Using The Five Elements – Inner Smile and Creation Process

3 articles on Using NLP To Support Systemic Balance Beyond “Illness”
© Richard Bolstad

NLP And The Five Elements

Metaprograms of the Body

As an NLP Practitioner, you will have understood that mind and body are one system; so “psychological” interventions such as a submodality shift, anchoring or parts integration may help the body as it heals a “physical condition” such as an allergy, infection or cancer.

You also understand that a physical illness does not occur as a thing separate from the rest of a person’s life. A human being is a system, and each symptom/illness is part of the wider ecology.  This is in the same way that a psychological symptom (such as anxiety) is part of the wider ecology of the person’s mind -their metaprograms, values, life metaphors etc.

In this article I put those two understandings together. What if there were metaprograms of the body-mind, which determined which specific physical conditions people are prone to? If you knew those metaprograms, you’d be able to support people with physical illnesses from a logical level above what you’ve done before. Because mind and body are one, you could intervene using NLP processes to resolve fundamental health issues and the fundamental psychological issues which are their mirror image.

When the developers of NLP began exploring the metaprograms, they recognised that there was no sense in reinventing the wheel, and checked what people such as Jung had said. Here they found eight basic  categories identified (Introvert, Extravert, Sensor, Intuitor, Thinker, Feeler, Judger, Perceiver). Jung noted that Introverts tended to be slimmer and extraverts to be wider, but didn’t go much further into the issue of physiology.

The ancient Chinese did. This article relates NLP to the five fundamental metaprograms of the body, which the Chinese identified. These metaprograms are often called the “Five Elements” in western studies. A better term is the “Five phases” (denominalising them from “Things” to Processes). My practical understanding of them comes from training with Mantak Chia and the Healing Tao Centre.         

Mantak Chia’s books already refer to the potential links between the Five Elements and NLP.  In this article I shall describe simply how to identify each of the Five Element metaprograms, and then suggest four ways of resolving fundamental health-psychological issues specifically for each metaprogram (Identifying a core therapy issue, Parts integration, Mapping across Submodalities and Time Line Therapy).

The Five Elements-Phases

These five elements-phases are called metaphorically Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. Their application goes wider than just human physiology. They are related to the phases through which any energy system flows. The easiest way to memorise them is to relate each one to a season of the year:

• Wood: Spring – the phase of expansion of energy, and new growth
• Fire: Summer – the phase of peak energy, spreading energy out across the surface
• Earth: Late Summer – the phase of moderation and stabilisation of energy
• Metal: Autumn – the phase of contraction and quietening of energy
• Water: Winter – the phase of consolidation and storage of energy

This sequence of the phases is called the “generation cycle”. Any system cycles through these phases. In the body, there is a specific organ network with responsibility for managing each phase.

The term “Organ network”  is used here to describe an energy system in the body. Each organ network has at least two key physical organs associated with it, and energy channels through the body (these channels are the ones used in acupuncture, and are named after the organs they are associated with). Each organ network generates, on the “emotional level” the emotional quality associated with that phase. Here are the Five Organ networks and the qualities they generate when healthy (notice that these qualities are an expression, in emotional terms, of the energy phases listed above):

• Wood: Liver/Gall bladder organ network – A Balanced Assertiveness/Kindness
• Fire: Heart/Small Intestine organ network – Loving Joyfulness
• Earth: Spleen/Stomach organ network – Openness to others
• Metal: Lungs/Large Intestines organ network – An ordered discrimination/righteousness
• Water: Kidneys/Bladder organ network – Careful gentleness

Energy Rebalancing in the Five Organ Networks

Problems in a particular organ network will affect not only the key organs, but other body areas connected to its energy channels. The resultant series of “illnesses” may seem unrelated to the person, but their connection is easily recognised by someone trained in Eastern medicine.

Difficulty in an organ network results in emotional, cognitive (thinking) and social responses as well as physical symptoms.

Problems in a network are of two main kinds: excesses and deficiencies of the energy needed to do that system’s job. An excess of energy in the fire (heart/small intestines) network might cause not only an overstrong erratic heartbeat, but also an overexcitability or even manic euphoria. A deficiency of energy in that network might cause not only a weak slow pulse, but also an anxious emotional fragility.

To complete the picture, I want to explain, in the next two paragraphs, how difficulties in one organ network affect the others. These paragraphs are not essential to our story, so feel free to reconsider them after you’ve got the general idea.

When there is an excess of energy in a network, not only will that system be affected, but excess energy may destabilise the next network in the generation  cycle (eg from fire to earth) and deplete the previous network (eg fire draining wood). When there is a deficiency in a network, it may deplete the networks on both sides of it (eg fire depleting earth and wood).

