The

Swish Pattern:
An In-Depth Look at this Powerful NLP
Technique
Shawn Carson
Jess Marion
Foreword by John Overdurf




© 2013 by Shawn Carson, Jess Marion
The Swish Pattern: An In Depth Look at this Powerful NLP Pattern
NLP Mastery Series
Changing Minds Publishing. All rights reserved.
Cover design Richie Williams
No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Foreword
Introduction
The History of the Swish Pattern
A Brief Example of the Swish Pattern
How the Swish Pattern Works
The Swish Pattern in Detail
Finding the Problem Context and the Trigger
Creating the New Self-Image
Using Archetypes
Designing the Swish Pattern using Submodalities
Delivering the Swish Pattern using Gestures and Voice
Combining the Swish Pattern with the New Behavior Generator
The Swish Pattern as a Recovery Strategy
The Hypnotic Swish Pattern
The Conversational Swish Pattern
The Social Swish Pattern
The Physical Swish Pattern
The Self-Coaching Swish Pattern for Personal Success
The Swish Pattern for Business
The Swish Pattern for Dealing with Difficult People
The Swish Pattern for Smoking and Other Habits
Stepping into the Future
About the Authors
Acknowledgments
Glossary

PREFACE
I don’t remember exactly where we were when Jess Marion and I began to
discuss the genesis for this book on the Swish Pattern, the first in a series of
books on NLP Mastery. It is very likely that the conversation took place
somewhere pleasant and outdoors—perhaps the Mirror Pond in New York’s
Central Park, or the 70th Street Pier on the West Side of Manhattan, where we
go with my wife, Sarah, and perhaps a few friends, to watch the sun setting
over the skyline of Jersey City.
Over a glass or two of cold beer, we were discussing how many ways NLP
patterns such as the Swish can be done with clients, how unfortunate it is that
we really only have time to teach one way of doing each pattern when we are
running an NLP Practitioner course, and how it is surprising that, while there
are many books describing NLP patterns, nobody (at least as far as we know)
has ever thought to write a book about all the nuances of one specific NLP
pattern. Of course, we realized that that “nobody” included us, so rather than
complain about it, we would just have to write it ourselves!
Jess and I agreed that we would each prepare a first draft of a manuscript on a
separate pattern and then exchange them for review, thereby having two
books co-written. Jess was fascinated by the Visual Squash, but for me there
was only one choice: the Swish.
I learned and practiced the steps of the Swish many years ago during my NLP
Practitioner training in New York City. But I didn’t learn the true power of the
Swish until I saw it demonstrated on a fellow student by an incredible NLP
Master Trainer named John Overdurf. The beginning was simple: John asked
for a volunteer with a small problem, such as procrastination about studying
—the type of small issue we all face everyday. Then, suddenly, seemingly far
above that, he asked a single question: “How do you want to be different, and
how will you be as a person when you are?” Then John took each phrase the
student offered and sweetened it into a possibility, into an image of such
delight! This was a kind of NLP I had never seen! Even though I was just an
observer, I was filled with a longing to step into that possible future self, as if
I were seeing the universe showing me my own potential.
The Swish Pattern allows a client to work through the most minor and
mundane issues and emerge on the far side transformed. Like a pearl forming
inside an oyster, the problem becomes the grit that is transformed, through the
alchemy of the Swish Pattern, into the new you. After all, if you are going to
change one thing, why not change everything?

—Shawn Carson
New York City, 2013

FOREWORD
It is my great pleasure to introduce this valuable work by Shawn Carson and
Jess Marion. I’m going to tell you right out of the gate: you’re going to be
glad you read this book. It is worth its weight in CHANGE.
I’ve been fortunate to know Shawn for many years now. His NYC-Brit wit is
so dry I was never sure about whether I should take him seriously or not—so I
decided to! Probably the highest compliment I can give to someone in our
field is saying, “You are a true student of the game.” That’s Shawn:
competent, passionate, and dedicated, with the humility that comes from
having a glimpse of a bigger picture and from not taking himself too
seriously.
I met Jess, a student of Shawn and his wife Sarah’s, at a hypnosis training I
was doing in New York City last fall. Her warm smile greeted me on the first
day, and by the end of the training I realized I’d found another “student of the
game”—a testament to her, her teachers, and the idea that “you never know
how far a change will go.”
This is a book for true students of the game, written by two true students of
the game. It is about one of the most flexible and versatile change patterns in
the classic NLP repertoire: The Swish. Oh, and did I mention? You never
know how far a change will go.
Shawn and Jess take the Swish by storm. No stone is left unturned. This is
one thorough treatment! It’s concise, yet deep. Demos, practical tips for using
the pattern in a variety of ways, in a variety of settings – it’s all here.

Why Read this Book?
Hmm, let’s see. Imagine asking a client—or yourself:
How cool would it be to take any situation that gives you some trouble and
use it to catapult yourself toward a new way of being?
Would you like to significantly increase the pleasure you feel in life by
exercising and strengthening the pleasure circuitry in your brain? (More about
that in a bit.)
Do you have any long-term projects? Do you want to stay motivated and
moving toward a successful completion?
Would you like to transform some unproductive habits into new, productive
ones?
Interested? Might as well be, right? After all, you never know how far…
The process of the Swish is a simple one, but there are lots of nuances and
variations you can learn to really maximize its effectiveness—but I’ll leave
that to Shawn and Jess! In its most basic form, the Swish is about linking two
pictures together in your mind’s eye. The first is the trigger for the
“limitation” you want to change and the second is a new self-image of how
you want to be. Through the process, the trigger for the problem becomes the
trigger for the new self-image. Your brain goes gets re-routed toward a NEW
YOU. The Swish wires in an entirely new self-image. You can build new
capabilities, new personal qualities, new beliefs, new values, and a new
identity all in one fell swoop—or Swish!

