https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdLlgQGGvbo
This is a demo from a seminar. Again, for me it’s a very clean demo of the Coaching Pattern rather than a swish. Terry doesn’t use a trigger picture or an outcome (self-image) picture, but rather attaches the client’s (Rachael) resource state to the ‘trigger’ by ‘stealing anchors’.
Terry discusses the importance of attaching the resource precisely at the trigger point, rather than when the client has already dropped into their negative state. He gives a good demo of rewinding the client’s story, although for me he did not actually identify the trigger point (meaning an external event that lets Rachael know it’s time for her to book her train and hotel). The trigger becomes ‘six o’clock’, rather than “I look at my watch and realize it’s six o’clock”.
Terry does give a good demonstration of ‘stealing anchors’ by mirroring Rachael’s physiology in her resource state. It’s worth watching this demo for that alone.
Keith Livingston – hypnosis101.com
http://www.hypnosis101.com/nlp/submodalities/kinesthetic-swish/
This is a very short (2.40) description of the swish. As such it is a brief overview and will not add much to your understanding of the swish, if you have watched all the other videos so far.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNSWDGqCMlE
This video contains one real gem of information. Unfortunately it is skipped over so fast it’s easy to miss. It’s this: for procrastination, one of the most powerful resource states you can bring to your client is the feeling of completion. Nobody likes doing their taxes (or their homework as in this case), but we all enjoy the feeling of having mailed our tax return off to the IRS and knowing we are done till next year.
--I can easily agree with all that — changing the scope of time to elicit a useful state. Another key piece is to be able to chunk down the task into small enough pieces, and to have that good feeling of completion after each chunk is done, so that there are motivating rewards all along the way. If they only get the good feeling at the end of the entire task, it won’t work nearly as well.
This feeling of completion creates the new self-image of being a person who ‘gets things done’ so that you can enjoy the feeling of being free.
This is all ways a great starting point when using the swish for overcoming procrastination strategies.
--The nice feeling of completion is great, but it doesn’t necessarily result in a change in identity. It can remain simply a useful learned behavior unless the client generalizes to “I’m someone who can get things done.” All of us have behaviors (both good and bad) that are not part of our identity. A client may use a change in behavior to conclude that they now have a different identity, but you can’t depend on it. If you assume that will happen, you (and your client) will often be disappointed. For how to work with many different aspects of self-concept, see my book, Transforming Your Self.
Ved Prakash – Programyourmind.org
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFhVMLnJs9g
I have to say the Caribbean or maybe Pacific background music does not add value to the quality of this video! I was unable to watch the whole thing, sorry Ved!
https://youtu.be/RJDAA-86os4
To me, this is more like a cross between a swish and the Coaching Pattern, because the new image is associated. Pip uses submodalities to boost Louise’s resource state. I would have liked to have seen more of a ‘pop’ in Louise’s state, although this may have been because the demo was more ‘staged’ than the typical demo in a seminar where the client brings a bigger issue.
It’s a nice demo of using submodalities within an NLP pattern (although not a typical swish pattern).
George Hutton – Mind Persuasion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6s97Dacdzg
This is not a demo, but rather a ‘hypnotic product’. George sets anchors for positive and negative states using blue and red circles, and then ‘swishes’ by changing the size of the circles. It’s a cute video (and has lots of fun state breakers). It will not teach you the swish but if you run through the video with a problem in mind you may find yourself getting some change! Enjoy!
https://youtu.be/u9haD3Qb7gQ
Again Mel does not claim to be an NLP trainer, so it’s perhaps a little unfair to judge the video according to some strict standard of whether the pattern is a swish or not, or the fact that Mel does indeed appear to be consulting his notes as he speaks. Mel’s focus is clearly to get change for the client (which he appears to do).
This video is a pretty good straightforward demo of the swish with a nicely responsive client. Watch it for a nice, simple, clean demo of the swish.
--No, whether good or bad, effective or not, it is not a demo of the swish; what he did was quite different from what Bandler described as a swish in detail some 30 years ago.
--The one point I found interesting was that Mel used the image the client provided and chunked up on that, “what will that do for you, and what will that do…” He went as far as values (“make more money, grow your business” – Mel is after all an ‘entrepreneur’s coach’), rather than identity, but it’s a nice approach to get a new self-identity from a client who otherwise has difficulty finding that new self-identity.
--“Make more money, grow your business” are both goals, not identity, and not even behaviors that would result in achieving the goals.
Jevon Dangeli
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je-2DURoanA
This is a very rich demonstration with lots of great learning points. I’ll point out a few of these:
Utilization: at an early point in the demo there is the sound of construction, an electric drill or saw, from outside the seminar room. Jevon utilizes this by commenting, ”we are cutting through already!”
