The Swish Pattern

1. The swish pattern is a rapid way to change any troublesome habit or other unwanted response, so it has a very wide range of applications. The swish was developed by Richard Bandler in the early 1980’s, and was first published in Using Your Brain for a Change (chapter 9) in 1985, over 30 years ago.

What’s next?

Gestalt was a part of the zeitgeist of the 1960’s that advocated paying attention in the here and now, which has been part of a number of very old spiritual traditions, and has been reincarnated recently in a secular form as “mindfulness.”

Reframing from reframing? Unlikely.

 “Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words. Just as all men have not the same writing, so all men have not the same speech sounds, but the mental experiences, which these directly symbolize, are the same for all, as also are those things of which our experiences are the images.” ~ Aristotle

Words can both reflect and shape mental processes.

Virginia Satir was one of the pioneers of family therapy.

Virgina Satir Video - 1985 NLP Keynote

The Virginia Satir Global Network consists of individuals, institutes and organizations dedicated to furthering the creation of healthy and just relationships with self and others based on the teachings of Virginia Satir.

Rare Virginia Satir Meditation Video @ http://satirglobal.org/virginia-satir-meditation-video/

Virginia Satir Forgiving Parents Family Therapy

Identify someone in your life who you KNOW loves you.

You are sitting at a desk or table filled with a computer, papers, pen, etc. Across from you are windows, or perhaps sliding glass doors, looking out to the outside. There, occupied in some endeavor of their own, is that special someone who you know loves you. It has come to that time in the book you are writing to describe this very character. You sit back, looking at them, musing to yourself as you let the possibilities form of how to describe this person in words — how to capture and express in words that which makes them unique, the words which would allow a reader to see them as you do. So you describe to yourself the idiosyncratic gestures, words, looks, and behaviors that make this person who they are: their humor, passion, intellect, foolishness, blind spots, strengths and weaknesses; the small and the global that coalesce into making that person unique in all the world. You listen to your own description, feeling the feelings that come and move through you as you are watching them on the other side of the glass.
As your description draws to a close, you quietly change positions and perceptions. You float out of your place there at the desk, and you float outside and enter into the person on the other side of the glass — becoming that person who loves you. From there, your eyes look up from the activity in which you have been so engrossed, and you see yourself sitting there working on a book. You see yourself through the eyes of someone who loves you; seeing for the first time what someone who loves you sees as they look at you. Listening closely, you hear your own gestures, words, and looks described by someone who loves you. Seeing yourself through the eyes of someone who loves you, you recognize qualities and attributes which were unknown, or perhaps viewed as faults by your own eyes. Viewing yourself through the thoughts, perceptions, and memories of someone who loves you, you find yourself to be someone to love — someone who enriches another by the simple act of being yourself. You hear and see what it is about you this person cherishes. Holding close all that is worth knowing, you slowly come back into your own being, remembering who you are to someone who loves you.

That’s an excerpt from Steve Andreas blog. He provides a process, “Looking at Yourself through the Eyes of Someone Who Loves You”, excerpted from Leslie Cameron-Bandler’s book, Solutions: practical and effective antidotes for sexual and relationship problems. He also provides a technique to use with yourself and to use with others.

The Native American advice to walk a mile in another man's moccasins is good advice for anyone wishing to improve a relationship. Put yourself in the other person's shoes and view the relationship from their perspective. Do you like what you see and feel?

What is valuable about this exercise?

Feeling loved and lovable.

One of the nice things about Byron Katie’s work is dealing with the statements of others. “You are single so there is something wrong with YOU.” Is that true? No. Reality is what is happening at this very instant. You are simply single. Period! Now you are empowered.

 “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” ~ Mark Twain

I found this prayer from “Miracles in Prayer, 150 Prayers for Everyday Living”(LINK here), a. free e-book from Robin Duncan

Finding a Love Relationship

Dear God, I‟d like to have a loving companion to share my life with. I accept that it is Your will to bring me happy experiences that fill my heart with joy. If I am not experiencing my joyful desires, then it must be that somewhere in my mind and heart, I have decided against You. Perhaps I thought You weren‟t listening, or maybe that I‟m not good enough or attractive enough, or perhaps I thought it just wasn‟t possible. Whatever the case, I‟m willing to surrender all of those thoughts and fears to You and ask that You heal them for me. I deserve happiness, companionship and fulfillment because these gifts are my natural inheritance as given by You. Thank You, in advance, for healing my mind and blessing me with the most amazing, peaceful, loving, lasting, romantic, connected and harmonious relationship I could ever imagine. In gratitude, I accept Your loving gifts. Thy will be done. Amen

Potpourri : Readings

What is hypnosis? An excellent article by Dr. Walter Schulze.