One final point is that energy also flows around the phases by another cycle as well as the generation cycle. This other cycle is called the “control cycle”. If you look at figure 1, you’ll see that the control cycle means that a problem in the fire organ (heart/small intestines) network could also affect the metal organ (lungs/large intestines) network, for example. The flow around the control cycle has different dynamics to the “normal” generation cycle though. In this case, a weakened fire network will cause an excess in the next (Metal) network, because fire is meant to control that network. An overstrong fire network would overcontrol the next network.

Figure 1 (from balancedhealthclinic.co.uk/)

Correlating Physical Syndromes and Psychological Issues

Table 1 gives examples of the effects of energy imbalances in each of the organ networks, both physiological and psychological.  In each person, one system will tend to predominate, and “illnesses” will tend to focus on that network. That is to say, each person has a metaprogram phase-element. To treat the immediate imbalance (and thus help the person as they heal from the illness) we can use NLP processes to deal with the element-phase issue as it is expressed psychologically.  This healing will not only help them as they resolve the particular condition, but enhance the person’s entire system.

I recommend you practise the system by considering a few of your close friends/family and yourself. Using the last three categories on the table (Organ system, Injured by and Other common physical ailments) identify which element each of the people you’re studying is having most physical challenges from. Then check the other information about people who have that element predominating, and notice how it fits. Much of this information is collated from:

• “Between Heaven and Earth” by Harriet Beinfield and Efrem Korngold (Ballantine 1992).
• “Fusion of the Five Elements” by Mantak Chia and Maneewan Chia (Healing Tao 1989)

Once you are familiar with the system, you are ready to use it therapeutically in cases where you find out what physical conditions the person is subject to. Remember that someone trained in Traditional Chinese Medicine can offer a much more thorough diagnosis of the energy imbalances. You’re just identifying viable hypotheses for therapeutic intervention. Another option is to get someone fully trained to diagnose and treat using herbs, diet and acupuncture while you use NLP.

Transcending The Metaprogram’s Challenges

There are four key ways to use this information to speed up the process of therapy.

• Firstly, the “Key Issue in Therapy” row tells you a likely frame for aligning what you do with the person’s own core questions.
• Secondly, the “Time Line Therapy Key Issues” row gives you options to ensure you clear using this modality.
• Thirdly, you can identify what the person’s current emotional response is using the “Excess” and “Deficiency” rows, by asking “When you think of your life at present would you say you’re reacting as…”. When you find an excess/deficiency response which seems true for the person, elicit its submodalities. Then elicit the submodalities of the Positive emotion (From the “Positive emotion” row). Now map across, keeping the content of “Life at present”, from the submodalities of the excess/deficiency to the qualities of the positive emotion. (This process was suggested by Taoist master Mantak Chia).
• Fourthly, you can use the “Parts Issues” column (Table 1B) to identify significant parts conflicts to integrate using the visual squash/parts integration process.

Example 1.  Leaving Fear Behind

Janets a physiotherapist trained in acupuncture, so she easily identified her chronic spine/neck problem as a water system imbalance. When she came to me she had been treating the bladder and kidney channel points using acupuncture. But months of severe pain had left her doubtful of change. Initially I attempted to treat this using hypnotherapy and ideomotor signals. I got co-operation from the unconscious mind but no resolution of the problem. Success came once I asked Janet what the key fear in her life was (water issue). Using Time Line Therapy TM we then went back to the root cause of her fear of abandonment (at the time when her parents split up) and cleared this. She was surprised to rediscover how much her father leaving her had affected her. Even more dramatic was the fact that within a week she had full mobility and pain-free comfort back in her neck. she was then free to deal with the key issue “Where am I going with my life” unobstructed by that old fear and pain.

Example 2, don’t sweat the small stuff

Like many successful business executives, Donalds body had developed a warning system to tell him when he was overloaded. In his case it involved him contracting a major bout of influenza every couple of months. In the week it took for him to recover each time, he would be incapacitated by fever, unable to eat or sleep, and his heart would be pounding. Donald knew himself that these times were preceded by periods of frenetic activity, he blamed his influenza on overdoing it getting “hyped up”. I discussed the Fire Metaprogram with him and he immediately identified the “How broad is my scope” question as a core issue in his life. So what where the steps in his strategy before getting “hyped up”? The crucial decisions were always about his knowing he needed to say “no” to some projects but wanting to agree to maintain good business relationships. Once we’d resolved that as a parts integration, he felt like he’d taken “a load off my chest”. Its now been over two years later and there have been no further fevers. In fact, even when others in his family get  “something that’s going around” it tends to pass Donald by.

Exploring The Five Phases/Elements Further

What’s most exciting about my work with Alice, Donald and others is my sense that I’m dealing with much more than the issue they came to see me about.  I believe the 5 Elements frame gives me an ability to go directly to the core energy imbalance in a person’s system and support them making fundamental, wholistic personality-transforming changes.

