Educational Hypnosis

by Tim Murphey Ph.D., Nanzan University, Nagoya, Japan
and Richard Bolstad Dip.Tchg., R. Cp Nurse, Certified Inst. Of Hypnotherapy.
Two articles first published in JALT Journal 1996

“Centuries of misunderstanding have diverted attention away from the realisation that hypnosis is simply ideas evoking responses. Thus, all physicians [teachers] are hypnotists, for the ideas they communicate elicit responses. And those responses can be either harmful or salutary.” (Steven F. Bierman 1995).

Class 1:

Student says: I’m worried about making errors.

Teacher says: You know, when I was a student, I used to worry about my errors too and I was nervous and scared to speak. I had a friend then who was at about my level but spoke freely. He told me, “It’s okay to make mistakes. And when you can believe that you can just enjoy speaking and love talking to people, and that means you can learn easily. I found that if I pretend to be like him, you can discover the joy of laughing at your errors and learning more.

Reaction: The student smiles and relaxes her posture. Later I hear her speaking English with other students and laughing in the corridor.

Class 2:

Student says: I’m worried about making errors.

Teacher says: I am glad you are worried about your mistakes because they will cause a lot of problems and people won’t understand you when you make a lot of mistakes. You only need to think carefully about your errors, when and where and why you make them.

Reaction: The student looks down and inaudibly thanks the teacher. For the next few classes the teacher notices the student doesn’t seem interested in interacting and contributing and the teacher decides the student doesn’t really want to learn.

Introduction

This article takes it’s inspiration from Steven F. Bierman’s (1995) article entitled “Medical Hypnosis” and in so doing will cite extensively from that article and then reflect upon parallels in education, more specifically language learning. I would like to acknowledge that not only do I use a lot of Bierman’s quotes, but I also use the structure and much of the vocabulary of Bierman’s article. So close were some of his phrases in some places, I have taken his sentences and merely changed a word or two to fit the educational context. In NLP, this is known as modeling excellence which is meant as a high compliment. Bierman’s article is one of the clearest I’ve ever read on hypnosis and I highly recommend reading the original.

All Teachers Are Hypnotists

Bierman (1995) says that “All physicians are hypnotists”. We can also say that “All teachers are hypnotists”, knowingly or not, for better or worse. We could say that all communication is hypnotic to some degree in that each thing we say evokes responses. However it also depends upon the sensitivity of the receiver of the communication as to the weight it will have in any situation.

Some teachers carefully express ideas in well-crafted phrases and thereby evoke remarkable and healthy responses. Others, unaware of the power and importance that their words have for students, speak carelessly and thus create unfortunate and, sometimes damaging outcomes which they interpret as inevitable realities. Yet, as illustrated above, reality is often the consequence of self-fulfilling prophecy, of hypnotic suggestion. The pain, or fun, of errors is but one common example. The pain, or challenge and satisfaction, of presenting in front of the class, trying to understand native speakers, doing homework, taking tests, and more, make up the constructed-reality to which compassionate, albeit unwitting, teachers constantly contribute.

In the late 1960’s in America some Harvard researchers picked students names at random and told the teachers to be that these students would make amazing progress that year. They had given them all a test and the researchers swore that those kids would make big progress and to look for it. The researchers basically persuaded the teachers to believe (hypnosis) that the kids would make great progress. And they did, more than the other students who were not lucky enough to be randomly picked by the researchers. The only difference was the teachers expectations. Their expectations persuaded the kids (hypnotised them) to believe in themselves (Rosenthal and Lenore 1968). That was a wonderful thing for those kids. I wonder if we could do it for all kids.

None of the above mentioned tasks need necessarily be painful for everyone, nor can these tasks be pain free for everyone. In all instances, however, hypnosis influences the outcome. Whether that influence is helpful or detrimental depends largely on the skill and circumspection of the teacher.

What is Hypnosis?

Bierman makes a useful distinction between hypnosis and trance:

“Cultural preconceptions require that we first state what hypnosis is not. Hypnosis is not trance as “trance” is commonly understood. Trance, in actuality, is no more and no less than concentrated or focused attention. Athletes, musicians, surgeons, writers, in fact, as Milton Erickson pointed out, all individuals engage in ‘naturalistic’ trance states. So-called hypnotic trance is merely focused attention responsive to extrinsic ideas.

