Creating a Rapport with the Unconscious Mind
How to Visualize
For many people, being aware of their internal images and voices is a simple matter of fact. For others, this skill is not so readily in their awareness. Being able to create a rapport with the unconscious mind to allow an awareness of inner thoughts is crucial for healing limitations from the past. We have identified several reasons for a person not having conscious access to their internal world:
Hyper-vigilance for safety.
Previous emotional trauma.
Not even knowing to “look for it.”
Habit or other familial patterning.
Not using both hemispheres of the brain in balance.
Whatever the reason, it is vitally important to open up these channels of inner communication for ourselves and for our clients. This can be done with awareness, practice, slowing the mind down temporarily to build the new structure and using the appropriate ‘eye’ (hemisphere) for the task or relationship at hand.
For instance, when we want to memorize a fact, name, concept etc., the analog (pictorial image from the right hemisphere) and digital (words and formulas from the left hemisphere) information both need to be connected and installed in our visual memory, in other words, both hemispheres need to work in unison.
One visualizing skill is to make the internal images into a movie, this keeps the brain interested because there is action. Another important foundation is to trust that you have the awareness and skill to create safety for yourself from inside, rather than being vulnerable to the outside world or the players in it to define who you are and what actions to take by their opinion or judgment.
For the person who has been dominantly processing information in the Kinesthetic system (feelings) and being victim to their knee jerk responses, it is useful to request that they acknowledge the feeling and then backup and discover what images and sounds or internal thoughts (voices) are creating these feeling responses. Feelings cannot just “come out of the blue.”
Another interesting distinction when going from a present challenge to desired results is the difference of having an awareness of a situation, and having a personal perception of the event. Awareness is just experiencing what is. Perception is the placing of attention in the awareness. This begins to give us a proactive choice in the situation and from there we can create a shift.
Synesthesia
When helping to unhook concepts and memories that are keeping a person stuck is it important to know about the phenomena of synesthesia. This occurs when we have images hooked to feelings, as if one created the other. It is crucial to sort out what modalities really go together in a resourceful and factual way, and what are the limiting beliefs or “hooks” that need to be healed or disconnected.
Coaching Practice Drill for Creating Fluidity in Internal Synesthesia:
In internal experience the more fluidity and completeness we can create the more powerfully we are utilizing the resources of our thinking.
Example of building all three modalities to have awareness simultaneously:
Begin with an internal image like a color, and add a sound, then a feeling – VAK. Continue with each sequence.
Continue with each variation sequence.
V V A A K K
A K V K A V
K A K V V A
This brain exercise was created by John Grinder, founder of NLP, and is a powerful drill to increase brain processing flexibility.
Coaching Drill to Pull Apart a Synesthesia:
Often when people are “stuck” it is because they are only aware of the result of their thinking – the emotional and physical response. Because our feelings are a result of our internal visual/auditory processing, without this information, change is most difficult. When we can get to what is causing the response then we can implement change.
Purpose: When stuck in bad feelings and unable to know what triggered it.
- Have the person put their hand on the physical location of the “feeling”, then as guide, gesture up above their eyebrow height and slightly to their left, and ask them what image is there.
- Gesture to their left at ear level and ask for the internal voice or sound. This process will give you the “address” or memory that is the trigger keeping them stuck. Then you can proceed with other HI/NLP processes to heal this, depending on the content of the situation.
Getting Started
This article was written by Al Sargent and Marilyn Sargent of Success Design International. They are the authors of the Spencer Institute’s Life Strategies Coach Certification and the Results Coach Certification.
If you found this article helpful, you will want to click over it and get more information on how to use this in a coaching setting. For more information on Al and Marilyn, visit www.repoweryourlife.com
