NLP Academy Forums

dymitr - 25 September 2009 11:30 AM

4. “how the selection would be made whilst in a high performance state, which is essentially context free and free of content ?”

That’s precisely the question:). In the version I proposed in my initial post the player enters the choosing position twice. Put in another words our question might sound: what is going to happen when the player reenters the choosing position in know-nothing state? Any variants of format clearly defining this meta-context very welcome.

Hi Dymitr, I set something like this up at the weekend with the friend I mentioned previously. Here is the format we used:

From third identify the context for change. In this instance several subcontexts serving as examples of what she wanted changing where apparent. Each was identified and spatially anchored, within the same area. By the end of this process there were several sub contexts stacked in one spatial anchor.

Next we used NASA to activate a high performance state, went back to the 3rd position to ‘identify’ other contexts etc .... and the state basically integrated with those contexts, at least that’s what would seem from the response.  The contexts which had been static (visually from 3rd) started to move, merged together, shrank and turned a mottled ashen colour. No new contexts were evident.

We then, regardless of the apparent integration, used the alphabet game to induce a second high performance state and then she entered the change contexts ‘zone’ and there seemed to be very little there to ‘explore’ and no more change anyway.

Interested in your thoughts ....

David Hamilton - 25 September 2009 11:49 AM

Toby,

I suspect you might be right in that he sacrificed the win for a larger goal. Hiran has just been doing some work with a golfer and has come to some similar conclusions. I’ll tell him to get in touch.

Sounds good, I’m interested in talking to anyome working with sports people.

David Hamilton - 25 September 2009 11:49 AM

In fact Hiran and I came to a conclusion this morning that it’s most likely my friend was modeling me or someone else in the hall. The thing he did immediately after he climbed first time was belay me which involves his full concentration on me. A perfect time for him to be in a know nothing state and able to assimilate my skills.

Dave

When I started climbing my climbing partner was much better than me, we both improved over the period we climbed together but I almost caught up with him in terms of skill. There were very few verbal exchanges of hints or advice on technique etc as neither of us really knew sufficiently what we were actually doing, that was making a difference from a technical point of view, to be able to describe it in a meaningful or helpful way. Now that I’ve stopped climbing and he’s been climbing with people who are much better than him he’s made further leaps in skill.

toby - 28 September 2009 10:21 AM

When I started climbing my climbing partner was much better than me, we both improved over the period we climbed together but I almost caught up with him in terms of skill. There were very few verbal exchanges of hints or advice on technique etc as neither of us really knew sufficiently what we were actually doing, that was making a difference from a technical point of view, to be able to describe it in a meaningful or helpful way. Now that I’ve stopped climbing and he’s been climbing with people who are much better than him he’s made further leaps in skill.

One of my motto’s: Always play with people that are better than you. Apart from friendship why would you play against or climb with people that can’t achieve better results? All that does is feed ones ego.

Dave

Hi.

Toby, I have just read your post (only now because of connection problems - hope to solve them soon for good) - it sounds really interesting. Would be also interesting to observe what is going to happen with your friend in the nearest future.
Appartently the integration was possible from the third position. I see it as a major achievement of the experiment.
It seems also that she might re-enter the spatial anchor without the additional game and it would not change much.
And one daring thought: would the simplest form of the format - 3rd - game - 3rd - also be effective?
These are my first thoughts. I will still take some more time to analyse your results
Thank you very much, Toby

Dymitr

Toby,

a first thing, just to make it entirely clear - when you say that you “went back to the 3rd position to ‘identify’ other contexts etc”, are you referring to the spatial anchor for that 3rd position, too?

toby - 28 September 2009 09:59 AM

We then, regardless of the apparent integration, used the alphabet game to induce a second high performance state and then she entered the change contexts ‘zone’ and there seemed to be very little there to ‘explore’ and no more change anyway.

You say “we used” - how did you decide? Did your friend participate in taking the decision to play the alphabet and then check the spatial anchor? If yes, how?

dymitr - 30 September 2009 01:24 PM

Hi.

