From NLP to Neuro-Semantics

PART I

“Why “Neuro-Semantics”?
What does Neuro-Semantics offers that NLP does not?
What would you say is the biggest difference?

These are some of the questions that are asked by quite a number of people.
So, for everyone new to NLP and Neuro-Semantics here are the answers to your questions.

Why Neuro-Semantics?
Primarily because we believe so much in the value and benefits of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and because we are so displeased with what has generally happened to NLP as a field. What began as a great idea, an idea whose time had really come in the 1970s, has proven very sad and unfortunate. After 3 years, the “field” (if we can even call it that) has no standards, no international body that governs it, no code of ethics, no self-policing, and no one who seems able to pull the field together.

And yet, the idea of modeling the best examples of excellence in human experiences and making those models available to others remains a truly powerful and inspirational idea. NLP began as a study of “the structure of subjective experience” to quote the subtitle on the book that Robert Dilts put together as the first formal book on the subject (NLP Volume 1, 1980)

Now a wonder, and surprising, fact about NLP is that NLP did not start out as a psychology, it started out as a Communication Model. It started out as the language patterns of three world-class communicators - Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, and Milton Erickson. It started out as a study of the structure of language, of how “the talking cure” of psychotherapy as practiced by that original trinity of therapists. There was a sense that there was magic in their words, in the way they listened, created relationship (rapport), and facilitated a remapping within the people with whom they worked.

So the first two NLP books were volumes 1 and 2 of The Structure of Magic. The term “magic” undoubtedly came from Gregory Bateson who made the comment that the linguistic symbols of language can work almost magically in that nearly anything can stand for and represent anything else. But unfortunately the word “magic” also conveyed other ideas to people which led some NLP people to misunderstand that NLP is primarily a Communication Model.

How many NLP-res don’t know that NLP is a Communication Model?
What are some NLP trainers teaching in NLP Practitioner and Master Practitioner? The Meta-Model of Language in Therapy was the first NLP model created. And yet today we see lots of “practitioners” who were not taught the Meta-Model during Practitioner!

Neuro-Semantics is also fundamentally a communication model. And we fully teach the Meta-Model as the beginning place, as the foundation for understanding how language works neurologically to create our mental maps about the world. Yes, language involves grammar, but in NLP and Neuro-Semantics our focus is on the neurology of language. That is, our focus is on how we experience language in our bodies via our nervous systems.

What this means practically is that our focus is not on “proper” grammar so much as on what that grammar does inside us. How does it affect you? What states does it create? What emotions? What skills and competencies? What limitations and interferences? For us, our interest is on the neuro-semantic and neuro-linguistic effect of grammar. That’s because we communicate from state (our state) to state (to the state of the one listening).

And the genius of NLP was the discovery of the languages of the mind - that we “make sense” of words by re-presenting them in our minds. Visually we make pictures, editorially we hear sounds and words, kinesthetically we feel sensations and movements, and so with our “senses” we make sense of presenting to ourselves again (representing) things that we have see, heard, felt, smelt, and tasted. These are our sensory representational systems. Then there is the meta-representational systems of words and various symbolic systems (the auditory and visual digital systems).

This is where we start here in Neuro-Semantics, but we do not end there. And while the Grinder camp of NLP continues his reductionist approach, giving up more and more of the Meta-Model distinctions, we know that mastery is in the distinctions. And that’s why Michael Hall added 9 additional distinctions in his book on the Meta-Model.

Nor do we stop there. Above the first level of sensory representation and above the second level of meta-representations, the unique kind of brain we have − our self-reflexive consciousness − we can, and do, set layer upon layer of additional levels. And that introduces the systemic nature of our meta-states into the picture − something that those still stuck in traditional NLP do not know about. And yet it is in those higher levels of “communication” (the “communication world” as Bateson called it) that the true magic of NLP occurs. And that’s at the heart of what Neuro-Semantics brings to NLP that takes it to a whole new level of modeling.

PART II

From the communication model of NLP, the biggest difference that Neuro-Semantics makes for NLP is the modeling reflexivity. Before the Meta-States Model, and since then, NLP had only modeled one aspect of “mind” − the reflexive consciousness. Yet this is the factor that makes human consciousness so special and so different.

