emphasized, provide a secondary meaning, which is in fact an embedded command.
The well formedness conditions for goals and outcomes include specific elements. These include, the goal must be stated in the positive, it must be accessible to the individual, and the larger goal must be broken down into reasonable outcomes (Dilts, 1995).Dreams, of course, are always positive visions. There are no blank or negative dreams. In this meditation, the dream for the planet gives way to specific, although quite general, dream-applications. by the end of the paragraph they have touched the personal level in the embedded command "use the tools that we have."
Allow your dream to move you into the future.What would medicine be like? Would people still go to doctors as we have them now?Would there still be hospitals anymore?If you could change the world just by dreaming it, by visualizing it, how would you transform the hospitals and the schools and the companies?What is the office of the future going to look like?Would there even be offices?Or would everybody be connected together through their homes?How would people travel in the future?There's no need to limit yourselfby today's technology.Imagine that you live on a planet where anything that you imagine could automatically become reality.The only limit would be the limits of your imagination.
How would we treat animals and the plant life in the future?Would we need lawyers or therapists?What would be the most important job in the future? What kind of music would you be listening to in the future?What would the museums of the future be like?If you went to a museum where you saw artifacts of today, which one would be the most amusing to the people of the future?
At the very outset, this section of the meditation makes the clear command to move into the future.Implicit throughout is the question, How will your life be different? Subsequent portions gently rock the subject between their present personal reality and a place in a future that they have helped create.Back and forth, they are disarmed by the breadth of the imaginings as they are encouraged to step into and personalize a positive, future reality.
What could you dream that would change the world the most? Which parts of our lives have the most space to change?
Imagine you could change the world through something that you yourself did. Dream about what you would do, and what would change in the world.
And let your unconscious mind continue that dream in the way that is the most appropriate... for you--in a way that gives you an inner sense of pleasure, excitement and hope. Then, for a moment, allow your mind to shift from the future to the past.Think back over your life and find a time when a dream came true... for you.Remember something that at one time had just been a dream... for you.Then later on, you discovered that somehow it had come true.
Ambiguities in cadence multiply the frequency of double binds as adverbial clauses move general themes of change and propriety to personal decisions.As the client puzzles over what he could dream that would change the world, he is suddenly shifted from the absolute question "What would change the world?" to the certitude of change implied by the question "What could you dream that would change the world the most?" Similarly, his search for appropriate continuity is moved from a search for an absolute standard to a relative one by the insertion of the words "for you."
Dilts now leads our meditation in very specific personal experience.From the absolutely non-threatening possibilities embodied in the dream of a possible world, fantasies about that world of the future, and things we might do, he now asks us to empower the dream with our experience of a dream that came true.This is no longer about idle speculations, it is about dreams that come true.
After a series of very concrete examples from his own life, including his own dream of understanding the strategies of the great geniuses and his mother's recovery from cancer, Dilts continues:
My children are certainly a dream come true for me. And perhaps each of you has had dreams that have come true.And maybe if you find one, you will start realizing, "Oh yes, there is another one!" Maybe there are even dreams that have come true that you have forgotten that were actually just dreams at one point in your life but now they are just normal reality.
And maybe we have an unconscious competence as individuals or as a collective group of people that can make these dreams come true if we could give our selves permission to dream them.
The concrete examples continue with his children.Taking care to include the possibilities of objectors who might claim that they have never had a dream come true, he softens the command to find a dream with the phrase, "perhaps each of you has had".Perhaps you have, perhaps you haven't.If you think you haven't, the logic continues, maybe you've just forgotten about it.And when you find one, another can be drawn up with it.Here Dilts evokes essentially the same strategy used in the FTV.The feeling tone of one example evokes another.
In the closing sections of the meditation, Dilts again evokes very concrete examples, The room, the chair, the electric light, a book.All of them ground the dream in the simple, practical, and accessible.Everyone has dreams which have come true.
As you look at the world around you, notice how many of the things that you see around you, are actually dreams that have come true; the room in which you are sitting, the electric light by which you may be reading, the chair upon which you are resting, the book you are holding in your hand.All of these things were at one time just a dream in someone's mind, but now they have come into being.
We live in a world of dreams which have come true.Perhaps you yourself have helped others to make their dreams come true.Maybe you are somebody's dream that came true. Perhaps your parents dreamed of you before you were born. Perhaps you have entered someone's life at the very moment they needed someone like you.
Personalizing the dream into the concrete and affective world of the client, the meditation now evokes the undeniable possibility that the client may be participating in someone else's dream.You may be a dream come true, you may have made someone's dream come true.
So cherish your dreams.Cherish those dreams that have come true.And as you return to the present at the rate of speed that is the most appropriate for you, maybe you can feel yourself standing in that exciting position, on the threshold of a new dream.Behind you are the dreams that have come true. Ahead of you are the new dreams that give your life meaning.
In the end, the meditation leaves the client on the threshold of a new dream that provides meaning for his life.The dream has moved from speculations through personal hopes to concrete physical, and emotional realities.In so doing it sets in motion the same basic processes as the FTV and provides a powerful tool for the setting and realization of personal goals.More importantly, it mobilizes the energy of the Ego-Self axis moving the subject into the possibilities that have always been a part of who they really are.
Many human beings have lost contact with any sense of deep purpose or direction in their lives.The Jungian model of the psyche presents the Telic Self as an image of personal fulfilment, and the path of individuation along the Ego-Self axis as a means to Self-realization.Two techniques for providing clients with a sense of that potential and itsaccompanying developmental direction are presented.Both are rooted in Ericksonian techniques and NLP.As whole-life reframes, they have the capacity to completely change some substance abusing life-styles. As adjuncts to other therapeutic approaches, they present a powerful positive background for personal change.
Note:The FTV was originally developed in association with A. Stanley Cunnngham of Cunningham and Gray Resources.It was first presented at a teaching seminar held in 1993.Since then, the author has modified it and applied it specifically to addictive populations.
| Richard M. Gray, Ph.D. | Richard_gray@ce2.uscourts.gov |
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