The whole history of modern hypnosis is mired and muddled from having confounded hypnosis with trance. Common expressions like, “I put him in hypnosis”, or “Distraction rather than hypnosis was used”, or “The subject was found to be unhypnotizable, a zero” all betray this persistent misunderstanding. Yet, when hypnosis is understood, we discover that all of us save the lone schizophrenic ranting ineffectually at his demons on a street corner are to some extent both doing and responding to hypnosis. Obviously, we are not all “in trance”.” (p. 65). Put another way, “hypnosis” describes a process which can be used effectively by any communicator, such as a teacher. “Trance” is a metaphorical concept; a way of describing some of the results of hypnosis. The second author of this article uses the metaphor of “trance” in teaching hypnosis, and suspects that in fact we are actually all “in trance” all the time. The effect is the same. Hypnosis as a process can be distinguished from trance as a state of mind. And actually, Bierman’s lone schizophrenic is in a very deep trance, as a result perhaps of some very powerful hypnosis done early in his life.

Bierman goes on to trace the history of the misconceptions of hypnosis from Mesmer (1784) through Bernheim (1837-1919) and then offers the amazingly clear definition that hypnosis is simply “ideas influencing responses” (p. 67), with trance being only one of many ways in which subjects can respond to ideas or suggestions. “Comprehension, recollection, reveries, catalepsy, analgesia, anaesthesia, haemostasis, and so on, are yet other responses that can occur, with or without trance” (ibid.).

Placebo and Beliefs

Bierman then describes the relationship between the placebo effect and simple suggestion:

“… the placebo effect establishes that an idea, however subtly or inadvertently presented, can elicit documented measurable responses across a broad range of psychological and organic conditions, without induction of trance. In the vast majority of randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials performed over the last several decades, placebo (usually an inert agent in pill form) has produced therapeutic responses in approximately 20 to 60 percent of patients (Beecher 1955; Benson & Epstein 1975) … . At the far end of the technique-spectrum, the hypnotherapeutic setting, the pill disappears. The doctor becomes a practiced purveyor of ideas only … . Thus, placebo effect and hypnotherapeutic suggestion though vastly different in terms of technique: the one crude, the other deliberate and refined, represent salient instances wherein ideas alone influence therapeutic responses: hypnosis.” (P.67)

A parallel in the educational field may be made with reference to beliefs. Many of the responses that ideas influence happen to be beliefs which may stimulate salutary actions. One can believe in the efficacy of a pill (placebo) or a method or simply the words of a doctor or teacher and then because the belief that health or success will follow, the subject breathes deeper, takes more exercise, laughs more, and generally leads a healthier life which actually does lead to more health and better well being for whatever the purpose. Much of the positive belief in personal development literature could be seen as hypnotic suggestion and accounts for a lot of its popularity – and it does feel good.

The power of beliefs to affect behaviour and physiological processes has been well noted in the medical fields (Cousins 1981, Dilts et al. 1990, Seligman 1990, Siegel 1986). Educational beliefs (hypnotic suggestions) are also widely understood as being generative of certain behaviours (see Pajares 1992 for a recent review in teacher education). Gardner and Lambert (1972) showed this in their attitudes and motivation studies. In language learning, Day (1990:52) supports this idea and cites Good and Brophy’s extensive research review (1987:144) which supports Rosenthal and Jacobson’s “Pygmalion Effect” findings of the power of teacher beliefs to shape student results (1968). Much of the inspiration of productive beliefs are simply Bierman’s definition of hypnosis “ideas influencing responses” in which the responses are productive beliefs and the ideas are suggestions and expectations from teachers and peers.

Bierman’s Curative Hypothesis

Once you understand the power of hypnosis to evoke positive responses in students, the question is, “How do you structure your communication to produce the responses you want?”. What makes the difference between the responses of the student in class one and the student in class two (in the above examples)?

There is, according to Bierman, a central suggestion which is common to all therapeutic hypnotic encounters (and x1 all successful teaching).

“If you do X, then Y = you will have the joy of changing easily”. X is the therapeutic ritual or structured learning experience – it may be anything from completing a whole set of practise exercises to simply thinking about the situation in a new way.

Y is the therapeutic response of “learning”.

How successful this suggestion will be depends on how believable and how achievable the therapeutic ritual X is, on how possible Y seems, and on the relationship between the person making the suggestion and the student.

Consider the following examples of the curative hypothesis in teaching.

Lecture: If X = you listen to me repeat this information, then Y = you will memorise it.

Experiential learning: If X = you have this experience and reflect on it, then Y = you will change your ability to respond to related experiences.

Homework: If x = you complete several more examples of this pattern tonight, then Y = you will install the pattern so it becomes easy to use.

As Bierman adds “This is not to imply that the Curative Hypothesis comprises the whole bulk and substance of these, and other therapeutic disciplines … . But implicit in each and every encounter between healer [teacher] and patient [student] is the Curative Hypothesis”. (P. 68) In neuro-linguistic terms the curative hypothesis is a “cause and effect” language pattern.

