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 ... :-)

What is the shortest distance between two points? It is held to be a direct line but that's NOT the whole NLP metaphor story ... Here we have one of those cases where real reality isn't like modelled reality.

Let me show you a picture to explain.

Here is an example of a simple NLP story which is of course also a metaphor, and an NLP training story about timeline orientation - in time vs through time. With a touch of conversational NLP and hypnosis changework. See if you can track all the patterns in the story, and in the way this NLP story is told. Good luck!

The word "metaphor" derives from "amphora," an old system of carrying goods on ships much like containers are today.

These clay made, vase shaped containers all looked the same, and they were the same size, allowing for standardised handling, transportation and storage - but their contents could be quite literally, anything at all.

In my opinion, the problem with NLP and metaphor is that NLP attracts and is marketed to people who are far more at home with lists, facts and conscious-style logic than those who have a natural leaning towards the far more fluid, information rich and interactive form of data flow that is metaphor.

Metaphor can't be learned by studying examples of metaphor, or by learning lists of metaphorical objects and occurrences by heart; metaphor can't be "drilled" (eeouwh! that hurts, so bad ...) and most of all, metaphor can NEVER be understood by dissecting language into its component pieces.

So the main method by which NLP analyses strategies and language is essentially entirely unsuitable for teaching or even understanding the organic processes of metaphor. What is to be done?

I've been watching a TV program about astrophysics and I am being driven INSANE by their appalling misuse of metaphor.

Here is an example of "mad metaphor in science" - see if you get this ...