Now isn’t that strange?
A discipline that purported to model how the brain works so that people can “run their own brain” and manage their own states never even described the most unique feature of the human mind!

In fact, in reading both Alfred Korzybski (Science and Sanity) and Gregory Bateson (Toward an Ecology of Mind; Mind and Nature) in the early 1990s Michael Hall became aware of the fact that it is our self-reflexive consciousness that uniquely distinguishes our form of mind. And yet, in all of NLP that facet of consciousness has not only not been modeled, it has been completely ignored, or as in Bandler’s case, dismissed.

Now you know what the Meta-States Model uniquely − that’s right, self-reflexive consciousness! Of course, not every NLP trainer knows that.
What is self-reflexivity consciousness and what is it about reflexivity that makes it so unique in our form of consciousness?

Glad you asked!

Reflexivity refers to the fact that when you think, when you process information, when you construct meaning from words, events, experiences, feelings, etc. You never just think once. For humans, that’s impossible! You think and then you think about your thinking. You feel and then you have feelings about your feelings. You draw conclusions, and then conclusions about those conclusions, and then more conclusions about all of those conclusions and so on again and again, layer upon layer. Your meaning-making never stops at the first level, or the second, or the third, it continues on and on. And every time you revisit a thought, feeling, experience, memory, imagination, decision, intention, etc. You keep laying more thoughts-and-feelings upon it. This is reflexivity.

You, like me and all of us, are a class of life that reflects on our experiences and we keep doing so. Korzybski’s Science and Sanity devotes a lot of attention to this facet of the human mind and he concludes by saying that this is an infinite process. Bateson notes from his study of dolphins in Hawaii that these highly intelligent animals may “jump one or even two logical levels” but then they stop. In fact, all animals, at some point, stop. After only one or two jumps, all animals stop reflecting upon their own experiences.

But not us! Not us humans. We continue, and can continue, without an end of our reflecting. This describes the very unique characteristic of our mind, the one that leaves our mind open at the top end. And this means several things incredibly important and which are foundational in Neuro-Semantics.

Whatever you think, you are not stuck there − you can think again!
However stuck you feel in your thoughts or feelings − you can always step back one    more time and gain en even larger perspective!
You are always just one step away from transformation.
If you don’t use your reflexivity wisely, it can create life as a living hell!
If you don’t know how to climb the meaning ladder, you will feel a victim of the meanings given to you.
If you discover how to climb the meaning ladder, you become a powerful creator of meaning.
It’s in using your self-reflexive consciousness that you build up an empowering Matrix of belief frames.
Following the energy of a persons’s thought’s-and-emotions is recognizing that how that person uses his or her reflexivity determines their interpretative style and quality of life.

And, there’s more, much more. And some NLP Trainers think that the Meta-States Model is a repackaging of time-lines! What a statement of utter ignorance and one that just locks a person into that ignorance.

It is your reflexivity as a mental-emotional process that determines how you create your highest and most complex maps, which in turn determines your skills, competencies, expertise, quality of life, and self-actualization. And it is the Meta-States Model that models human self-reflexive consciousness.

PART III

In human self-reflexive consciousness is the unique kind of “mind” which the Meta-States Model focuses on and models, then what else does reflexivity mean besides the ever-continuous layering that creates the complexity of our minds? The answer is simple to say, difficult to comprehend, and almost impossible to describe. But, I’ll give it a go:

The answer is that human reflexivity makes our mind-body-emotion system within our family, language, business, cultural systems completely systemic.

There, that’s simple. Right? Well, not exactly. In developing and formatting the Meta-States model, Michael Hall tried for years to find and use various words and metaphors to explain the systemic nature of reflexivity. But, that’s quite challenging. For one thing, as you are thinking or feeling something at one level, you are simultaneously thinking and feeling other things at higher levels about the first thing. Now multiply that times 7 or 10 or more layers and you begin to get a sense of the complexity of human experiences and emotional states.