Bierman identifies three principles which explain how the curative hypothesis actually creates the reality of change in human beings. Of the 3 principles he says “Just as noise becomes music through attention to the fundamental principles of melody, harmony and rhythm, so does random speech with haphazard outcomes become suggester therapeutics … through attention to and study of the principles of communication”. (P. 69).

Principle One: “Patterns Emerge and Persist”

The first principle a teacher can apply is that human beings seek out and preserve patterns. The brain naturally sorts for such patterns and, once discovered, they tend to persist. According to Bierman “Three patterns prevail over the hypnotic situation: (1) rapport, (2) linkage, and (3) authority. Their persistence is what drives ideas to actualisation”. (P. 69).

(1) Rapport is a pattern which naturally occurs in human interactions, where two people develop a sense of resemblance, of shared experience between them. It is credited where teacher’s voice tonality matches the student’s; when a teacher uses similar body postures and gestures to the student; when a teacher laughs or sings or otherwise synchronises breathing with a student. The handshake in the west and the bow in Japan are both formal methods of creating this pattern.

Bierman says of rapport “It is the “I = You” pattern. Thus, my experience equals your experience (my ideas = your ideas; my movements = your movements; my state of mind = your state of mind)”. (P. 69). This pattern is found in every human culture. A newborn baby will poke out its tongue if a caregiver pokes her or his tongue out for a few seconds; two women living together often find that their menstrual periods coincide, when two people talk, often they nod in time to each others words; and so on.

When a teacher is enthusiastic about their subject and believes it can be learned easily, the pattern of rapport will assist the student to experience this belief and enthusiasm. In my early days, I sometimes felt entranced in a class and everything flowed beautifully. Then I often tried to repeat the same thing in another class and it bombed and I was confused. Intuitively, I began adjusting on-line, using some of the same content, but knowing I had to relate to the people here and now in a unique way, not simply try to repeat what went before. NOW was a different time.

Teachers often have the experience of some classes that for some reason “click” in which students seem to absorb nearly everything you do and then the next class the opposite happens. The degree of rapport determines the degree of identification with others. When rapport is well established, the teacher’s entrancement is immediately communicated to the students, creating a sense of flow. When this flow doesn’t happen, I now recognise it as a signal to re-establish rapport.

(2) Linkage is another pattern which naturally occurs with human beings, and follows on from rapport. In NLP this pattern is called “pacing and leading”. When a teacher acknowledges, “paces”, something the student knows is true (e.g. “You’ve read this section in the textbook”, this statement can be easily linked to another statement which might be true (e.g. “so you’re learning how to do these things”). If the student agrees with the first statement (the “pace”) they will be more willing to agree with the second statement (the “lead”) which is linked to it.

Bierman explains “Establishment of this pattern allows the hypnotist to move from description of present experience to prescription of future experience, while at the same time concentrating and directing the subject’s attention: in other words … the experience of the subject becomes the claim, as it were, of the hypnotist”. (P. 69). Very young children already know how to use this linkage pattern to hypnotise their parents: “You love me, so buy me this new toy”. “It’s a lovely sunny day; let’s go to the beach”. Even apparently opposite concepts can be linked in this way, e.g. “The fact that you have doubts about this article means you’re checking out how these ideas will really work”. “If you’re sceptical about hypnosis, you owe it to your scepticism to find out more about how it works.”

3. Authority is, according to Bierman, a pattern which results from our experience as children, trusting the greater experience and wisdom of parents. “It is essentially the “My ideas = your reality” pattern. (P. 69). A situation like the teacher-student relationship revives this pattern with tremendous power. Teachers benefit enormously from remembering that when they as teachers (and hence as “authorities”) tell a student “You’ll never manage to pass this exam” it has the power of self-fulfilling prophecy (Rosenthal and Lenore 1968, discussed previously). Conversely, when you say to a student “You can achieve anything you set your mind to” it activates the authority pattern and creates success.

Principle Two and Principle Three “Consciousness (meaning, present Attention) is a quality … Consciousness is Limited”

The next two principles which enable the Curative Hypothesis to work concern the nature of consciousness. In defining consciousness, Bierman aims to debunk the concept of the “unconscious mind” just as he has debunked the notion of hypnotic trance. The second author of this article prefers to use the metaphors of “trance” and “the unconscious mind” as teaching tools. However, it is useful for hypnotists to realise that these words are only metaphors. As Bierman emphasises “So ingrained is the notion of an “unconscious mind” in modern thought that it is difficult to convey how misleading and fallacious it is”. (P. 69).

A different metaphor for the meaning of “unconscious” was offered by psychotherapist Fritz Perls. He asked that we imagine the mind as a tennis ball floating in dark water. We can only see the bit of the ball above the water (the conscious mind). The area of the ball below the water is invisible (unconscious). However, as the ball floats around, the particular area above the waterline shifts. At one moment one place is “conscious”, at another moment another place is more apparent. Consciousness is a quality that area has when it is above the water. There is no set area of conscious mind nor of unconscious mind. However only a small area can have this quality of consciousness at any one time.