Once you’ve come this far, you’ll realise that there’s a lot more to learn here. And it may be an ongoing adventure for you to do so.  You may be interested to find out the applications of the acupressure and herbal/dietary systems of China and Japan to the conditions you are working with. For example, certain flavours are said to nourish certain elements (Sweet for wood, Sour for fire, Salty for earth, Bitter for metal, and Spicy for water). The principle explained in the “Injured by” row of the table can be used as a guide to finding appropriate foods and air conditions for a person.

Another  issue with great relevance to NLP is that each organ network has one of the senses as its key input or opening to the world. These are pathways from the other senses to the kinesthetic organs. Connecting the opening with the organ network regulates both organs and sensory system. The links are:

• Wood: Eyes (V) are the opening to Liver
• Fire: Tongue (Ad) is the opening to Heart
• Earth: Mouth (G) is the opening to Spleen
• Metal: Nose (O) is the opening to Lungs
• Water: Ears (At) are the opening to Kidneys

This means, say the Taoists, that you can visualise to your liver, talk to your heart, share tastes with  your spleen, share smells with your lungs and share music with your kidneys. (In this case the tongue is associated with speech, the mouth as a whole with taste)

Transforming the Metaprogram

Can you change someone’s metaprogram in this context? Many teachers of the system say no, but then they haven’t had the advantage of NLP. Mantak Chia’s approach is to use the Chi Kung (energy work: a combination of breathing exercises and visualisation)process called Fusion of the Five Elements. In this the Five energies are purified, combined and balanced. Chia explains:

“The negative emotions associated with each organ, and, so, each element, are drawn out of the organs during the Fusion practise for transformation into a neutralised energy, thereby “balancing the weather” of the body’s total energies. This neutralised energy can be blended with positive energies, also residing in the organs, and transformed into pure life force energy. The Taoists have a saying “Refined red sand turns into silver.” This means if you fuse all the different kinds of emotional energy together, they will adhere into a harmonious whole.”

This process involves a sophisticated sequence of visualisation and internal Kinesthetic shifts and has been described as Taoist internal alchemy. Simple instructions follow in the next two sections.

Conclusion

The five elements model gives us a metaprogram framework for mind-body healing. It defines five phases of energy flow through the human body, one of which will be the key energy focus for a particular person. Having identified that metaprogram focus from the related physiological symptoms, you as an NLP practitioner can work with the psychological issues which relate to that focus. In summary the treatment sequence is ;      

Step One: Identify the person’s key physical symptoms and health conditions.

Step Two: Using Table One, decide which organ system/s are out of balance.

Step Three: Use the correlations on Table One to identify which key psychological issues relate to that organ system. Simplifying…

• Wood: liver and gall bladder organ systems > resolve issues with anger, control
• Fire: heart and small intestine organ systems > resolve issues with overexcitement, overextention
• Earth: spleen and stomach organ systems > resolve issues with rigid thinking and dependency
• Metal:  lung and large intestine organ systems > resolve issues with perfectionism and sadness
• Water: kidneys and bladder organ systems > resolve issues with fear of others or future.

Step Four: Resolve these key issues using any NLP techniques, eg submodality shifts, Time Line Therapy , or Parts Integration.

Step Five: Check results using physical health as feedback.

In my experience this not only gives you the leverage of being a logical level above clients’ health “issues” ; it also gives a profound sense of wholeness to your NLP process. In traditional Chinese medicine, the doctor was often paid only while the client remained healthy. This ensured a focus on prevention by monitoring the state of the person’s entire energy system. The 5 Elements model enables you to offer the same depth of health care. Like all metaprogram differences, the Five Elements set is only a map, not the territory. 

Five Elements Personal Profile

2. Recycling Emotions

“A five minute process for clearing unpleasant emotions and to support healing your body!” It sounds like yet another new technique from the field of NLP. Instead, what we’re presenting here is a technique tested and refined over thousands of years in China, and now backed by modern research. Our aim is to restate it in NLP format.

A number of models for dealing with emotions already exist in the NLP literature. Leslie Cameron Bandler suggests (1986, p118-144) that they include 1) using personally developed ways of tapping into a desired emotion, 2) self-anchoring a desired emotion, 3) shifting perspective temporally or perceptually on an undesired emotion (as in Tad James’ Time Line Therapy ™, and 4) remodelling an undesired emotion (by changing  structural elements such as submodalities). This article presents an ancient Taoist process called the Inner Smile, and describes a fifth model of emotional change, on which it is based. That model is one of recycling energy.

Chi Kung

The Inner Smile is part of the science of Chi Kung (a Chinese term meaning “energy cultivation”), a 4000 year old field which is the source of Tai Chi and the Acupuncture model. The medical theory behind Chi Kung has already been presented in NLP terms by me previously (Bolstad, 1995, p23-34). 

