NLP Foundation Skills - NLP Certification -( Practitioner )

This is without doubt the most important part of achieving absolutley anything at all. And its such a simple concept that its amazing how few people really KNOW what it is that they want in life

And of course you cannot realistically hope to achieve anything if you dont know what it is you hope to achieve and by that I mean precisely. 

In this  part we are going to look at Taking Action

Look what I am giving you now is not rocket science, however, it is often easy to mix up being very busy with real focused action that is going to drive you forward towards your goal.
 If you are watching this then you are already taking positive action that is in alignment with your goal you are taking this training.  So how are you going to keep this up ? 

Imagine, if you had a machine that you could carry around with you that told you whether things were going to plan? Imagine if you could use that machine to make small corrections to your path so that you avoided obstacles and  maintained a steady progress to your ideal life. How good would that be? 

In this part we are going to be looking at concept of flexible behaviour, or having behavioural flexibility. And if you are one of those people, that gets really stuck in, and goes for it when you start a new goal, then you might want to pay special attention to this one  - because the fact is that we as human beings are creatures of habit and  naturally or the most part are not comfortable with change. 

And this It all comes from the fight flight or freeze response that is hardwired into our  unconscious minds as a means of protection

In this lecture we are going to take a look at the final key to an achievable outcome and that is to operate with a  the physiology and  with the psychology of excellence.  

the pictures in our minds, are linked to our physiology, and our physiology is linked to our behaviour which affects the type and quality of results we get.

In NLP we  teach you a process that you can learn that will teach you how to model excellence in others, not only the way they think but also their physiology as well.

These Keys have come about after extensive research and study into the principals and attitude adopted by people that consistently achieve their goals. When the creators of NLP started modelling successful therapists and other individuals that were known for their ability to hit their goals with apparent ease. They discovered that there are a number of traits disciplines and attitudes that these people adopt in their lives

To establish a good an achievable outcome, that goals needs meet the first key in the list.  The goal or outcome must be be stated in the positive

Now this comes down to motivation a lot, and , if you like the ‘why’ of what you have set as a goal. Why is it that you have this goal? What is it you are wanting to get out of achieving this goal or what is it that you don’t want any longer, the achievement of the goal being a to way to ensure you can get rid of a particular aspect of your life or behaviour

Part of successful goal setting and achievement is not only knowing where you want to get to but also knowing where are currently. This is really important in determining whether or not a goal is realistic or not.

Whilst yes, pretty much anything is possible, it isn’t always realistic or plausible.

The simple fact of the matter is, if you don’t know where you are going, you are unlikely to arrive there. You have heard it said in may different ways before I am sure and it is so true, imagine a game of soccer with no goals,  archery without a target. Imagine getting in a car and just driving, with no destination or map and see how you get on.

‘How will I know that I am achieving my goal, or have achieved my goal” what evidence will there be along the way, and when you have achieved your goal that will make it absolutely undeniable. what happened along the way that was evidence that I was achieving my goal?

For you to be successful in achieving it the outcome or goal must be congruent with your entire system.

In Nlp when we talk about congruency, we are referring to the physiology that accompanies our externalised dreams or goals. So what I mean by that is, does the physiology that you are communicating outward match the language that you are using, the conscious way in which you talk about what you desire

this is so very important  you must take full and complete ownership of your goal. And that means that for a goal to be truly achievable and viable, it must be initiated by you, so it must be YOUR goal and not someone else. If you don’t have 100% buy in to the goal then you are sitting yourself up to have some issues along the way

Does the goal you have and the picture of it in your mind tick all of the correct boxes, and does it make sense in context, so in order to get this clear in your mind, you need to ask the question. Where how when and with who do I want this goal?

There are many different types of resources, for example time, money, material things like equipment, software, machinery etc and there are less tangible items as well such as a positive attitude, confidence, creativity etc. 

So to give your goal the best chance of success this key is crucial if you want to really get things going in the right direction

whether you like it or not, everything you do, affects something else, physically mentally spiritually, energetically. And The study of ecology gets you to consider the consequences of the pursuit of your goal and its ultimate achievement.  the environment, the planet and heck the universe. 