Jevon elicits a nice ‘clean language’ metaphor for the problem behavior, a ‘machine gun’ (although he doesn’t utilize it further in the demo).
Jevon associates the client (Rene) into the problem state and calibrates Rene’s physiology nicely (so he can test his change later on).
After associating Rene into the problem state, Jevon breaks state nicely by first ‘wiping’ away the internal image, then re-associating Rene back into ‘now’ by getting her to focus on the light coming into the room through the leaves of the trees outside. He uses this break state several times through the demo.
Jevon elicits a ‘last time and place’ trigger very nicely (the look in the other person’s eyes; 11.40 through 13.00). Those familiar with John Overdurf’s work will recognize this as the first step in the Meta pattern. This is not surprising as Jevon is an HNLP coach.
Jevon first finds the client’s desired state, and uses this state to elicit an image. This presupposes (correctly) that if the feeling elicits the picture, then seeing the picture will elicit the feeling. At the end of the day, in my opinion the swish relies on the ‘end state energy’ feeling associated with the new self-image.
--That is what results from keeping the desired self-image dissociated. If the client associates into the self-image deliberately, the motivation to become it is lost.
Jevon gently challenges Rene’s change using Overdurf’s ‘testing loop’ (“Are you sure…”). When the client responds with “90% sure”, Jevon utilizes the Ericksonian technique (‘90%? Not 91% or 89%?’).
In the Q&A Jevon gives a good explanation of the positioning of chairs (or relative position of client and coach) for the swish.
One issue with the demo is (as in the last video), the swish might not be the best NLP pattern to use in Rene’s context. I say this because Rene had a workable strategy (the ‘machine gun’ strategy) for dealing with the problem. Simply changing the state does not necessarily offer the client a new strategy that will necessarily work to give her the desired outcome. To complete the change, Jevon might have used e.g. a strategy installation, to make sure the client had a new strategy.
--I can agree with this. However Shawn’s “Meta-pattern” described earlier “state-based coaching” states that a resource state is all that is needed, and doesn’t say anything about strategies.
Of course, he might have done some additional work later in the course that we didn’t see. In any case Rene’s post course feedback indicates that the change was effective.
For those still uncertain as to the difference between the swish and the map-across, there is also an interesting discussion between a couple of the students in the audience.
Anthony Beardsell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyRfpod2fxw
For me this technique was more like a ‘double map across’ (such as is used in the NLP Belief Change) than a swish. But what the heck, who’s splitting hairs now!
I enjoyed this video because it shows a really important principle, namely that change arises primarily from the rapport between coach and client. Rapport is much more important than ‘following steps’. Anthony creates very nice rapport with Michelle and she gets her change quickly and easily as a result.
--I can easily agree with all that, but what he did was not a swish, and it was not generative.
David Shepard – The Performance Partnership
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b15h9F_Yfrc
The great thing about this video is that you can see how the coach enters into the dance with the client. As Steve Andreas notes, the client responds with several problems throughout the pattern. The coach responds to each with an elegant reframe, for example using submodalities, meaning reframes and hypnotic suggestions. The end result of the intervention appears to be extremely positive for the subject.
Steve Andreas does raise some excellent issues regarding the video which, I believe, come from the fact that driving a motorbike round a tight bend on a race-track is primarily a kinesthetic experience, while the swish is primarily a visual pattern. Perhaps this demo would have been better using a different NLP pattern?
--Perhaps. But the swish can also work fine if done appropriately; the desired self-image would be someone with exquisite kinesthetic sensitivity and balance — far better than a dissociated image, or the delusion that the motorbike is actually on rails, so it can’t possibly slide. This is another example of expanding the frame to find out how well a specific behavioral outcome will work in the real world. In this case, the answer is that it would likely be catastrophic. The client would happily make an image of himself going around the turn fast “on rails” and have a nasty crash — and no one would realize that it resulted from an incompetent NLP intervention!
The video does not show the ‘demo selection process’ that preceded the demo, but in an ideal world I might have saved this problem to demo a more kinesthetic pattern, such as Bandler’s ‘backward spin’. At the end of the day, the change appeared to come more from the client’s feeling of ‘being on rails’ than the change in the (visual) picture.
In any case, this demonstrates the adage than any NLP Pattern can be used to address any problem,
--Another universal statement that I strongly disagree with. If you use the phobia cure on grief (or the grief resolution process on a phobia) it will not work, because a phobia has a structure that is the opposite of grief.
assuming rapport between the coach and client, and the coach’s ability to ‘dance’. Again David Shepard’s rapport with the client is excellent, as is his dancing!
This pattern is structurally different to the classical swish. In the NBG Swish, the client steps into (associates with) the new self-image. This is particularly effective when the pattern is being used to generate a specific new state and behavior (rather than to eliminate a compulsion as in the classical swish). So in this case, the client steps into a state of (say) confidence so he can deal with his difficult boss.