Approximately 60 million Chinese practise Chi Kung regularly (MacRitchie, 1993, p21). Over 800 internationally published research studies testify to its ability to boost human immunity, destroy cancer cells, balance blood pressure, reduce neurological hearing and vision problems, reduce neurological problems such as Alzheimer’s disease and heal paraplegia (McGee and Chow, 1994, p163-187). The Chi Kung practitioners themselves claim that much of its effect is a result of the recycling model of emotional health embodied in the process which I will explain here. Chi Kung  Master Mantak Chia, with whom we trained, says “Negative emotions are the main causes of energy imbalances in the body.” (Chia, 1985, p24).

The Recycling Model

Chi Kung is founded on a way of thinking about the universe in terms of energy cycles. In the universe itself, energy is constantly recycled, and the concept of rubbish or garbage does not exist. Everything is in change, and constituents which form one “thing” today may form themselves into parts of another “thing” in a year, or in a thousand years. There is no need for a celestial rubbish dump to store all the leftover bits of animals, planets etc. It is we humans who have coined the terms garbage and rubbish to explain a very odd custom of ours: the custom of mixing together things in a way that delays their “biodegrading” into the raw materials of new creations.

At our house, for example, we have a place where we put our newspapers after they’re read. We have a place where we put glass containers after they’re used. We have a place where we put food scraps (a compost heap), a place where we put plastic bags, and so on. None of these things are garbage. They are all useful raw materials. Then we have large bags into which we put the remaining products of our daily life, mixing them all together. This is garbage. It is unsorted, and consequently cannot be easily used to create new items. The city council collects it and buries it in a special place reserved for rubbish. Such a concept is uniquely human, and extremely unecological (ie unnatural).

The Taoists suggest that what we do with our less enjoyable emotions is a parallel process. Each emotion is an important product of our system, and forms the raw material for something useful. If we sort out the emotions, they can be used to create that new thing. But if we leave them mixed together, they become garbage.

The Body’s Recycling Bins

Traditional folklore in Europe as elsewhere associates certain emotions with certain body systems. We talk about someone who is angry being “livid”, someone who is going over and over some frustration as “venting their spleen” over it, or someone who feels joyful as being “heartened”.Traditional Chinese Medicine suggests that these correspondences are more than metaphorical. In the Chinese Medical system, the human body has five key “recycling bins” to deal with the less pleasant emotions.  These bins are:

• The Heart, which transforms hasty temperedness or overexcitement into joy and love. The pressured feeling of overexcitement is just a signal that there is something to feel joy (to “take heart”) about.
• The Spleen and Pancreas, which transform the stuckness of repetitive worrying thoughts, (issues one has been “venting one’s spleen” on) into openness. Worry and obsessional thoughts are a signal that it’s time to be open to new experiences and responses.
• The Lungs, which transform sadness and grief into a courage to identify what’s right for you. Sadness and grief are a signal that it’s time to consider what to let go of (what to “get off your chest”) and what to hold onto. This sense of having the courage of ones convictions is sometimes called “righteousness”.
• The Kidneys, which transform fear (things one has been “wetting oneself” about) into gentleness. Fear is a signal that it’s time to be gentle with oneself, rather than demanding one live up to certain standards.
• The Liver, which transforms anger and resentment (things one has been “livid” about) into a more balanced assertiveness where one is kind to oneself as well as to others. Anger is a signal that ones own needs also are to be respected.

Actually, it is not simply the physical organs (heart, spleen, pancreas, lungs, kidneys and liver) which do the recycling, but the energy channels (or acupuncture “meridians”) which move energy from the organs around the body). These organ channels balance and regulate the flows of energy in the body. Mantak Chia explains “Stuffing and suppressing our emotional garbage weighs us down, and dumping these negative emotions on others only creates disharmony and more negativity. Stuffing or dumping our negative emotions simply doesn’t work. Only by collecting and sorting our emotional garbage can we regain control of our lives. Taoist inner alchemy is like organic gardening. Recycling garbage into compost enables us to live a balanced life, transforming our negative emotions into the fruits and flowers of positive emotional energy.” (Chia & Chia, 1991, p6-8).

Recycling Emotions: Other Descriptions

Taoism is one of several spiritual teachings which utilise this recycling model. For example, Rabbi Nilton Bonder describes a Jewish version of the same idea: “It’s quite common these days to hear about people trying to reflect on the “ecology of the mind and heart”. These attempts recognise that a mind or heart can become a storeroom for pollutants that don’t disappear over time, that are not degradable.” (Bonder, 1997, p17) Bonder takes the example of hatred. “How do we fight hatred? In three stages, the rabbis say: kabbalah (reception), hahna’ah (conquest), and hamtakah (sweetening)…. Learning not to scare off evil and to use it is important, because the potential it carries is too valuable to discard…. Educating oneself to do this is like learning not to dump trash in public places. This means understanding that it is not possible to throw something “out”, because there is no “out”. Hatred that is discounted without being “sweetened” will certainly end up in an individual’s own system.” (Bonder, 1997, p164)

The idea that unpleasant emotions can be experienced as signals redirecting our attention in a useful way is common in western psychology too. Virginia Satir said “For me the symptom is analogous to a warning light that appears on the dashboard of a car. The light, when lit, says the system required to run the car is in some form of depletion, disharmony, injury or impairment…. My treatment direction is to release and redirect that blocked up energy.” (Satir and Baldwin, 1983, p188).

