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Glossary of  NLP Terms
source: L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., Bobby G. Bodenhamer, D. Min. 
 
Accessing Cues: How we use our physiology and neurology by breathing, 
posture, gesture, and eye movements to access certain states and ways of 
thinking. These are observable by others. 
 
As-If Frame: To "pretend." To presuppose some situation is the case and 
then act upon it as if it is true. This encourages creative problem-solving by 
mentally going beyond apparent obstacles to desired solutions.  
 
Analogue: An analogue sub modality varies continuously from light to 
dark; while a digital sub modality operates as either off or on, i.e. we see a 
picture in either an associated or dissociated way. 
 
Analogue Marking: Using voice tone, facial expressions, gestures, 
or a touch to emphasize certain words non-verbally as you are talking to 
someone. The marked out words give an additional message.  
 
Anchoring: The process by which any stimulus or representation (external 
or internal) gets connected to and so triggers a response. Anchors occur 
naturally and in all representational systems. They can be used intentionally, 
as in analogue marking or with numerous change techniques, such as Collapse 
Anchors. The NLP concept of anchoring derives from the Pavlovian 
stimulus-response reaction, classical conditioning. In Pavlov's study the tuning 
fork became the stimulus (anchor) that cued the dog to salivate.  
 
Association: Association contrasts with dissociation. In dissociation, 
you see yourself "over there." Generally, dissociation removes emotion from the 
experience. When we are associated we experience all the information directly 
and therefore emotionally.  
 
Auditory: The sense of hearing, one of the basic representational 
systems.  
 
Behavior: Any activity that we engage in, from gross motor activity to 
thinking.  
 
Beliefs: The generalizations we have made about causality, meaning, self, 
others, behaviors, identity, etc. Our beliefs are what we take as being "true" 
at any moment. Beliefs guide us guide us in perceiving and interpreting reality. 
Beliefs relate closely to values. NLP has several belief change patterns.  
 
Calibration: Becoming tuned-in to another's state and internal sensory 
processing operations by reading previously observed noticed nonverbal signals.
 
 
Chunking: Changing perception by going up or down levels and/or logical 
levels. Chunking up refers to going up a level (inducing up, induction). It 
leads to higher abstractions. Chunking down refers to going a level (deducing, 
deduction). It leads to more specific examples or cases.  
 
Complex Equivalence: A linguistic distortion pattern where you 
make meaning of someone else's behavior from the observable clues, without 
having direct corroborating evidence from the other person.  
 
Congruence: A state wherein one's internal representation works in an 
aligned way. What a person says corresponds with what they do. Both their 
non-verbal signals and their verbal statements match. A state of unity, fitness, 
internal harmony, not conflict.  
 
Conscious: Present moment awareness. Awareness of seven ( two chunks of 
information.  
 
Content: The specifics and details of an event, answers what? And why? 
Contrasts with process or structure.  
 
Context: The setting, frame or process in which events occur and provide 
meaning for content.  
 
Cues: Information that provides clues to another's subjective structures, 
i.e. eye accessing cues, predicates, breathing, body posture, gestures, voice 
tone and tonality, etc.  
 
Deletion: The missing portion of an experience either linguistically or 
representationally.  
 
Digital: Varying between two states, a polarity. For example, a light 
switch is either on or off. Auditory digital refers to thinking, processing, and 
communicating using words, rather than in the five senses.  
 
Dissociation: Not "in" an experience, but seeing or hearing it from 
outside as from a spectator's point of view, in contrast to association.  
 
Distortion: The modeling process by which we inaccurately represent 
something in our neurology or linguistics, can occur to create limitations or 
resources. The process by which we represent the external reality in terms of 
our neurology. Distortion occurs when we use language to describe, generalize, 
and theorize about our experience.  
 
Downtime: Not in sensory awareness, but "down" inside one's own mind 
seeing, hearing, and feeling thoughts, memories, awareness, a light trance state 
with attention focused inward.  
 
Ecology: Concern for the overall relationships within the self, and 
between the self and the larger environment or system. Internal ecology: the 
overall relationship between a person and their thoughts, strategies, behaviors, 
capabilities, values and beliefs. The dynamic balance of elements in a system.
 
 
Elicitation: Evoking a state by word, behavior, gesture or any stimuli. 
Gathering information by direct observation of non-verbal signals or by asking 
meta-model questions.  
 
Empowerment: Process of adding vitality, energy, and new powerful 
resources to a person; vitality at the neurological level, change of habits.  
 
Eye Accessing Cues: Movements of the eyes in certain 
directions indicating visual, auditory or kinesthetic thinking (processing).  
 
Epistemology: The theory of knowledge, how we know what we know.  
 
First Position: Perceiving the world from your own point of view, 
associated, one of the three perceptual positions.  
 
Frame: Context, environment, meta-level, a way of perceiving something 
(as in Outcome Frame, "As If" Frame, Backtrack Frame, etc).  
 
Future Pace: Process of mentally practicing (rehearsing) an event 
before it happens. One of the key processes for ensuring the permanency of an 
outcome, a frequent and key ingredient in most NLP interventions.  
 
