NLP and Magic
Heron Bull
to what has been referred to down the ages as 'magic' - by which I mean
wizards, the occult, fairies and such. Here they are:
a) Magic Spells:
The stuff of ancient spell books, witches' curses, shamans and the rest. The
parallel NLP technique is a throw word/wordinterruption followed immediately
by a direct command which gets straight into the subconscious mind. Example:
"Thrablogemdal: you will heal yourself by tomorrow. (Eat your heart out
Merlin, we've figured out how you did it!)"
b) The Laying on of Hands:
Healing magic of a Biblical variety. A variety of Bandler & Grinder's
'Secret Therapy', (see Frogs into Princes) whereby they change a past phobia
(which is but a memory image encoded into the body) by attaching it to a
strong, powerful feeling through the use of kinesthetic anchors. If you read
'sins' for phobia, 'faith' for the powerful feeling and 'laying on of hands'
for kinesthetic anchors then you have it.
c) Fairy Story/Parable:
Again as old as the hills. Nowadays, we understand that metaphor tends to
bypass the conscious mind and the ultimate meaning of a given metaphor
(whatever that may be...) gains direct access to the subconscious. So we
have an entire new generation of purpose designed therapeutic metaphors in
the NLP school. I'm sure there are other things that cross map these two
areas & it would be interesting to hear the views of others on the subject.
[PS: An intriguing thing here. If we can put these phenomenon down to
'NLP' - and we know the origins of NLP in modern
psychology/psychiatry/therapy/hypnosis - then it is interesting to speculate
how & where the magicians/healers/storytellers of ancient days actually
acquired their knowledge...]