In NLP terms this concept of recycling emotions is a standard meaning reframe (eg “Feeling angry doesn’t mean something’s wrong; it means it’s time to be kind to yourself as well as others”). What makes it more powerful is the creation of a visual-kinesthetic submodality shift to embody it.

The Value Of A Loving Smile

Even if you accept the notion that the body could contain recycling systems for emotions, the question is how to activate them. The Taoists offer a variety of ways to “release and redirect” the energy of unpleasant emotions.

The Inner Smile is a collection of such techniques. It uses visual and kinesthetic imagination to stimulate the body’s natural energy rebalancing. The kinesthetic elements in the process include creating a smile by accessing a time when you felt caring or love for someone or something, and flowing that smile down through your body. As Wyatt Woodsmall explains (Woodsmall, 1989, p67) this type of kinesthetic submodality shift is characteristic of many meditation and martial arts practices. In a comment reminiscent of Rabbi Bonder’s “sweetening” Mantak Chia notes “Taoist sages say that when you smile, your organs release a honey-like secretion which nourishes the whole body.” (Chia, 1985, p33). Modern research backs up the powerful effects of smiling and laughing, as described by Norman Cousins in his account of curing illness by their use (Cousins, 1989). Imagining the smile flowing down through your body is a kinesthetic submodality shift, in itself likely to promote relaxation and healing.

Accessing a time when you felt caring has a particularly powerful healing effect. Dr David C. McClelland and Carol Kirshnit of Boston University has published a study which clearly explains much of the effect of the Inner Smile (McClelland and Kirshnit, 1988, p 31-52). In this research, subjects are shown a variety of movies, and their level of Immunoglobulin A (the first line of defense against viruses and other pathogens) is monitored before and after. Gardening films and political propoganda have no effect, but a film of Mother Teresa caring for people in Calcutta caused a sharp rise in levels of the immune chemical. Interestingly, many of the subjects in this study, when questioned after, said that they did not approve of Mother Teresa and doubted the genuineness of her work. But their bodies didn’t mind. Their immunity level rose anyway. The fact that they had held the visual images of caring in their mind was more important than the theories they considered about it. In the same way, you don’t need to believe in the Inner Smile for it to work.

Adding Colours and Sounds

The Taoists say that each of the five organ systems has a sound which activates it auditorially, and a colour which activates it visually. The colours associated with each organ can be visualised as filling up the organ as you smile to it. They are bright red for the heart, bright yellow for the spleen and pancreas, metallic white for the lungs, dark-blue for the kidneys, and leaf green for the liver.

The sounds can be used as a separate exercise themselves, and Master Mantak Chia assigns each one a body position which enhances the passage of the sound through the associated organs (Chia, 1985, p65-106). The sounds are generally unvocalised: they are made by breathing out with the mouth in the appropriate shape, rather than by “saying” the sound. The heart sound “Haaaa”, for example, sounds like a sigh, rather than as if one were saying the word “Half”. The spleen-pancreas sound is the sound made by gargling water in the mouth.The lung sound is like the sound of air escaping from a tyre (“Sssss”), the kidney sound is like a wind blowing (“Woooo”), and the liver sound is like the noise one makes to ask someone to be quiet (“Shhhh”).The sounds are repeated in a set order (the order listed below) and a sixth sound is added at the end (“Heeee”).

Master Chia explains the function of the six healing sounds thus “When negative energy cannot be expelled from the body, it is circulated and trapped in the organs and in the membrane covering of the organs. The organs themselves begin to overheat, creating more negative emotional energy, and added stress. However, by simply pronouncing the organ sounds, one can release and exchange the gas trapped in the organs.” (Chia, 1985, p73).

In NLP terms, we know that a person who is unwell will tend to have the unbalanced areas of their body stored in less healthy submodalities. If their lungs are damaged, for example, they may picture them as dark and torn. Picturing them as full of bright light is a clear submodality instruction to heal them. Hearing the “Sssss” sound in them may similarly replace other less useful sounds associated there.