Toby, I have just read your post (only now because of connection problems - hope to solve them soon for good) - it sounds really interesting. Would be also interesting to observe what is going to happen with your friend in the nearest future.
Appartently the integration was possible from the third position. I see it as a major achievement of the experiment.
It seems also that she might re-enter the spatial anchor without the additional game and it would not change much.
And one daring thought: would the simplest form of the format - 3rd - game - 3rd - also be effective?
These are my first thoughts. I will still take some more time to analyse your results
Thank you very much, Toby

Dymitr

Hi Dymitr

It was interesting to observe and I don’t know enough about state to be able to say with any authority what was happening, but I wont let that get in the way   My question would be, in your experience of running the new code format at what point do people start to get a sense of the familiar kinesthetic associated with the context for change, is it only when they deliberately step in and associate or do they sometimes get sucked into an associated state prematurley ? and if so have you got a clean third ?  In the instance I related to you I explained that we stacked several specific occurances of a theme in the one spatial anchor. In the first of these the 3rd position was not clean as she was experiencing the kinesthetic associated with the state she was observing from 3rd. This was less so with the other instances and the 3rd position was, by the time we’d completed stacking sub contexts, relatively clean.

I’ve read of people reporting high performance states that last for hours. I think I recognise what people are reporting as I’ve experienced prolonged state shifts after coaching people (I often go into a HPS during coaching because of my method of calibrating). But in my opinion these prolonged states are not the same as the initial content free states that are created with application of new code games, although they may follow on. Why do you think, on calibrating that someone has activated a HPS, we move them quickly with as little fuss as possible into the spatial anchor ? Because there is no content attached to the HPS it’s like an empty vessel, it will fill with any old random rubbish if you let that happen.

So I think what happened was that the submodality shifts from 3rd position are evidence of the state integrating with the content observed from 3rd. But what will trigger the HPS since the content viewed from 3rd is different from 1st. My guess is that there’s enough shared between the two positions that the HPS will still trigger. But will it, for example, trigger in response to a kinethstic - which was not present in 3rd ? By integrating the state from 3rd, if that’s what happened, have we just diminished the number of triggers that will activate the state ? or something else. In any event I don’t see how trying to integrate a state from 3rd position offers advantages over 1st, not with my current understanding of what is actually happening and what I observed at the weekend.

Hi Toby!

You uncover my ignorance. My experience with the NCCF is very limited, indeed. I tried to avoid having linguistic filters as much as I could and I simply did not pay particular attention whether the third was clean or not. Therefore I can only interpret what’s left in my memory but I think that the “sucking into an associated state” you mention indeed occurred in two cases. I have never stacked several (sub)contexts together, though.

I think your observation about the differences in HPSs is very nicely formulated.

The 3rd contains kinesthetics of searching what areas need improvement. My original idea was to move immediately from the game to the 3rd and the 1st right afterwards. The change of state would be then perceived in both positons as opposed to states from before the game. Kinesthetics of the 1st would still do their triggering job in the real world, if I am not mistaken.
The difference (in comparison with the classical NCCF) is that the kinesthetics of the 3rd (being the 1st for trying to do the job of determining which areas need to be positively influenced and finding their visual plus possibly auditory representation) would also trigger HPS whenever the person tries to make adjustments in the future. It does not make sense only if going through the classical NCCF solves every (state) problem and forever. However, if - on the contrary - some difficult contexts happen to appear in his/her future life, the person would, I suppose, need only to try to define them and to find their dissociated representation in order to enter HPS. I suppose your friend would then easily stack subcontext, find their representation and spontaneously integrate it with HPS both from 3rd and 1st position. Actual playing one of the games might improve the whole process of course but a bit of independence from the presence of other helpful person should be at least partly achieved.
I believe visiting both, 3rd and 1st position, should have a better effect than finishing just on the 3rd - but this is only my imagination. The latest pattern I suggested was so tempting only because of its simplicity.