Make a sWISH Before You Read this Book

I don’t know about you, but for me, when I begin to read a book, there is a
certain sense of anticipation: you look at the cover and maybe page through it
a bit to whet your appetite for something really tasty. What you don’t know
for sure is how much you’ll learn, or how different you will be by the time
you finish the book—but obviously there’s something that you want to
achieve, or you wouldn’t be reading this right now.
Most of us were never taught one simple thing that we can do in order to read
faster and with greater comprehension and deeper impact. Want to know what
that thing is?
It’s this: Ask yourself questions before you read the book.
What new thing would you like to learn? What are you curious about,
regarding the Swish? How would you be different, having thoroughly read
this book and gotten what you wanted from it? How would you be as a
person, having integrated all this? Get the picture of yourself being that way.
Then check out the table of contents and quickly page through the book. Just
graze. Resist diving right into something you think is interesting. You’re
creating anticipation and purpose. Doing this primes your brain to not just
absorb information, but suck it in like a Dyson vacuum cleaner. At a deep
level, as you turn the pages, you’re activating that picture you made. (By the
way, that is not a suggestion—more of a statement of how your brain works.)
Each time you open the book, having that sense of anticipation lights up a
region in your brain commonly known as the dopamine pleasure circuit. This
is the exact same circuitry that the Swish engages so effectively. This circuit
thrives on novelty and gets exercised whenever you are feeling anticipation,
excitement, or the rush of wanting to “go for it.”

The Swish as a Dopamine Driver

Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that gives you the “go for it” feeling. It’s
the rush you get when you really feel alive. Ever been attracted to someone
and felt like you were just being drawn toward that person? The closer you
got, the more intense the feeling became, right? How about when you think
about an upcoming vacation or trip—getting to go to some place you’ve never
experienced before, and you’re counting the days? That’s all dopamine. Lit-
up dopamine-using neurons are what create drive and motivation.
Deep in the center of your brain lies the ventral tegmental area (VTA). The
VTA is filled with dopamine-using neurons that extend all the way to the
nucleus accumbens (your pleasure center), the amygdala (your emotional
amplifier), the hippocampus (your memory depot—so you can record your
pleasure) and the prefrontal lobe (so you can connect all this to your self-
image and what’s important to you).
When you do the Slingshot Swish, one variation that Shawn and Jess teach
you, you will be exercising that circuit. And there’s more! Neuroscience has
documented that the neurons in our brains are more like our muscles than we
ever knew: they can be trained to grow in size. This is known as
neuroplasticity. Our brain is an organ and our mind is our attention. Our
brains are constantly re-wiring themselves through our life experience, but we
can also use our minds to change our brains.
The Swish Pattern is one of the easiest ways to harness this neuroplasticity.
You are re-wiring your brain in a very simple and direct way with the Swish.
Furthermore, each time you repeat the process, you are actually causing the
activated neurons to grow in size, fire more easily and more quickly, and
connect to more of their neighbors. You are creating a new circuit and training
your dopamine pleasure circuit at the same time.
Don’t you think you could make room for more pleasure and drive in your
life? Want to know all the nuances and details about how you can use the
Swish to help yourself and others? Let Shawn and Jess show you, and
remember what happens when you’re willing to turn the page. You never
know…
sWishing YOU a life of pleasure, possibility, peace by peace,

—John Overdurf
Arizona, 2013

INTRODUCTION
This book examines, in depth, one of the fundamental patterns of Neuro-
Linguistic Programming, or NLP: the Swish Pattern. As such, this book will
benefit all coaches, hypnotists, and therapists who use NLP in their practices.
It’s also a useful guide for people with a passing knowledge of NLP
techniques who wish to develop their expertise further.
To understand why it is important to examine any NLP pattern in detail in this
way, consider the following benefits:
1) You will gain a thorough and in-depth understanding of the pattern
itself. Although the Swish is described elsewhere, we are not aware of any
book that describes the pattern in enough detail to do it justice. You may wish
to know how to use the Swish elegantly for a number of different client issues
or contexts. Or you may simply want a very thorough and deep understanding
of the mechanics of the Swish so that you can adapt it easily to any situation.
Whatever your reason, this book will provide the level of information you
really need.
2) You will begin to see the underlying functioning of the mind. You will
also discover how the NLP techniques underlying the Swish Pattern work
within the mind to create change. You will understand how submodalities
work and how to use them to both release negative emotions and build up
positive ones in their place. You will also understand how an emotion can be
destructive in one context but a strong resource in another. But perhaps the
greatest understanding that comes from studying the Swish is how self-
identity relates to personal change. At its core, the Swish is designed to install
a new self-identity in the client. Building this new self-identity on a deep,
unconscious level provides a new framework within which generative
changes develop. As NLP Master Trainer John Overdurf says, you never
know how far a change may go! This is particularly true of the Swish.
3) You will begin to extend your own coaching flexibility. You might use
the Swish in any number of contexts: NLP coaching, a hypnosis session,
business coaching, or simply working with a friend. Perhaps you are curious
about how to use the Swish Pattern in a conversational way, such as in a
business relationship where the Classical Swish may not be appropriate. Or, if
you are a classically trained hypnotist, you may be curious about how to
incorporate the Swish Pattern into deep trance work. If you are interested in
personal development, you may wish to know how to use the Swish Pattern
for yourself. This book provides detailed instructions for using the Swish in
any context. So, now that you are ready to begin, let’s start by putting the
Swish Pattern into context within the evolution of NLP.