In summary, the correspondences are:

• Organ System – Negative Emotion – Positive Emotion – Colour – Sound
• Lungs – Sadness & Grief – Knowing what’s right – White – “Sssss”
• Kidneys – Fear & Anxiety – Gentleness – Blue – “Chwoooo”
• Liver – Anger & Resentment – Kindness to self & others – Green – “Shhhhh”
• Heart – Overexitement – Joy & Love – Red – “Haaaa”
• Spleen & Pancreas – Stuckness & Worry – Openness – Yellow – gargling “Whooo”

The Script

Following is a script to guide yourself or someone else through the smile. Further training in its use and in other Taoist practises for balancing the emotions is available from Richard Bolstad, or from other Instructors certified with the International Healing Tao. The power of regularly repeating this exercise is extraordinary. In my training in Thailand with Master Mantak Chia, I talked with an instructor who had been crippled with arthritis, so that she could only crawl around her house in pain for a couple of hours a day. She began using the Inner Smile and the Six Healing Sounds, and once she was recovering progressed to other Chi Kung techniques. By four years later, when I met her, she was physically more agile, flexible and in some ways stronger than me.

Bibliography:

• Bolstad, R. “NLP And The Five Elements” in NLP World, July 1995, Volume2, Number 2, p 23-34
• Bonder, N., The Kabbalah Of Envy, Shambhala, Boston, 1997
• Cameron-Bandler, L. The Emotional Hostage, Futurepace, San Rafael, California, 1986
• Chia, M. Taoist Ways To Transform Stress Into Vitality, Healing Tao Books, Huntington, New York, 1985
• Chia, M. and Chia, M. The Inner Smile: Energy Medicine Of The Future, Healing Tao Books, Huntington, New York, 1991
• Cousins, N. Head First: The Biology Of Hope, Dutton, New York, 1989
• McClelland, D. C. and Kirshnit, C. “The Effect Of Motivational Arousal Through Films On Immunoglobulin A” in Psychology and Health, 2, 1988, p 31-52
• McGee, C. T., MD with Chow, E. P. Y. Ph. D. Qigong, Medipress, Coeyr d’Alene, Indiana, 1994
• MacRitchie, J. Chi Kung: Cultivating Personal Energy, Element, Shaftsbury, Dorset, 1993
• Satir, S. and Baldwin, M. Satir Step By Step, Science and Behaviour Books, Palo Alto, California, 1983
• Woodsmall, W. Beyond Self Awareness, Advanced Behavioural Modelling, 1989

Inner Smile Script

1. This Chi Kung exercise is usually done sitting on a chair.  Sit on the edge of the chair with your feet flat on the floor.  Your back needs to be straight but relaxed; an effect which you’ll get by imagining that your head is suspended by a cord from the crown up to the ceiling.  Close your eyes and gently press your tongue against the top of your mouth.  Clasp your hands together gently.

2. Remember  a time that you can feel comfortable recalling, when you felt caring or loving.  Perhaps a time when you were caring for a plant, or an animal, or for a child.  Imagine that you can see this time, and the gentle smile of caring it brings, as a picture about three feet in front of your eyes.

Allow your forehead to relax, and draw the energy of caring into the place between your eyes.  Experience it as a limitless source of caring energy flowing to this place, and from there flooding through your body as a smile.

3. Allow the smiling energy to flow across your face, relaxing it.  Smile into the neck and throat, through the thyroid and parathyroid glands, which control your metabolic rate and keep your bone tissue balanced.  Smile down to the thymus gland in the upper central chest area; the gland which co-ordinates your immune system.  From there spread the smile back to the heart, allowing it to relax and blossom in a shining red light, transforming hastiness and irritation to joy and love.  Flow the smile out on each side to the lungs, filling them with white light, transforming sadness and grief into the ability to discriminate what’s right for you, and enhancing their ability to take in energy from the air.

On the right, flow the smile down through the liver, filling it with leaf green light, enhancing its hundreds of cleaning and organising functions, and transforming resentment and anger into an assertive kindness to yourself and others.  On the left flow the smile through the pancreas, which assists in digestion and regulation of blood sugar.  The far left is the position of the spleen which forms and stores blood cells, and here rigidity and stuck thinking are transformed to openness. Fill the pancreas and spleen with yellow light. On each side the smile now flows to the back at waist level, flooding through the kidneys which filter the blood, and the adrenal glands atop them which give your body the energy burst of adrenalin.  As these glands relax, fill the kidneys with dark blue light, and feel fear transformed into a gentleness.

Finally, flow the smiling energy down through the urinary bladder, and through the sexual organs, including the glands (ovaries or testes) which balance the cycles of your life.  Conclude by flowing the smile to a place just below the navel and a couple of centimetres in from the front.  Feel the energy spiral into this centre, called Dan Tien in China, as a storage for the day.

As you flow this smile, check for the “feeling” that each organ is smiling back.  Take the time it needs to allow this to happen.

4. Draw the smile again into the place between your eyes.  This second time, flow the smile down your nose and mouth into the digestive tract; swallowing as you do, and imagining that the saliva you swallow is also full of smiling energy.  Smile through the stomach, just below the ribs, and through the intestines.  Having flowed the smile down through the whole digestive system, draw the energy back to the Dan Tien centre below the navel.

