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Becoming aligned is different for each person. Once Bobs Observer position was aligned, his Self position was automatically aligned. Usually, its still necessary to align each representational system in Self position: to invite the person to move the viewpoint into exactly their own eyes, to invite the voice to come exactly from their own throat, the listening to come exactly into the ears, feelings to be centered in the body, etc.
Weve found many interesting ways people can be misaligned. In one of our workshops, a man named Dan noticed that his point of view moved in a circle around his eyes. When he discovered this, he said, Oh, thats so interesting! That really fits, because Ive never wanted to let anyone pin me down.”
Joseph was seeing himself from the outside, while having his own feelings of being observed. As you can imagine, he reported feeling self-conscious.
Sometimes misaligned perceptual positions make if difficult for other NLP interventions to work. One participant reported that this made sense out of why submodalities changes hadnt worked for him. He said, I could change all the submodalities, but it didnt change my feelings. When I realized my feelings were out to the side, and I moved them back into me, the submodality changes had an impact.”
Rebecca, who was NLP-trained, discovered that when she took Observer position, she was looking straight at the Other person directly in front of her, but her Self was way off to the left side. After she aligned this position, moving her Self and the Other to be centered in front of her as Observer, she commented:
Now I can see much more how my behavior impacts the situation. Before I thought I was peripheral and it was just the other person who mattered. I realize Ive done all the NLP dissociation processes that way, so I didnt get the full benefit.” Rebecca used the word peripheral” to describe how she thought of her potential for impact; it turned out that this was a direct expression of where she had seen herself in her inner picture.
Our inner sensing configuration is always a reflection of how we experience ourselves and interact with our world. It is a direct expression of our many beliefs about ourselves and others. As such it gives us a powerful window to notice and transform aspects of our experience to become more resourceful and whole as human beings.
Some of us trained in NLP may have spontaneously done a few of these kinds of interventions before. However, thinking of it in this new way—that its about aligning our inner experience including all of our representational system—means I notice things I never would have noticed before. Practitioners, Master Practitioners and Trainers who were already experienced with perceptual positions are also reporting this.
A useful mindset when exploring aligning perceptual positions is to assume that whatever inner configuration we are now using, we originally developed as a solution to something. It was our beings best wisdom in a difficult situation. For instance, when someone is part inside and part outside of their body, it may have been an attempt to dissociate from an overwhelming situation when they were so young they didnt have the ability to fully dissociate. Whatever we are currently doing originally served some useful intent. Aligning the perceptual positions offers another choice that will stick” whenever it is a better solution. We invite you to explore this model gently, with respect for any objections and full attention to ecology. The process lives up to its potential when we have an attitude of curiosity and discovery, noticing what happens when we allow our configuration to be aligned. We can trust our being to keep any arrangement that is, for us, a better solution.”
This article is just a brief introduction. This method can actually be taken to quite a bit of depththe process of alignment can continue. One of my workshop participants who was an experienced meditator, commented that he experienced the method as a direct way of accessing the kind of clean” and empty state that he reached through meditation. In this brief demonstration with Bob, I aligned the most obvious things. With advanced” use, we find more subtleties to align. There are more criteria for alignment, unique ways to work with people who have different configurations, ways to honor ecological considerations within the process, etc. (See reference materials below and trainings for more information.)
With exploration, this method can be used as a practice that brings about greater wholeness as human beings. We become literally more integrated. Some methods help us get particular outcomes in our lives that we have decided we wantfor example we might want to be confident when asking someone on a date, or motivated to make a sales call. In contrast, this method assists us in becoming more whole human beings. We become more alignedand then discover what we and our world are like. We may find that we want different thingsour goals might be different than when our inner world was out of alignment.
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