What is NLP?
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is based upon the study of the brain
and body, and of how the wiring of each individual’s brain and nervous
system (neuro) and use of language (linguistic) shapes that individual’s
personal reality on a systematic basis (programming). By first understanding
and then systematically changing the way that you think about the world, you
can change the wiring of your brain. This process is called self-directed
neuroplasticity. NLP is a discipline that provides the specific tools you need
to rewire your brain and achieve your dreams and goals.
NLP provides a set of techniques based on modeling states of excellence. It is
used by coaches, therapists, and hypnotists to help others be the best that they
can be. It is also used by business people, athletes and artists. In fact, the
techniques of NLP are useful to anyone who recognizes that there are
limitations they want to overcome in order to attain excellence in their lives.
NLP was developed in the 1970s by Richard Bandler and John Grinder.
Bandler and Grinder noticed that some therapists excelled in helping their
clients to change. They concluded that if they could identify what made these
therapists great, they could build a “model” of techniques and communication
that others could adopt, and then change could happen more easily for
everyone. As a result, Bandler and Grinder “modeled” some of the best
therapists practicing at the time, people such as Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir and
Milton Erickson.
It was from these models that techniques like the Swish Pattern evolved.
Patterns such as the Swish are among the most well known aspects of NLP.
They are designed to use the natural software of the human brain to produce
optimal results and achieve change. But as much as the details of the
techniques are important, the spirit in which they are undertaken matters too.
A definition of NLP widely attributed to Richard Bandler is “an attitude of
wanton experimentation which leaves behind a trail of techniques.” If you
ever get the chance to watch Richard Bandler in action, you’ll understand
what he means by that! Bandler is a whirlwind of creative energy. He
becomes intensely curious about the people in front of him. He wants to know
how they do what they do, and how they construct their map of reality. His
coaching work is full of experimentation, both for himself and the client. He
is always asking questions: “What happens when you do…?”, “What happens
if…?” As far as Richard Bandler is concerned, the techniques of NLP are a
byproduct of the spirit of NLP. It is that wanton experimentation which
creates the client change; the technique is simply a record of what happened
during any particular session. We invite you to take the same attitude toward
learning the Swish Pattern (or re-experiencing it in a new way, if you already
know it). This means taking the technique out of the book and into your
practice. The Swish Pattern is only alive in the space between coach and
client, hypnotist and subject—not on the pages of this or any other book.

What is the Swish Pattern?

Put most simply, the Swish uses a change in one or more submodalities (the
qualities of a mental picture, such as size or location) to link two visual
representations, two pictures, together. The first picture is typically something
seen in the outside world and it is a trigger for unwanted behavior. The second
picture is imagined, and it represents the client at his or her best. We will
address how we construct these images later in the book. The Swish links the
two pictures together using a number of techniques: the first picture might get
smaller as the second gets larger, or the first picture moves away as the
second one moves closer. Again, we’ll explore this in more detail later on.
The Swish Pattern is often used to deal with habits and compulsions. For
example, if a person is a smoker, and wants to become a non-smoker, then the
Swish might be used to help that person quit. Crucially, it is the client’s
problem—the urge to smoke—that is used to create the solution. But the
Swish can also be used in a much more general way to install a new self-
image, a new sense of self, in the client. As such, it can be extremely
generative, meaning it can lead to positive changes in the client’s life beyond
merely stopping smoking.
The Swish installs the client’s new self-identity using visual representations
and submodalities. Visual representations are simply the pictures that we
make inside our own minds. For example, if I were to think of a horse, I
might see a picture of a cowboy on a horse, or a horse pulling a carriage, or a
horse in a field. But I will see some kind of picture of a horse.
The submodalities of the visual representation refer to the way in which I
hold this picture in my mind. For example, is the picture in color or black and
white? Is it close to me, or far away? Is it large or small? Submodalities are
used by the unconscious mind to code information about the meaning of the
picture, and changing submodalities can have a huge impact on how we feel
about the content of our internal visual representations. Images that are large,
close to us, and in color tend to have more emotional content than images that
are small, far away, and in black and white. The Swish takes advantage of
natural mental processes such as this.
We will be going through the Swish in great detail later in the book, but to
begin getting your mind in the right place, try this exercise:
Think of something that you would like to change in your life. It could be a
feeling, a behavior, or a situation. You might have something in mind already,
but if you don’t, allow the information to come forward. Consider where you
will be, physically, when this feeling, behavior, or situation next arises.
Picture that place and take your time to visually recreate it in your mind.
When you have identified that place, consider what you will be seeing
immediately before you behave in the old, unresourceful way. What is it that
you will be seeing in the outside world that will trigger your behavior?
Now, if you could be any way that you want to be, and if you could feel any
way you want to feel, how would that be? Would you feel confident? Would
you feel excited? Would you feel playful? And if you could picture yourself
feeling this way—confident, excited, playful, or however you’re feeling—
what does this new you look like?
Now the pattern is in place. You have the trigger that you see immediately
before you engage in the new behavior, and you have this new image of
yourself.
It’s that simple. It’s a pattern, and with a little practice you will be able to
“swish” between the two. A little repetition is key, so let me say that again:
you have a trigger that you see immediately before you engage in the new
behavior, and you have the new self-image.
One more time: you have the trigger… and a new self-image.
The trigger… new self-image.
Trigger… self-image.
This is the Swish in microcosm! Don’t worry if it seems confusing at first; we
will explain each step in detail in the following chapters.

Overview of this Book
The first few chapters of the book introduce you to the Swish. These chapters
will help get your unconscious mind comfortable with learning the pattern
before your conscious mind begins the actual learning.
Then we will look at the Swish in detail. We will break it down, step by step,
then reassemble the whole thing into the wonderful pattern that is the Swish.
After that, we will look at some variations on the Swish such as the Hypnotic
Swish, the Conversational Swish, and the Swish for Self-Coaching. We will
also look at the New Behavior Generator Swish, the Swish as a recovery
strategy, and for those who are feeling more active, the Physical Swish.
Finally, we will look at how the Swish can be used to help with specific
problems such as smoking, nail biting, and dealing with difficult people.
Feel free to read the book from cover to cover or to dip in to it for specific
techniques. For those unfamiliar with the Swish, or those who need to brush
up their knowledge, we strongly suggest you read section two to give you a
firm foundation in using this amazing pattern.