5. The third time, draw the smile into the centre between your eyes (actually called “upper Dan Tien”) and circle your eyes nine times clockwise (as if watching a speeded up clock face right in front of your eyes) and nine times counter-clockwise.  Draw the smile back through the brain itself, smiling deep into the brain tissue, where the glands which co-ordinate your entire hormonal system reside. Flow the smile down the spinal column, and through the neurons (nerve cells) out to every part of the body.

As you continue to draw the smile into your body from an infinite source of love and healing, imagine the smile flowing out from your body into the air around you, and across the entire room. The smile, remaining infinite, flows out beyond the room across the whole area, across the whole country, into the oceans and across the continents, until the entire planet is filled with the smile. As the smile continues to expand, just check back in your body in the room. Check if there is anywhere in your body where there was an excess of energy (perhaps an area where there was some tension -just an indication of energy not flowing on easily yet) and draw the energy back to lower Dan Tien, feeling it spiral in there as a store for the day.

3. The Creation Cycle

Like all spiritual traditions, Taoism has its stories about the creation of the world. So it is told, the creator gods and goddesses had one great gift they wanted to give humanity -the gift of happiness. But they knew that if they simply handed it to us, we might not fully treasure it. They decided to hide happiness, so that its discovery would be heralded as the momentous event it was.

One of the gods suggested hiding it on the top of the highest mountain, but others quickly pointed out that this was too easy -with their strong legs the humans would easily climb and find it. Another suggested hiding it at the bottom of the deepest ocean -but again, it was thought that, with human inventiveness, this would be too easy a challenge. In a similar way, each possible site was rejected. Finally, they discovered the perfect place. They took true happiness and hid it in the last place humans would look -inside the human heart.

The following NLP technique is modelled from an ancient Taoist process for rediscovering this ultimate treasure.

The Five Organ Systems

Taoism considers the human being as a system. The Chinese model holds that in any natural system, energy moves through five phases (metaphorically called Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water). These phases can be easily understood in terms of the seasons of the year (another system) as follows:

• Wood: The phase of expansion and new growth of energy e.g. Spring
• Fire: The phase of peak energy and flowing out of energy e.g. Summer
• Earth: The phase of moderation and stabilization of energy e.g. Late Summer
• Metal: The phase of contraction and quieting of energy e.g. Autumn
• Water: The phase of consolidation and storage of energy e.g. Winter

These phases are discussed more fully in NLP terms by Bolstad (1995). Each of the five phases has an actual organ system in the body which handles that phase of energy use. The Liver, for example, is associated with the expansion and new growth of energy (both “energy” in the sense of electromagnetic and other energy, and energy in the sense of emotion). Each organ is said to “nourish” the next organ in the cycle. For example, the kidneys (water) nourish the liver (wood). If the kidneys were malfunctioning, the liver would suffer from not being nourished. This cycle of nourishment is known in Taoist medicine as the Creation cycle. The central organs associated with each organ system in the Creation cycle are:

• Wood: Liver
• Fire: Heart
• Earth: Spleen and Pancreas
• Metal: Lungs
• Water: Kidneys

Organ Systems As Emotional Recyclers

Like all systems, the human system with its five organ centers generates results. Some of these results are desired (outcomes) and some are not desired but become feedback to help you adjust your behavior. The Taoists say that each organ system has a positive emotional state as an outcome. When that organ system is not functioning, it produces an unpleasant emotional state, which is a signal of the need for the positive one. Specifically:

• Wood-Liver Anger is a signal to have Kindness to Yourself and Others (Assertiveness)
• Fire-Heart Over-excitement is a signal to feel Joy and Love
• Earth-Spleen Stuck Thoughts are a signal for Openness to the New
• Metal-Lungs Sadness is a signal for Courageously choosing what is Right for You
• Water-Kidneys Fear is a signal for Gentleness Towards Yourself

The Taoists have developed a variety of techniques for transforming these emotions, including using energy interventions such as Acupuncture. In a previous Anchor Point article, I described in NLP terms one technique for transforming emotions (The Inner Smile). In this process, the person simply feels (Kc) a smile flowing through each organ, and imagines a color change (Vc) occurring in each organ as the emotion is reframed (Ad). This remedial technique is always used before the technique which follows. Without it, the following technique could in fact do harm. Please refer to the Inner Smile before continuing!

Overviewing The Creation Cycle

The Creation cycle technique is designed to enhance positive feelings that are already there. In effect, it involves stacking a kinesthetic internal anchor. The Taoists maintain that it is also utilizing an actual physical correlation between kinesthetic locations and internal states (in the same way that in old English, to do something “with heart” is to do it with love and joy, or to be “inspired” to act is to courageously choose what’s right for you).

Those who experience this technique often report it as emotionally moving and uplifting. The Taoists say it actually generates energy in the body, collects together emotional resources, and integrates “parts” of the system into a unified whole (Chia, 1989, p6-9).