Generalization: Process by which one specific experience comes to 
represent a whole class of experiences, one of the three modeling processes in 
NLP.  
 
Gestalt: A collection of memories connected neurologically based on 
similar emotions.  
 
Hard Wired: Neurologically based factor, the neural connectors 
primarily formed during gestation, similar to the hard wiring of a computer.  
 
Incongruence: A state of being "at odds" with oneself, having "parts" in 
conflict with each other. Evidenced by having reservations, being not totally 
committed to an outcome, expressing incongruent messages where there is a lack 
of alignment or matching between verbal and non-verbal parts of the 
communication.  
 
Installation: Process for putting a new mental strategy (way of doing 
things) inside mind-body so it operates automatically, often achieved through 
anchoring, leverage, metaphors, parables, reframing, future pacing, etc.  
 
Internal Representations: Meaningful patterns of information we 
create and store in our minds, combinations of sights, sounds, sensations, 
smells and tastes.  
 
In Time: Having a time line that passes through your body: where 
the past is behind you and the future in front, and 'now' is inside your body.
 
 
Kinesthetic: Sensations, feelings, tactile sensations on surface of skin, 
proprioceptive sensations inside the body, includes vestibular system or sense 
of balance.  
 
Leading: Changing your own behaviors after obtaining rapport so another 
follows. Being able to lead is a test for having good rapport.  
 
Logical Level: A higher level, a level about a lower level, a 
meta-level that informs and modulates the lower level.  
 
Loops: A circle, cycle, story, metaphor or representation that goes back 
to its own beginning, so that it loops back (feeds back) onto itself. An open 
loop: a story left unfinished. A closed loop: finishing a story. In strategies: 
loop refers to getting hung up in a set of procedures that have no way out, the 
strategy fails to exit.  
 
Map of Reality: Model of the world, a unique representation of the 
world built in each person's brain by abstracting from experiences, comprised of 
a neurological and a linguistic map, one's internal representations (IR). (see 
Model of the World)  
 
Matching: Adopting characteristics of another person's outputs (behavior, 
words, etc.) to enhance rapport.  
 
Meta: Above, beyond, about, at a higher level, a logical level higher.
 
 
Meta-levels: Refer to those abstract levels of consciousness we 
experience internally.  
 
Meta-Model: A model with a number of linguistic distinctions that 
identifies language patterns that obscure meaning in a communication through 
distortion, deletion and generalization. It includes specific challenges or 
questions by which the "ill-formed" language is reconnected to sensory 
experience and the deep structure. These meta-model challenges bring a person 
out of trance. Developed in 1975 by Richard Bandler and John Grinder.  
 
Meta-Programs: The mental/perceptual programs for sorting and paying attention 
to stimuli, perceptual filters that govern attention, sometimes "neuro-sorts," 
or meta-processes.  
 
Meta-States: A state about a state, bringing a state of mind-body 
(fear, anger, joy, learning) to bear upon another state from a higher logical 
level, generates a gestalt state--a meta-state, developed by Michael Hall.  
 
Mismatching: Offering different patterns of behavior to another, breaking 
rapport for the purpose of redirecting, interrupting, or terminating a meeting 
or conversation.  
 
Modal Operators: Linguistic distinctions in the Meta-Model that 
indicate the "mode" by which a person "operates": the mode of necessity, 
possibility, desire, obligation, etc. The predicates (can, can't, possible, 
impossible, have to, must, etc) that we utilize for motivation.  
 
Model: A description of how something works, a generalized, deleted or 
distorted copy of the original; a paradigm.  
 
Modeling: The process of observing and replicating the successful actions 
and behaviors of others; the process of discerning the sequence of IR and 
behaviors that enable someone to accomplish a task.  
 
Model of the World: A map of reality, a unique 
representation of the world which we generalize for our experiences. The total 
of one person's operating principles.  
 
Multiple Description: The process of describing the same thing 
from different perceptual positions.  
 
Neuro-Linguistic Programming: The study of excellence. A 
model of how people structure their experience; the structures of subjective 
experience; how the person programs their thinking-emoting and behaving in their 
neurology, mediated by the language and coding they use to process, store and 
retrieve information.  
 
Neuro-Semantics: A model of meaning or evaluation utilizing the 
Meta-states model for articulating and working with higher levels of states and 
the Neuro-Linguistic Programming model for detailing human processing and 
experiencing, a model that presents a fuller and richer model offering a way of 
thinking about and working with the way our nervous system (neurology) and 
(linguistics) create meaning (semantics).  
 
Nominalization: A linguistic distinction in the Meta-Model, a hypnotic 
pattern of trance language, a process or verb turned into an (abstract) noun, a 
process frozen in time.  
 
Outcome: A specific, sensory-based desired result. A well-formed outcome 
that meets the well-formedness criteria.  
 
Pacing: Gaining and maintaining rapport with another by joining their 
model of the world by matching their language, beliefs, values, current 
experience, etc., crucial to rapport building.  
 