Interested in your thoughts
Dymitr

There are some good points in this thread. Let me go back to one of Dymitr’s early questions

Let us theoretically consider what would happen if, instead of letting the client step into the position associated with previously chosen context, we directed her/him into the original choosing meta-position?

Here are the steps of the New Code Change format

1. From third identify context where change is wanted. Locate a space in floor. The player will have third position Visual/Auditory representation of context.

2. Step into the context. Access VAK circuits of first position

3. Play the game

4. When coach calibrates player is in a high performance state -Coach manoeuvres client to context -

The idea is -when the player enters the context in high performance state, the state overwhelms the VAK circuits of the context. The process generalises because when the client goes back into the real world context and experiences the VAK circuits - he/she automatically accesses the high performance state and from there the necessary states for the context.

If you manoeuvred the client to third immediately after the game; when the client goes into the real world context it is unlikely the high performance state with automatically fire because it has not been associated with the first position VAK circuitry during the game

Michael
Hope this helps

Hi Michael,

Welcome to this thread:)

Michael Carroll - 04 October 2009 01:21 AM

Here are the steps of the New Code Change format

1. From third identify context where change is wanted. Locate a space in floor. The player will have third position Visual/Auditory representation of context.

2. Step into the context. Access VAK circuits of first position

3. Play the game

4. When coach calibrates player is in a high performance state -Coach manoeuvres client to context -

Toby has already done some empirical work with the variation of the format. Here is the variation he tested (Toby, please, correct me if my report is flawed):

1. From third identify context where change is wanted. Locate a space in floor. The player will have third position Visual/Auditory representation of context.

2. Step into the context. Access VAK circuits of first position

3. Play the game

4. When coach calibrates player is in a high performance state -Coach manoeuvres client to the third -

5. Play another game

6. When coach calibrates player is in a high performance state -Coach manoeuvres client to context -

It was certainly a good way of avoiding the problem you mention:

Michael Carroll - 04 October 2009 01:21 AM

If you manoeuvred the client to third immediately after the game; when the client goes into the real world context it is unlikely the high performance state with automatically fire because it has not been associated with the first position VAK circuitry during the game

Moreover, Toby’s results were:

toby - 28 September 2009 09:59 AM

Next we used NASA to activate a high performance state, went back to the 3rd position to ‘identify’ other contexts etc .... and the state basically integrated with those contexts, at least that’s what would seem from the response.  The contexts which had been static (visually from 3rd) started to move, merged together, shrank and turned a mottled ashen colour. No new contexts were evident.

We then, regardless of the apparent integration, used the alphabet game to induce a second high performance state and then she entered the change contexts ‘zone’ and there seemed to be very little there to ‘explore’ and no more change anyway [italics mine].

Toby’s result suggests that the change in the 3rd has not been reinforced by the additional game. Since VAK is complete in the “context ‘zone’” there should be no problem with automatical firing of the high performance state even if the additional game was missing.

The emerging format is in some ways similar to one of classical formats:

1. From third identify context where change is wanted. Locate a space in floor. The player will have third position Visual/Auditory representation of context.

2. Step into the context. Access VAK circuits of first position

3. Play the game

4. When coach calibrates player is in a high performance state -Coach manoeuvres client to the third -

5. -Coach manoeuvres client to context during or right after completing the process of integration - access new WAK circuits of first position

If my reasoning and reading of the result of Toby’s experiment is correct, the format thus extended (in comparison with the classical form of it you refer to) should also enable the player to find him/herself in the high performance state while entering the context in the real world.