The technique involves accessing in sequence each of the five “virtues” of the organs and swishing and stacking the combined feeling into the kinesthetic location of the heart. Detailed instructions follow. Here I have simplified and modeled the technique in NLP terms.

Setting Up The Technique

First, run the Inner Smile Process fully!

Secondly, identify where in your body you find the heart (central chest), spleen (far left in the tummy), lungs (chest), kidneys (nearer the back on each side of the midline, at waist height), and liver (right side of the tummy up below the lower ribs).

Thirdly, identify the following five resource experiences from your personal history:

1) A specific time when you had a powerful feeling of love and joyfulness; perhaps a time when you were “in love”, or experiencing a beautiful event. As you recall this feeling, place your left hand over your heart.

2) A specific time when you were enjoying being very open to new experiences; perhaps a time when you started a new job, a new training, or a new relationship. As you recall this feeling, place your left hand over your spleen.

3) A specific time that feels good to recall, when you had the courage to do what was right for you; perhaps a time when you chose something uniquely suited to you, or chose a course of action that was right for you (despite others opinions). As you recall this feeling, place your right arm and hand across your chest.

4) A specific time that feels good to recall, when you had an exquisite sense of gentleness; like when you were holding a baby animal, or being extremely gentle in talking lovingly with a friend. As you recall this feeling, place your hands at the back over your kidneys.

5) A specific time when you were doing something with an attitude of kindness both to yourself and to others; perhaps when you were preparing a meal to share with others, or planning an enjoyable shared event. As you recall this feeling, place your right hand over your liver.

Running The Process

Place your attention in your heart, covering it with your left hand, and visualize it as a shining red flower blossoming in the chest. Remember the time when you felt love and joy, and feel that feeling in the area of the heart. Once the feeling is tangible, place the left hand over the spleen, and the right hand over the heart. Imagine that you can flow the feeling of joy and love down to the spleen. See the spleen as a shining yellow organ, and with your attention there, recall the time when you were open to new experiences. Feel the beauty of that openness there now, as it combines with the feeling of joy and love. In your spleen experience the delight of joy and love with the openness to the new.

Once you have that feeling in the spleen, place your right hand across the chest and keep the left hand over the spleen. Flow the feeling on both sides up to the lungs. Imagine the lungs shining white in colour, and see how they glow more with each breath that draws the feeling into them. With your attention in the lungs, recall the time when you chose what is right for you. Feel inspired by the strength of knowing what is right for you, as it builds in the lungs, and combines with joy and love, and with openness to the new.

Now place both hands on the kidneys, and flow this combined feeling from the lungs down to the kidneys on each side. Visualize the kidneys as shining blue in color, and recall the time when you were so very gentle. Allow that feeling of gentleness to build in the kidneys, and combine it with the feeling of knowing what’s right for you, the feeling of being open to new experiences, and the feeling of joy and love.

From the kidneys, the feeling flows up to the liver on the right. Place your right hand over the liver. The liver is a shining green color. As the feeling flows into it, recall the time when you were being kind to yourself as well as others, and allow that feeling to build up in the liver. The feeling of being kind to yourself and others, the feeling of gentleness, the feeling of knowing what’s right for you, the feeling of openness, and the feeling of joy and love combine in the liver.

Now place the left hand over the heart. Finally, this feeling surges up from the liver to the heart, completing the cycle and creating a vast sense of some extraordinary new emotion there in the heart. The heart is the appropriate place to contain this feeling, which is the ultimate outcome of the human system. This feeling is what we are born for. All of the ingredients have lain waiting inside you. They are always available for you to fuse into one. In Taoism this ultimate feeling is called Compassion. It is from this that all the great teachers of all spiritual systems have lived and spoken. Place both hands over your heart and enjoy….

Compassion

The most beloved of all the goddesses of ancient China, Kuan Shih Yin was venerated by both Buddhists and Taoists. The goddess of compassion, her name means “She who hears the cries of the world”. In her famous sutra, the following words are written (Palmer, Ramsay and Hock, 1995):

There’s a treasury full of jade and jewels: it is in you
Don’t go searching far from home for it -it’s here,
Or you’re like a man with a lantern looking for light.

May that light burn brightly inside you!

Bibliography

• Bolstad, R. “NLP and the Five Elements” in NLP World, Volume 2, No 2, July 1995
• Bolstad, R. “Recycling Emotions” in Anchor Point, 1998
• Chia, M. and Chia, M. Fusion of the Five Elements, Healing Tao Books, Huntington, New York, 1989
• Chia, M. and Chia, M. The Practical Book Of Fusion II, Healing Tao Books, Huntington, New York, 1995
• Palmer, M., Ramsay, J., and Kwok, M. Kuan Yin, Thorsons, San Francisco, 1995

Richard Bolstad