We are motivated away from things we fear or will cause us pain and towards things that will bring us pleasure. whilst  Moving away from pain is highly effective at getting things moving, and indeed in the short terms getting things done, there is a fundamental problem with i

The mindset of NLP Practitioners differs somewhat to perhaps a lot of people out there. It is a mindset of possibility, curiosity, and is innately positive. 
Now in NLP we have something called the Pre suppositions of NLP which are lets call the convenient assumptions which as NLP Practitioners if  we were to choose to accept as real, will certainly make our job as a practitioner, and frankly all contexts and aspects of our life  easier to understand and a lot more pleasant. Which is always good thing. 

You are a one off, and there is no one like you anywhere on the planet. And that is good, and it means that you have your own version of events, the world, the universe society etc. And they are yours and yours alone. You may share some similarities with other peoples. But essentially your ‘model’ of the world you live in is unique. And of course the same applies to everyone else you meet. They have their model of the world. Now again this may be very similar to yours or it may be vastly different. 

As NLP Practitioners, we need to be careful when we are working with our clients that they don’t inadvertently cause themselves additional issues.
Remember Everything that we do, impacts on others, our surroundings, and of course our own lives and futures. So as an Ethical NLP practitioner, operating with Integrity, is is really important to evaluate the consequences of change for a client, to bring the possibility of change and its consequences for making those changes

 In NLP we say, There are no resistant clients, only inflexible communicators. So  What do we mean by that. ? Well, to be a really effective communicator involves, assuming responsibility for the communication. And by that I mean 100% responsibility for the communication, how it is received, how well it flows, whether or not it reaches the goal of that communication.

 Everyone is doing the best they can with the resources they have available to them. 
And again this presupposition need to be considered fairly carefully to understand it. As on the face of it it can seem to contradict another presupposition which states that everyone has the resources they need to be a success and achieve their goal. S so you might be thinking to yourself, well if everyone has all the resources they need and they are doing their best with this resources they have - well how can that possibly make sense… And the there is a very important word in this presupposition and that his the word available.. Everyone is doing the best they can with the resources that are available to them. So, its true that everyone has all the resources that they need to be able to achieve absolutely anything at all, to be a massive success in life, to be happy and positive and to live a full and enriched life. Those resources are within them, they are unlimited and they can be tapped into in an instant.

If you have a map laid out in front of you on a table. And you were to take a look at, you would be able to get a lot of information from it, you may be able to get a feeling of height, the terrain, you may be able to see how built up the environment is and you may well be able to see routes and familiar areas and landmarks detailed on the map. An that can of course be very useful. If you want to know about the territory it represents then you can study that map and get some of the information you want from it. 
Now although you can pull this information from off of the page. And as useful as it is, it is not the same as being in the actual plot of land that it represents is it? 

When a client is operating with conflicts or limiting beliefs, by default they are not operating at their best or operating in alignment with their true purpose in life. And it is when we have these conflicts, which incidentally are not wrong or weird they are just part of life, that a client might feel that they ‘cant do x or y because of this and that’ and these limiting beliefs if we are not careful grow arms and legs so to speak. They become the only thing that the client can focus on and if left unresolved can begin to hold the client back. 

The meaning of commmunication is the response that you get. 
Now I have already mentioned about taking responsibility for the communication you are having and if you recall that  means 100% responsibility for it.  And being flexible is one thing but how do you know when you need to adapt your communication. Well whenever you communicate you have an intention for that communication, and it is often quite easy to assume that when we communicate the message we want to get out there, is automatically picked up in the way we want.

Calibration is the skill, of comparing the overall physiology of a client at different points in time. Or the comparison of two sets of physiological snap shots taken time. 

Lets take a look at the typical indicators that signal a change in internal representation or a change in thinking, and these are the slight physiological signals that we can easily pick up on if we are using peripheral vision. 

