By: jvoves
The easiest way to explain Neuro Linguistic Programming, commonly abbreviated to NLP, is to look at each of the three terms. While they sound a bit of a mouthful, which is because of their roots in academia (see History of NLP), the term NLP is associated with many alternative healing and emotional healing techniques that are proven to provide positive results.
Neuro
The concept that all behaviour is physiological i.e has its origins in neurological processes such as sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. Using the central nervous system and the autonomic system primarily, body and mind are one system.What this shows us the relevance of physical changes linked with emotions,e.g. the dry mouth when we feel anxious, butterflys in the stomach when we feel nervous, going red with embarrassment.
Linguistic
That we use language to order our thoughts and communicate with others. As neurological resaerch has moved on since NLP was used as the terminology we now know that communication is much more subtle, and takes place at more complex levels e.g. body language and pheremones. However the cognitive “thinking” part of the brain still relies on language to make sense of our experiences and to interpret our world.
Programming
Patterns of how we organise ideas and actions. Often we find we use the same patterns repeatedly. Once a pattern is learned the brain will continue to use it until something different is programmed (learned).
For more information on how NLP techniques can be used to help you achieve the results you want, whether at work/for work, in your relationships, or perhaps in your sports performance, browse the other articles in our NLP articles archive.