“Consciousness is not a thing, it is a quality. Like a shaft of light, it shines at times on some experiences, some patterns, while at other times it does not. And it is limited. It can shine only on a limited number of experiences at any given time.” (P. 69).

The significance of this for the hypnotist is that when a hypnotist directs a subject’s attention using rapport, linkage and authority, they are shining the light of consciousness on a specific direction. Because such patterns persist, the subject will continue to give attention to this new direction. “Thus, for example, in the pain patient, once consciousness (or attention) is fully “linked” to the physician’s words, it need only be redirected to other patterns or experiences that are at once both absorbing and painless”. (P. 69).

Similarly in teaching; with the student who panics about their “mistakes”, once attention is fully linked to the teachers words, it need only be redirected to other viewpoints or experiences that are at once both enjoyable and success focused. In guiding a class’s attention using hypnotic language, the teacher shifts their focus from any pain and self-doubt that students may have previously experienced in relation to learning. Instead, the focus moves to the students’ ability to learn, to experiences of success and enjoyment and to ways of thinking which empower them to make every event educationally enriching. In order to hold these newer, more useful patterns in consciousness, students will automatically and effortlessly tend to let go of the older, less effective patterns.

The limited nature of consciousness then means that only unlimited learning can be conscious.

Conclusions

Having read this far means you’ve already begun to recognise your ability to use hypnosis successfully in a class situation. Empowered by some very simple principles, you can increase the likelihood that your ideas (such as the idea that students can learn easily and fully) will be actualised by your students. That’s all hypnosis is. Finding the ways to express your ideas, verbally and non-verbally, so that they produce the responses you intend. All teachers are hypnotists, and there isn’t any question that you’ve been using these hypnotic principles. The question, instead, is whether you’ve understood yet how to consciously use them to structure your teaching for the good of your students.

To do so you can develop your ability to apply the patterns of 1) rapport, 2) linking from pacing to leading, and 3) perceived authority or expertise. You can carefully choose where you direct the limited conscious attention of others, and focus them on enjoyment and learning. As you do, your language will increasingly suggest to students that everything they experience (X) can cause learning (Y).

If you’d like to develop more skill with the specific processes described here a few days of Ericksonian or NLP based hypnotherapy training can give the practical experience to sharpen your skills phenomenally. The book Tranceformations by Richard Bandler and John Grinder is a good beginning text for such training.

Looking back, now, on Class 1, the first teacher directs the student’s attention with authority to what they may already know “You know”, and paces the student (builds rapport) by an identity (I=you) example: “when I was a student.” Then the teacher blocks off the behaviour in the past, “I used to worry,” and gives permission to the student to do something else while confusing the referents (I, you), “then I realised that when you can just enjoy speaking and just exchange information, you can learn easily.” Finally, an alternative way to react to errors is offered, “you can discover the joy of laughing at your errors and learning more”. This mini-metaphor provides a role model, invites one to block off a limiting belief in the past, and offers the possibility of an alternative focus and the reframing of errors in the future.

In Class 2, the teacher (probably well-meaning but unconscious of how the brain treats language) lets the student know that the teacher is pleased that the student is worried, “I am glad you are worried” and that the mistakes are all the students fault and responsibility, they are “your mistakes” and the bad results of mistakes “because they will cause a lot of problems” which can easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Then, the teacher gives a post hypnotic suggestion that “people won’t understand you when you make a lot of mistakes”. Thus, it is likely that the student will make a lot of mistakes (or at least have the impression) and also feel that people don’t understand (even if they really do). Finally, the last suggestion has the potential of turning a worry into an obsession, “You only need to think carefully about your errors, when and where and why you make them.

Again, “physicians [teachers] are hypnotists. Therefore, it behoves teachers to study hypnotic techniques. For the greatest therapeutic benefit from such study is not the ability to induce hypnotic trance but rather the enhanced sensibility of the physician [teacher] to the meaning and implication of his/her words and deeds. This sensibility, in turn, constitutes an essential first step in avoiding inadvertent harm while achieving deliberate and salutary outcomes”. (Bierman 1995, p.70).

Reference: Bierman, Steven F. (1995). Medical Hypnosis, ADVANCES: The Journal of Mind-Body Health 11 (1) 65-71, (contact address: Fetzer Institute, 9292 West KIL Ave. Kalamazoo, MT 49009-9398 USA).

With these articles in the Japanese Language Teacher magazine, Tim Murphey and I announced our Educational Hypnosis training “Mind Your Language”. The following one was mainly my contribution:

Teaching to the Right Sense

(An Introduction To NLP In Teaching For Those New To It)

Teachers need more than knowledge of their subject!