And I have an Acronym to help you to remember these and that is the word BLESS which stands for. 
Breathing. When we are communicating with someone we can calibrate against the clients breathing.So for example We can calibrate on both the location of the breathing and the rate of breathing.
L - Lower Lip Size The lips are a really good indicator of a shift in internal representation withe the shape and the lip size can indicate a change in the clients thinking and it is fairly easy to associate a certain lip size or shape to an emotional state that the client does well. And by that I mean one with a reasonable intensity. 
E - for EYES : Again the eyes are a great indicator of a change in thinking and are truly unconscious physiological changes. The eyes can tell you a lot about what someone is thinking once you have calibrated fully .
S- Skin Colour We can identify changes in the skin colour. And Again when there is a change in the clients internal representations, a physiological change that is manifested in a change in skin colour can also often be noticed. Obviously this is more noticeable on naturally fair skinned people but is easily spotted on all skin colours and types
And the final S - Skin Tonus 

Breathing is a really great indicator that there has been a change in the clients internal representation.

And there are a few things that you can look out for in the clients breathing that will stand out and help you to identify a change in thinking, and in fact some of these are covered in Rapport as well. 

The lips are incredible indicators of a change in state and internal representation. In fact as you start observing peoples lip, you will notice movements of the lip that are so subtle, you would normally miss them and some of these can be very much associated to people individually. Now that is a lot more in depth, but trust me when you start doing this you won’t be able to stop, the lips, size etc and the movements are like a running commentary of what is going on inside someones head. However for this lecture, we are going to look at one particular aspect of the lips and that is the lower lip size. 

The eyes have been referred to as the windows to the soul, you will have heard a million loves songs mention the words, as I look in to your eyes…. Etc etc. 

So it is pretty well accepted that the eyes give away a lot of information about how someone is thinking. “I knew he didn’t like me, I could see it in his eyes” ever heard anything like that ? Of course you have. Whats interesting though is that if you were to ask someone what it was precisely that they sae in someones eyes, then for the most part people will struggle to tell you. You will probably get a response like ‘I don’t know, there was just something in his eyes’ 

When we have changes in emotion, when we change the internal representations that we are holding inside, then our physiology can change quite dramatically, the unconscious mind can instantly deliver more chemicals, hormones and indeed expand or contract blood vessels and capillaries restricting or increasing blood flow to various parts of the body. 

And these are things that can be easily picked up on, when we are using our sensory acuity.

Along with breathing, lower lip size, and skin colour, Skin tonus is another great indication that the client has started to think differently.  And a change in skin tonus Is the the result of the slight  muscle contraction or relaxation, just underneath the surface of the skin, most obvious in the face which results in slight, but certainly obvious change in the overall taughtness of the skin, how tight the skin is stretched over the top of the underlaying muscle structure. 

My suggestion to you is that you find a few people you run this exercise with to get a bit of variety in and  to do the exercise often, until it becomes an unconscious awareness you use all the time. 

Of course if you don’t have a partner or for any reason you don’t want one thats fine you can practise this covertly whilst just going about your day to day business and through simply asking questions and meeting people. 

We are going to get into the world of Representational systems, and this is where your understanding of the concepts and principals of NLP will really come together. 

So Our representational systems are intrinsically linked to all of our senses. In the same way that we see hear touch taste and smell, those same senses are created in our minds when we have an internal representation. So for example, whenever we remember a memory we re-create that experience with all of those senses and we do so internally. Remember, we don’t ever actually smell or hear anything, our brains create smells and sounds based on input from sense organs. 

In this lecture we are going to look a little deeper into each of theses system preferences and look at some of the traits of the people who have them. 

We will look at  the visual preferences Visual people, Auditory and Kinaesthetic people

Ray birdwhistle hypothesised that all communication was made up of three distinct areas.  He stated that, 55% of communication was done through  a persons physiology, 38% was thought the tonality that was used  and surprisingly only 7% was made up by the  actual words used by someone  when they are communicating. Which if you are like most people changes your perception of what communication is, pretty much immediately. But as you will see, communication can take place very effectively without using any words at all

 Ray birdwhistle hypothesised that all communication was made up of three distinct areas.  He stated that, 55% of communication was done through  a persons physiology, 38% was thought the tonality that was used  and surprisingly only 7% was made up by the  actual words used by someone  when they are communicating. Which if you are like most people changes your perception of what communication is, pretty much immediately. But as you will see, communication can take place very effectively without using any words at all