But even if there is no loss in the extended format, you might ask, where is the gain? The answer is WAK again, but the WAK of the third position.
I have just observed one flaw in my previous post:

dymitr - 03 October 2009 12:47 PM

It does not make sense only if going through the classical NCCF solves every (state) problem and forever. However, if - on the contrary - some difficult contexts happen to appear in his/her future life, the person would, I suppose, need only to try to define them and to find their dissociated representation in order to enter HPS. I suppose your friend would then easily stack [here I referred to the specific procedure described by Toby] subcontext, find their representation and spontaneously integrate it with HPS both from 3rd and 1st position. Actual playing one of the games might improve the whole process of course but a bit of independence from the presence of other helpful person should be at least partly achieved.

I had in mind new difficult contexts and I did not express it explicitly. So, as a possible gain which might follow using the extended format either in version containing 6 or 5 steps I see a higher order change: an ability of the player to manage without coach’s help when future unexpectable problems appear, those problems not necessarily having much in common with contexsts defined before playing the game.

You used the word “to generalise”:

Michael Carroll - 04 October 2009 01:21 AM

The process generalises because when the client goes back into the real world context and experiences the VAK circuits - he/she automatically accesses the high performance state and from there the necessary states for the context.

Did you mean by that word (italics mine) that after having gone through the classical version of New Code change format the game and the state achieved by playing it would influence future life of the client in such a way that no additional intervention would ever be necessary again? If this is what comes from the experience, I simply might have produced a lot of unnecessary words. If not, the extension of the format is still worth considering and empirical or practical testing.
I am not saying that the change in the format I propose would solve client’s problems forever. I am just curious whether that change would add anything to the client’s future ability to emulate on his/her own the gains normally produced by the New Code change format as applied to new contexts.

I will be grateful for your feedback (as I am for all the comments I’ve already received from everybody and for Toby’s experiment)
Oh, yes - Toby made an interesting observation which might speak against my reasoning and I find it worth further investigation:

toby - 01 October 2009 06:33 PM

My question would be, in your experience of running the new code format at what point do people start to get a sense of the familiar kinesthetic associated with the context for change, is it only when they deliberately step in and associate or do they sometimes get sucked into an associated state prematurley ? and if so have you got a clean third ?  In the instance I related to you I explained that we stacked several specific occurances of a theme in the one spatial anchor. In the first of these the 3rd position was not clean as she was experiencing the kinesthetic associated with the state she was observing from 3rd. This was less so with the other instances and the 3rd position was, by the time we’d completed stacking sub contexts, relatively clean.

So, if anybody would like to run the 6 step change format as described further above, it would be interesting to observe, whether keeping realy “clean” third before games would not change the relation between the state after the first game (3rd position) and the state after the second game (1st position). In Toby’s experiment it appeared that reentering the 1st position after the second game didn’t change much in comparison with reentering the 3rd position after the first game but it might be due to the shared kinesthetics.

Michael, thank you for your comment on this subject
Looking forward to hearing from you

Dymitr

Hi,

It is maybe strange to describe feelings in the first place but I can tell I feel different about what I am going to write below, than I used to feel while posting up to this point.
My first experience with the New Code change format took place in a small space. It was me leading somebody through the format. Surprisingly - or not? - it was that one time when I got the strongest response right on the spot, when the person reentered the spatial anchor of the first position. I must confess I refused to follow the changes caused by the format - I found it somehow improper in that case (in some other cases it was hard to overlook the profound changes in certain areas of the players’ life). The question about the strength of that response has popped up in my head several times since then and indeed different explanations are possible.
The player was a teenager son of close friends of mine, let us call him D. The context was not of the utmost impotrance - I new it and I proposed an experiment.
I visited my friends today again and asked D several questions. I tried to compare our memories of that event and also to get some new information which I was just guessing.
As I said the space we had had to our disposal had been rather small. The playing position had been pretty close to the third. Anyway as D had looked at the first position as he had been approaching it after the game, the angle had been very similar to the first angle, from the third position. He had definitely seen the previously constructed image right after turning and kept watching it while approaching. He did not remember any changes of the image before he had entered the first position again except missing memory of approaching the image the first time.
It might follow that the integration had started before D reached the first position after the game.
I guess then that many of you might already have used one of the forms of the five step extended New Code change format at least accidentally. I speak of the form when “the coach manoeuvres the player to the third position and then to the first during integration”. It just depends on the mutual location of all the positions of the player.
It seems that there is a common hidden assumption about the activity of the player between playing the game and reaching the first position for the second time - that that activity cannot add anything to the quality of the state. Must it be true? To use a metaphor: the light going through the glas looses some of its energy but can be focused.
My callibration skills are limited. There are people on this forum who have been far better trained than I ever could imagine. I just had a “hunch”. Maybe there is something to discover in the space and time between the game and reentering first position what could help us, maybe not. I am curious
Yours

