The Practice Group
Nigel & Jenny Heath:-
Address: Jinglewood House Ltd, Lyndhurst Road, Landford. Wiltshire
SP5 2AS
All of Nigel’s other reports:
2004 NLP reports
2003 NLP reports
About NLP-
About Nigel Heath
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Having played for a bit, Charles stopped us for more instructions and to discover what we had noticed. What had we noticed? “She moved as I was walking and it threw my balance off!” What were we up to? If you missed the evening you need the Practice Pack!
It was during this exercise we took the mid way break and came back complete with
our drinks for solutions.
Charles began talking about an active imagination. Sometimes we apply it sometimes
we don’t. What strategies did we employ in the previous exercise? How active or passive
is our imagination? Do we have some members of the group with an over active imagination?
You might say that, but I couldn’t possibly comment!
Charles began by giving us the news that we have more than one body. (I thought these
chairs were small). We have a body schema, a physical body we can map, by for example
taking a sip of water and sensing its movement down our throat and into our stomach,
and we have
a body image, and we have a symbolic body.
The internal view of our body,
which often does not match ‘reality’, is based
on our early maps’ of who we are.
This influences the way we move and hold ourselves. Charles went on to describe how
much of what we know in NLP is based on our body. Our most basic and universal metaphors
are body generated. He explained the four systems which are bundled together into
‘kinaesthetic’, our somatic systems, of which one is vestibular. This is intimately
connected to the force we swim in -
Charles told us about his investment in a virtual reality machine he was building
in his garage, (did you realise he is a ‘mad’ inventor?) designed to allow the ‘explorer’
to become other animals. Starting as yourself the machine, and the special suit you
would be wearing, which holds you very tight, changes your reality. At the flick
of a switch Charles turns you into a buffalo. As a buffalo and herbivore your eyes
are placed on the side of your head, (and that grass now tastes delicious). This
of course gives you an immediate change in your perspective. Buffalo don’t like things
coming at them from the front, they feel better when things, particularly other buffalo
move along beside them. It’s very soothing. Then at the flick of that switch you
become a salmon. No appendages and a very different relationship with gravity. Up
and down becomes as interesting as left and right. You still have orientation and
know when you are upside down but there is greater freedom of movement through different
planes. Then Charles flicks the switch again, (well let’s face it how are you going
to do that with only fish fingers?) you become a jelly fish. Completely circular
how does this change your relation to gravity?
Go on use your imagination!
The virtual garage
You may also have noticed we are bilateral creatures. Human beauty is based on symmetry. We find it attractive. We look for symmetry in the world. It’s a basic sign of life. Rocks are not usually symmetrical, and when they are we humans find them particularly attractive. If you buy jewellery its value is often based on the symmetry of the stones and the symmetry of the design. Funnily enough symmetry is where we start in understanding our body schema. Symmetry requires balance and the vestibular system is all about balance. From our earliest moment we like being rocked. The movement of the sea also rocks us. Our vestibular system is intimately connected to the fun of movement. So when you find yourself ‘digging the music’ and ‘moving to the beat’ the pleasure and connection is coming from a pleasantly stimulated VS. As a child we spin around and go on swings. Changes in this inner ear ‘donut’ are prime ways to enjoy ourselves.
Did you realise 95% of what we humans think is unconscious and we can’t get to it. This is not a Freudian sense of unconscious it’s a ‘somatic’ unconscious, held in our body.
Beauty is based on symmetry.
We look for symmetry in the world.
A symmetrical rock!
BaLAncE is everything
Our first exercise involved getting someone else to help us play with our VS. Charles
suggested we find someone trustworthy to play with. As if we have any other sort
of person in this group? So we engaged in a game of ‘trust’.
Full details of this
in the Practice Pack.
To get us back Charles dinged his dong!
Next bit of fun With a partner to watch us and report back, plus the chance to model
others. Make sure when you try this at home that your insurance is up to date and
you have written your will! Is there nothing we’ll give a go at NLP-
More fun. We were instructed to find a New partner. Someone interesting and different
from ourselves. (Different was no problem, but interesting too?) To play with mirror
neurons. You know all about mirror neurons, don’t you? Charles calls them “Monkey
see, Monkey do”. But then he would. There’s more on this in (You guessed it) the
Practice Pack. We played for a while with our New partner and what did we discover?
Well it might be OK for monkeys but some of us found It to be harder than we thought.
Some even metamorphosed into their dog to make this work. (I’m not sure I noticed
the difference to be truthful).
We were of course shifting our sensorium to flex
our skills. (Madam please keep your sensorium under control, it’s squashing my chair).
And finally -
Thank you Charles for bringing us your great knowledge and your sense of humour and
fun whilst learning.
We followed up on Friday with Charles running a workshop to
include the first presentation in the UK of
“The 8 representational systems sensorium”.
To find out more about Charles and his work in pushing outwards and onwards the boundaries
of NLP and its complimentary sciences visit his web-
The message to us from
Charles is:-
The outside is a model for the inside.
Our internal representations are modelled
on what happens outside and particularly what we do with the body.
We are always using body metaphor and in particular VS words of balance, acceleration, vertigo etc.
Charles’ message to the world and the US in particular,
“We are deeply in denial
about our bodies, Welcome to the century of the soma.”
Nigel will be talking online with Charles about this evening, about his use of NLP, about his life in general and other interesting stuff on Friday 24th November at 7.00pm . If you missed this it is available as part of the Practice Pack.
Goodbye from me, and goodbye from the “vestibules”
When I set the theme for 2008 as “How to have even more fun, Now Let’s Play” I hoped
all our guest speakers would embrace the spirit of the theme and find original and
interesting ways to work around it. Did I mean this to be a challenge of some sort?
Maybe at some level I did. Have they (our speakers) responded to this challenge?
You bet they have. From Marian Way interviewing me for our February meeting and asking
“and when fun, that’s fun like what,” to Gavin Meikle in March getting us to check
out the ‘well-
When we first discussed this theme I enthused interest as I tried to recall where my vestibular system might be, and indeed if I still had one. (Some things drop off when you pass 50). Fortunately Google had none of my problems in knowing exactly what the vestibular system is, where it’s located and its function. It even showed me pictures of naked vestibular systems. (Least I think that’s what they were?)
But Google didn’t tell me what the connection was to fun, and even more fun. Fortunately Charles had the inside track on this and we spent a great evening connecting vestibularly with ourselves and each other.
At this point you may be interested to know that there are ‘vestibular altering
substances’ available from all good pubs, off licences and many grocery stores. Too
much of this however leads to vestibular disorientation, falling over, throwing up
and partial (convenient?) amnesia. This report therefore carries an NLP-
Charles has been studying
“Representational systems”. The five we are NLPly familiar with are ‘visual, auditory,
kinaesthetic, olfactory, gustatory’. (VAKOG) He maintains there are at least three
more and the vestibular system is one of these three, and is particularly linked
to our sense of enjoyment and fun. (Later in the evening he talked of eleven rep
systems, but we just didn’t have time for all of them too).
Enough of this vestibular rambling, what did we do?
Report of meeting NLP-South October 2 nd. Charles Faulkner
“Fun and the vestibular
system”
