I find it useful to tease out the different inputs. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the psychologists of old were known as alienists. Let me describe an exercise I have synthesized from a variety of sources. YMMV. I use variations of this technique in a variety of circumstances to attempt to identify sources of discomfort or hidden motivations.
Humans have a tendency to create a false internal geography of their bodies. While this is a hindrance for objective medical assessment, you can turn it into a strength. Consider the tells of eye movement. Up and to the left is imagination, up and to the right is memory, down and to the right is consideration. While these are common side-affects of the functioning of the conscious mind, they are also an external indication of internal geography.
To begin labeling “the voices inside your head” you first need a baseline. This can be a difficult starting point. Find a situation where you are mentally and physically at ease. At this point take a mental kinesthetic snapshot—label in your head a memory of your body state as the baseline. This is not an exercise in detail but of gestalt.
Reinforce this memory sufficiently so that there exists a distinct memory of your baseline body-mind state.
Once you have a strong baseline for comparison you can begin finding deviations. If you are given to partake of alcohol or other recreational intoxicants, then you have ready experimental material. Have a drink and then try to bring the baseline to mind. For a stronger example, have a drink among friends and then step into a a quiet room and bring the baseline memory up for comparison. Since so much of our behavior is cued by our circumstances, you should see a significant change when your sober state is in front of you (in memory). Much of your brain does not know the difference between memory and direct sensory input.
Now that you have practice comparing states of your brain, it is time to start organizing. Find a part of your head or body that seems to best correspond with inebriation and associate that region with the sensation. Especially if you are an American, associate a region of your head with the desire for fatty, high calorie foods. Tiredness is another common brain state that can be labeled. Locate libido wherever you feel appropriate. Continue as you find more identifiable inputs.
The creation of a map of your consciousness is meant to raise awareness of you internal state. The practice becomes useful when you recognize organic influences affecting you without explicitly looking for them.
I find this technique is useful when attempting to “sober up” and when trying to identify and clear psychosomatic illnesses.
I’ve never heard of this before, and Google suggests it seems to be mainly a component of NLP, with little supporting evidence. Still, I can’t find anything that puts paid to it either way, and it’s an interesting idea. Has anyone done a reputable study on it? Scholar yields nothing relevant.
There are a lot of studies, with murky results. FWIW, the original context described by Bandler and Grinder is that when they stood on stage and asked audiences questions, they noticed that huge portions of the audience would make the same eye/head movements in response to the question.
As far as I know, none of the studies performed such a test. ;-)
However, I’ve also seen a book which discussed how certain head and eye positions affect blood flow in the brain, suggesting that tilting the head back and to either side directs more blood to the visual cortex in one hemisphere or the other. And it’s plausible that the eye movement is a precursor to that movement—I notice that when I start to visualize, my eyes go up first, then my head.
Anyway, the original NLP-based generalizations were not terribly accurate, and even the guys who originated them don’t consider them to be of much importance any more. I’ve rarely bothered to use them in my work, since I can’t see people’s eyes over the telephone. If you’re a good listener, you can identify someone’s processing mode by sound almost as easily as you can by watching eye/head movements, on the rare occasion that you need to know.
(Note that people’s head tilts are usually accompanied by postural shifts that in turn affect voice timbre… which is also how we can identify many emotions expressed in voice tone—the postural shifts and muscle tension differences show up in the sound.)
It seems unlikely that consciousness is simple enough to be usefully projected onto a 2D or 3D map. I think you may be using a map to construct anchors, as they’re referred to in NLP. Whether the technique works, and whether the map has any meaning or any non-arbitrary correspondence to your mind, are separate questions.
I think you may be using a map to construct anchors, as they’re referred to in NLP.
Yep, that’s it precisely. How well that works is a function of how thoroughly you can get into the state you want to link. I personally find that sort of thing difficult because there’s always a part of me that’s focused on the technique… which means that part is not in the desired state.
This is why I don’t care much for “classical” NLP, as its tools are all optimized for, well, other-optimizing rather than self-optimizing. If you’re the NLPer keeping track of the procedure, then the subject is free to go into the pure states of whatever you’re trying to anchor (not unlike a hypnotized person entering into belief they’re a chicken or whatever). But if there’s just one of you, it can be a lot more difficult.
I find it useful to tease out the different inputs. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the psychologists of old were known as alienists. Let me describe an exercise I have synthesized from a variety of sources. YMMV. I use variations of this technique in a variety of circumstances to attempt to identify sources of discomfort or hidden motivations.