Parts: As in "a part of your mind" that generates other frames of 
reference, these include belief frames, value frames, understanding frames, etc. 
When we ask, "Does any part of you object to this new way of thinking, feeling, 
or responding?" we are searching for "internal conflicts" within the facets of 
our personality and do so to create more alignment and personal congruence. In 
speaking about "parts," we speak metaphorically and not literally. The term 
"parts" functions hypnotically as a "selectional restriction violation" which in 
essence means we give life to an object that doesn't have life, as in "the walls 
speak." With the term "parts" we are referring to a certain neurology speaking 
as if it has a "mind" of its own separate from the rest of the nervous system 
which it does not. 
 
Parts: A metaphor for describing responsibility for our behavior to 
various aspects of our psyche. These may be seen as sub-personalities that have 
functions that take on a "life of their own"; when they have different 
intentions we may experience intra-personal conflict and a sense of incongruity.
 
 
Perceptual Filters: Unique ideas, experiences, beliefs, values, 
meta-programs, decisions, memories and language that shape and influence our 
model of the world.  
 
Perceptual Position: Our point of view; one of three mental 
positions: first position-associated in self; second position-from another 
person's perspective; Third position-from a position outside the people 
involved.  
 
Physiological: The physical part of the person.  
 
Predicates: What we assert or predicate about a subject, sensory based 
words indicating a particular RS (visual predicates, auditory, kinesthetic, 
unspecified).  
 
Preferred System: The RS that an individual typically uses most in 
thinking and organizing experience.  
 
Presuppositions: Ideas or assumptions that we take for granted for a 
communication to make sense.  
 
Primary levels: Refer to our experience of the outside world 
primarily through our senses.  
 
Primary states: Describe those states of consciousness from our 
primary level experiences of the outside world.  
 
Rapport: A sense of connection with another, a feeling of mutuality, a 
sense of trust, created by pacing, mirroring and matching, a state of empathy or 
second position.  
 
Reframing: Changing the context or frame of reference of an experience so 
that it has a different meaning.  
 
Representation: An idea, thought, presentation of sensory-based or 
evaluative based information.  
 
Representational System (RS): How we mentally code 
information using the sensory systems: Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic, Olfactory, 
and Gustatory.  
 
Requisite Variety: Flexibility in thinking, emoting, speaking, 
behaving; the person with the most flexibility of behavior controls the action; 
the Law of Requisite Variety.  
 
Resources: Any means we can bring to bear to achieve an outcome: 
physiology, states, thoughts, strategies, experiences, people, events or 
possessions.  
 
Resourceful State: The total neurological and physical experience 
when a person feels resourceful.  
 
Satir Categories: The five body postures and language styles 
indicating specific ways of communicating: leveler, blamer, placater, computer 
and distracter, described by Virginia Satir.  
 
Second Position: Point of view; having an awareness of the other 
person's sense of reality.  
 
Sensory Acuity: Awareness of the outside world, of the senses, 
making finer distinctions about the sensory information we get from the world.
 
 
Sensory-Based Description: Information directly observable 
and verifiable by the senses, see-hear-feel language that we can test 
empirically, in contrast to evaluative descriptions.  
 
State: Holistic phenomenon of mind-body-emotions, mood, emotional 
condition; the sum total of all neurological and physical processes within an 
individual at any moment in time.  
 
Strategy: A sequencing of thinking-behaving to obtain an outcome or 
create an experience, the structure of subjectivity ordered in a linear model of 
the TOTE.  
 
Submodality: The distinctions we make within each rep system, the 
qualities of our internal representations.  
 
Synesthesia: A "feeling together" of sensory experience in two or more 
modalities, an automatic connection of one rep system with another. For example, 
a V-K synesthesia may involve perceiving words or sounds as colored.  
 
Third Position: Perceiving the world from viewpoint of an 
observer; you see both yourself and other people.  
 
Time-line: A metaphor for how we store our sights, sounds and 
sensations of memories and imagination; a way of coding and processing the 
construct "time."  
 
Through Time: Having a time line where both past, present and 
future are in front of you. For example, time is represented spatially as with a 
year planner.  
 
Unconscious: Everything that is not in conscious awareness in the present 
moment.  
 
Universal Quantifiers: A generalization from a sample to the whole 
population - "allness" (every, all, never, none, etc). A statement that allows 
for no exceptions.  
 
Unspecified Nouns: Nouns that do not specify to whom or to what 
they refer.  
 
Unspecified Verbs: Verbs that do not describe the specifics of the 
action¾how they are being performed; the adverb has been deleted. Uptime: State 
where attention and senses directed outward to immediate environment, all 
sensory channels open and alert.  
 
Value: What is important to you in a particular context. Your values 
(criteria) are what motivate you in life. All motivation strategies have a 
kinesthetic component. This kinesthetic is an unconscious value  
 
Visual: Seeing, imagining, the rep system of sight.  
 
Visualization: The process of seeing images in your mind.  
 
Well-Formedness Condition: The criteria that enable us to 
specify an outcome in ways that make it achievable and verifiable. A well-formed 
outcome is a powerful tool for negotiating win/win solutions.  
 
 
  
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