--I agree that stepping into an image can be useful to link to a specific behavior, but then it is no longer a swish (just as a bridge without cables is no longer a suspension bridge), and it will no longer be as generative.
The coach presupposes the change has taken place (as Steve Andreas notes), so that the client can search for and notice what is different.
- It is vital that there be a break state in any pattern
(see NLP Mastery: The Meta Pattern by Sarah Carson and Shawn Carson).
--I strongly disagree with that statement. I don’t think there is a break state in the compulsion blowout pattern, or in a content or context reframe, mapping across, or many other patterns. The break state is essential in the swish pattern because we using repetition to teach the client a certain sequence of experience, a direction and not a loop.
However here it is not the ‘blank-the-screen’ break state that appears the classical swish. This is presumably why Steve Andreas, focused on the classical swish, misses the break state. The break state at 2.12 of the video when the client sticks the post-it (or postage stamp) onto Burt’s forehead; if there is someone who makes the client feel bad, and you ask them to imagine sticking a post-it on that person’s forehead, you can get them to laugh (laughter is a break state). That’s why I crack a joke at this point in the video.
--I didn’t laugh, so I guess it wasn’t a joke or a break state for me. However, let’s assume it’s a break state. The purpose of a break state is to interrupt one state to keep it from being connected to a following state. However since the next step is to have the “picture leap out of the forehead,” a break state at this point will only interfere with the sequence that Shawn wants to establish. A bit later (2:40) the instruction says, “Repeat several times to condition the change.” “Repeat” isn’t very specific about what exactly to repeat, and there is no mention of a break state in between the repetitions. This is where a break state is needed, because if there is no break state between repetitions, that can result in a yo-yo effect. Instead of creating a single direction from the problem image to the desired image, it may oscillate back and forth.
Many patterns use physiological tricks to enhance their effect. This one is no exception: the act of looking at someone’s forehead (i.e. above their eye level) is associated with social dominance. Having the client stick the post-it (and hence look at) the forehead of their nemesis tends to put them into a more socially dominant physiology, and hence will tend to shift the dynamics of the encounter in their favor.
--That’s an interesting point that I can agree with. However, my end goal would be equality, rather than either submission or dominance, which are opposite polarities.
Shawn Carson (me again!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQ00plfm84w
This excellent video (did I just say that?) uses the swish to deal with difficult people. I learned this pattern (which Jess and I refer to as the ‘New Behavior Generator or NBG Swish’ in our book ‘NLP Mastery: The Swish’) from John Overdurf. When understood it does reveal some important and useful principles, including:
- Creating patterns by Integration. Some great hybrid patterns can be created by incorporating elements of one NLP pattern with another. For example we use Deep Trance Identification or New Behavior Generator as Steve Andreas rightly points out, within the swish. This can be a particularly powerful approach with clients who can’t imagine their ideal future self, but can find a model (Superman, Oprah Winfrey, James Bond, Emelia Earhart or whoever) with the qualities they wish they had. Seeing, then stepping into, this image can create powerful change. Just ask Steve Gilligan who used DTI to model Milton Erickson. Steve Andreas refers to this image as “unreal”, and “a delusion”; it’s actually called a “positive hallucination” in hypnosis!
--It is fine to use the DTI or NBG (both are patterns with steps that Shawn earlier disparaged as “not necessarily NLP”) to access qualities for a desired self-image. However, the NBG has an important step that Shawn has left out, namely to adjust the image of the model before you step into it, so that the face is mine, the body shape is mine etc. This both adapts the quality to make it appropriate to the individual person, and also provides a kind of reality check.
--Regarding delusions, I think there are two related issues. One is the selection of an imaginary model like superman, in comparison to a real person. Superman relies on “superpowers” which don’t actually exist in the real world. If you identify with Superman, and think that bullets will bounce off your chest, I hope you don’t have an opportunity to test that delusion! Some kids who decide that they can fly like superman, so they put on a cape and launch themselves off a top bunk. There are a number of people in mental hospitals who believe that they ARE Christ or the Virgin Mary, and that is not particularly useful. Quite a few NLP trainers are deluded in much the same way.
--When using DTI or NBG with a real person, it is relatively easy to access useful general qualities or attitudes like persistence, empathy, courage, kindness, etc. It is somewhat more difficult to access specific abilities and behavioral skills, particularly those that require systematic practice over time. Identifying with Usain Bolt may be useful, but it probably won’t get you to the Olympics. Gilligan spent a long time in his very thorough identification with Erickson, and learned a great deal from it, but even now, over 35 years later, he hasn’t reached Erickson’s level of perceptivity, subtlety, and skill — and I think he would be the first to agree with that.