Not only are you responding to you at multiple levels at the same time, but you are also simultaneously responding to multiple messages from people and events outside of you. This means that both communication loops are in play. While you are using your vertical loop of feedback to yourself (called “thinking” or “believing” etc.) and feed forwarding those thoughts and emotions into your body (called “emoting,” feeling,” embodying, etc.) you are also using your horizontal loop of receiving feedback from people and events ‘called “seeing,” “hearing,” “listening,” “noticing,” etc.) and feeding forward energy to those people and events ‘called “responding,” “speaking,” “acting,” “reacting”)

Wow! All of that is occurring simultaneously. Talk about a complex system all in action at the same time. Now how do we model all of that? And how de we talk about our modeling of all of that?

In the Meta-States Model, Michael Hall has and others have developed a wide variety of metaphors to help explain this and give a visual image of it. Those that are most prominent are the following:

Spinning
Spiraling
Living within a canopy of consciousness
The Matrix
Following the energy through the Matrix
Seeing how far the rabbit hole goes
Etc.

To think systemically is to think and imaginatively view the whole system, in this case, the system of a person with a mind-body-emotion responsiveness to the world of people, events, influences, a person who moves through time and who engages people and events intentionally.

This is where NLP is far too simplistic. Even though NLP came out of several systems models such as Virginia Satir’s Family Systems, Bateson’s systems, Korzybski’s, even Miller’s TOTE model system − NLP has tended to be reductionistic (Grinder’s influence on things) and downplay systemic thinking and responding. This has caused NLP in many parts of the world to be very linear in the presentation of the model and with a focus on techniques.

Many of the key thinkers in the field of systems like Peter Senge use various forms of circles and arrows to try to map out the ever-changing territory of a system. That’s the problem with a non-linear model − the territory keeps changing because the system itself is self-changing, self-influencing, and self-interfering. So, to think and work systemically, you have to not only trace out the variables and processes, but consider the influence you are generating as you enter the system. The systems principle is that you cannot not influence the system that you engage!

NLP reduced to a set of techniques misses all of this. And there are a great many people who treat NLP as just a set of techniques. Their thinking is: “Do this to a person, or say that, and they will respond this way or that way”. And this, of course, is what reduces NLP in the hands of some people to a set of manipulations.

But, people are not so simple or so easy. That’s why when we test and experiment in psychology we use complicated double-blind and triple-blind studies. Why? Because people are devious? No. It’s because of the mere fact that if a person knows you are studying them, that knowledge itself changes the study. They will behave differently. That was the ultimate discovery in the original Hothouse Studies. When they went into Westinghouse to study employees and what would improve employee satisfaction and engagement, they made the lights brighter and things improved. They dimmed the lights and things improved. They gave longer breaks and the people’s attitudes improved. They gave shorter breaks and the people’s attitudes improved. In fact, everything they did caused things to improve!

After awhile they realized that it was not the lights, the breaks, the actions of the managers, etc., it was the attention. Pay attention to people in any way and they will read that as care, as that they are important, that what they are doing is significant and they will be more pleased and effective! That’s the way it is with human systems. Even studying a human system influences it no matter how careful you are to try to not influence it.

NLP as mere techniques probably explains why Michael Hall’s book, The sourcebook of Magic, is such a best seller. It’s a book that has a list of 77 NLP patterns (including just a few Meta-States patterns). When Michael Hall put that book together he did not know that there were people who treated NLP as something that you “do to someone to get a particular response.”
The problem i that people don’t like being manipulated, and once they discover a manipulation, they will not allow the manipulation to work − even if in doing so is to their own detriment. Do you? Of course not. So even f the “manipulation” is to your benefit, just for the principle of your own self-determination, you will resist it. We all do. And that’s why simplistic, linear, techniques driven NLP only works in a Guru context where people are tricked, deceived, and seduced to give their power away to a Guru, or it only works for the first few times until people catch on. Then it stops working!

And why? Because of the self-reflexive consciousness of people. People catch on! The trick that creates the deception is seen for what it is and the seduction ceases to work − that’s why. And so everyone who is using that form of reductionistic, simplistic, linear, techniques-driven NLP is accused of “manipulating.” What’s the solution?

PART IV

So, what xill cure the reductionistic, simplistic, linear, technique-driven forms of NLP that are given to using NLP in manipulative ways?