From the 1950s to the 1980s, psychologist Virginia Satir was one of the most influential developers in the new field of Human Relationships.  Often called the grandmother of Family Therapy, Satir assisted thousands of married couples and families to resolve old conflicts and create a more enjoyable life together.  In her field, she was an expert, but Satir had one problem – she couldn’t teach what she did to others.  Hundreds of people trained with her, but when they left her seminars, they were usually unable to copy what she had done.

One day Satir was demonstrating in front of a group of student psychotherapists.  She stopped talking to the couple she was working with, and asked if any of her students could carry on, using her methods.  On by one, students tried to help the couple, but none of them seemed to know how Virginia chose what to say.  At the back of the room, a young man was tape recording the training session.  He was Richard Bandler, a computer programmer and a graduate student of linguistics at the University of California, and he had no training in psychology.  Finally, after Satir’s students had failed, Bandler came to the front of the room and offered to talk to the couple.  Amazingly, he seemed to know exactly how Virginia was constructing her questions and suggestions to the couple.  Listening to him was like listening to her.  The psychotherapists were puzzled.  Who was this young man, and how had he learned Satir’s method so precisely?

In 1976 Richard Bandler and Professor of Linguistics John Grinder wrote the first of several books explaining their discoveries about communication, human change, and teaching.  Their first book, called “The Structure of Magic” (Bandler and Grinder, 1975) explained that by understanding the inner “languages” of the brain (neuro-linguistics) anyone could learn to achieve the excellent results of the most expert communicators, teachers and therapists.  Before publication, Bandler and Grinder showed the transcripts of their books to the experts whose skills they had “modelled”, people like medical doctor/hypnotherapist Milton Erickson, anthropologist Gregory Bateson, and of course Virginia Satir.  Satir’s comments, which I will quote from later, convey the excitement which teachers around the world have been reporting ever since, as they learn the “structure of the magic” of Neuro Linguistic Programming.

What NLP Offers Teachers

For teachers, NLP offers three important benefits.  Firstly, it provides a new model of how people learn.  NLP’s precise understanding of the way the brain works can be compared to a computer “User’s Manual”.

Without the manual, you know that the computer has a vast memory and can do amazing things.  If you play around with it eventually you’ll manage to stumble on some of those things.  But with the manual, you can choose exactly what you want to do, and have the computer do it perfectly every time.  In NLP, we know the programs (or “strategies” to use the NLP term) which naturally excellent learners have accidentally stumbled on: the strategy perfect spellers use to memorise words; the strategy enthusiastic readers use to speed read their books in a fraction of the time, and so on.

Secondly, though, human beings are more than computers.  Learning and creativity work best when the student’s mind is free from distraction, when it has an almost meditative calmness and alertness.  Research shows that having students relax at the start of each teaching session will increase their learning by 25%.  (Jenson, 1994, p. 178).  NLP delivers us some remarkable new ways to get students quickly into that state.

If NLP only provided these powerful new ways for students to learn, it would already deserve it’s place at the centre of the learning revolution.  But NLP also provides a whole new model of what teaching is, of how the most effective teachers are able to create a sense of “rapport” with their students, motivate them, and inspire them to achieve their best.  In a world where the teacher competes for students’ attention with television, video games and popular culture, that is no small achievement.  NLP shows you how to utilise your every move, and your every word so that they support you in getting your students to believe in and be hungry for learning.

NLP is not one technique; it is a field generating hundreds of techniques, and the framework that makes sense of them.  This chapter gives just a sample of the ideas you can take advantage of in teaching. With these basic concepts, the rest of the book, on NLP Training, will be accessible. We strongly recommend getting reputable NLP training experience to support you in actually using these techniques successfully.

Making Sense of Learning

Here is a simple experiment which explains the NLP model of how your neurology (or to use less formal language, your “brain”) works …

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, you mouth is now salivating.  Why? Because your brain followed your instructions and thought about, saw, heard, felt, smelled and tasted the lemon.  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 neurology.  When you use these languages, your neurology treats what you’re thinking about as “real”.

In the past, some teachers thought that learning was just a matter of “thinking” about the subject, of using words.  But when students learn, they are using the five basic senses, as well as the sixth language of the brain – words.  In NLP the six languages of the brain are called:

• Visual  (seeing pictures or images)
• Auditory  (hearing sounds)
• Kinesthetic  (feeling body sensations)
• Olfactory (smelling fragrances)
• Gustatory  (tasting flavours)
• Auditory digital (thinking in words or concepts)

Some students do a lot of thinking in words (auditory digital).  They want to know the “information” you’re telling them.  But for other students, being able to “picture” what you’re showing them (visual) is more important.  Others will want to “tune in to the main themes” behind your words (auditory) or “come to grips with” the lesson and “work through” some examples” (kinesthetic).  If you listen to the words students use, they will actually tell you which is their favourite sensory system for representing their learning in (called in NLP their preferred Representational System).  Effective teachers learn to “speak in each of the representational systems”.  (Bolstad and Hamblett, 1998, p 124-125).