Rapport is the process of matching and mirroring a client so that your communication is accepted un critically by the person you are communicating with. It means is that in that communication conscious resistance is reduced or eliminated so that whatever you suggest is considered at the very least by the people you are speaking with and it works both ways by the way, so not just for influencing other people or getting them to see your point of view. If you want to learn something for example from someone you meet, then being in Rapport with them will allow you to take in a lot more information unconsciously

 Rapport is the process of matching and mirroring, so what exactly  is that and how do you match and mirror someone . Well matching and mirroring is  the actual process or technique that we use in NLP , to establish and maintain rapport  by actually being like the client physically, by following their physiology and through matching or mirroring  the movements in their physiology of the person you are speaking with. 

 55% of all communication is achieved through physiology, so undoubtedly the person you are speaking with will be moving their body and their limbs, facial expressions in certain ways and we can match or mirror these also. For example hand gestures, some people are very animated when they talk and these are easy to match in a person.

Pacing or pacing current experience is best achieved and in fact IS the process of building rapport intentionally  through matching and mirroring that we Have just been discussing. Now there are a couple of ways of pacing people and they are both really effective and incidentally are really useful if you are working with hypnosis .

How do we know we have successfully built rapport, what are the indicators of rapport and how can we spot them. 
And the first one up is the phenomenon called  leading  which we discussed at some length in the earlier lecture and again this is an incredibly useful skill to develop particularly if you  are working with clients in a therapeutic setting or indeed if you are a salesperson looking to improve your closure rate. Leading can be applied in that context as well.  So a really good indication that you are in rapport is when you are able to easily lead the client, by changing your physiology when you are in rapport. 

Sometimes it isn’t always possible, or appropriate to match exactly the physiology of a client, maybe if you are wearing a skirt, or if the clients physiology is really overtly expressive, maybe they tap the table when they are thinking, or bounce their legs up and down. You can probably think of someone that does something similar to this, some trait that makes them stand out a little. Well if you know someone who jumps up and down when they are excited for example, it probably wouldn’t be appropriate to start jumping up and down yourself when you are communicating with them 

 In the previous lecture we went through the process of meeting someone and building rapport with them 
So lets see what else we can gather from this meeting, 
Well. First off We can determine the chunck size that the client is speaking in, are they talking ambiguously in concepts and ideas or are they drilling down to a lot of detail? Now obviously to pic up on this information the most important thing you can be doing at the beginning of that meeting is to listen, let your  client tae and just notice where they are in a scale from detail to ambiguity and  you can store this knowledge inside and we can match that level of detail in our own speech when the time comes. 

 “yeah this is all well and good but most of my meetings and contact with clients is done on the phone, so what am i supposed to do? - I mean I can’t match physiology on the phone right?”
And its a fair question and one that comes up a fair bit so lets deal with that now, because the good news is that you can absolutely build rapport on the phone, and you can do it very quickly and very easily by following just a few simple processes. 

Mind is a complex idea. And certainly there are many concepts surrounding mind that are very interesting and without explaining this quick caveat, would seem to contradict what I am about to say. 
That is that for the purpose of this course. A whole mind is to be assumed to consist of 2 separate minds. A conscious mind and an unconscious mind. So what are they and why are they so important in our work with NLP

The unconscious mind stores all of your memories. 
Now in the earlier lecture I mentioned the huge amount of data that enters our neurology every second of the day. And to go back to that data, every single experience you have ever had has been stored by your unconscious mind. Your unconscious mind is like a powerful supercomputer with unlimited storage capacity. In fact the storage capacity of the human body is incredible, with memory being stored in every cell of the body.  

All of our emotions are held at the unconscious level, and its not uncommon for people to thik, hang on, I am very conscious of how I feel. But it is important to remember that  our conscious awareness of emotions is just that, an awareness of them or rather an awareness of something, that is interpreted by the conscious mind as the feelings we have. And in fact it is out conscious perception of emotion the is what often causes the ‘issues’ that we believe we have, 

The unconscious mind organises memories in relation to time, which is the basis of something known as a timeline. And to just pick up on this, this time line, or organisation of time has to present in the unconscious mind, or we would never be able to tell past remembered events from future memories. 