The solution actually involves several things − minimally it involves the following:

Think and work systemically with the human system.
Work with respect and care of people.
Work with the higher and highest frames of people.

The first item warns that we should never treat people as if they are things to manipulate. They are not. Things can be manipulates − “handled” efficiently. People cannot. People have to be related to as persons, and not handled as if impersonal things. Do that and stand back and watch the anger, frustration, stress, fear, and other negative emotions arise! With human beings, we have to relate to them as persons of value and significance. Violate that principle and you will not be able to understand the actions and responses of people or get along very well with them.

So we start with rapport − with connecting mentally and emotionally with people so as to seek to understand them and support them s persons, respecting their values, beliefs, and world-view. Rapport is the way into another person’s reality. But if you treat rapport as a technique, you are back where you started! Rapport-as-a-technique is a reductionistic attempt to short-cut the process and merely operate on-the-surface without encountering the person heart-to-heart. And this is the problem with a lot of superficial, linear, technique-driven NLP.

Just because you can learn how to pretty quickly gain rapport with another person does not create what is called “instant rapport” in spite of NLP books, promotional materials, and websites that promise such. I am now convinced that we should stop making such promises. Yes we can teach a person the required things to do and say that matches or paces another person and that is part of the external behaviors of rapport. But if there is not an attitude of respect and care and compassion in the person doing these things − et “rapport” will eventually been seen as superficial, shallow, and manipulative. Those who teach such things are short-circuiting the person and the inner attitude which are essential for it to be real and authentic for the long-term. At best it can only create short-term results. And those short-term results will soon fall apart. And that’s the difference between traditional NLP and Neuro-Semantics. It is not only what you do that makes NLP effective and successful as a tool, it is who you are as a person and your higher level attitudes (your meta-states).

That’s why “competency” in Neuro-Semantics involves both. We care just as much (actually more) about who you are as what you are able to do. Merely being able to do, without being, is just another path to being ineffective. Ultimately, it is in setting your own personal frames of respect, care, and compassion that enables you to be a respectful, caring, and compassionate person. Then what you do is able to convey that. Then when you match behaviors and words and pace another person it creates a significant connection. It creates an I-thou relationship rather than an I-it one.

The NLP pattern of “instant rapport” is sorely and disastrously used when it is used by a person to get something from someone or to use that person for some advantage. In Neuro-Semantics we consider that an ethical violation of the principles of NLP. And we will confront and address the person among us who does such. Why? Because that’s not what we are about. But in the field of NLP generally, there is no other body or organization that does that.

It is the higher frames of a person’s meta-states that creates and governs the mental-emotional dynamic that we call “attitude.” This is also what the Meta-ySates Model models. With the meta-layering of beliefs, decisions, intentions, permissions, understandings, identities, etc., we are able to fully model the construction of an attitude. And we can not only model it, we can treat the “attitude” as a meta-state strategy that we can then refine, streamline, and enrich. That’s why we often train the introduction to Meta-States, the APG training, as “Kick Starting Your Attitude,” because we can!

With the Meta-States Model we think of the human system as a system of many interactive parts and variables and so as we work with new behavior on the level of performance (matching, pacing) we simultaneously work on the level of meaning (respect, care, and compassion for the person). Together these enable the actualization of the highest and best in a person for connecting to others and creating a relationship rich enough and robust enough to collaborate effectively.

This is the Neuro-Semantic difference that the Meta-States Model offers. We can now identify and work with the highest frames of people, the belief frames that govern their intentions, designs, and understandings.

PART V

In explaining the difference that Neuro-Semantics has brought to he field of NLP, one of the newest developments is an understanding of the historical position of NLP. After Michael Hall discovered this, he wrote about it in various articles and books on Self-Actualization Psychology.

What is the position of NLP historically?
We know that, historically, it arose in southern California during the early 1970s from the encounter that Richard Bandler had with the materials of Fritz Perls as he listened to tapes and transcribed them for a book and then his encounter with Virginia Satir, similarly making transcripts of her work. The language patterns that he found and replicated were then analyzed by John Grinder using Transformational rGammer (TG° distinctions. Together this gave birth to The Meta-Model of Language in Therapy as recorded in “The Structure of Magic” Volumes I and II, 1975, 1976.