NLP gives you a number of ways to reach the learners you have in your classroom.  If there are some of your students who just don’t seem to learn, you may not be teaching to the sense they think in most.  For example, to reach visual learners, you may want to write words up on the board, and draw more diagrams.  To reach auditory learners, you may choose more discussions and use music.  Kinesthetic learners like to move around (you’ve probably noticed them in the class already), and they will appreciate your use of activities like role plays.  You can adjust your language to match each of the main senses (if you don’t see the point of this, you may not have been picking up a key way to get on the same wavelength as your more challenging students).  When you use all these main three senses in your classroom teaching, your students brains will be far more fully activated.  They will thirst for your teaching just as your mouth watered for that lemon.

The Right Sense For The Job

How do polyglots (people who speak a number of different languages fluently) remember which of a dozen languages each word comes from?  Is it magic?  In the past many people have assumed that there might be something different in the polyglot’s neurology; something that made them naturally more able to keep each language separate.  Actually, NLP studies (Dilts and Epstein, 1995, p. 222) show that polyglots are paying special attention to their auditory and kinesthetic sensory systems.  They use a different tone of voice and different set of body postures for each language.  Someone who only uses their visual system (and tries to picture each word they say, as if it is written down) will not find it as easy to become fluent in multiple languages.

Just as the Windows software program can be installed in any compatible computer, so the “strategy” that polyglots use can actually be installed in any other person.  If it’s possible in one person’s neurology, it’s possible in anyone’s.  All we need to know is exactly which sensory distinctions the first person uses, and in which sequence.  To “install” a new strategy, NLP uses a series of groundbreaking discoveries about what happens when a person uses each sensory system.  For example, we use the fact that a person’s eyes move differently depending on which sense they are getting information from.

Just how easily a new learning strategy can be installed is shown by a piece of research done at the University of Moncton in Canada.  (Dilts and Epstein, 1995, p. 409).  Here four groups of pretested average spellers were given the same spelling test (using made up nonsense words they had not seen before).  Each group had different instructions.

• Group A was simply told to learn the words.
• Group B was told to visualise the words as a method of learning them.

The two other groups were told to look in a certain direction while they visualised.

• Group C was told to look up to the left (an eye position which NLP claims will help visual memory).
• Group D were told to look down to the right (an eye position which NLP claims will help feeling kinesthetically, but may hinder visualising).

Group A scored the same as their pretest.  Group B scored 10% better.  Group C scored 20-25% better.  Group D scored 15% worse!  This study supports two NLP claims: a) the eye position a learner uses decides which sensory system they can effectively process information in; and b) Visual recall is the best sensory system for learning spelling in English.  Even more exciting, it demonstrates that students can be successfully taught (in 5 minutes) to use the most effective sensory strategy.  For a kinesthetic learner who had been a poor speller, this would result in an instant improvement of 35-40%. Interestingly, in a final test some time later (testing retention), the scores of Group C remained constant, while the scores of the control group, Group A, plummeted a further 15%, a drop which was consistent with standard learning studies. The final difference in memory of the words for these two groups was 61% .

In the same way, any learning strategy can be “modelled” from expert learners and taught to others in a minimum of time.

The State Where Learning Naturally Occurs

Research bears out the belief of accelerated learning experts that students’ ability to memorise new information is increased by over 25% simply by having them enter a relaxed state (e.g. Jensen, 1994, p. 178).  Learning new information is not so much a result of studious concentration by the conscious mind, as it is a result of relaxed almost unconscious attention.  Children learn nursery rhymes and television commercial songs, not by studying them consciously, but by just relaxing while they are sung.  You ride a bike, not by thinking about your balance at each moment, but by trusting your unconscious responses.

What NLP offers the teacher is the skill to quickly and unobtrusively invite students into this relaxed state.  The NLP skills which achieve this were modelled from Hypnotherapist Milton Erickson.  They are similar to the techniques developed in Suggestopaedia from Hypnotherapist Georgi Lozanov.  An NLP practitioner learns to talk in such a way that students relax, without having to use formal relaxation techniques (“You are getting more and more relaxed; your toes are relaxed, your feet are relaxed …” etc).  The result is like switching your students’ memories into top gear within minutes of them walking into the room (see Bolstad and Hamblett, 1998, p 27-28 for an example of this relaxation process).