Research in NLP: Steve Andreas Blog is very informative

It led me to these

• Susan Clancy :The Trauma Myth
• BPS Research Digest
• Synesthesia (A neurologically based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway)
• Re-evaluating the time of your life (A study of Holocaust survivors who had experienced traumatic events and how some were able to move forward while others remained stuck)
• How can you recall negative past experiences without being overwhelmed?

We must not allow other people's limited perceptions to define us.

Virginia Satir (1916 - 1988) was an American author and psychotherapist, known especially for her approach to family therapy and her work with Systemic Constellations. She is widely regarded as the "Mother of Family Therapy". She is also known for creating the Virginia Satir Change Process Model, a psychological model (how change impacts organizations) which was developed through clinical studies.

“Life is not what it's supposed to be. It is what it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference.”

Virginia came from a farming family with an alcoholic father.

When she was five years old, Satir suffered from appendicitis. Her mother, a devout Christian Scientist, refused to take her to a doctor. By the time Satir's father decided to overrule his wife, the young girl's appendix had ruptured. Doctors were able to save her life, but Satir was forced to stay in the hospital for several months.

A curious child, Satir taught herself to read by age three, and by nine had read all of the books in the library of her small one-room school.

When she was six, she became very observant of human interactions when she developed deafness for two years following mastoiditis. She noticed that people appeared to communicate in very different ways from each other and decided then that she was going to be a detective of adults when she grew up. Unable to hear what they were saying, she learned to detect when they were blaming, placating, doing “super reasonable” (or computer), or distracting. She later explained that "I didn't quite know what I would look for, but I realized a lot went on in families that didn't meet the eye."

"The family is a microcosm. By knowing how to heal the family, I know how to heal the world."

Once she was an adult, she developed these defensive Communication Stances that she then recognized as defending low self-esteem. She taught people how to communicate congruently (sincerely but with consideration for the other's feelings); in other words, to be the same on the outside as they were on the inside and to be fully in touch with their whole Self.

When congruent, one can freely express one's own thoughts, feelings and opinions, and also acknowledge the thoughts, feelings and opinions of the other, and acknowledge the context of the relationship. She also taught that being congruent would raise self-esteem.

Virginia was internationally recognized for her creativity in the practice of family therapy. Based on conviction that people are capable of continued growth, change and new understanding, her goal was to improve relationships and communication within the family unit.

“Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible - the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family”

She was one of the three sources of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), which was developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder. These two videotaped her, Fritz Perls, and Milton Erickson, the famous hypnotherapist. Richard Bandler and John Grinder discovered that these three magical therapists were using non-verbal cues and communication at a non-verbal level that can, in fact, be taught. NLP can be a potent tool for change, but asked what she thought of it, she said, “They have the mind of the matter, but not the heart of it.”

“We can learn something new anytime we believe we can”

Virginia Satir developed what she called "survival stances" that demonstrated how problems were dealt with. These four are:
• blaming,
• placating,
• being irrelevant and
• being super-reasonable.
These four stances were, she felt, developed throughout one's life; developed for survival which were used to protect themselves from perceived and presumed, verbal and nonverbal threats.
The four stances were used in therapy sessions as tools to determine her clients' issues and what the best avenue of productive therapy was needed. In addition, the therapy techniques were altered accordingly to help the client change their survival stances. By providing the client knowledge, awareness, experience and manifestation the therapies were enhanced and provided a positive outcome for the patient's.

Adolescents are not monsters. They are just people trying to learn how to make it among the adults in the world, who are probably not so sure themselves.

There are five points of philosophy that drove her work; she referred to them as the "Five Freedoms" which are as follows:
• The freedom to see and hear what is in the present instead of what was, should be or will be
• The freedom to say what one thinks and feels rather than what one should
• The freedom to feel what one feels rather than what one ought
• The freedom to ask for what one wants rather than waiting for permission
• The freedom to take risk's on one's own behalf rather than choosing to "rocking the boat"

“If I can have the same from you then we can truly meet and enrich each other.”

One of Satir's most novel ideas at the time, was the "presenting issue" or surface problem – that the presenting issue itself was seldom the real problem; rather, how people coped with the issue created the problem." Satir also offered insights into the particular problems that low self-esteem could cause in relationships.

Long interested in the idea of networking, Satir founded two groups to help individuals find mental health workers or other people who were suffering from similar issues to their own. In 1970, she organized Beautiful People, which later became known as the International Human Learning Resources Network. In 1977 she founded the Avanta Network.