Dymitr

dymitr - 07 October 2009 10:26 PM

It seems that there is a common hidden assumption about the activity of the player between playing the game and reaching the first position for the second time - that that activity cannot add anything to the quality of the state. Must it be true? To use a metaphor: the light going through the glas looses some of its energy but can be focused.
My callibration skills are limited. There are people on this forum who have been far better trained than I ever could imagine. I just had a “hunch”. Maybe there is something to discover in the space and time between the game and reentering first position what could help us, maybe not. I am curious
Yours

Dymitr

Hi Dymitr, regarding the hidden assumption, I don’t recognise one. I think the logic is simple - as soon as someone is in a HPS get it linked to the context for change ASAP. This avoids degradation and pollution of the HPS. Degradation because states do not last indefinitely. Pollution because this is content free and the content will flood back and take root as soon as you let it - it’s the activity in the new code games that holds content at bay.

I don’t think anything about a rigid inflexible process must always be true and I don’t recognise anything in NLP that is rigid and inflexible, that’s why you always have to rely on your calibration I think in one sense that New Code definitely sets the bar higher for an NLP’er because all you have is your calibration, it isn’t enough to pace someone step by step through a format and know that this will cause them to change - you need to be able to make at least gross distinctions about state changes. This step by step recipe isn’t enough in classic code either, but the illusion seems more easily sustained in classic code.

Regarding being helped during transition from game to 1st position - you don’t need help. The value comes from the quality of the HPS and that effectively no decisions need to be made about resources until the next time the context is encountered (although seemingly they sometimes are - probably governed by the nature of the change context), thus the choice will be optimal with respect to ecology. This exercise is about utilising state because behaviour (which includes choice)is a function of state. Getting the state right and making it available is all that is required.

However as you continue to get live feedback from your own calibrations you can no doubt continue to make your own mind up about what is what. And I’d be interested in your further feedback on what you are noticing.

Dymitr thanks for your contribution to the forum

you wrote

Did you mean by that word (italics mine) that after having gone through the classical version of New Code change format the game and the state achieved by playing it would influence future life of the client in such a way that no additional intervention would ever be necessary again?

Yes. There are exceptions usually to do with congruence of practitioner or client.

If this is what comes from the experience, I simply might have produced a lot of unnecessary words. If not, the extension of the format is still worth considering and empirical or practical testing.

What is your hypothesis about the extra step? What is the intention of the additional step. How does it bring value to to the player?

Regards

Michael

Hi Toby, it is nice to hear from you again

First of all, my post you are referring to was an expression of an act of resolving of my personal puzzle or, to use Bateson’s words, my little “epistemological crisis”. The common description of the New Code change format did not match my unconscious observation that the third position is actually very often present after the game. The map I was given did not match my FA - hence the crisis probably.

Now about the hidden assumption. It seems that in your post my “gestalt” of the assumption gets hidden again. The simple logic that moving from the game to the context as soon as possible helps avoiding the degradation of the state achieved during the game is in my eyes almost equivalent with the statement that whatever happens between the game and the context anchor, it cannot add anything to the quality of the state. One of the differences between the two formulations consists in driving the attention away from all the events between the game and the context anchor in the first case - according to it the ideal is zero events - and at least allowing of building of any mental map of those events in the second case.
The linguistic transform i use here is (again almost) a simple reversal. I see it as similar to the technique you might use in solving certain riddles where the way of formulating the problem obscures the the simplicity of the solution. To give one example of such a misleading formulation of the riddle: what is the way of putting ten trees in five rows of four trees each? It takes far more time to resolve it than the riddle formulated this way: what are the possible positions of five straight lines (let’s say, on a piece of paper) if our aim was that every line crosses each other and that only two lines can go through one point while crossing each other?
I both cases you get the same result.

