Category Archives: NLP

Developing flexibility with the 12 states of attention helps with Biodynamic Meditation, and more

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One of my influential teachers, Nelson Zink, investigated the 12 states of attention, which I first learned of in 2010.

We have three primary ways through which we perceive: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.

We have locations in which to place our attention, internal and external. The skin is the boundary.

Our attention has range, narrow to broad.

We come to favor a few of these states. Practicing the ones less used gives us more attentional flexibility.

Since the quality of our attention is important, I thought I would share this here.

When I settle my body into my sitting posture, I am using Kinesthetic, Internal, moderately Broad attention, K I B — moderately broad because I’m attending to my whole body and the surrounding biofield.

I tune into my central energy channel, K I N.

When I feel radiance at my face, it’s K I N. When I sense energy moving from far away, it’s K I/E B.

Stillpoints are K I N.

Monkey mind/internal chatter is A I N.

I don’t often get visual input when I’m meditating or receiving a Craniosacral Biodynamics session, but a few people who have received sessions from me have had visions, such as being showered with golden light (V/K I B).

When I give sessions, I open my eyes, looking out the window into the woods and sky outside. That would be V E B, while I’m sensing with my hands and field, K I/E N/B.

If you are curious about this, Google “navaching” and “12 states of attention” to access Nelson’s website and some blog posts I wrote years ago.

If you are challenged trying to sense the Tide, stillpoints, or other aspects of Biodynamic Meditation, you may find it helpful to access states of attention you don’t usually use.

This can be very powerful!

NLP resources for the time of the coronavirus

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My friend, international NLP trainer Katie Raver, has put together a series of 15 one-hour programs, given by NLP-trained people who variously work as coaches, teachers, researchers, healers, entrepreneurs, therapists, and more.

These online programs will take place at noon CDT every weekday for three weeks, starting Monday, April 13. That’s 10 am Pacific, 11 am Mountain, 1 pm Eastern time, and 1800 British Summer and 1900 CEST if you’re across the big pond.

The programs are intended to share resources during these times. If you’re a parent, partner, friend, working from home, spending too much time online, feeling anxious, not feeling resilient, wondering if you’re drinking too much, etc., you can find something here to help.

Each program is only $3US.

Here is the link to learn more and register.

(I’ll be presenting a program on the power of silence on April 15.)

How to stop touching your face

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It’s harder than you think, isn’t it? You’re still going to do it because it’s mostly an unconscious gesture. But there are things you can do to change this habit and protect yourself, and it’s important to stay healthy and keep others healthy.

Carry tissues or a handkerchief (remember those?) with you always, or wear a scarf or Buff around your neck. (I love Buffs. You can pull them up over your nose and mouth, keep your hair out of your face, keep your neck warm, protect your thyroid from WiFi/5G, etc.)

Buff

As soon as you become aware of touching your face, immediately repeat the same gesture but with a tissue, handkerchief, scarf, or Buff over your fingers.

This will work much better than “don’t touch your face” to train you to become more aware of touching your face! When we hear “don’t x” we hear the action “x” more clearly than we hear “don’t”. An action is something to do, even when we desire not to do it!

So you’ll touch your face unprotected, and then touch your face protected. And…what’s been unconscious becomes conscious.

Keep doing this, and with repetition, you will remember that you want to just touch your face with protection, and you will begin to omit touching your face unprotected.

The more you do it, the more the habit becomes ingrained.

Wishing you all the best in these trying times.

Come NightWalking with me in Taos, NM, in August 2018

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Today is an exceptionally cold day in Austin, Texas. At noon the temperature is 27 degrees F (-2.8 C). It rained last night, then froze, sleeted this morning, and now it’s snowing. Schools are closed, and many people are staying in, staying warm, staying safe. People in cold areas may laugh, but most Austinites don’t know how to drive on ice. We don’t have snowplows. Sand on bridges is about it. So we call everything off and stay in.

Today (besides staying cozy in my pajamas and sipping hot bone broth), I’m daydreaming about an event I will attend this summer, August 10-12, 2018, when it will probably be over 100 degrees F (38 C) here. I’m going up into the southern Rockies where it will be cooler, to Taos, New Mexico, a legendary town in the high desert mountains. Continue reading →

Core Transformation is a process that amplifies well-being

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Sometimes we believe we have to do something (or not do something) before we can experience a sweet state of being such as peace, love, feeling one with everything, etc.

If only I wasn’t so nervous, I’d feel more confident about a troublesome situation.