Humans have a tendency to create a false internal geography of their bodies. While this is a hindrance for objective medical assessment, you can turn it into a strength. Consider the tells of eye movement. Up and to the left is imagination, up and to the right is memory, down and to the right is consideration. While these are common side-affects of the functioning of the conscious mind, they are also an external indication of internal geography.
To begin labeling “the voices inside your head” you first need a baseline. This can be a difficult starting point. Find a situation where you are mentally and physically at ease. At this point take a mental kinesthetic snapshot—label in your head a memory of your body state as the baseline. This is not an exercise in detail but of gestalt.
Reinforce this memory sufficiently so that there exists a distinct memory of your baseline body-mind state.
Once you have a strong baseline for comparison you can begin finding deviations. If you are given to partake of alcohol or other recreational intoxicants, then you have ready experimental material. Have a drink and then try to bring the baseline to mind. For a stronger example, have a drink among friends and then step into a a quiet room and bring the baseline memory up for comparison. Since so much of our behavior is cued by our circumstances, you should see a significant change when your sober state is in front of you (in memory). Much of your brain does not know the difference between memory and direct sensory input.
Now that you have practice comparing states of your brain, it is time to start organizing. Find a part of your head or body that seems to best correspond with inebriation and associate that region with the sensation. Especially if you are an American, associate a region of your head with the desire for fatty, high calorie foods. Tiredness is another common brain state that can be labeled. Locate libido wherever you feel appropriate. Continue as you find more identifiable inputs.
The creation of a map of your consciousness is meant to raise awareness of you internal state. The practice becomes useful when you recognize organic influences affecting you without explicitly looking for them.
I find this technique is useful when attempting to “sober up” and when trying to identify and clear psychosomatic illnesses.
That myth again?
I’ve never heard of this before, and Google suggests it seems to be mainly a component of NLP, with little supporting evidence. Still, I can’t find anything that puts paid to it either way, and it’s an interesting idea. Has anyone done a reputable study on it? Scholar yields nothing relevant.
There are a lot of studies, with murky results. FWIW, the original context described by Bandler and Grinder is that when they stood on stage and asked audiences questions, they noticed that huge portions of the audience would make the same eye/head movements in response to the question.
As far as I know, none of the studies performed such a test. ;-)
However, I’ve also seen a book which discussed how certain head and eye positions affect blood flow in the brain, suggesting that tilting the head back and to either side directs more blood to the visual cortex in one hemisphere or the other. And it’s plausible that the eye movement is a precursor to that movement—I notice that when I start to visualize, my eyes go up first, then my head.
Anyway, the original NLP-based generalizations were not terribly accurate, and even the guys who originated them don’t consider them to be of much importance any more. I’ve rarely bothered to use them in my work, since I can’t see people’s eyes over the telephone. If you’re a good listener, you can identify someone’s processing mode by sound almost as easily as you can by watching eye/head movements, on the rare occasion that you need to know.
(Note that people’s head tilts are usually accompanied by postural shifts that in turn affect voice timbre… which is also how we can identify many emotions expressed in voice tone—the postural shifts and muscle tension differences show up in the sound.)
I often find myself doing this. But then again I clearly make use of a spatial organization of information.
It seems unlikely that consciousness is simple enough to be usefully projected onto a 2D or 3D map. I think you may be using a map to construct anchors, as they’re referred to in NLP. Whether the technique works, and whether the map has any meaning or any non-arbitrary correspondence to your mind, are separate questions.
Yes, precisely. I do believe that I specified that the map was erroneous. If the comparison was unclear I apologize.
(On the other hand, if consciousness is an artifact of the brain, it must arise from a 3D object.)
The activity is meant to associate sensations on the edge of awareness to an arbitrary map.
NLP seems to encompass a variety of techniques which I developed for myself after reading the Bicameral Mind.
Yep, that’s it precisely. How well that works is a function of how thoroughly you can get into the state you want to link. I personally find that sort of thing difficult because there’s always a part of me that’s focused on the technique… which means that part is not in the desired state.
This is why I don’t care much for “classical” NLP, as its tools are all optimized for, well, other-optimizing rather than self-optimizing. If you’re the NLPer keeping track of the procedure, then the subject is free to go into the pure states of whatever you’re trying to anchor (not unlike a hypnotized person entering into belief they’re a chicken or whatever). But if there’s just one of you, it can be a lot more difficult.
Dis-associative mental states would help a LOT with that..