I think you describe the crucial difference between the classical and the New Code just right. I think also that we should keep in our minds what helped the transition from the classical to the New Code. In my opinion it was the sensitivity and willingness to detect one’s own misconceptions, mistakes, flaws in mental maps and so on.
I do not believe that the New Code has to be our final word. Maybe it is but I find it more fruitful to assume it’s not. Such an assumption does not exclude development beyond the New Code as we know it today (you probably better than me).

When I spoke about help, I meant help in the development of our discipline - of knowledge and art at the same time.

And about my calibration. The New Code change format seems to work despite my ignorance (I am not speaking about content here) or lack of the experience.  I try to be in touch with the player and myself. I direct the player to the context rather in the absence of “no” signals (it is a bit like Zen bow shooting).

I have already a more or less clear picture of an experiment with the explicit third after the game in mind. I will report as soon as I do it.

Dymitr

Michael,

Thank you, your previous post helped me in solving my personal puzzle I mentioned in my reply to Toby.

My question you quote has not been formulated in sufficiently precise way, my mistake. I see two extreme interpretations of it: 1. the necessity of an additional intervention is considered only within the context defined before the game plus some “spreadouts”; 2. that necessity is considered most generally, regardless of the initial context.

Your answer - if my understanding is correct - refers to the first option. I have absolutely no doubts about its validity.
My experience is not enough to determine whether one session with the NCCF when congruently conducted is able to infect all the areas of life of the player by HPS. This is the second side of my question.

My hypothesis about the extra step has multiplied. I think it is likely that the third position is very often implicitly present between the game and reentering the context zone. One of the question sounds: is it ever absent? I have managed to ask only very few of “my” players but the answers seem quite obvious so far. I cannot recall my own experience as a player though - I do not remember whether I saw my own picture while approaching it after the game or not.

I have not come across any written description of the NCCF reporting the third’s presence after the game, except my own. Anyway, no one has reported about its presence there spontaneously. So, it seems it has been somehow hidden from our conscious minds.

I see some ways of avoiding the real presence of the third after the game. The comparison of the effects of the format with and without the third (should I rather say: with the third removed?) could determine its influence.

So, one hypothesis of mine sounds: the extra step in certain form has always been there. Once the player turns after the game and faces the context zone, the image located in that zone marks the place the player is going to enter, and already starts filling “the empty vessel” of HPS with the proper data. Normally (classically) the player stays in the third so short that s/he never speaks about it if not asked. I guess usually nobody speaks with the player about the third in that place, either.

Toby’s experiment shows that the integration of HPS can at least start from the third position. The “ASAP” policy in connecting the HPS with the context content is then respected also if the transition from the third to the first position after the game was slower. I have a suspicion that slowing down that transition to the certain point could actually intesify the experience of the player instead of diminishing it. It might also leave more HPS cues: to the environmental cues we add those connected with the player’s own mental activities like visualisation. And maybe we would attach HPS more clearly to the whole process of transition from the third to the first position as we have it before the game.

Generally, keeping in mind that all those suspicions have different “strenth”: the intention is to search for more profound and quicker “spreadouts” of HPS beyond the initially defined context. And, last but not least, the new formulation of NCCF enables the coach to callibrate the effects of the variables previously not taken into account, i.e not included in her/his mental map.

Regards

Dymitr

PS - I have not entirely left the idea of explicit reentering also the spatial anchor of the third after the game - I cannot yet consciously determine why. I will write something as soon as my thinking about it becomes a bit more clear.