Resignificación del Cuerpo como territorio de paz

Anchoring

In 1902 Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, a Russian researcher at St Petersburg University, began work on an interesting phenomenon: the conditioned reflex³⁴. He noticed that he could train dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell. He did this by ringing a bell just before feeding them. Soon the dog’s autonomous nervous system learned that bell = food and would begin to drool at the sound of the bell alone.

This discovery helped to nurture a growing new field of psychology³⁵. But whilst many experiments were carried out on the conditioned response phenomenon, it made a very small impact on therapeutic or educational techniques. This was partly due to a perception that it took countless repetitions to properly install a conditioned response. Meanwhile hypnotists around the world had been using the phenomenon for centuries in order to induce trances in the subject more quickly. They would use simple things like finger clicking or eye stare or “sleep NOW!!” suggestions to trigger trances instantly. The thing was that nobody had bothered to tell the hypnotists that they needed to spend hours and hours conditioning the response. So they did it in a matter of minutes with great success. Later this principle was developed for therapeutic application by such pioneers as Dr. Milton H Erickson.

Anchoring was born.

An anchor is a conditioned response. It is possible to anchor pretty much anything that an organism can do. So you can anchor a behaviour, a feeling, a mind-body state, a memory, something you learned or even (if you are perceptive enough) a thought. The interesting thing is that it happens automatically all the time. It is the mechanism behind recognising the face of a friend. It is the reason why you can sit on a bicycle, or a horse or get in a car after many years, and discover that your body remembers how to do the activity. The feeling of the saddle was an anchor – a cue to your body – to remember how it is done. It is also how people create true phobias³⁶. NLP adopted and developed anchoring as a core approach to change. This is because it allows people to make dramatic shifts quickly, easily and without any cognitive interference. This means you can change for the better without having to know what was wrong – your unconscious can sort all of that out. Indeed your unconscious has been doing precisely that throughout your life. You just never noticed it because your unconscious was doing such a great job!

34 In reality he was beaten to the punch slightly by an American Dr Twitmeyer who studied the knee-jerk reflex in human beings, conditioning them to jerk the knee at the sound of a bell. Unfortunately his research fell on deaf ears, whilst Pavlov became a star (Pavlov received the Nobel prize in 1904).

35 Known as “Behaviourism”.

36 NB there is a difference between a real phobia and what many people think is a phobia. A phobia is an

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99 State Dependant Learning

In the early 1980s a range of interesting experiments were carried out on people’s ability to learn³⁷. They took a group of students and divided them into two groups.

Both groups had to memorise a series of nonsense syllables. Group A was given a few shots of alcohol, group B remained sober. They were given some time to memorise the content. Then they were given a few hours (to allow the mild effects of the alcohol wear off) before being tested. Unsurprisingly group A underperformed.

Then they repeated the experiment. Only this time BOTH groups were given a measure of alcohol before being allowed to answer the test. Group A did better this time. Why? State dependant learning.

Imagine that your nervous system is like the lights that decorate a Christmas tree.

Every time you are in a particular state (mood, feeling etc) a unique pattern of light lights up. Whatever you learn whilst in that state is stored in that part of the system.

That means that it is easiest to access that information (memory or behaviour) when you are in the same state again. So the students in group A had a better access to the memorised list when they had alcohol in their system because that is where the list had been stored in the first place.

The implications of this are huge. Every behaviour you engage in, every memory you experience can be enhanced or inhibited by the state that you are in. So for example, when someone is feeling a little low, even depressed, they find it almost impossible to remember anything pleasant that has happened to them. Even if they can drag up the memory, it seems “distant” and unreal to them. They cannot get the feelings associated – because they are in the wrong state!

Athletes have known this instinctively for centuries. This is why they develop many pre-match rituals – they are anchors to put them back into a high performance state in which they have access to all their skills and abilities.

Anchoring is a powerful way to create a shortcut back into these states. It can be used to learn more, perform better, overcome problems³⁸ or install new strategies for living. Anchors will allow you to enter any one of an almost infinite range of mind-body states to greatly enhance your choices.

Because the state is the gateway to the stored memories and behaviours, NLP anchoring focuses on working with the states.

37 Eich, J.E. (1989).Theoretical issues in state dependant memory. In H.L. Roediger & F.I.M. Craik (Eds), Varieties of memory and consciousness (pp. 331-354). Hillsdale, N.J. : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

38 If you always bypass the neurological circuits of the problem state, you will never have that problem again. You simply don’t have access to it anymore – a very good thing, I think you’ll agree!