The History of the Swish Pattern
After reading the title of this chapter, you’re probably asking yourself: “Why
are they doing this? Why do I want to know the history of the Swish Pattern?”
Those are really good questions to ask—it’s good to be curious about why
you’re doing something. We encourage you to maintain that state of curiosity
as you read the rest of the book. And here’s why the history is important: the
Swish is a perfect microcosm of NLP. It incorporates the fundamental
building blocks of our mental world: internal representations and
submodalities. It’s a pattern that leads toward potentially massive generative
change.
If you understand the Swish within the historical context of NLP, then you
will understand the two main schools of NLP: those following the route of
Richard Bandler and those following the route of John Grinder, and you will
understand how every other school of NLP fits within the NLP landscape. In
doing so you will begin to understand how the Swish can be used to both
rewire the brain at the most fundamental level of sensory experience and
install a new sense of self at the highest level of cognitive abstraction.

The Two Geniuses of NLP

In the early 1970s, Richard Bandler and John Grinder jointly developed the
field of NLP. Bandler was a student at the University of Santa Cruz and John
Grinder was a professor. Bandler had a genius for being able to instinctively
model those around him, including the therapists he delighted in working
with. Grinder was a trained linguist and was able to dissect what Bandler was
doing and translate it into an explicit model that others could follow. Bandler
and Grinder eventually disagreed about the direction that NLP should take,
and each of them began to develop his own version or school of NLP to
rectify what he saw as the shortcomings of the original system.
Grinder essentially worships the unconscious genius. He believes that each of
us contains a unique personal genius and the aim of change work is to create a
context in which this genius can arise. You can see this approach if you go to
his trainings or study New Code NLP, which he developed.
Richard Bandler believes that experience is something that is constructed
from smaller parts, and that the most effective way to create change is to first
break the experience down into those parts, then change the parts—or change
the sequence in which the parts arise. By doing so, you reconstruct the client’s
map and change the behavior. Bandler calls this Design Human Engineering
(DHE); he sees himself, perhaps, as an engineer who is building a person
from parts.
It’s very important to understand these two approaches (in NLP in particular,
and in change work in general) because they both work, and the truth has to
include both of them.

Grinder and New Code NLP

Our interpretation of Grinder’s approach is that he first creates the context for
self-growth and change, then triggers the desire for such change and allows
the change to happen. He discusses his principles at some length in his 1987
book, Turtles All The Way Down, written with Judith DeLozier. In this book,
Grinder made the distinction between first-attention and second-attention,
concepts that he borrowed from Peruvian-American author and anthropologist
Carlos Castaneda. Castaneda describes first attention as “…animal awareness,
which … takes care of the day-to-day world in all its innumerable aspects. In
other words, everything that one can think about is part of the first attention.”
Grinder talks about first attention in terms of internal representations and
submodalities (internal pictures, sounds, and feelings, plus the qualities of
those images, sounds, and feelings). Castaneda goes on to describe second
attention as “…a more complex and specialized state of the global awareness
[which has to do] with the unknown.” Castaneda calls first-attention “right-
side awareness” and second-attention “left-side awareness.” In other words—
and grossly simplifying—first-attention is the conscious mind and second-
attention is the unconscious mind. As soon as we try to make something
conscious, it becomes merely first-attention. According to Grinder, personal
excellence lies in the field of not knowing. The more you try to “know,” the
further you move from your personal genius.

Bandler and Design Human Engineering

Our interpretation of Bandler’s approach is that he uses the detail and
sequencing of sensory experience, including internal senses such as the
pictures you make in your mind, to construct a better reality. He has moved
from traditional NLP to the idea of Design Human Engineering, although
most DHE tools are similar to those that are used in traditional NLP.
The principal differences between Bandler and Grinder appear to be that
Grinder, in New Code NLP, uses NLP for generative change (rather than
simply to fix problems), and that Bandler, in Design Human Engineering,
disavows eliciting information sequentially and embraces accessing it
simultaneously. (By the way, both Ericksonian hypnosis and neuroscience
view simultaneous processing as being a right brain and therefore
unconscious mind activity.) In the end, Bandler and Grinder arrive in much
the same place although they take very different routes.

The Swish Pattern in a Historical Context

So how does the Swish fit into this? As far as we know, the Swish is first
discussed in Bandler’s book, Using Your Brain for a Change. This book was
published in 1985, ten years after Bandler and Grinder wrote their first book
together, The Structure of Magic. Using Your Brain for a Change was the first
book that discussed submodalities in detail and how the submodalities could
be used in change work. The Swish is specifically described as a
“submodality pattern” in that book.
So the Swish was perhaps designed by Bandler (rather than Grinder), and
when you read about it in Using Your Brain for a Change, you very much get
the idea that it is all about creating specific changes using submodalities and
nothing else. Using the Swish to create generative change—placing the client
into a context that would allow for bigger, more all-encompassing change—is
not discussed in detail. Although Bandler does say at the end of the chapter
that “…the swish pattern… sets the person in a direction that is generative
and evolutionary,” when he discusses the Swish Pattern in detail he tells the
story of a woman who complained of smoking; he very explicitly describes
how he creates the picture for the new self-image as a person “politely
enjoying other people smoking” because he “didn’t want her to see herself
sneering at smokers and making life miserable for them.” In other words, he
was very focused on making the specific change that she had asked for in a
way that was pleasing to Bandler, rather than a change that would necessarily
lead to further positive changes in her life.
As we see it, and as Bandler hints, the Swish Pattern is much more than
remedial change work. The Swish is potentially extremely generative in
nature and is ideal for creating a context in which personal genius—as
described by Grinder—can arise. It specifically creates a new self-image and
gives the client the opportunity to build any resources she wishes, including
personal genius, into this self-image. Using the Swish in this way utilizes the
best of both Bandler and Grinder. By taking the time to use submodalities and
allow the client to build up a new self-image that includes all the aspects of
personal genius that they would like to express in their life, the Swish not
only creates laser-focused, specific change, but also offers the opportunity to
take the change to a generative level.
As you are reading this book and imagining using the Swish with your
clients, colleagues, and friends, paint a broad picture of how the client will be
at the end of the session. Do not limit yourself to only changing habits; you
can also open up the client’s unconscious mind to all of the possibility and
potential that they have as a human being. And when you are working with
clients, do not allow them to settle for results that are just “okay.” The real
pleasure of working with the Swish Pattern is in sharing your clients’ joy as
they build amazing and exciting new self-images, trusting that those self-
images will create the contexts in which they can experience amazing changes
in their lives.
When you imagine looking at a client’s face and posture as he or she
describes a problem, imagine being the sort of coach who can not only lead
them to the solution they seek, but can also show them everything that they
can be. When you see yourself as that sort of coach, your enthusiasm and fun
will communicate itself to your client and you will both find yourselves
moving into a bright future.
To receive your free Swish Videos please
visit: http://www.bestnlpnewyork.com/Swish_Video.html
A Brief Example of the Swish
Pattern

