Swish
Swish, also known as Swish Pattern, is an NLP technique that is very
useful for replacing an unfavourable emotion or behaviour with a
more useful one. With a little bit of creativity, Swish can be used to
do a lot of useful things, such as make going to the gym more fun or
making foods that are good for you taste better.
Think of Swish as a neuro-linguistic programming version of your
computer’s “copy and paste” function. On your computer, you have
some text, you copy them, and paste them somewhere else. With
Swish, you can take part of a memory or neurological tag and paste
it over the tag of a different memory.So What is The Swish Technique?
Let’s try to explain Swish in a more interesting way. Every memory has emotions attached to it. Some
emotions are good (good memories) and some are bad (bad memories). Let’s do a role play to show
you how Swish can be used to “edit” your emotional tags.
You’re a teenager, and you just moved house, and tomorrow is your first day at your new school. You
don’t know anyone there. How do you feel? You might feel nervous, anxious or worried. Yet you know
that by feeling this way, you’ll come across this way to others and make it more likely that you’ll be
alienated. It’s a vicious cycle.
You associate “anxiety” with the condition “first day at a new school”. It would be better if you associ-
ated “excitement” instead. So we can use Swish technique to make that happen.
First up, you take a memory that is associated with excitement - such as anticipation of going to a
theme park or a party with friends. Concentrate on how you feel, thinking about what might happen,
all the promise of adventure - now picture that situation in your mind and SWISH! Quickly swap that
picture with the picture of going to school tomorrow. Then, before any feeling of anxiety starts to
form, SWISH! Swap the picture back to the good memory.
The idea is to keep remembering how excited you felt, and hold onto that feeling. Whilst maintaining
the positive emotion, “swish” back and forth quickly between the two pictures.
What’s happening in the brain during Swish? The following dialog should help: