NLP & Representational SystemsThe term refers to how we use our five senses of smelling, tasting, hearing, seeing and feeling to represent our experience of events. Clues to a persons inner activityNLP is renowned for the attention we give to how a person demonstrates their use of their five senses - their representational systems. This is because everything we experience is 'represented' internally in our nervous system. Without our being consciously aware of it our five senses are constantly receiving and processing information about the world about and within us. And, since the mind and body are part of an interactive system, anything that happens in one part of the system affects all parts of the system. We cannot, for example, have a thought without having a physical response to that thought. If I remember a feeling, or talk to myself about something or imagine a forthcoming event I will use my senses - or representational systems - and this will be apparent to a skilled NLP-er in my use of certain words or phrases, how I use my eyes, my voice tonality and even my breathing. So in NLP we recognise that people are continuously communicating information about what they are doing internally - their inner processing. And this information is available for those who have the ability to discern it – who have taken the time to develop their sensory acuity and their ability to calibrate to, or recognise the personal significance of, our external behaviour. The types of cue/clueThese are the cues, clues, or signals that we can pay attention to in order to identify which of their representational systems a person is primarily using i.e. whether they are mainly remembering or making pictures, talking to themselves, remembering or making sounds, or attending to their feelings. The two main categories of cues which we pay attention to in NLP are predicates and eye accessing cues. The PredicatesThese are the 'give-away' words and phrases: the adverbs, verbs, and adjectives which a person uses and which indicate which of their representational systems they are more consciously aware of utilising at that moment. The NLP eye accessing cuesThese are the body-language clues as to how a person is thinking. The eye accessing cues are the directions in which they habitually look when they are thinking - or 'processing' information. Non-verbal accessing - otherThe eye movements patterns are the easiest accessing cues to observe. However you can also gain information about a person's processing from their voice rate and tempo and tone, breathing patterns, and gestures. (The skills to recognise these behavioural signals and to interpret them in terms of the person's individual style is a key part of the NLP Practitioner Certification Programme)
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