eye accessing cues

originally published aug 20 2007 on myspace

i just completed my third weekend of NLP practitioner training. (that's Neuro Linguistic Programming for the uninitiated...google it if you wish, or just stay tuned to this blog.) i love this training. i will post something soon about what all i can now offer, because it's really useful stuff, like how to get over phobias and traumas, stuff like that.

anyway, working a full-time job and doing two days of training over a weekend makes it hard to get everything done that i usually do on weekends. got laundry done friday night, the dishes done last night, tonight after RC (reevaluation counseling...google it...don't i make you mad telling you this?...but my mom made me look everything up in the dictionary in the hard old days so rejoice for google) with my buddy john, i'll get the grocery shopping done, or at least some of it.

good thing i'm off work next week--can really get caught up with housework, chores on house, thrift store shopping, swimming at barton springs...

here's tiny bit of what i learned this weekend, just a teaser for NLP. it's about eye movements.
for 80-90% of people, when they look up and to their right (left to you as you face them), they are imagining a visual image they've constructed. where do your eyes go when i ask you to imagine a purple poodle with green wings?

when they look up and to their left (right to you), they are accessing a visual memory. what color was your first car?

(note: if you ask someone about an event they said they attended, and their eyes look up and to their right, they're making it up. if they look up and to their left, they are actually remembering.)

looking down and to the right means someone is accessing a kinesthetic state--physical or emotional sensations in his or her body. how is your elbow feeling now?

a look down and to the left means someone is listening to their internal dialogue. what happens when you tell yourself you can do it?

again, this pattern isn't true of everyone all the time, but it is true for the majority of people most of the time. the pattern also applies to gestures--when people are talking, where are their hands? they are showing you their mental maps with their eyes and hands.

most fascinating is the unproven hypothesis that these activities actually map to areas of their brains in which neurons are firing. and i wonder how the activity of dreaming in REM sleep compares to this...

next time you're watching someone in REM sleep, see if you can tell where their eyeballs are pointed under their closed eyelids-- if they are primarily looking up or down. when they wake, ask them if the dream was primarily visual or emotional. and let me know!

the big implication to me is that if you want more flexible resources for dealing with life's complexities and challenges, make a daily practice of rolling your eyes in each direction. then make a box, an X, and a + with your eyeballs. do it in the other direction. it's a brain warmup. you can also do this when you need a break from something. it's literally a way to break state!