Two years later, Satir was appointed to the Steering Committee of the International Family Therapy Association and became a member of the Advisory Board for the National Council for Self-Esteem.

“Over the years I have developed a picture of what a human being living humanely is like. She is a person who understand, values and develops her body, finding it beautiful and useful; a person who is real and is willing to take risks, to be creative, to manifest competence, to change when the situation calls for it, and to find ways to accommodate to what is new and different, keeping that part of the old that is still useful and discarding what is not.”

Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.

Some one mentioned hypnosis a while ago and seemed a little apprehensive. That’s not a good idea to do around a hypnotist so today I’ll talk a little bit about hypnosis.

Hypnosis is self hypnosis. It’s a relaxation state. You’re not forced, you don’t spill you guts and give out private information and you can’t be programmed to rob a bank. Unless you already do that. It’s also the power of suggestion working on the subconscious.

Stage hypnosis is different. People volunteer and they do what they’d do normally anyway.
I became interested in the 80‘s I had some pretty good tapes. Around that time NLP neuro linguistic programming was introduced. Developed by Bandler and Grinder it modeled the syntax of hypnosis methods of 3 hypnotherapists (Milton Erickson, Virginia Satir and Fritz Perls).

Milton Erickson could hypnotize someone with 2 words. “That’s right”. “That’s right”. He could also use hand gestures and body language to get someone under.

He didn’t necessarily use hypnosis. He sent one alcoholic to a nursery and told him to look at cactus plants for 3 hours. After 2 hours he got the message, went home and never drank again. A cactus plant can survive for days without water.

Hypnosis was first called mesmerism. And it was because of my interest in ancient history that I never watched the DVD the SECRET. Too hokey. But I did buy the book . The authors in the appendix intrigued me because I like to know the originator of something.

Of the 5 from the early 1900’s 3 were in it for the money. One Charles Hannel sold a course for $1500, that’s a first class ticket on the Titanic. Wallace Wattles may not have ever made any money. But two were legit. And they were part of the then self help movement called New Thought, Mental science or Mental Healing.

The father of that movement was Phineas P. Quimby . Inventor, clockmaker, daguerreotypist (the daguerreotype was the first commercially successful photographic process) and mesmerist.

In 1840 he saw a demonstration and decided to try it. It took 10 minutes to succeed , then he didn’t know to do next so he shook his friend out of it and bought a book. After that he found a 15 year old assistant who was a great subject and they toured New England doing demonstrations for 10 years.

From his work in mesmerism Quimby discovered the power of the mind, the power of suggestion and the power of one’ s belief system and the ego. This was all around 50 years before Freud.

Quimby had a great line , he said the “The more outrageous the notion the mind will go to extremes to prove it”.

He lived until 1865 healing 16000 people by changing their beliefs.

Thomas Troward warned of the misuse of power of suggestion in 1907, shop keepers were trained to prey on unsuspecting customers to sell what they didn’t really want and there were dubious ads with wild claims running in the newspapers.

Today we can ad the internet and infomercials to the list.

Quimby’s outrageous notion is still applicable today. The are groups that believe there’s a planetary alignment and the Mayan calendar running out in 2012 so the world will end. NASA hasn’t confirmed any alignment and the Mayan calendar starts a new cycle in 2012, the same as it does every 395 years.

Egypt has similar wild claims.

Power of Suggestion may also apply to theReconnection as the eyes flutter there in a similar manner to hypnosis. As Quimby said “The More Outrageous the notion the mind will go to extremes to prove it”.


One famous hoax was perpetuated before the American Spanish war by a newspaper man in Chicago. People still believe it today. Penn and Teller staged it years ago. Although a retraction was printed it went unnoticed and the legend still survives.

Quimby said there was nothing or no one that could affect you unless you let it.

Your own beliefs use the power of suggestion on you and no one else. You alone.

Your own beliefs, operating on your subconscious.

As Byron Katie has said: “Our concepts are based on a life time of uninvestigated beliefs”.

So change your mind and you change your life.

Be yourself.

Everyone else is taken.
From a speech I gave July 7th 2011

Core Transformation

Core Transformation meets the deepest strivings of our times: to heal ourselves and develop as human beings – emotionally, physically, and spiritually. This simple 10-step process offers a graceful way to change unwanted thoughts, feelings, and habits, and achieve goals you thought unattainable.