Before describing the Classical Swish Pattern in detail, we will provide you
with a client example as an overview of how it might be used in practice. By
Classical Swish we mean the Swish Pattern as taught in most mainstream
NLP courses, as opposed to the alternative approaches we describe later in the
book. As you listen to the dialogue between Janet and her coach unfolding,
you can begin to imagine how effective you will be when you have the Swish
Pattern embedded deeply inside your own abilities as a coach.
Janet is a smoker who wishes to become a non-smoker. The transcript below
is only a part of the change work that was done with Janet.
Coach: So, Janet, you want to become a non-smoker?
Janet: Yes.
Coach: And why do you want to make this change?
Janet: It just annoys me that cigarettes have this hold over me. I have control
over other areas of my life, but the cigarettes seem to have control over me. I
don’t like it.
Janet has just told us that smoking cigarettes is not aligned with her self-
image. She is annoyed that cigarettes have a hold over her. This annoyance
reflects the fact that she sees herself as somebody who is in control of her
own life, but in the area of smoking she is clearly not in control. This context
is absolutely ideal for the Swish because running the pattern will give her a
very clear new self-image to which she will be drawn. The energy of this self-
image will provide her with the energy to become a non-smoker.
Coach: I wouldn’t like that either. I’m sure you want to feel in control of
what you put inside yourself. I see that you brought your cigarettes along –
what brand are they?
Janet: Marlboro.
Coach: Is that the brand that you normally smoke?
Janet: Yes.
For a smoker, the packet of cigarettes often provides a strong visual cue that
precedes the behavior. The smoker sees the pack of cigarettes and it triggers
the desire to smoke; the cigarette pack becomes an “anchor” for the smoking
behavior. Smokers become very attached to their specific brand of cigarettes,
and to the packaging of that brand. We will be using this visual representation
of the pack of cigarettes later in the pattern.
Coach: Can you tell me about the times and places when you typically smoke
over the course of the day?
Janet: Yes, I smoke first thing in the morning with my first coffee, then at
work when I get bored. I have a cigarette at lunchtime, and usually after
dinner.
Coach: So let’s take one of those occasions. Let’s take the cigarette that you
have in the morning. Where are you when you smoke that?
Janet: On my front porch.
We are finding out when she smokes, the sorts of things that trigger her to
smoke, where she is when she smokes, and how she feels when she has
smoked. All this information may or may not be used in the Swish Pattern
itself but will be useful in helping her to kick the habit.
For smokers, each cigarette can represent a separate problem. The cigarettes
they smoke when they are stressed or bored at work may be very different
from the cigarettes they smoke when they are with their friends in the
evening. The cigarette in the daytime is triggered by stress or boredom and is
smoked in the context of the office. It leads, perhaps, to a sense of focus, and
allows the smoker to go back to her daily routine. The cigarette smoked in the
evening perhaps is triggered by a sense of camaraderie with friends and
allows her to relax. The hypnotist or coach should be aware of these
differences and ensure that each and every cigarette that the client smokes is
dealt with before considering the change complete. Here, the coach selects
one of the cigarettes, the cigarette smoked in the morning, to begin work.
Later in the session, the rest of the occasions on which Janet smokes will be
dealt with. This transcript only deals with the first of the cigarettes. You will
notice that there’s a lot of repetition in this transcript. That’s intentional. The
repetition of key words by the coach keeps the ideas and images present in the
region of Janet’s brain called the “working memory” (the area you use when
you “play a movie” in your mind). The coach needs to do this for long enough
for the change to become hard-wired into the neurons of her brain.
Coach: So you’re on your front porch. Why do you smoke then?
Janet: I guess it wakes me up.
Coach: And when you’re on your front porch, what do you see when you’re
on your front porch?
Janet: I can see the streets, the tree in my front yard and my neighbor’s car.
Coach: And as you are on your front porch what do you see immediately
before you smoke?
Janet: I can see my cigarettes, the pack.
Coach: So you see the pack of cigarettes and you feel it is time to smoke?
Here we are gathering some more information about Janet’s smoking,
including the physical context in which she smokes (the environment, and
what she sees there), and the purpose for smoking (which is to wake her up).
Coach: So what I would like you to do is pick up your packet of cigarettes.
As you look at the packet of cigarettes, what do you notice about the pack?
What catches your attention about the design?
Janet: I notice the gold foil on the front of the pack.
Coach: You notice the gold foil on the pack. And as you look at the gold foil
on the pack I would like you to pick someplace within that gold foil on the
pack.
Janet: The lion and the unicorn. They have a shield between them. That’s
what catches my attention.
Coach: Okay, so put the pack down for now.
The client has now got a visual representation of the pack of cigarettes, and
also a particular visual point within the pack of cigarettes. This visual
representation, the gold lion and unicorn around the shield, will be used as the
“trigger picture” in the first half of the Swish Pattern. The trigger picture is
what the client sees right before she engages in the unwanted behavior. We
will discuss the trigger picture in detail in Chapter Five.
Coach: Now tell me again, why do you want to quit?
Janet: Because I feel awful. I just want to be free of the cigarettes.
Coach: And when you are living free of the cigarettes, living free as a healthy
non-smoker, how will you be then as a person?
Janet: I won’t have to hide my cigarettes! I’ll be able to breathe easily.
Actually, I’ve been thinking of running a marathon, so I guess I’ll be a
marathon runner!
Coach: You’ll be free and you’ll be able to breathe easily. You’ll be running a
marathon! So, Janet, what I would like you to do now is to make the picture
of yourself being free. If you could see yourself living free, and breathing
easily as a healthy non-smoker what would that be like?
Janet: I see myself running in a marathon!
Coach: You see yourself running in a marathon! And when you see yourself
running in a marathon, when you look at yourself, what lets you know that
you’re free and that you can breathe easily as a healthy non-smoker?
Janet: I look healthy and strong and I’m smiling!
Coach: That’s right, you look healthy and strong and you’re smiling. You’re
free and you can breathe easily as a healthy non-smoker. And this question
may sound a little silly, but when you see yourself healthy and strong,
smiling, are you awake? By this I mean are you completely, tinglingly, alert
and awake?
Janet: Yes!
This final question was designed to make sure that we captured the intention
of the first cigarette of the day that Janet gave us earlier on, namely to wake
up. We have now constructed a new image, called the outcome image. This
outcome image is a picture of Janet herself. This is very important: the first
picture is what she sees out of her own eyes immediately before she engages
in the behavior. The second image is a picture of her as she wants to be. In
NLP terms we say the first picture is associated and the second picture is
dissociated.
Coach: So let’s take that picture of you in the marathon, looking healthy and
strong and smiling. I’d like you to take that picture and make it very small
