Tag: visual

How does the Brain represent Reality, Part 2

More on Representational Systems

Interestingly language gives us some clues about the primary representational system used by ourselves and others. Ever heard the phrases, “Oh I see what you are saying”, “I see what you mean”. At one level it doesn’t seem to make sense how can they see what I’m saying or meaning?

What’s coming through is leaking from their primary representational system, in this case visual. Let’s look at some examples in the following figures.

Figure 1 visual                                       Figure 2  auditory

Figure 3 kinesthetic

When you respond in the moment,  what is the prime system V, A, K, you use?  Use your ‘Observer’  to notice which system seems dominant?

It may be kinesthetic (feelings) in the moment and  perhaps you recall it later using visual.
Knowing for example that you get a feeling, in the moment, can enable you to do something different, ( respond )
When I get this feeling in a meeting I will say something out loud to register my discomfort and buy myself some time, to reflect on how I will respond. e.g. “Er just a moment here, that doesn’t feel quite right, I’d like to reflect on it and come back If I may”

If someone was being annoying in a meeting, what is the prime system you use in recalling that memory?

Using the ‘Observer’ in the moment of making a judgement about a person, which system is dominant?

What would the judgement be if you used another system?

In general, just start to be aware of language used by others and yourself.

Do you have the same preferred representational system as they do? If not can you switch to using their kind of language?  That really helps rapport and communication if you match others in language.
Think about a ‘vision’ for yourself. Use each of the representational systems
o What do I see?
o What do I hear?
o What do I feel?

Knowing your preferred representational system and being able to exercise the others, will give you greater flexibility in  connecting and communicating.

It will help you enrich your internal experience of  reality, the ‘world’ out there. 🙂

How does the Brain represent Reality part 1?

Figure 1 vakog

What are representational systems? See also part 2

Put another way, how does the brain re-present reality? (This entry is from the teachings of NLP).
The reasons you’d want to know about this are:-
• Your preferred system affects how you understand the ‘world’ out there
• We don’t all have the same preference and therefore do not all have the same ways of describing or talking about reality.
• Once you know your preference, you can exploit its strengths and begin to become more flexible by exploring other representational systems
What is this about?
A useful way to think about representational systems is; we experience the world through our five (or maybe there are six 🙂 ) senses, i.e. we see (visual), hear (auditory), feel (kinesthetic) smell (olfactory), taste (gustatory) and maybe we could include having a sixth sense (intuit). I will refer to the five using the acronym  (vakog). Let me take gustatory as an example. When you have a meal you obviously taste the food and this strongly involves your sense of smell, (olfactory). The other senses are also involved of course, we see the food (visual), we feel the textures (kinesthetic) and we hear (auditory) and this is maybe more subtle, the sounds of cutlery, conversation, maybe background noise in a restaurant. Etc. Thus there is a whole experience laid down as a set of patterns in our brains, driven by each of the five senses. This is an important notion here, that as we experience life ‘out there’, we lay down patterns internally, to represent the experience, using our five senses to drive that, see Figure 1 vakog

I trained in NLP back in 1996, with John Seymour, here he is explaining about Visual Auditory and Kinesthetic

If we now, let’s say, sometime after the meal, want to remember the experience then it is as if we relive the experience internally, triggering each of the senses. As an example let me ask you to think about cutting a lemon in half, removing the pips, then biting into the flesh, you can feel your mouth salivating now, at the expected sourness to come.

What am I saying here?
• We experience the world through our senses
• That experience is laid down as patterns in our brains
. We represent what is out there, internally in our minds
• We can ‘relive’ the experience by recalling the pattern / representation
It may or may not surprise you to know that when we lay down and recall memories we have a preferred system for doing that. The visual, auditory and kinesthetic are the primary systems used in most western cultures. Olfactory and gustatory are minor and usually lumped with kinesthetic. Another fact that may help you, is to know that our learning styles are closely aligned with visual, auditory and kinesthetic.

Think about the way you learn best.

  • By seeing pictures?
  • By listening?
  • By direct experience?