--This is another difference that perhaps can only be decided by experimentation when NLP becomes scientific.
As you watch all the videos, you will see that the swish pattern begins slowly, to allow the client to acclimatize, but ultimately each swish is being run in a fraction of a second. This does not allow time for one state to decrease and the other to increase.
--That last statement is offered without proof or rationale, and in any case it is the images that increase/decrease, and those changes elicit the feeling changes.
States take up to a minute to ebb and flow, not fractions of a second.
--If that were true, the swish couldn’t work, because the feeling elicited by the cue wouldn’t have time to transform into the feeling of desire for the self-image. If you vividly imagine that you are furiously angry at someone, and then that person points a loaded gun at you, with a facial expression that indicates they are quite willing to pull the trigger, and you will find that your anger response changes to fear in a very short period of time — certainly less than a minute.
In fact, the swish is run so fast that the client realistically does not have time to even change the pictures in a meaningful way;
--That is a conscious-mind statement, without evidence or rationale. One of the reasons for doing it fast is to force the client’s unconscious mind to make the connection.
I would argue that the swish neurologically wires the end-state to the real-world trigger, via Hebb’s Law. As a result, the trigger becomes an anchor for this new state.
-I agree, but that will happen with either a lap joint or a butt joint; it’s only a question of which is stronger.
Finally, Steve Andreas talks about images being ‘realistic’ (see discussion above or Steve’s swish video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0_mbC60aho). It’s pretty clear that in reality the trigger is not going to actually reduce in size. Imagine walking into Dunkin’ Donuts and seeing the donuts actually get smaller before your eyes (in reality). Ain’t gonna happen; not realistic.
Given the length and very basic nature of the video, there are no ‘important principles’ revealed here.
--Thanks, I had forgotten about that little clip. When I used the word “realistic,” I meant “believable” to the client (which I think is clear from what I say in the video) not “realistic” in the size of the image. Luckily, readers can click on the video and decide for themselves — one of the great things about having a video to observe.
Shawn Carson (oh, wait, that’s me!)
This is part of a series we did using an animation program called ‘Two Minute NLP’ (although this video runs an impressive 3.17).
This sets out the classical swish, but using the ‘slingshot’, in a (hopefully) fun way. I lead the client Sophie into choosing a self-image not a behavior.
--This is flat out false. The caption states: “Sophie, what if there were a way that every time you saw a donut, you felt motivated to work out?” “Felt motivated” is a feeling and “working out” is a behavior; neither is a desired self-image. The sketch is of Sophie with a barbell and exercise ball — doing a specific behavior. Sophie responds, “That would be fantastic!!” which is a clear indication that she hasn’t thought this “solution” through at all.
--Firstly, it means that she can never enjoy choosing a donut, because if she has to exercise instead, she will be just as choiceless as when she’s not able to refuse it. That is replacing one robotic response for another — not necessarily progress, and certainly not generative.
--Secondly, whenever a specific behavior is selected as an outcome, it’s important to expand the frame and ask, “How well will this work in the real world?” In this case, the answer is “Not very well!” If Sophie is offered a donut at a meeting, and feels motivated to work out, she won’t be able to, so now she’ll be frustrated by not being able to (on top of being tempted by the donut!). There will be many other contexts in which she won’t be able to work out in response to seeing a donut. This is a great example of the limitation of a specific behavior chosen by someone’s limited (and often downright stupid!) conscious mind. Another example is in David Shepard’s video, where the desired behavior is a dissociated image of himself going around a tight turn on a motorbike (see below).
--The next frame says, “Make a picture of yourself as you want to be . . . your ideal self. . . Make it big and bright. . .” The image is of her with barbell and exercise ball again, looking slim, and the balloon over her head says, “OK I look fantastic!!” This image is either her behavior, or the result of her behavior (being slender and fit) but it’s definitely not an image of someone for whom responding to a donut is an easy and effortless choice.
To represent this in an animation there has to be a picture of something, in this case Sophie in work-out clothes (Steve Andreas describes this as a ‘behavior’; so be it).
--The barbell and exercise ball clearly indicate a context in which the behavior is exercising.
Steve Andreas makes the point that the ‘standard’ swish uses a submodality change that allows the self-image to (for example) get bigger as the trigger picture gets smaller. The changes take place simultaneously. In contrast the slingshot swish, which is used in several of the videos including this one, uses sequential submodality changes. The trigger image gets smaller as it moves further away, followed by the self-image picture getting bigger as the picture returns.
We talked about a couple of the advantages of the ‘slingshot swish’, versus the ‘standard’ swish when we analyzed Michael Carroll’s video above. But what about Steve Andreas point that the simultaneous change in submodalities of trigger picture and self-image is like a “lap joint” and therefore “stronger and more lasting”?
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