 
Your unconscious mind is concerned with your wellbeing, and as such if there is a significant emotional event in your life your unconscious mind MAY decide that the best thing overall for you is to keep the negative emotion repressed. Remember the unconscious mind is concerned with your overall wellbeing and your system as a whole

The unconscious mind , may repress negative emotions following a significant emotional event. The unconscious mind will do this almost automatically  if we are not in a good enough place or position to deal with them.
 That said the unconscious mind, as we discussed earlier will be using a lot of energy in keeping the memory repressed and as such, when the unconscious mind believes that you are in a ‘good state of mind’ and that you are flexible to deal with old negative emotions.

Sometimes unresolved negative emotions will remain repressed, and the unconscious mind may decide that the time will never be right to present them to the conscious mind for resolution. And other times when the opportunity to resolve these negative emotions comes up and is presented to us by the unconscious mind , we might quickly and consciously push them back down into the unconscious realm

You can think of the unconscious mind very much as  the maintenance manager of your physical body, 

At the deeply unconscious level your unconscious mind holds the blueprint for cell creation and perfect health. Which is what it is constantly doing its very best to achieve for you and your system. Your unconscious mind, is running maintenance on your physical system all of the time, wwith entire organs being replaced over fairly short periods of time

 The unconscious mind communicates with individual cells based on the internal representations we hold, so physical changes are made throughout the body as a result of our unconscious internal representations, which means that we can essentially communicate at a cellular level through our unconscious minds. So what does that mean? 

Every experience we have and believe to be real is in fact only a perception of reality  based upon the way in which we have filtered our experience and the way that our unconscious mind interprets that filtered experience and presents or communicates it to us consciously. We hold these perceptions of events within the unconscious mind and it is the unconscious mind that maintains what we believe to be real.

A common law, in physics and the universe and your unconscious mind is no different, if there is a simple way to deliver the result you have instructed your unconscious mind to seek out, then the unconscious mind will find it and use it. So again, being very specific with our instructions to the unconscious mind is important particularly where goal setting is concerned. Because if you are not absolutely clear about what it is you want you could end up getting some ambiguous results. 

Your unconscious mind takes very seriously the morality that we have grown up with and it directs our motivation and behaviour in alignment and accordance with that morality. A we go Throughout our lives we are influenced in may different ways and especially by our environment , and as we progress through childhood into adulthood  this influences the development of our values and beliefs.

.To recognize that people are not their behavior and that everyone has an unlimited potential to achieve whatever it is that they desire in life. When we can accept everyone as an incredible human being, then we can start to see that reflect back onto ourselves. We are connected beings, and we are unable to influence or help change any behavior without working on ourselves also.

The unconscious mind has the ability to tap into the energy within us and direct it in was that will ultimately benefit us.  There is a huge amount of energy within each and every one of us and a lot of the time that energy is just potential energy that isn’t actually doing any work. 

Your unconscious mind is conditioned to continually seek more and more.
Again, another reason for be very careful about how you choose to communicate with your unconscious mind. Remember that you give your unconscious mind instructions all the time, and your unconscious mind will look for as many ways to back up the instructions you give it, seeking out evidence that is otherwise wouldn’t have even considered. If you say to yourself ‘my life sucks’ dont be surprised to find yourself finding loads and loads of reasons why, as your unconscious mind will go to work to seek out more and more evidence to back that belief up.

Now at first encounter this might sound a little bit out there however the unconscious mind has the ability to tap into the energy within us and direct it in was that will ultimately benefit us.  There is a huge amount of energy within each and every one of us and a lot of the time that energy is just potential energy that isn’t actually doing any work. 

A lot of people when they hear the word  habit, often associate that with bad  habits, and  things that they want to change. But habits are a vital part of getting what you want in life . Generating empowering habits is one of the very best things that you can do if you want to really take control of your life. And the beauty about habits is that they are completely unconscious they work one autopilot and are really consistent. Which means that you can quit literally, plan  your habits and turn yourself into an achievement machine. 

