NLP Consulting & Training
(Neuro Linguistic Programming)
 Everything we experience of the world comes to us through the neurological channels of our sensory systems. The most tender interpersonal moments are "experienced" (transformed into internal experiences) as images (visual), sounds (auditory), body sensations (kinesthetic), tastes (gustatory), smells (olfactory) and learned symbols such as these words (digital). Those experiences, furthermore, can be remembered (put together again) by use of the same sensory information. Let's take a simple example.
Think of a fresh lemon. Imagine one in front of you now, and feel what it feels like as you pick it up. Take a knife and cut a slice off the lemon, and hear the slight sound as the juice squirts out. Smell the lemon as you lift the slice to your mouth and take a bite of the slice. Taste the sharp taste of the fruit.
If you actually imagined doing that, your mouth is now salivating. Why? Because your brain followed your instructions and thought about, saw, heard, felt, smelled and tasted the lemon. By recalling sensory information, you recreated the entire experience of the lemon, so that your body responded to the lemon you created. Your brain treated the imaginary lemon as if it was real, and prepared saliva to digest it. Seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling and tasting are the natural "languages" of your brain. Each of them has a specialised area of the brain which processes that sense. Another NLP term for these senses is "Modalities". When you use these modalities, you access the same neurological circuits that you use to experience a real lemon. As a result, your brain treats what you're thinking about as "real".
The person with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder uses the same process to recreate vivid and terrifying flashbacks to a traumatic event, as does the person with Phobias. You can imagine the consequences of this in some cases for example the person who is scared of flying on planes. They create pictures in their head of the terrible plane crash they are about to have, and their unconscious brain sends a warning to the nervous system, thus producing physical sensations in the body (sweating, shaking, dry mouth, heart racing etc). A single thought is all it takes for your body to become physiologically aroused as if it were actually happening. No wonder they feel highly anxious and want to get off the plane. Knowing how these brain circuits allow them to do that also shows us a number of ways to solve the problem.
Most of our automatic behaviours and responses run at the unconscious level, outside our conscious awareness. Therefore, some of the most powerful changes need to take place at the level of unconscious mind.
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