NLP Representation Systems

Representational systems

The human mind internally organizes and subjectively attaches meaning to events. It does this through taking an experience and making sequences of internal representations - visual/images, auditory/sounds, kinesthetic/feelings, olfactory/smells and gustatory/taste - VAKOG

We all have differing preferences for processing information. These representation systems include:
eye movements - accessing cues
changes in posture,
shifts in breathing
use of language - verbal predicates.

These representations are either recalled from memory or future constructed

Eye Movements - Accessing cues

"I see what you are saying" indicates focus on visual imagery,

"That sounds good to me" has a focus on auditory input

"this doesn't feel right" indicates focus on kinesthetics

Representational systems and submodalities are used in the process of NLP therapeutic work

People usually have two preferred input systems - visual and kinethsetic or auditory and kinethsetic.

Advanced Modal patterns

As a former research affiliate of the Organizational Learning Center at MIT, Dawna Markova's model of sensory modalities enhances the NLP model. In her book Dawna Markova. (1996) The Open Mind: Exploring the 6 Patterns of Natural Intelligence. Berkeley, California: Conari Press. she examines in detail how people utilise their sensory modalities. She has discovered that people learn and interact in radically different ways depending on how they process that information at different conscious levels.

Markova found that each person uses one of the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic sensory modalities to process information consciously, a different modality to process subconsciously and the third for unconscious processing.

If visual is used by your conscious representation system, your subconscious mind will process either auditorily or kinesthetically, but not visually. If you use V and A for conscious and subconscious processing, your unconscious will use the third modality, K, making your Markova stack VAK. There are six possible combinations: VAK, VKA, AKV, AVK, KVA, and KAV.

How a person uses each modality depends on whether it's their conscious, subconscious, or unconscious representation system. Attending to a particular modality tends to shift people to the corresponding type of processing — conscious, subconscious, or unconscious — and from alertness into trance.

Markova Stacks: Sensory Systems and NLP
by Jan "yon" Saeger and Wilma Keppel

Steven Heller referring to the work of Paul Bakan in his book Monsters and Magic Sticks 2006 believes that we have unconscious input systems (eye movements) and additional potentially differing output systems (speech) based on our unique representation systems.

He believed that if the systems were incongruent then this could be central to resolving personal issues and blocks

Use of Language - verbal predicates

Visual -
I want your viewpoint on this.
Share your views
I will look into this
imagine
see
let me show you what I mean
colourful
illustrate
insight
picture this
look out for this
in hind sight
I get the picture
his mind was clouded
have a new perspective on this

Auditory -
I hear your point of view
How does that sound
I know a quiet restaurant where we can talk
talk over
listen
tune in
loud mouth
it is your call
that resonates with me
she was struck dumb
It rings a bell
That clicks
I've tuned you out
have a dialogue with him
there is too much static

Kinesthetic -
so glad you stayed in touch
lets firm up your ideas
have a calm and relaxing vacation
my gut feeling is that we should do it
he is winding down for the weekend
walk away
that was heavy handed
he was passed over for promotion
touch upon the point
get a hold of yourself
he felt numb
has he touched upon the problem
get a grip of the situation
that feels right to me.
I can't grasp the point.
I catch your drift.
You're insensitive

Olfactory
smells fishy
this behavior just stinks
he has a nose for this
came up smelling of roses

Gustatory
he won't swallow that one
tastey
couldn't stomach it
spilled his guts
I'm sick of this

Paul Bakan in his paper Hypnotizability Laterality of Eye Movements and Functional Brain Asymmetry 1969 tested a hypothesis that there is a relationship between lateral eye movements and hypnotizability. People who move their eyes to the left when answering a question were proven to be more hynotizable than those who moved them to the right.. This, he belived, suggested that the area responsible for hypnotisability is located in the right hemisphere of the brain.

Based on the later work of Richard Bandler who proposed that those who move their eyes to the left are in fact internally constructing new visual or auditory material, it is therefore likely that people with imagination are those most likely to be hynotisable.