and embed it in the middle of the shield between the lion and the unicorn on
the pack of cigarettes, right there. Can you do that for me?
Janet: Yes.
Coach: So in a moment—but not yet—I’m going to ask you to do the
following: I’m going to ask you to look at the cigarettes and notice the gold
foil and the lion and the unicorn and the shield between them. Notice that in
the center of the shield is that small picture of you looking healthy and strong
and smiling, running in the marathon. And when I tell you—but not before—I
want you to imagine that picture of you, healthy and strong and smiling,
running in the marathon, getting very big, life-size, bigger than life, so it
totally covers the pack of cigarettes. Got it? The picture of you, healthy and
strong and smiling, running in the marathon, just bursting out of the shield.
Janet nods. She is clearly following along. Explaining the technique in such
detail while instructing her not to actually do it allows her unconscious mind
to run the pattern before her conscious mind does. We are also chaining the
two pictures together so that when she sees the pack of cigarettes in real life,
her mind will automatically bring up the picture of the new person she wants
to be. It is this chaining of representations that makes the Swish Pattern so
powerful.
Coach: So see the pack of cigarettes. Now see that tiny picture of yourself
right in the middle of the shield. Now the picture of you, strong and healthy
and smiling, bursts out and appears right there in front of you, life-sized.
Janet’s head moves back as the new picture leaps into place. This shows that
she is following along with the pattern inside her mind. We are now going to
repeat the pattern a few times in order to condition it but before we run the
Swish again, it is important that we blank the screen. This is because we want
to run the pattern from “seeing the packet of cigarettes” to “seeing the picture
of herself as she wants to be” but not the other way around. We do not want
her to think about the way she wants to be and then see a pack of cigarettes!
Coach: Okay, we are going to do that again. First, blank the screen. Now see
that pack of cigarettes, see the lion and the unicorn with a shield in between
them, and see that tiny picture of you, healthy and strong and smiling, in the
center of the shield. Now—1, 2, 3—the picture of you, strong and healthy and
smiling, bursting out. Now blank the screen. One more time—1, 2, 3—the
picture of you, strong and healthy and smiling, right there in front of you.
Using the count of 1-2-3 allows the client time to mentally prepare by setting
up the pictures in her mind, so the Swish happens easily. This is repeated two
more times. The client is then instructed to run the pattern inside her own
mind. We are watching to see her unconscious responses as she does this.
Coach: How was that?
Janet: That was amazing!
Coach: Pick up your pack of cigarettes. Take one out.
The client picks up the pack and opens it. Her hand reaches for a cigarette and
then she stops.
Janet: I feel my … my feelings for them have changed, I don’t…
Almost all our smoking clients leave the office as non-smokers after one
session, as did Janet. The Swish is one of several NLP patterns that we use,
along with trance work, to help our clients to change. (Our complete stop-
smoking protocol is laid out in our eBook Quit: The Hypnotist’s Handbook to
Running Effective Stop Smoking Sessions, available at amazon.com.)
So, to summarize: the basic Swish Pattern simply involves asking the client to
create two pictures. One picture will be what they actually see immediately
before they engage in the behavior that they want to change. This is called the
trigger picture (the pack of cigarettes in the example above). The second
picture is the client as she wants to be. In the example above, it’s the client,
looking healthy and strong and smiling, in the marathon. We want this picture
to have details that let her know that she has changed. In this case, the client
in the picture is able to breathe easily, looks healthy and strong, and is
smiling. The picture must be attractive to the client. Once we have these two
images we can simply exchange the first picture for the second one.
Don’t worry if you didn’t get all of the pattern—we will be exploring it in
more depth as we continue on in this book. For now just be aware that we are
constructing a trigger picture and an outcome picture, and we are seeing them
in sequence: trigger > outcome. If you understand this, you have the basic
outline of the Swish. Furthermore, by reading the example above, your
unconscious mind has already begun to assimilate and internalize the pattern.
This will pave the way for your conscious understanding as you move
through the book.
Now that we have laid the foundations of the Swish—but before we get into
the nitty-gritty—we’re going to explain how the Swish works on a
neurological level. Understanding the effect that the Swish has on the
neurological structure of the brain will enable you to understand why we do
the steps in the order that we do them.
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How the Swish Pattern Works
The question we are exploring in this chapter is: how does the Swish Pattern
change the wiring of our brain to give us new and better choices of feeling
and behavior?
The human brain is essentially a machine for “chaining representations.” Our
brains work by wiring one neuron or network of neurons to another. When the
first neuron fires it sends a signal to the second neuron that tells it to fire (or
sometimes not to fire). As neurons fire together, they begin to wire together,
and by doing so they create the great levels of complexity and abstraction of
the human mind. However, it all begins with one neuron firing and causing a
second neuron to fire: links in a chain. Learning is the process whereby one
set of neurons creates links to another set of neurons.
The Swish Pattern builds up a specific set of links between two specific sets
of neurons. These new links will be automatically triggered when the client
sees an object in the outside world. The client will then have a new internal
experience that provides new choices. As we wire in this new response, the
old response will cease and the old neural pathways, which are no longer
useful, stop firing. Think about the new neural pathways that are being built
as you read through the Swish Pattern, and follow along with the examples.
Let’s try a little experiment. Think of something that you like to eat, and
notice how you feel. Chances are you’ll start to feel pretty good, and maybe
pretty hungry. Now slow the process down. Imagine the food that you like to
eat and notice what happens inside your mind. If necessary, slow it down even
more. If you slow the experience down sufficiently, you’ll find that you’re
making a picture or a movie inside your mind, some kind of image of you
eating the food, perhaps. Perhaps you even begin to feel the texture of the
food in your mouth, or its taste or smell. This is how you make yourself feel
good.
Each step in this process becomes a link in a chain: see food > make picture
of me eating food > feel hungry/good > eat food > feel full/good.
Other times you may overeat, so you see food, make a picture of yourself
eating the food, feel good, actually eat the food, and then…feel bad. This is
an unsuccessful strategy but it happens because you don’t notice the final link
in the chain (the feeling bad). Think about the last time you overate or
overindulged in some other way. Go back to the point in time immediately
before you took the first mouthful. What is going on inside your mind? Are
you seeing the food, making a picture or movie of you eating food, and
getting that good feeling? Now try including the final links of the chain: see
the food > make a picture inside of you eating the food > feel good > make a
picture of yourself stuffed and bloated > feel bad. Now you’ll probably be
