www.ZENLP.org
where neuro-linguistics meets meditation
Where NLP meets Meditation - an introduction to the intersection.
There are many overlaps between the classic traditions of meditation and the fairly recently described techniques of Neuro-linguistic Programming.
Let's first acknowledge that NLP was built on models of some very smart, (and wise) people. It was initially a discovery of how people work, rather than an invention. Many clever people through history had used similiar powerful techniques to influence others.
Some of those clever people were meditators and teachers.
Buddha was one of the greatest human thinkers ever, and an extraordinary spiritual guide. But he learnt from those who'd gone before, too.
As we move from the information age to the cellular revolution, one of the great questions continues to to be: who am I?
How we have consciousness, and more acutely, where our sense of self comes from, has always troubled humans.
As we better understand the workings of our brains, we may get closer to an answer. I suspect we may get closer to understanding how Buddha, and so many other profound meditators, got it right.
In one way you can regard profound meditation as being like resonating with the universe. But it isn't easy to explain. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people have tried, but if you haven't already got it, their meaning can seem impenetrable. Nonetheless that is one of the aims of this website, and we hope that in time we'll explain it well enough for you.
What we can do here, to start, is cover some of the overlap between NLP and meditation.
Anchors
Anchoring is an NLP term that describes the utilisation of the Pavlovian Response. Our visual, auditory and bodily responses are amazingly connected, and operate without our conscious involvement.
The use of incense, tied to a spiritual situation, is one of the most powerful anchors - that of smell. The sound of a gong, sometimes tied to taking a meditative breath, uses the auditory channel. A sitting meditation often uses special hand positions, which are a bodily, or kinesthetic, reminder of the meditatve state. Mantras, interestingly, by filling our heads with imagined sound, quell our own internal voices, or self talk.
A statue or picture of Buddha is a visual anchor.
It is also interesting to compare the main imagery of Buddhism - a calmly blissed out sitting figure, with the main Christian image - an agonised and tortured man nailed on the cross.
Trance
There is no doubt meditation is a class of trance. But hypnosis can range from the farcical vaudeville of stage performance, to calm medical use, through to a meditative way to delve into the mysteries of life.
On other pages we have given a number of what were originally trance inductions, as ways into meditation. Where we think the NLP techniques are most powerful is in the maintenance of useful trance or meditation states, and self guidance through them.
We don't believe that sitting meditation should hurt to get you to the right state. We do think that a straight back may be an important part of good meditation, though. There is certainly a place for discipline, but there's no need for unnecessary discomfort.
Submodalities
In NLP it is thought that we store memories and perceptions in certain ways, and that those submodalities effect the power of the memories and perceptions.
Whether we recall through sounds, pictures, or feelings, and how those 'modalities are coded' can be useful to know. Often it is not in conscious awareness.
We do have many descriptions, in those terms, of the advanced meditative "enlightened" state. It is vast, in three dimensions, empty, and silent.
Some meditators describe other states that may be encountered on the way to the deepest level - bliss might be one of them. NLP suggests that by imitating the perceptions we'll be able to model and achieve those states.
Metaphor
The most interesting use of metaphor in Zen is the koan. It is a metaphor that has no obvious meaning. NLP says that human brains love metaphor and stories, because they search for their own meaning in them. That process revels in the wonderful name 'trans-derivational search'. Koans deliberately don't mean anything. Koans are not to be understood, they are to be realized. They are a way of jolting the brain beyond meaning through metaphor.
Contemplation, a milder form of meditation, loves metaphor and imagery. In time we hope to have some interesting launching points for that in our 'meditations' section. Thich Nhat Hahn's image that our lives are waves, but that what we're made from is like the water is a wonderful metaphor.
Timeline and Super Identity
NLP uses a couple of very useful mental constructs to help analyse how our brains work. Timeline is about how we physically code time around ourselves. Some people see events of the past, present and future in front of them, while for other people the present is right inside them, for example.
The Buddhist idea of karma and reincarnation vastly extend the individual's timeline from one lifetime to almost eternity, of course.
Similiarly NLP addresses the issue of our identity, or who we are because of our values and beliefs. Buddhism, or any profound meditation, goes beyond identity, to an eternal awareness that may not be who we think we are.
There is an extraordinarily useful role for that Super Identity in NLP - as a very powerful meta-position. We'll explore that later, too.
We hope this brief and hasty introduction gives you a sense of what we're thinking. One one level it has the potential to make meditation far more accessible and useful for many people. On another it may provide a powerful basis for NLP to advance the change work it can do.
Most interestingly it gives us a reason to keep in touch with the great advances in neuroscience that may finally provide some answers to questions like: Who are we? What is 'self'? and How do we think, when we're made up of stuff that doesn't?
You're welcome to correspond with us on any of these issues.
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