you know or an entirely imaginary one. Your goal is to describe in as much detail as you can the experience, cycling through each of your five senses. First, describe everything you see—the color of the sky and the ocean, the seagulls in the air, the white foam flying into the air as waves crash against the black rocks, the colorful clothes of children playing in the sand, and so on. Then move to another sense—hearing, for example—and describe everything you can hear, from the sound of your feet on the beach to a ship’s horn in the distance. Continue until you have completed your description in all five senses.2 Now, review your description and notice whether it was easier to make pictures, hear sounds, or feel sensations, such as the temperature of the air against the skin. Was it easy to imagine the smell of salt in the air, or the taste of a hot dog bought from an oceanfront stand? One of these senses will dominate. This is your sensory preference.
Note: Having a preference for one sensory modality does not mean you do not use the other senses, or that you use your preferred modality in all situations. We all tend to use all senses in processing information, but some are used to a greater or lesser degree.
The Gentle Art of Casting Spells
I USED THE TERM “INCANTATIONS” in The Structure of Magic I to describe the use of language in change-work for a very good reason. Words—as occultists, philosophers, psychologists, and writers know all too well—have magical effects. When I invite clients to “sit for a spell,” the ambiguity is deliberate. I want them to begin to be open to the possibility of change—and to the fact that the change may seem magical; often, it is.
One important aspect to helping people change is making sure they feel you understand their problem, then to move them as quickly as possible from their problem state to the solution you have prepared for them. Words are the primary means by which you can help create this kind of change.
Watching Virginia Satir work, I noticed that she tended to reflect her clients’ sensory predicates—those words and phrases that signify which of the five senses is dominant at the time of speaking.
Someone might say: “I just feel everything’s getting on top of me and I can’t move forward or back. I just don’t see a way through this.” She would reply: “I feel the weight of your problems is stopping you from finding your direction, and the best route you can take isn’t clear yet…”
She did this intuitively and achieved really close connections with her clients.
On the other hand, I often observed therapists who had no concept of the sensory preferences of their clients and just spoke the same way to everybody they met. In response to “I’m weighed down by all my problems,” a less enlightened therapist might respond, “Well, you need to listen to what I’m saying so you can see some light at the end of the tunnel.” These therapists were talking a different language from their clients, and their clients felt as if they were somehow not being listened to or understood.
Couples sometimes end up in trouble by not recognizing these differences. One person—the visual partner—might express love in the form of gifts and flowers, but the other—the auditory partner—still feels neglected because the words “I love you” are never actually spoken out loud.
Once you have successfully matched the other person’s preferred sensory system, you can begin to lead them in new directions, to increase their ability to process effectively and make enduring change. We do not want the subject to stay stuck in one processing mode; this lack of flexibility landed the person in trouble in the first place.
One of my objections to the Montessori method was just this. Originally, when a kinesthetic child was identified, he was taught only by kinesthetic methods. Likewise, visual children were taught only visually, and auditory children were taught strictly by auditory methods, thereby stunting their growth and possibilities. They were stuck on one channel, whereas real learning involves crossing into other sensory channels to optimize an individual’s potential.
Expanding a client’s experience by expanding the limits of his or her subjective model is central to the methods adopted by all the truly effective therapists and teachers I have studied. Other characteristics of effective therapists and teachers include:
They tend to be proactive and directed toward outcomes rather than formalized in their approach.
Their sensory acuity is well developed and they respond to the patient in the moment, rather than invoking a concept of what should be done.
They demonstrate behavioral flexibility, trying different approaches, and work toward developing the same quality in their clients.
They share a belief—not necessarily made explicit—that the structure of the client’s problem is more significant for making change than its content.
They see problem clients as a challenge and an opportunity to learn.
They regard the client’s condition as an attempt to deal with a problem, rather than a sign that the client is broken or stuck.
They have certain unconscious or intuitive skills and behavior patterns in common.
Among these commonalities was the kind of questions they asked. Somehow these people seemed to have the ability to ask questions that put the client on the way to recovery. When we analyzed the effective therapists and teachers, we found that they focused less on gaining more information about the possible origins of the problem, and they paid more attention to helping the client retrieve deleted, distorted, and generalized information. In this way, the client was able to reconfigure her or his internal map. The syntactic distinctions, published as the Meta Model in Volume I of The Structure of Magic, were intended to explore the under lying, full sensory representation (the deep structure) of the thoughts and utterances (the surface structure) made after information had been filtered out by the processes of deletion, distortion, and generalization. A simplified version of the model is laid out in Resource File 4 (page 311), and I suggest you spend some time studying and practicing the different patterns and their challenges. The section that follows is intended to give a feeling for what is possible with mastery of the model.
Over the years, some people have come to see the Meta Model as a form of therapy, possibly because the book included a transcript of a therapy session, identifying a client’s violations of the Meta Model together with the therapist’s challenges. But the Meta Model has nothing to do with therapy. It is a powerful, recursive, linguistic pattern used to uncover quality information. That’s why, when I use the Meta Model, I always ask for the biggest chunk of information first. I start the opposite way to that laid out in The Structure of Magic I.
The purpose of the Meta Model is to be meticulous, to ask the kind of questions that will help you find out how somebody’s problem works so that you make sure you alter just the problem, and not everything else in the person’s life.
Somebody comes in and says, “I’m depressed.”
I challenge the generalization (the Universal Quantifier) within the statement by asking, “Every moment of every single day? Even in the shower?”
They might admit, “Well, not always.”
I then