less likely to overeat!
The more times we do something, the stronger the corresponding neural
pathways become. At some point they become habitual. The representations
(pictures, feelings, and self-talk) are chained together so strongly that the
behavior becomes automatic. The representations are still there, but they have
dropped out of our conscious awareness. Think about brushing your teeth:
There are several steps to the process, but your brain has made them
automatic. Once you pick up the toothbrush, all the rest is done on autopilot.
We do the behavior without really being aware that we are doing it.
The brain does this on purpose because automatic processes are very efficient,
and the brain loves efficiency. It takes much less energy for our brains to do
things on autopilot than to have to think about them. However, when our
brain has constructed a bad strategy, and that strategy has gone onto autopilot,
then we can be in a lot of trouble. Bad strategies running on autopilot are the
reasons for most of our problems.
The Swish Pattern takes advantage of the brain’s tendency to automate
strategies. The Swish uses a conscious process to chain two visual
representations together, but the way we do the Swish involves the
unconscious mind and therefore allows the process to become coded into your
unconscious much more quickly than by going through a completely
conscious or completely unconscious learning process. This is what makes
patterns like the Swish different from cognitive and behavioral therapy, or
CBT. In CBT, new thinking and behavioral chains are built, but there is less
emphasis on bringing the unconscious mind into the process and it can
therefore take a little time. Remember our discussion of Bandler and Grinder
in Chapter Three? Grinder’s criticism of classic NLP revolves around the fact
that it was “first attention” (conscious mind), and failed to include “second
attention” (unconscious mind). The Swish uses both. The client can follow
along consciously while the unconscious mind is involved in building the
outcome picture. Using submodalities to switch from one picture to another
favors the unconscious mind, too. This is what makes the Swish effective.
Used properly, it has elements of both first attention and second attention, of
conscious processing and unconscious processing.
Let’s consider the example we looked at earlier, the Swish used to stop
smoking, and break it down in light of our new understanding. The first
picture the client sees is the packet of cigarettes. With her old, automatic
strategy, she might unconsciously imagine herself smoking one, and then
begin to feel good. Then she actually smokes one. Then she may feel bad. She
may even—eventually—die of something unpleasant, but she almost certainly
did not picture those possibilities before she smoked. If she did, she would
probably not smoke.
In the Swish, we are taking the first picture—what she sees outside of herself
before she smokes—and we are attaching a new link in the chain. We are
creating a new neural pathway from that picture. So the first link in the new
chain is the same as the first link in the old, problem chain: the pack of
cigarettes. But the second link of the new chain is now the outcome picture.
We ask the client to think of how she wants to be: a healthy non-smoker, free
of cigarettes. She creates another picture in her mind. We want her to see
herself in the picture because we want her to think, “I want to be that person!”
If she does not see herself in the picture, she may not have the desire to
become that person because she might feel like she already is her (even if she
isn’t yet). Without the emotional desire to become that person, there is no
second attention, no unconscious involvement in the Swish, which may lead
to it being ineffective.
So now we have the two pictures. We need to “chain” them together. We do
this by seeing the first picture and then replacing it with the second picture,
using a Swish. The manner of replacement is important, and we will talk
about this later. We condition this chain using repetition, as well as the
emotional involvement we have already mentioned. And, of course, we blank
the screen in between each repetition, so that the chain only runs in one
direction: picture one > picture two. It does not run: picture two > picture one.
Neurological conditioning chains the images together and begins to create the
effect that we want. The brain works through associations: we think of one
thing and it makes us think of another thing, and that makes us feel a certain
way. The client thought of her pack of cigarettes and her desire to smoke.
Now she thinks of her pack of cigarettes, sees herself as she wants to be, and
has the feeling of desire to be that new person, the person who is free from
cigarettes. We have inserted an extra link in her chain of thought which is
more powerful than the original desire.
Think of the Swish as a way to wire a new neural pathway from an image that
used to trigger a problem to the new person that the client wants to be. This
makes the steps of the Swish easy to understand. We suggest that you keep
this metaphor of the new neural pathway in mind as you read this book.
Reading the book is itself a process, and therefore it creates new neural
pathways. If you become confused at any point you are in exactly the right
place because confusion always precedes understanding. So if you feel
confusion, simply picture all the new neural pathways that are being
constructed in your mind.
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The Swish Pattern in Detail
In this section, we will explain the steps of the Swish Pattern in detail; we’ll
also present some of the choices you have as a coach or practitioner. Finally,
we will explore some of the things you need to watch out for when using the
Swish Pattern with your clients.
Let’s run through the basic steps one more time:
1) Get the context for the work by asking your client to think of a
specific time and place where they engage in the problem behavior.
2) Elicit picture one, also known as the trigger picture, and the emotion
connected with the image, by asking them what they see immediately
before they engage in the problem behavior. They should not see
themselves in this picture; rather, they should see what they see when
they look out of their own eyes. In NLP terms, they should be
“associated” into the picture.
3) Put the picture to one side for now. Give the client space to
disengage from the problematic neural chain by distracting them in
some way. This is called a “break state.” This allows them a chance to
begin building the new resourceful picture. It is much easier to go from
a neutral to a positive state than it is to go from a negative to a positive
state.
4) Elicit the outcome picture (picture two) by asking the client how they
will be different—how they will be as a person—when they have made
this change. Ask them to make a picture of themselves as they will be in
the future. Make this picture attractive—super attractive! They should
see themselves in this picture, so they are not looking out of their own
eyes, but looking at themselves, as if looking at a photograph or a frame
from a movie. Seeing yourself in a picture or movie in your mind is
called being “dissociated” in NLP.
5) Break state again by distracting them, perhaps asking them an
irrelevant question such as “do you smell popcorn,” or “what is your
phone number backwards.”
6) Do the Swish. Ask them to think of picture one, and then replace it
with picture two. This is the Swish. The Swish should be an active
process that involves the unconscious mind. We will discuss how to
move one image and replace it with another in detail in Chapter Eight.
 7) Repeat to condition. By repeating the Swish Pattern a number of
times we strengthen (“condition”) the new neural pathways that are
being built in the brain.
8) Test.

