Introduction

When doing any kind of anchoring work, controlling as much of the 4-tuple as possible is important, as this means a better recall is more likely. Also, using a representational system that isn’t dominant for the subject may give different, more powerful results. So it’s useful to be aware of correspondences between techniques.

There are a number of techniques that we’re going to play around with here. The idea has not been to give a taxonomy of possible techiques involving K, but to play around with some ideas, and hopefully show some techniques you haven’t tried yet. Almost all centre around setting up anchors and then firing them off. The real fun comes when we have more than one anchor, and we can allow the brain to generalise a pattern between them.

Anchoring – basic contact

Here, we are anchoring states through kinaesthetics, anchoring at points on the body which give you a clear line, for instance, the arms, back or legs. We call this the ‘anchor line’.

Chaining anchored states

Anchor each successive state a little along from the previous. Test, and if necessary re-apply the each successive anchor individually, so that you know that you have three discrete states. Next, fire off each state in succession so that one state naturally flows into the next. Finally, test the initial state to see if the subject unconsciously moves through the states and arrives in the final states.

Volume control

Anchor a state in various degrees of intensity, measuring these off along the anchoring line, but leaving plenty of room at the end. Test each ‘volume’ and ensure that the subject is increasing the intensity. Now test a higher volume, that you haven’t explicitly anchored.

Looped anchors

Here the anchor line is a circle. The last state moves on to the first. You can choose here to chain the discrete states, or to make a ‘volume knob’ (although beware of phonological ambiguities!). If you choose to use discrete states, you may it useful to add in a decision state, that decides whether the subject has had enough. Using discrete looped anchors may be a great way of installing a strategy. If you use looped anchors as a volume knob is also very powerful, because in effect you don’t have a maximum volume – although the subject doesn’t have know this at first.

Looped anchors are analogous to the way that Richard Bandler amplifies feelings: note where the feeling starts, note where it spreads to, and then loop it back to where it started.

Arm movement

Basic integration

Fast integration

You can speed up the integration by pushing their hand down manually ("now!"). Watch out for all the classic physiological signs the subject is actually doing some work inside (skin colour changes etc).

Looped integration

Cause and effect

Hence, we allow the subject to form a kinaesthetic linkage. NB: be careful to use the breath as the cause, and the dropping arm as the effect, and not vice versa! It may work the other way around, but I wouldn’t hold my breath (the subject on the other hand…).

Other Milton Model examples

From the examples given, it is quite easy to think up some other examples of equivalents of Milton Model structures. Complex equivalence could simply be two hands interlinking

Milton’s handshake interrupt is well known, and goes to show that ambiguity can be in any modality and in any coding of communication. Similarly, here is another simple but incredibly effective kinaesthetic ambiguity.

Miscellaneous

You may also like to think how these ideas fit in with such techniques as visual squash. Most NLP techniques like this use spatial sorting via anchoring (be it visual, auditory or kinaesthetic).

Ideomotor signals

Unconscious approval

Is possible to use the lifting of a finger or some other part of the body to indicate unconscious approval of some process. Richard Bandler uses a variant of this, which is to put hands on shoulders with arms crossed to confuse the conscious mind. We don’t normally think of this an anchor, but anchors are merely bodymind memories – a memory of the gestalt of phsyiology and mental focus. Just as we can fire off a state by the body being in certain way, we can use state as an input and the body as output.

Different maps

Input, Integration and Output

The above techniques all build an anchor and then use it to integrate (i.e. sort) things internally, or to produce some kind of result (via ideomotor signals). The result is generally an indication that some change has gone on internally. It is possible to link these together – to build a machine whose input is its own output. This is left as an exercise for the reader.

Point, line and circle

Point

See Anchoring Basic Contact.

Line

See the volume control, and basic integration.

Circle

See both looped anchors and looped integration.

InnerBalloons

Last updated: 29 September 1997