Core Transformation is a process where you can learn to experience a pleasant, desirable state of being (maybe even more pleasant and desirable than you can currently imagine!) without having to do something to get there.

rainbow, The Well, ATXThat’s right, you can experience these states regardless of what happens (or doesn’t happen) because your mind creates states of being. You can learn to work with your mind and be way more than 10 percent happier! Continue reading →

New video of Tom Best

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I found an audio file on my iPhone this morning from April 17, 2011, that I didn’t know I had. What a sweet and unexpected joy it was to hear the voice of Tom Best leading a group of evolutionary NLPers on a hucha-clearing breath work journey, so much sweeter since Tom died the following April. (At least I think it’s been a little over two years since he passed.)

Enjoy this journey of lightening up the heavy events in your life!

Incorporating NLP into bodywork sessions: two stories

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I want to share a couple of stories about how I’ve used my NLP training (practitioner, master practitioner, advanced techniques) to help my bodywork clients with issues in their lives.

One client, a creative musician and jewelry maker who comes in for Ashiatsu and occasionally Swedish, mentioned that she had been plagued by an inner voice that sounded just like the voice of her father, a critical man who had belittled her up until his death. She felt depressed and stuck, unable to move forward with her creative projects. His voice still haunted her long after his death. (What a sad legacy to leave.) Continue reading →

13 reasons for learning peripheral awareness, peripheral walking, and night walking

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I did my 10 minute presentation on peripheral awareness yesterday. I wish we’d had  more time! I’m learning how to teach this by teaching it, and one attendee asked me a great question:

What would someone get out of learning this?

Thanks, Xtevan. That seems worthy of a blog post! So here are my top reasons for learning peripheral awareness, peripheral walking, and night walking.

  1. Using more of your human capabilities, which means you have more resources. You could have a choice about how to see.
  2. Better mood. The neurology of peripheral vision affects your state. When you’re doing it, it’s impossible to feel anxious or depressed. Your center of gravity drops, and your breathing slows. You feel more relaxed.
  3. Shifting attention away from minor pains and discomfort.
  4. Ecstatic states. Feeling joy, feeling euphoric, feeling very “in your body” and connected to the planet. Feeling really, really alive. Feeling one with everything.
  5. Altered states of consciousness! You may experience trippy effects such as “eating the trail,” a feeling of levitation and of being still while the scenery moves past you (while you’re actually walking). And more!
  6. Trust in your unconscious mind. The wiring used in peripheral walking and night walking bypasses your conscious mind. Thus, you step over a rock before your conscious mind perceives it’s there. It’s uncanny and takes some getting used to.
  7. No thought, stopping the world, shushing the internal dialog.
  8. The ability to see in nearly complete darkness. It takes about 20 minutes for the eyes to adjust to the dark, of course. With practice, you could do night walking in a remote place over uneven terrain on moonless or cloudy nights with no problem. You would be much more aware of nocturnal creatures and their activities.
  9. An advantage in activities where seeing more of your surroundings is key. Great basketball players know where the other players are and where the ball is while moving quickly around the court. Martial artists, gymnasts, dancers, other team sports players, long-distance runners and more can all benefit.
  10. Enhancement of other senses. Hearing and proprioception become sharper.
  11. You could also have more resources in unsafe situations, such as being where sneaky predators of any kind are, whether urban or rural jungle.
  12. When night walking, you can see the energy of some plants, which appears as a moving bioluminescence.
  13. The world you’ve always known becomes new.

Some of these benefits don’t happen right away. The originator, Nelson Zink, said it takes 15-20 hours of using a peripheral training device for the eyes to become trained not to switch to focused vision and for the eyes to consistently focus where they’ve been trained to gaze without a device. (He said they always took them with them, though.)

Oh, and walking in public wearing a peripheral vision training device definitely helps keep Austin weird! That’s another good reason to do it!

No wonder the great Japanese sword fighter Musashino said in The Book of Five Rings:

It is necessary in strategy to be able to look to both sides without moving the eyeballs. You cannot master this ability quickly. Learn what is written here: use this gaze in everyday life and do not vary it whatever happens.

If you find this interesting and are in the Austin, TX, area, I teach peripheral awareness/walking for 1-3 people at a time. We walk on city trails. This is required before night walking, which can be arranged when demand is sufficient.

Seeing differently, peripheral awareness, Carlos Castaneda, joy, lessons

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This post is to let you know that I’m doing a short presentation entitled “Seeing Differently” at Austin’s first Free Day of NLP tomorrow. The event will take place at Soma Vida, 1210 Rosewood in East Austin from 9 am until 4 pm. You can come and go as you desire.

