Practice Your NLP Eye Access Acuity

Move your mouse over the animated face below. As the eyes move, they access different parts of this person's neurology. Click on the face or words to start an interactive exploration of NLP eye-accessing cues and the kind of brain processing going on in these "neural quadrants." By moving the eyes and clicking your mouse, you will soon hear phrases that might be processed using the neural processing pathways in those areas of the brain. Scroll down and have fun...

Learning about NLP eye accessing cues and practicing noticing them in yourself and others, can make your rapport and communications more effective in every area of your life (business, education, public speaking, personal relationships...) Be it selling your widget to a customer, influencing a boss or colleague, communicating with a subordinate or student, or expressing more fully and clearly with a child or other loved one - this basic NLP skill will increase the effectiveness of your communications.

(If the eyes do not move as you move your mouse, you need to download the Flash 5 plug-in from Macromedia.com. For more information, click here. This is a simple and fast download - and well worth it! Remember the download location of the plug-in Installer file, should you need to run it to update your browser.)

 

V K A O G - Visual Audio Kinesthetic Olfactory Gustatory Systems

Early researchers of NeuroLinguistic Programming noticed that people have experiences of their worlds, which they store in their brains as visual, auditory, kinesthetic (and olfactory and gustatory) representations. If you think of a pleasant memory, you can't help recalling a very specific set of images, sounds, feelings, smells and taste sensations that represent that specific memory. Each memory has a specific set of these representations, which is how we can tell the difference between one memory and an other.

In NLP, we learn that when we access these V's and A's and K's, we predictably move our eyes in specific, observable directions, which seem to correspond with the neural pathways in our brains that process/store these kinds of sensory information.

When we look up, we generally are connecting with pictures. Moving the eyes down seems to connect us with kinesthetic sensations, feelings, and our own self-talk. Moving eyes left and right horizontally at the mid-line of sight seems to invoke our auditory channels. Check out the interactive eye access cues game above to learn more of the fascinating subtleties of this eyes-neurology connection.

Preferred VKAOG Neural Processing Sequence

By being able to notice the "preferred visual, auditory, kinesthetic sequence" of processing of the person with whom you wish to communicate, you can then deliver your communication to that person in "their own language".

When you do this, paying attention to your partner's rhythms, you can enter into "entranment" with them by first pacing their rhythms and patterns, then leading them in the direction you desire. This is the basis of the "art of influence". It's as useful in selling a used car as it is in persuading your child to brush his teeth.

Imagine paying this sort of attention to one's own inner being. It brings a whole new meaning to "healing the inner child".