Specific changes attributed to the Core Transformation process include:
 Changing problem emotions and behaviors (i.e. anger, self-consciousness, procrastination, fear)
 Losing weight
 Improving relationships
 Overcoming depression and anxiety
 Healing addictions
 Finding fulfilling work
 Improving all aspects of health
 Creating an overall sense of inner peace, wholeness, and well-being

Read more... http://coretransformation.org/

CORE TRANSFORMATION TRAINERS ASSOCIATION TRAINERS... http://coretransformation.org/trainers.htm

ABOUT THE FOUNDER...
Connirae Andreas, Ph.D. is the mother of three, and has been a leader and innovator in the field of NLP for three decades. She is well known for her groundbreaking work developing Core Transformation, and her contributions to the field in areas including Advanced Language Patterns, Timelines, Grief Resolution, and Shame.

She has co-authored or edited nine books and manuals of international acclaim, including "Core Transformation" (with Tamara Andreas), and
"Heart of the Mind" [ http://www.realpeoplepress.com/heart-mind-p-36.html ]
(with husband Steve Andreas[ http://realpeoplepress.com/blog/ ]).

"THE CORE TRANSFORMATION STORY: How the process came to be" Acknowledgements and History... http://www.coretransformation.org/ct_story.htm

NLP

Richard Bandler (1950- ) is an American author and trainer in the fields of alternative psychology and of self-help. He is best known as the co-inventor (with John Grinder) of Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), a collection of concepts and techniques intended to understand and change human behavior-patterns[1]. He also developed other systems known as Design Human Engineering (DHE) and Neuro Hypnotic Repatterning (NHR).

John Grinder Ph.D. (1940 - ) is an American linguist, author, management consultant, trainer and speaker. A graduate of the University of San Francisco with a degree in psychology from the early 1960s he returned to college in the late 60’s, after a stint in the military, to study linguistics and received his Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in 1971. His dissertation, titled “On Deletion Phenomena in English”, was published by Mouton in 1976.

In the early 1970s, Grinder worked in George A. Miller's laboratory at Rockefeller University. After receiving his Ph.D., Grinder took a full-time position as an assistant professor in the linguistics faculty at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). He engaged in undergraduate and graduate teaching, and research. His research focused on Noam Chomsky's theories of transformational grammar specializing in syntax and deletion phenomena. He published several research papers with Paul Postal on the syntactical structures relating to "missing antecedents" or missing parasitic gaps for the pronoun. They argued that the syntactic structure of a deleted verb phrase (VP) is complete. Postal and Grinde's doctoral adviser at UCSC, Edward Klima, [2] was involved in the early development of generative semantics.

Grinder co-authored, with Suzette Elgin, a linguistics text book titled “A Guide to Transformational Grammar: History, Theory, Practice”.

In 1972 (during Grinder's stint at UCSC) Bandler, an undergraduate student of psychology, approached him for assistance in modeling Gestalt therapy. Bandler had spent much time recording and editing recordings of Fritz Perls (founder of Gestalt therapy) and had learned Gestalt therapy implicitly. John Grinder, then a professor at the University, told Bandler that he could explain almost all of the questions and comments Bandler made using transformational grammar, the topic in linguistics that Grinder specialized in.

Starting with Fritz Perls, followed by a leading figure in family therapy Virginia Satir, and later the leading figure in hypnosis in psychiatry Milton Erickson, Grinder and Bandler modeled the various cognitive behavioral patterns of these therapists. This work formed the basis of the methodology that became the foundation of neuro-linguistic programming[1]. They developed a model for therapy and called it the meta-model.[3]

They cited Noam Chomsky's transformational syntax, which was John Grinder's linguistics specialization, and ideas about human modeling from the work of Alfred Korzybski as being influential in their thinking. Of particular interest was Korzybski's critique of cause-effect rationale and his notion that "the map is not the territory" which also featured in Gregory Bateson[4]'s writing.

"Modeling" in NLP is the process of adopting the behaviors, language, strategies and beliefs of another in order to build a “model” of what they do. The “model” is then reduced to a pattern that can be taught to others.

[1] "Neuro-Linguistic Programming" denotes the belief in a connection between neurological processes ("neuro"), language ("linguistic") and behavioral patterns that have been learned through experience ("programming") and can be organized to achieve specific goals in life.
Basically, it takes the way in which somebody learns something and gives it to somebody else

[2] Edward S. Klima (1931–2008) was an eminent linguist who specialized in the study of sign languages. Klima's work was heavily influenced by Noam Chomsky's then-revolutionary theory of the biological basis of linguistics, and applied that analysis to sign languages.

[3] The meta-model is a practical communications model used to specify information in a speaker's language. The meta model consists of categories of questions or heuristics which seek to challenge linguistic distortion, clarify generalization and recover deleted information which occurs in a speaker's language.
Typically, questions may be in the form of "What X, specifically?", "How specifically?", "According to whom?" and "How do you know that?".

