Neuro Linguistic Programming

Chapter 6: Seeing, Hearing, and Feeling Your Way to Better Communication 99

NLP suggests that everyone has the capacity to develop their sensory repre-

sentational systems, by simply moving their bodies or turning off the mobile

phone to see what’s going on around them.

As with any system, making a change in one part causes an effect elsewhere,

and that change begins by paying attention to what’s happening around you.

Acknowledging the Importance of the Eyes

Body language offers wonderful clues to people’s preferred representational

systems. How they breathe, stand, move, their tone of voice, and tempo

of speaking all tend to vary according to visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic

styles. In particular, in the early days of NLP, Bandler and Grinder observed

that people move their eyes in systematic directions depending on which

modality they’re accessing. These movements are called eye-accessing cues.

Therefore, when people move their eyes in response to a question, you can

pretty much guess whether they’re accessing pictures, sounds, or feelings.

Why is noticing these movements helpful, you may wonder? The answer is

that you have a great chance of knowing, even without them uttering a word,

which system they’re going to use and how you can talk to them in a way that

makes them respond positively to you. Table 6-2 outlines what eye move-

ments are associated with which modality.

Table 6-2 Accessing cues

Pattern Eyes move to

the subject’s

What’s happening

inside

Sample of

language

Visual

constructed

Top right Seeing new or dif-

ferent images

Think of an

elephant covered

in pink icing

Visual

remembered

Top left Seeing images

seen before

Think of your

partner’s face

Visual Blank stare

ahead

Seeing either new

or old images

See what’s

important

Auditory

constructed

Centre right Hearing new or

different sounds

Listen to the

sound of your

name backwards

(continued)