Further because TG was part of the emerging Cognitive psychology movement that was being led by Noam Chomsky, George Miller, Eugene Gallanter, and Karl Pribram, the Cognitive Revolution informed and governed the early development of NLP. Grinder did his doctorate in TF and even wrote a book on TG with Suzanne Elgin (A Guide to Transformational Grammar 1973) Then together Bandler and Grinder used George Miller’s developments of the TOTE model as their template for identifying “strategies” within the structure of experience.

Gregory Bateson then encouraged them to study the language patterns of Milton Erickson, after that came the “Gestalt Class” that Richard ran at the University as a student which turned into the first NLP study group. And that, in turn, gave birth to the movement and field. Out of that class came the first group of NLP Leaders and Trainers as they were inventing it as they went − Robert Dilts, Judith DLeozier, Leslie Cameron-Bandler, David Gordon, Terry McClintock, Steve Gilligan, Frank Peculiar, Byron Lewis, etc.

That’s the usual “NLP History” that’s in the great majority of books on NLP. But where did Perls, Satir, Bateson, and Erickson get their ideas? What was the larger historical perspective? If we step back just a little bit − they were all part of a larger historical movement there in California, the Human Potential Movement (HPM). In fact, just up the road from Santa Cruz was Salem which Michael Murphy and Richard Price created in 1962 when they purchased the property. Then in 1963 Fritz Perls moved onto the property to become the first “scholar-in-residence.” In 1964 Virginia Satir moved there to live as the first Director of Training and Development at Esalen. And in 1964 Gregory Bateson delivered the second workshop at Esalen and later moved there as the last “scholar-in-residence.” That’s also where he died.

So there you have it−
The Who’s Who of the Experts that NLP modeled to launch the movement were all living and working together many, many years prior to Bandler and Grinder as some of the second and third generation of leaders in the Human Potential Movement.

How about that! And if they were second and third generation leaders, then who were the pioneers of the HPM? Abraham Maslow primarily, then Carl Rogers, and then other key thinkers las Rollo May, Eric Fromm, Roberto Assagioli, Viktor Frankl, James Bugental, Evert Shostrum, Will Shultz, etc. And way back in 1937 Maslow was the person who began modeling self-actualizing people. And the first two individuals who stood out as excellent characters of the best in human kind were Max Wertheimer and Ruth Benedict. And it was Maslow who almost single-handedly created the paradigm shift in the field of Psychology from studying sickness and pathology to studying health and excellence.

And what does all of this mean for NLP today? It identifies where NLP sits historically−NLP is a step-child of the HPM. NLP got its basic “presuppositions” from the Self-Actualization Psychology of Maslow and Rogers. NLP with its emphasis on modeling human greatness for communication excellence is actually positioned within a much larger perspective−the development and unleashing of human potential with the human potential movement. It is actually within the humanistic movement that emphasizes the humanity of persons−in contrast to treating people impersonally as tolls or technology.

So NLP arose from two movements − the Growth Movement of Maslow and Rogers (that later became known as the Human Potential Movement in the 1960s) and the Cognitive Psychology Movement. That’s why NLP is often put in the chapter on Cognitive Psychology in textbooks.

What does all of this mean for NLP today?
It means that NLP people, and especially Trainers, need to lift their eyes and minds to the larger frame, the larger perspective of what NLP is about − it is about the ongoing development of the best in human nature. It is part of a psychological perspective. It means that NLP comes out of an ethical movement in psychology to make sure that psychology is person focused (in contrast to the Behaviorist approach of Watson and Skinner). And when NLP people fully know this, then we can begin to stop and/or correct the mis-use of NLP and the unethical practices.

PART VI

There is another difference I want to mention. And it goes to the systemic nature of Neuro-Semantics that Michael Hall has been describing and the results from the Meta-States Model. Now while NLP is “systemic,” to some extent, it is just so on a surface level. And this is a sad development. After all, NLP emerged from the “family system” therapy of Satir and from the system approach in Korzybski (the non-Aristotelian system) and from the systemic thinking of Bateson. And yet for all of that, the way NLP is mostly taught around the world is very linear and simplistic.