[4] Gregory Bateson (1904 –1980) was a British anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields.

Leslie LeBeau (formerly Leslie Cameron-Bandler) is an author and the co-developer of Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP). She was a part of the Grinder/Bandler research group.

Judith DeLozier is a trainer and author in Neuro-linguistic programming. Her interests are in culture, anthropology and Gregory Bateson's epistemology. A member of John Grinder and Richard Bandler's original group of students, she continues to contribute extensively to the development of NLP models and processes.

Robert Dilts has been a developer, author, trainer and consultant in the field of Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).

The map is not the territory.

Alfred Habdank Skarbek Korzybski (1879 –1950) was a Polish-American philosopher and scientist. He is remembered most for developing the theory of general semantics.
General semantics is an educational discipline created by Korzybski.
Its basic assumption is that “language ‘enslaves’ us by conditioning our brains to perceive a false reality”.

Korzybski’s central goal was to attain an awareness of the map/territory distinction and of how information gets deleted/distorted in the linguistic and other representations used.

The map–territory relation describes the relationship between an object and a representation of that object, as in the relation between a geographical territory and a map of it. Korzybski remarked that "the map is not the territory" encapsulating his view that an abstraction derived from something, or a reaction to it, is not the thing itself. For example, the pain from a stone falling on one's foot is not the actual stone, it's one's perception of the stone; one's opinion of a politician, favorable or unfavorable, is not that person; and so on. The pain in one's foot does not convey the internal structure of the stone, you don't know everything that is going on in the life of a politician, etc. — and thus may limit an individual's understanding and cognitive abilities unless the two are distinguished. Korzybski held that many people do confuse maps with territories—that is, confuse models of reality with reality itself—in this sense.

He thought that certain uses of the verb "to be", called the "is of identity" and the "is of predication", were faulty in structure, e.g., a statement such as, "Elizabeth is a fool" (said of a person named "Elizabeth" who has done something that we regard as foolish).

E-Prime (short for English-Prime, developed by one of his students D. David Bourland, Jr. 15 years after his death, forms a subset of the English language in which the verb to be does not appear in any of its forms. Prime therefore does not use the words "be", "is", "am", "are", "was", "were", "been" and "being" (nor archaic such as "art", "wast", or "wert"). Neither does it use their contractions: "'s", "'m", and "'re". For example, the sentence "the movie was good" would correspond to the E-Prime sentence "I liked the movie", thereby distinguishing opinion from fact).

Korzybski's work maintained that human beings are limited in what they know by (1) the structure of their nervous systems, and (2) the structure of their languages. His system included modifying the way we consider the world, e.g., with an attitude of "I don't know; let's see," to better discover or reflect its realities as revealed by modern science. One of these techniques involved becoming inwardly and outwardly quiet.

Korzybski's work influenced Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, and Neuro-linguistic programming (especially the Meta model, Korzybski's critique of cause-effect thinking, and ideas behind human modeling for performance).

"There are two ways to slide easily through life:

to believe everything or to doubt everything;

both ways save us from thinking."

Reframing

Reframing # 1: Labeling.
Learning to look at a negative (or even disastrous) situation from a positive point of view.
For example, let's say that you've been working on an important essay when your computer suddenly reboots itself. And of course, as disastrous events usually go, you forgot to save your file. The easiest thing to do at this point would be to succumb to anger, get mad and maybe even break a few things. But instead, you take the whole thing inm stride and treat it as a learning experience. Now you know that you must save your word file every now and then, especially if you're working on something very important. Everyday is a learning experience.
When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade.

Reframing # 2: Context.
Change the context by which you understand the situation, and understand how the said situation can be of use to you.
For example, you've just learned that you have an older sibling. Instead of brooding over the whole family drama, think of how cool it is to have someone you can ask advice from or to have someone who can add a little excitement to your otherwise dull life.

Reframing # 3: Content.
It's all about perception. One thing can mean another. It all depends on how you see a person, a thing or a situation.
For example, let's say you're a lady with a boyfriend who is too much of a cheapskate to buy you flowers and chocolates. Instead of seeing him as a cheapskate, see him as a person who knows that material things aren't the way to a woman's heart. Recognize he knows that there are far more important things in life than flowers and chocolates. Know that he would rather shower you with his utmost attention than to let something bought do the talking for him!

NLP reframing techniques have been known to have positive influences on anyone!

They can make you see things in a different light and can generally encourage you to be a better person.