One of the key ways NLP uses to get your students into a learning state of mind is anchoring.  Here’s an example of what I mean by anchoring.  Sometimes when you’re listening to the radio, you hear a song you haven’t heard for many years, a song that was a favourite of yours back then.  When you hear it, all the feeling of what it was like back then may come back to you; even the sound of old voices and the image of those favourite places may re-emerge.  The song has “anchored” you back into that “state”.  In the same way, if you revisit your old school, it will anchor you back to the feeling of being at that school (not always as positive as the song!).

Once you understand this process, you can design powerful anchors which instantly get your students feeling confident, curious and eager to learn.  Even playing the same tune at the start of each of your classes will help to get your students quickly into the mind-set for your subject (Bolstad and Hamblett, 1998, p 24-25).

Communicating Your Enthusiasm For Learning

Earlier this century, successful salespeople were considered to have a sort of inexplicable charisma, a personal magnetism that made others buy from them.  We now know that this charisma can be taught.  When new executives learn the body language, and speech patterns of expert salespeople, their own sales begin to rise.

In the past, these kind of skills have not been available to teachers.  My belief as an NLP Trainer is that teachers have even more right to be skilled at motivating people than sales staff.  Just as no modern company would leave its sales staff untrained in this area, no school can afford not to teach its teachers how to motivate students.  In a sense, we are salespeople for the future.  The life we and our children will enjoy, depends on our ability to inspire and enthuse them with a love of learning.

NLP is continuously developing and expanding new teaching techniques such as metaphor, positional and music-based anchoring, and mind maps.  But NLP is much more than “The most important communications toolbox of the decade”.  (Jensen, 1994).  It is a whole new way of thinking about teaching in particular, and communication in general.  In this new way, teaching is a process of “building rapport and then leading” (Bolstad and Hamblett, 1998, p68-72).

Rapport is the feeling of shared understanding that good friends and business colleagues sometimes build.  It results in a genuine eagerness to co-operate and follow each others lead.  If you remember a time when you really admired a teacher and had fun in her/his class, you know the feeling of rapport.  You probably became interested in the things your teacher was interested in, and were highly motivated to follow their suggestions.

Rapport is created by matching your students’ behaviour.  That means doing activities together with them, using examples that are already interesting to them, using their preferred sensory system when you teach them, using similar gestures and body positions to them, adjusting your voice to a similar speed and tone, even breathing in time with them.  If these things seem a little strange at first, notice that you do them naturally with your own close friends.  Wherever people build rapport, they match each others’ behaviour.

Leading is the process of inviting students to follow your suggestions.  If you have rapport, students will do this easily.  Once, teachers would have said that students who don’t follow their suggestions were “resistant” or “disobedient”.  It makes more sense to realise that when students don’t follow your leading, it just means they aren’t enough in rapport with you yet.  That’s something you can change, when you learn NLP rapport skills.

Successful teachers are also good at using their language to elegantly invite students to learn and change.  When we study skilled teachers, we find them using their language with care to create the kind of internal representations (pictures/sounds/feelings etc) they want their students to have. In order to understand what you say, your students make internal representations of your words.

Here’s an example.  If I say to you “Don’t think of a juicy lemon!”, in order to understand my sentence, you first make an internal representation of a juicy lemon.  If I add “… and don’t taste the tang of that lemon now!” your mouth may begin to water -even though I told you not to.  When teachers say “Don’t forget to do your homework!”, students have to imagine forgetting it.  Their brain is thus more likely to forget.  If you want to suggest that your students do their homework, the thing to say is not “Don’t forget …”, it’s “Remember your homework.”

Skilled teachers structure their every word so that it produces the representation they want their students to have. This art, called “Suggestion” in hypnosis, is very powerful.  I wouldn’t want to suggest that you want to learn about suggestion now though, because you can do that when you read the rest of this book.

Reframing (changing the meaning of an experience by describing it differently) and metaphor (telling stories to offer students new choices) are other examples of how skilled teachers use their language to have students create useful internal representations (O’Connor and Seymour, 1994, p.; 182).  For example, many students believe that the more mistakes they make, the worse their learning is.  As a metaphor, I often tell them about Thomas Edison, who tried 10,000 different materials before finding the one that would make an electric light work.  He said that this was the real key to his brilliant invention; that he was willing to find 9,999 things that didn’t make a light go.  Mistakes are the secret of genius!  (That last sentence is a “reframe”.  It changes the meaning of “mistakes”).

Metaprograms

In building rapport, as we mentioned, you match the behaviours and thinking styles of your students. Different “styles” of processing information are called metaprograms in NLP, because they are the programs that run other programs in the brain. One example we’ve discussed already is the metaprogram of sensory preference (whether a student prefers to think in visual, auditory or kinesthetic). This “metaprogram” decides which more specific learning programs (strategies) the person is likely to use.