I’m on at 2 pm. If you’re on Facebook and want an invitation or to see the whole schedule, send me a message!

Because I only have 10 minutes, we’ll do some exercises so attendees can experience seeing differently rather than go into the science and history of it. Afterwards, I’ll be available for questions and insights.

The basic premises are:

  1. Although we humans have two ways of seeing, foveally (focused) and peripherally, our peripheral visual capabilities are underused and can be developed.
  2. These two ways of seeing have different neurological wiring and create different states/experiences of awareness. Thus using peripheral vision creates peripheral awareness.
  3. Developing peripheral awareness can result in natural altered states of consciousness in which we experience less anxiety and more joy.
  4. Practicing peripheral awareness gives us more resources in life, whether it’s seeing a bigger picture than customary, feeling more centered/grounded/solid in your body, enhancing your other senses, being better at sports and martial arts, and finding your way around in the dark!

I believe this is what Carlos Castaneda was getting at with the following quotes:

Everybody falls prey to the mistake that seeing is done with the eyes. Seeing is not a matter of the eyes. Seeing is alignment and perception is alignment. Seeing is learned by seeing.

When you see, there are no longer familiar features in the world. Everything is new. Everything has never happened before. The world is incredible!

To perceive the energetic essence of things means that you perceive energy directly. By separating the social part of perception, you’ll perceive the essence of everything. Whatever we are perceiving is energy, but since we can’t directly perceive energy, we process our perception to fit a mold. This mold is the social part of perception, which you have to separate.

I first encountered peripheral awareness in my evolutionary NLP training with teacher Tom Best, who learned it from the master, Nelson Zink. Katie Raver (creator of Free Day of NLP) and I co-ran a meet-up in Austin a few years ago in which we taught people to do peripheral walking.

The way I teach it, there are three parts: peripheral awareness, peripheral walking, and night walking.

If you could experience enlightenment every day, would you?

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Note: There are just a few spaces left in this workshop, which is limited to 30 people.

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I am going to be attending a workshop September 28-29 in Austin, and I’d love for it to fill up. This workshop is for people who are interested in enlightenment (or maybe just deeper well-being), Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), or both. No NLP experience is required.

Connirae AndreasThe teacher is Connirae Andreas. She’s got her own Wikipedia page here. If you haven’t heard of her, she’s a psychotherapist, writer, and trainer in the field of NLP whose impeccable and compassionate work has helped many thousands of people suffer less and enjoy life more.

She and her sister Tamara Andreas created, developed, and trained people in a process called Core Transformation (described in the book Core Transformation: Reaching the Wellspring Within) that can take you from a problem state to a state of expansion and resourcefulness. Many experience their spiritual core in this process.

I’ve enjoyed taking people through this process so much, I offer it for free. Contact me if you would like a Core Transformation session in Austin.  

Connirae has been working on a process for personal growth that she calls “the Wholeness Process,” after studying various spiritual teachings on enlightenment, translating them into a precise method that people can adopt into a daily practice, and then working weekly with a small group in Boulder (her hometown) to refine the method.

She’s presenting the workshop to teach this practice in Austin September 28-29. Click the link for details. Keep in mind that the class is limited to 30 people, so if you’re interested, reserve your space sooner than later. She may not be teaching this again, so this is an opportunity to learn in person from the source.

The practice reportedly has benefits such as:

  • resetting the stressed nervous system, inducing deep relaxation
  • increasing one’s sense of well-being
  • helping one relate to others with more ease
  • melting away issues that before seemed like problems
  • accessing natural wisdom more easily
  • increasing creativity
  • feeling more whole and congruent
  • healing difficult, raw emotions
  • becoming more adaptable and resilient

She’s also learned that the practice has been found to relieve insomnia. It can also be used to dissipate pre-migraine auras and help people deal with their emotional hot buttons.

She found that once learned, the practice can take as little as 5 minutes a day.

Connirae wisely doesn’t promise enlightenment, but she does say this:

…if you use the process, you will experience a natural shifting in the direction that we might call enlightenment. The class is practical and experiential, and no beliefs regarding spirituality or philosophy are needed or offered. However the experiences people have at times resonate with many mystical writings and understandings.

Part of “evolving” in this way, is getting more comfortable and “at home” with our vulnerabilities and “weaknesses,” which become increasingly a part of a felt love and acceptance.

I hope to see you there.