The unconscious mind as we have discussed has a LOT to do, and for it to be operating at its peak it needs to be able to operate with the minimum distraction and that means to have everything in our system aligned. Integrity is important within our system both in terms of our physical integrity and the integrity of our thought we have already discussed the mind body connection so when the body is is operating in a way that supports the unconscious minds prime directives of running and maintaining the integrity of the body, then the two can work in harmony to produce fantastic results in record time. 

The more you do something the more likely it is to become a habit, including thinking. There is a saying that neurons that fire together wire together, neuro plasticity states that the more you think something, or do something the more hardwired the behaviour or thought pattern becomes, creating new neural pathways in the neurology and allowing old ones to become redundant. 

The unconscious mind is immensely powerful, it operates in a different manner to the conscious mind. Which if you recall I said was more like an interface to the unconscious mind. The conscious mind very much delivers our conscious intention to the unconscious mind. And the unconscious mind is concerned with delivering up result and delivering up that which we instruct it to deliver. 
I refer to the conscious mind as the goal setter and the unconscious ind as the goal getter, which is a fairly accurate description. And with that in mind, the unconscious mind needs very clear instructions as to what it is we are directing it to achieve. 

If you are new to NLP and certainly if you plan on working with others, when you do so I pretty much guarantee that at some point you will meet someone who says that they can’t create a picture. That when you ask them do you have a picture ‘ they say something like ‘well I think so, kind of. I am not sure’ and here is the thing. Sometimes when you recall a past emotion, state or experience, sometimes your internal representation of that experience is like a polaroid perfect picture snapshot. And other times, in fact most times it isn’t. Sometimes ‘the picture’ you have in your mind, might be a strange image of swirling colours or it might not be a picture at all, but be more of an awareness that ‘something’ is there.

The unconscious mind does not process negatives. If you feed the unconscious mind a negative, then the unconscious mind needs to actualize the negative positively to bring it into existence and communicate that to the conscious mind. 

The Hierarchy of ideas is a structure to it that we can learn, that allows us to traverse the varying levels of detail from detail through to ambiguity and maintain effective communication with anyone and at any level. When I say level I refer to levels of detail of which in NLP we say there are seven, seven levels or as we call it in NLP chunk sizes, where a chunk is a chunk or bundle of data. 

Linguistic presuppositions  are assumptions made through interpretation of the language that is used that has to be believed or assumed to be true by the client for the sentence to make sense. 
Now remember in NLP we are concerned with understanding and respecting the other persons model of the world and understanding linguistic pre supposigions will certainly assist us in doing that. So Learning a way to communicate with a client or someone in a way that respects their model of the world absolutely would be pretty good right? 

We use strategies for absolutely everything. All the things we do are as a result of running a strategy. So a strategy is a set of internal and external experiences or representations that consistently lead to a specific outcome. So why would you want to know about strategies.

Well if everything we do is done by running a strategy, it stands to reason that if we can understand how people do what they do, we can assist them in changing the way they do things. Learning strategies, gives us insight into the workings of the mind, the way mind runs programs if you like that deliver results, either good or bad. If you are working as a coach or therapist, how would it be if you could learn how to really understand how to change a strategy that doesn’t serve your client?

When we are working with a client there are a lot of NLP techniques in our tool box and skills that we can draw upon and  one of the core disciplines if you like is the work with Submodalities. In truth you can do pretty much any change work using submodalities and as a topic it covers a number of NLP techniques. SURE  there may be some more effective or quicker techniques but Submodalities as a general topic are so powerful, that its fair to say that you can really make a difference with any issue by learning and implemeting them.

Everyone likes a good story and metaphors are just that, they are stories with a purpose. That purpose being to dsiplace conscious resistance in a client, and to covertly provide suggestion of choice to a client at the unconscious level to. connect to the unconscious mind and provide new possibilities. 

You find stories in every context in life, in business, coaching, therapy and education, everyone loves to engage with a witty story or a curios tales. And whenever you hear someone telling a story you feel yourself drawn in, wondering where it will go, what twists and turns there may be, stories build an anticipation and a wonder, they install curiosity and a willingness to learn more of what is to come. Imagine how good it would be to be able to grab hold of the attention of people and instill a state of curiosity and wonder when you are doing presentations or selling your products and services, imagine if you were able to connect with the unconscious minds of your audience so that they see possibility and choice in your communication with them. And imagine if you could do all of that by simply telling a few stories. 