Another metaprogram which is essential to understand in terms of teaching is the preference for details and specific facts versus the preference for overviews and generalisations. Some students find it easier to think in more general terms (to “chunk up” in NLP jargon). Some find it easier to deal with specific facts and examples (to “chunk down”). If you start teaching details to a student who chunks up, they’ll be frustrated because they don’t know “where this fits in the big picture”. If you only teach in general concepts, the person who chunks down will have difficulty understanding what specifically they are supposed to do with all these general ideas. Successful teachers, of course, have the flexibility to shift from overview to detail, from concept to example, and back again. They can match each metaprogram, as needed.

Multiple Perspectives

One of the fundamental ideas of NLP is that it can be useful to consider any event from different perspectives. Different perspectives change the meaning of an event (reframe it). For example, when a student says “I can’t learn the writing methods they teach us at school.” NLP trainer Robert Dilts points out that you could respond to this at a number of different “neurological levels” depending on which word or phrase in the sentence you attend to.

1. The final phrase “…they teach us at school.” refers to the Environment where the problem happens. One way to create change is to change the environment (eg by finding a different teacher or a different school). Often this is the first level of change that students want to try.
2. The phrase “…the writing methods…” refers to the specific Behaviours which the student is unable to do. Change can be created at this level (eg by showing the student how to do those specific writing methods). Often this is the first level of change that teachers want to try.
3. The word “…learn…” refers to the Capabilities which the student would need in order to solve the problem. More profound change can be achieved at this level (eg by showing the student new learning strategies).
4. The word “…can’t…” refers to the level of Beliefs and Values. It would be the same if the student said “I don’t want to learn the writing methods they teach us at school.” “…don’t want to…” is a Beliefs and Values level issue. Fundamental changes can occur for students when they resolve issues at this level (eg by changing their beliefs about what is possible).
5. The deepest level in the statement is the level of the word “I…”, the level of Identity. At this level, change can occur by giving the student a new experience of who they are as a person (eg the experience of themselves as a good learner). Many of our attempts to get students to change do not work because change needs to occur at this much more profound level.

Another NLP model for thinking about different perspectives is the model of Perceptual Positions. NLP co-developer John Grinder points out that in an interaction between myself as the teacher, and a student, I can consider the interaction in three ways.

1. I can stay “in my own body”, listening through my own ears and looking through my own eyes. This is called First Perceptual Position. It gives me useful information about my own opinions and choices. As a teacher, if I just “go with my students’ ideas” then I become unassertive, and I am unable to convey the understandings that I have. I need to be able to use First Position because often I have important information that my students do not.
2. I can, in my imagination, step into the other person’s body, and listen through their ears, and look through their eyes. This Second Perceptual Position gives me more information about the effects of my actions on the student. It also gives me a sense of where they are coming from. If I only used First Position, I would not notice whether they understood me; I’d be preoccupied with my own fascination with the subject. As a teacher, Second Position helps me to know how to effectively explain things so that they make sense to this particular student, with their current level of knowledge.
3. I can, in my imagination, step out of my body to a neutral spot, separate from both the student and myself. This Third Perceptual Position gives me valuable information about the system of interaction between the student and myself. I don’t get caught up in conflicts or misunderstandings so easily here. As a teacher, I can monitor our relationship, the class “climate” and the consequences of my actions more objectively from here.

NLP: A New Field and A Tool For Our Profession

As you read the above descriptions, you may have thought “Well, I already do some of that”.  That’s part of why NLP is so powerful.  NLP will help you to identify what you already do well, so you can repeat it even with the most difficult students, and the most challenging subject matter.

And that’s why Virginia Satir, one of the first teachers studied by NLP, said in her foreword to “The Structure of Magic” (Bandler and Grinder, 1975): “It would be hard for me to write this Foreword without my own feeling of excitement, amazement and thrill coming through.  I have been a teacher of family therapy for a long time …. I have a theory about how I make change occur.  The knowledge of the process is now considerably advanced by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, who can talk in a way that can be concretised and measured about the ingredients of the what thatgoes into making the how possible.”  (Satir, in Bandler and Grinder, 1975, p. Viii).

Bibliography:

• Bandler, Richard and Grinder, John, The Structure of Magic, Meta Publications, Cupertino, 1975.
• Bolstad, Richard and Hamblett, Margot, Transforming Communication, Addison-Wesley-Longman, Auckland, 1998
• Cleary, Thomas, The Japanese Art of War, Shamballa, 1992.
• Dilts, Robert and Epstein, Todd, Dynamic Learning, Meta Publications, Capitola,1995.
• Jensen, Eric, The Learning Brain, Turning Point for Teachers, 1994.
• O’Connor, Joseph and Seymour, John, Training With NLP, Harper Collins, London,1994.