Neuro-Linguistic Programming

By now you may be familiar with the five representational systems - visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, olfactory and gustatory - but this is only part of the story. For each of the sensory modalities there are finer details and distinctions, which are known as submodalities.

When we're thinking visually, for instance, the pictures in our mind's eye have color, brightness, contrast, depth, size and so on. Sounds have volume, location, tonality, etc. The feelings within our body have temperature, intensity, duration and more. The same is true of our olfactory and gustatory senses.

Submodalities are the way we code and make up the structure of our internal experience. As with so many other things, most of the time this happens outside of our conscious awareness. Every thought we have, whether a memory or vision of the future, is formed out of these nuances of pictures, sounds, feelings, tastes and smells.

How submodalities function

The best way - arguably the only way - to understand how submodalities function is to experience them. And to do that you need to engage with your own experience.

So, allow yourself to think back to a time when you were relaxed and happy, perhaps on holiday. Tune into the visual element of your memory and, looking through your own eyes, recall what you saw at the time. Is your image in color or black and white? Is it moving or still? Is it panoramic or is there a frame around it like a picture? How far away or near to you is it? Does it have a specific location? You may find you can make more distinctions than this.

Now play around with it. As you look at your image turn up the brightness. Does it alter how you feel about it? Then gradually make the image dimmer until you can barely make it out. Many people find there's an optimum brightness at which their feelings intensify, and when it's too light or dark they don't have any feelings for it at all.

If the image is moving, make it frozen, like a postcard. If it's already still, give it movement. How does that change things? If it's color turn it to black and white, and if it's already monochromatic, fill it with color. What's the effect? Move your mental image further away, then closer, to the side, and up and down. How do you feel when it's in those different locations?