This parts conflict scenario is something that does happen, we are familiar with it, and so we are generally happy to accept the idea that people have "parts". In and of itself, that's already both dubious as well as problematic; where the concept of parts begins to move into insanity is when we start talking in terms of, "The part of me that is my father."

Here is a classic example of a NLP style metaphor teaching story that is also quite hypnotic.

What's particularly cool about it is that this really happened, so it's a true story, just phrased in a slightly more mystical fashion and with the requisite language patterns in place.

Enjoy The Candle ... :-)

Alright, so it's called NLP - Neuro Linguistic Programming. What that means is that you can program your neurology with language, the language being the software for the neurology, and the neurology being the hardware that runs the software.

And here comes Bill Gates with a fabulous quote that really does sum up all of NLP in a nutshell.

One - if not actually, THE! - master key to understanding how communication works and how we can use language, state, touch, movement and energy to "influence" what a person thinks and how they feel is to really understand what internal representations are and how they work.

In fact, the contribution Count Alfred Korzybski made when he wrote Science & Sanity and for the first time in human recorded history, laid out how reality, internal representations and language hang together in a "geared mechanism" can simply NOT be underestimated.

NLP language plus a little EmoTrance energy work make for an interesting combination. Here is an article from 2008 on taking apart a sentence about depression, and doing a bit of neuro linguistic programming with it, looking at the presuppositions, and FEELING the energy effects. Cool stuff!

That's an interesting question. The first answer I have to that is that phonological ambiguities are fun and they always make me chuckle inside. Which is not something that one might easily say about a lot of other NLP patterns.

So I guess I better explain what a phonological ambiguity is for the newbies and then we can go on to wonder what they're good for, apart from keeping Silvia amused.

I just had a lovely NLP language/internal representations experience on a German translators forum. The poor guys there were tearing their hair out how to translate this sentence: "As the credit crisis deepens and morphs into uncharted waters, a little perspective is necessary on what it is costing, in both dollars and human terms."

People often ask me what the "most powerful NLP language pattern" is.

The other day I really thought, "Perhaps it's not the language we use, but the language we choose not to use!" and ended up with thought - could it be true that THE most powerful NLP language pattern is actually, SILENCE?"

Something I've noticed a lot on this year's The Apprentice TV Show was and is that the candidates are constantly being hoisted by their own petards - or in other words, their own words are being used as the most devastating weapons against them. The way they are describing themselves is literally delivering the ammunition into the hands of those who want to shoot them down - and the way to avoid that is one of the most basic of all NLP 101s.

This is an interesting story of a short but very powerful NLP intervention which showcases the understanding of presuppositions and language, internal representations and their relationship to words and symbols used to describe them.

It starts with a Catholic nun discovering during an EmoTrance exercise that she had confused the Eucharist with eating chocolate.

When you tell people to "practice NLP" or anything, for that matter (and I tell people this often!), I wonder what internal representations they are making, or what they think I mean by "practice".

What do you think that word means?

Learning Presuppositions: What's Behind The Words? One of the most powerful and important exercises in NLP language is to learn to understand and notice the presuppositions BEHIND the mask of the words. Here is an easy exercise to learn about NLP style presuppositions.

In this NLP language article, Dr Hartmann shows how correct language can avoid "Korzybskian Insanity" in the bereavement process and gives a chance for time to heal bereavement naturally.

An NLP wordgame, a play on words - realise, realisation, reality: Can we use NLP style languaging to create reality? Are we doing it already? Are we creating reality well?

And how far do we ...