Last week we played with the “Thank-you” technique for accepting & releasing
“stuck states”. This week we're going to explore another powerful technique
I use when I'm helping people make changes. In fact, I use this in the
course of virtually every piece of change-work I do. In this article, you're
going to discover a tool for helping people clear blockages & experience the
feelings & results they want in their lives.
One
of the things that really excited me when I first started learning NLP was
the idea of developing really good “sensory acuity”, the ability to notice
the patterns of (often minor) changes in a person's outward appearance /
behaviours, as a way of making predictions about what's going on “on the
inside.” Examples of this include:
|
Breathing rate |
Skin colour |
Energy levels |
|
Eye movements |
Language
patterns |
Head position |
|
Gestures |
Body posture |
etc |
As
I worked with 100s of clients in a variety of contexts, I started to notice
a pattern: on numerous occasions, when I asked a person a question about an
area where they were “blocked” in some way, they would stop breathing.
Breathing is good
Breathing is good. If you have any doubt about this, stop breathing for a
minute or two & notice how your body-mind responds. Breathing sustains life.
If we stop breathing, carbon dioxide starts building up in the bloodstream,
& we start to experience “air hunger”. Various processes in our bodies
require oxygen & the other gases contained in air in order to maintain
various “life support” processes.
Most people die if they stop breathing for more than a couple of minutes,
but the impact on various bodily processes starts the moment you stop
breathing.
Here's my theory: people often stop breathing as a way of suppressing
emotions that they don't want to feel, either because they experience them
as uncomfortable, unfamiliar, frightening, bad, dangerous, or as meaning
something bad about the person.
When the body realises that breathing has stopped, it diverts resources away
from the “optional” process (feeling a feeling) and towards “mandatory”
processes (staying alive).
Keep breathing
Over the last few years, I've become more & more aware of people pausing
their breathing at points during changework. I see this as a great
opportunity for them to “breathe through” the point where they've been
stopping until now.
You'll hear me tell people to “keep breathing” at various points during
change-work. This is because I've noticed them stop (they typically don't
notice it themselves as its an unconscious process that they've practised
repeatedly).
The
funny thing is, it doesn't just apply to “nasty” feelings – it happens just
as often with “nice” feelings that a person hasn't been allowing themselves
to experience, for whatever reason.
Next time you experience a situation where you feel “stuck” or “blocked” in
some way, notice your breathing, & continue breathing in and out as you
“connect” with the sensations in your body. You can combine this with the
“Thank-you” technique from last week to create fast, powerful shifts in all
sorts of situations.
By
the way, it's just over a month until the start of the 2008/2009 Salad NLP
Practitioner training. This is the last time we will be running the
Practitioner training in its current form, so if you want to learn NLP the
way I did, with a select, committed group of people over a 5-month period,
go to
http://www.saladltd.co.uk or ring 0845 650 1045 for more
details.
Have a
great week,
Your
friend
Jamie
Jamie
Smart
Jamie Smart
director of training
jamie.smart@saladltd.co.uk
If you have found this tip useful, please share it with any friends,
family, colleagues and associates who you think will be interested. You are
welcome to reprint it (with copyright and subscription information) and
continue to enjoy the tips. I am always grateful for any comments,
criticisms or other feedback that you may have. Please send them to
jamie.smart@saladltd.co.uk
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