Neuro-Linguistic Programming

When you're sitting in a restaurant enjoying a meal your senses are being bombarded with stimulation. You smell the food, the perfume of the people you're with, the flowers on the table. You hear the sound of people chattering, of plates and glasses being rattled, of cars passing by outside. You see the room, the customers and staff, and everything on the table. You taste the food, the wine, and if you smoke, perhaps a cigarette. You feel your weight on the seat, the knife and fork in your hand and, towards the end of the meal, a 'full' sensation.

We take in the world through our five senses or, as they are often called in NLP, modalities. That's how we know what's happening around us, there's no other way. Our neurological system then uses the information gathered from our eyes, nose, ears, mouth and the nerve endings in our skin to create an internal representation of the world. It's not a true, complete representation of reality and never could be, because our senses are relatively poor instruments, and can only take in data across a limited range.

We can only pick up sounds, for instance, from 20Hz to 20,000Hz, yet many animals can hear well outside that range, and with far greater sensitivity in respect of volume. What we can take in with our eyes is only a narrow part of the spectrum - unlike bats and other creatures, we can't 'see' in the dark. And it's a similar story when it comes to smell, taste and feeling.

But our internal representation is all we have, and we use it as the basis for all aspects of our mental processing as if it were the world itself. Because we use our sensory modalities, working with our neurology, to create this internal representation, they are called representational systems in NLP.

The representational systems are often referred to collectively as VAKOG, which is shorthand for Visual (seeing), Auditory (hearing), Kinaesthetic (feeling and touching), Olfactory (smelling) and Gustatory (tasting). In NLP, most emphasis is placed on visual, auditory and kinaesthetic since they're the ones that are most essential to us in everyday life.

As we think about the world around us, we do so using pictures, sounds, feelings, tastes and smells.

When asked to recall a meeting you attended last week you bring to mind an image of the room or the people who participated. Maybe you remember what someone said - you hear the sound of their voice. Perhaps the weather was cold or the heating too warm. And there might have been a musty smell or tasty food.

Imagine taking the holiday of your dreams. Where will you be going? What will you see when you first arrive? What sounds will you hear? How will it feel to finally visit this place? When we think about the future we use our senses to create mental pictures, sounds and sensations. The world we create inside our heads can be as vivid as the world around us.