Meta-programs are a Master Practioner topic and their definition if you like is that they are deeply root, deeply unconscious filters, that are powerful determinants of behaviour. If you go back to the NLP communication model, you will remember that an experience comes into our newurology via the 5 senses, the things we see, hear, feel, touch, tast and smell, and that experience is filtered unconsciously, and the experience is deleted, distorted and generalised to give us the perception of that experience that we believe to be real. Well in that diagram on the NLP communication model, you will recall one of those filters were our meta programs. 

The Milton model is a set of language patterns that are deliberately ambiguous and designed to displace resistance in a client an induce a trance state

Imagine if you were able to communicate with people in such a way that whatever you said that communication would be accepted at the unconscious mind, would meet little or no resistance and would be considered uncritically and without limitation of conscious thought. 

 1902 Twitmyer published his findings into the knee jerk reflex and a year on from Twitmyers paper  ‘ knee jerks   without stimulus of the patella tendon’  a Russian by the name of Ivan Pavlov was working at the Instiute for Experimental Medicine in St petersburgh  on  a study into digestive function  in dogs.
Now Pavlov was working on and experimenting with the digestive tract and the saliva glands in dogs which he ultimately won the nobel prize for and  as part of those experiments he would collect, measure and analyse  the saliva that the dogs produced and the response they had to food under various conditions. Nice work if you can get it… 

We have a useful way for remembering the overview of the process of Anchoring . Which is if you like the the big picture of anchoring that describe the key components to the process.   You don’t have to use this you can make your own if you like but this works well for me  And that is thorough using the mnemonic PAST which stands for Past experience Anchor State Change Test. 

There are certain aspects of a state that need to be present for that state to be considered a suitable state for anchoring. Ctrieria if you like for a suitable state. So lets have a look at them 
FIsrt of all the states need to be resourceful, that is that they have to have positive benefit to the client. And when we start anchoring there seems in my experience for their to be a tendency for people to go for high energy states like  motivation etc. But resourceful might also means calm, peaceful, happy.. All of which a good strong resourceful states. 
No we mentioned al

 When we are working with anchoring there are a number of  to consider And again I have a useful mneominc which you can use to remember these keye and to  ensure you get great results. And that  Mneomic is FRUIT 
Which stands for 
Frequency or number of times, Replication, Uniqueness, Intensity and Timing. 
So lets look at each of these in turn. 
OK so the first key in our FRUIT mnemonic is Frequency or  the number of times.

The intensity of the state has to be heightened for the anchor to really take hold. If you want to see really good results your client will need to show you that they have a state that holds a lot of energy. In fact personally I think a High energy state is probably a good way of describing this key, as you can anchor a calm state, which carries a lot of energy and for most people intensity doesn’t naturally ‘fit’ with calmness. So, the state needs to have a significant amount of energy, and you will be able to tell whether your clients does by using your sensory acuity. If the state the client recalls is flat or has  a low intensity or low energy then essentially you will anchor nothing during the process. So just be sure that there is a significant change in physiology when the client access the state to make sure it has sufficient energy 

 Within NLP we have a number of different anchoring techniques that we can use with clients and we can use these in many different  situations and with many different issues. And these anchoring techniques include. 
Basic anchoring  - Which is coming up shortly by the way, and basic anchoring is a technique  where we ask a client to recall a specific experience an intense emotional state and apply an anchor or link a stimulus to it at the peak of that experience  and by doing so we are able to fire off that anchor, and instantly recall a desired state . 

 And as with most processes in NLP the first thing we are going to do is establish rapport with the client, if you recall this is done through matching and mirroring, and pacing and leading. So  be sure to  have gained rapport before running through the process. And incidentally if you are doing this with yourself. Then you are not let off the hook,  you still need to be in rapport, with your unconscious mind, So try a few ‘pictures’ on before you get going and start that communication with the unconscious mind.