Now, as with most things, there’s exceptions to this. Robert Dilts has attempted to introduce into NLP several systems models, as has O’Connor and Ian McDermott, as well as others. And yet, most NLP practitioners think and talk in linear terms... Following the Strategy model: first make a picture, then say these words, then feel this feeling, now let’s anchor that, okay, future pace and we’re done.

By contrast, learning Neuro-Semantics involves a much more systemic approach and one that involves many system words and processes: simultaneity, hyphenating words, both-and framing, etc.

Hyphenating
First, we begin by adopting the language of systems by using a hyphen when we talk about thoughts-feelings, mind-body, thinking-doing, etc. This comes from Alfred Korzybski and the Meta-Model distinction that he offered of using the hyphen to re-connect words that are especially systemic, we more consciously and intentionally try to use a systemic language. And by doing that, to avoid falling into the linear thinking of talking about “thoughts,” “emotions,” “cognitions,” etc. As if they were separate elements and could be separated. They are not and cannot be spoken in such “elementalism” without confusion.

Stepping in and stepping Out of States
Then there is the shift from talking about states and emotions. You will notice that most of us do not use the over-simplified NLP language of “association” - “dissociation.” This language comes from psychiatry, and especially from the sub-field of the Dissociative Personality Disorders. There they talk about people as “dissociated” and suffering from “dissociation.” That’s why it does a disservice to NLP to talk about “dissociating” a person as in the Movie Rewind Pattern. Talk that way, and people from that field will think you are not only ignorant and crazy, but ding real harm to people.
Further, you have to remember that this language is metaphorical. The actual fact is that no one is literally dissociates, no one is literally outside of his or her body. They may feel that they are; they may think that they are − but those are only thoughts and feelings, metal maps about such, not the fact. They are in their bodies and from inside they are breathing, standing, sitting, etc. A person with the label of “dissociative personality disorder” thinks and feels numb, strange, weird, and so makes judgments about themselves that they are crazy or literally out-of-the-body.

In Neuro-Semantics we avoid all of that language and talk more simply about stepping into and out of various states. If you are in a depressed state and step out of it you inevitably step into some other state−curiosity, witnessing, joy, playful, laughter, neutrality, etc. You are always in a state! Yu cannot be in no-state. So you are always and continually stepping in and out of states.
Similarly, associate and disassociate are relative terms. Whenever you associate into one state you are always dis-associating and can do so with hundreds of other states. Whenever you step into one, you are stepping out of many, many others. So to keep things easier to rack and simpler in concept, my recommendation is to speak in the metaphor of stepping in ad out of various states.

Feelings and Meta-Feelings
Whenever you think, you are at the same time thinking emotionally. It’s inevitable! There is no such thing as “pure” thinking. We humans have bodies and as long as we do, we will always and inevitably think somatically and think emotionaly! So when you buy something, anything, you think emotionally as you buy. You think emotionally whenever you make any choice or decision. How something feels to you, the emotions associated with something moves you to choose it.

Now the conclusion some people make from this is that we have a “rational” brain and we have an “emotional” brain and the emotional brain always wins out. Oh, that human psychology was so simple! It is not. This is the same old dichotomy of mind versus emotions, mind versus body that has been around since Aristotle. It posits that mind and body are polar opposites. But again, they are not.

The mind arises from the brain of the body and is both rational and emotional at the same time. That’s why we inevitably and always are meta-stating our states with emotions as well as thoughts, as well as with reasons and explanations and other “cognitive” stuff. If you think systemically about the mind-body-emotion system, you will save yourself (and others) a lot of elementalistic non-sense. You’ll speak and then think as if the mind-body-emotion are part of a singular system rather than compelling parts. This is a distinction that we have brought from Korzybski into Neuro-Semantics.

Responsible Accountability
Finally I’ll mention the systemic thinking about responsibility. This is key in Neuro-Semantics. To empower ourselves and others, we highlight our four powers of response and that we are always able to make these responses. This put all of us “at cause” for our mapping of reality and the responses and to others. The first creates accountability, the second relationships. Now we can positively welcome and use feedback from others as part of the system of interactions.

Michael Hall Ph.D.

Director of the International Society of Neuro-Semantics.