NLP Sensory Acuity and Observation!
NLP Sensory Acuity and Observation!
NLP Sensory Acuity and Observation!
communication
If there was to be an NLP short course it could be done in three minutes. The sum total
of the class would see written on the board these simple points:
∗ Outcome
∗ Acuity
∗ Flexibility
∗ Action
1 st Know what you want specifically, the costs and consequences, the needed resources
to achieve it and the evidence for achieving it.
2 nd Know what’s working and what’s not.
3 rd Have the ability to view your achieving from multiple perspectives
4 th Take action and put into your muscles and central nervous system the behaviors of
that outcome.
Acuity is the ability to recognise difference either by a presence or absence. Sensory
acuity is your sense organs mobilising this recognition.
In your conversation with a friend perhaps you are noticing your attention shifting and as
it shifts from their voice tone to their breathing to their blink rate and to their eye
movements you are noticing differences. You are using your own sensory acuity. (See
accessing cues)
Calibration
The use of your sensory acuity with another person can be extremely important when it
comes to knowing when or when not to invite, encourage, chastise, praise or criticize.
Often many of our intuitions come from our unconscious calibrations. You ask a friend
out to dinner and before they answer you know the response. Or you admit something
and already know how your communication will be received. These “already know” type
understandings can often be broken down to less complex details observed in another's
behavior e.g. shift in lip shape, breathing rate, posture, voice tone/pitch and speed etc.
Accessing cues
Your ability to know when someone is thinking with pictures or sounds or feelings is
perpetuated by finite observable behaviors. It is almost universal; when a person is using
the visual, auditory or kinesthetic part of their brain it affects their behavior and the body
moves accordingly.
For example think of the first thing you look at when you start your car. Your eyes
probably moved up and to the left. This is a general rule for right-handed people. Try
thinking of the movement and feel of velvet across your skin. Your eyes probably went
down and to the right.
Visual construct Visual recall
Kinaesthetic Audio
Internal dialogue
Fig 1.1
Eye accessing cues.
NOTE: Fig 1.1 is the eye accessing cues for a right-handed person.
As the mind and body are inseparable, other accessing cues exist, though the eyes are
perhaps the most obvious. Some of these are observable in breathing, skin tone,
posture/ head tilt, gestures rate and area, voice pitch and speed etc.
Visual information can be processed fast so our body may coordinate our physical pace
like wise. Sounds are often processed rhythmically and feelings are processed low and
deeply. Sound silly? Casually try observing these points from figure 1.1 in a person, and
these aren’t the only ones.
Fig 1.2
Other accessing cues
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