Coaching Context and Pre-Frames

Before you can begin the Swish Pattern, or even decide what type of Swish
Pattern to use, you must first consider the context. You also need to “set up”
the work you are about to do with the client so that you can be sure that the
process will be successful and run smoothly. This set up is known as
“framing” in NLP, and any framing that you do before the work starts is
called a “pre-frame.”
Any piece of coaching, or “change work” as it is called, takes place within a
certain context. These could include:
1) Traditional NLP coaching.
2) Formal hypnosis.
3) Business coaching.
4) Informal coaching (for example, with a friend).
Of course, there are as many contexts for change work as there are people on
the planet, but the above list includes the most common types of coaching.
Once you have determined the context in which the coaching is to take place,
you can decide what type of Swish Pattern to use. If you are doing NLP
coaching, for example, you can use the classic NLP Swish Pattern. If you are
doing more formal hypnosis, then the Swish Pattern may be more hypnotic. If
you are doing business coaching, then the pattern may be more
conversational. If you are simply speaking with a friend, then the pattern may
be more conversational still. We will go through various versions of the Swish
Pattern later in the book.

Is the Swish the Right Pattern to Use?

The Swish Pattern is particularly useful when a client engages in a problem
behavior that is out of alignment with his or her self-image. In other words,
the client does not see herself as the sort of person who engages in that
behavior.
The Swish Pattern is also a fantastic general-purpose pattern because it is
very generative. By “generative” we mean that it generates change at a high,
abstract level: the level of identity, the level that is all about knowing who you
truly are and who you wish to be. Ultimately, the Swish Pattern is not simply
about changing a behavior; it is about moving the client toward a new, more
positive and more resourceful self-image. Running the Swish Pattern with a
client may result in changes that spread throughout her life, not simply in the
behavior that she wanted to change. You, too, can use the Swish Pattern with
your clients to create powerful generative change.
So now you understand the context of the coaching work, you have decided
to use the Swish Pattern, and you have decided what sort of Swish Pattern to
use: Classic, Hypnotic, or Conversational. You are almost ready.
Before you begin the pattern itself, you should set an appropriate context with
the client. At a minimum, this will involve gaining rapport and compliance
(which we will discuss further, below) and setting the expectation that change
will occur. Depending upon the context in which the coaching takes place, it
may also include an explanation of the coaching process, or of hypnosis. Let’s
look at each of these steps in more detail.
1) Obtaining compliance from the client. This will generally involve
building rapport (a relationship of trust between coach and client) and
then testing it by asking the clients to complete certain tasks. For
example, we can ask the client to sit in a certain chair, put their feet flat
on the floor, and so on.
2) Setting the expectation that the Swish Pattern will result in change.
Depending upon the client, this may involve explaining how the brain
chains images together, as described above, and that we will be using
this natural process to help the client get what they want out of the
session. In addition, it may involve telling them the story about another
client who used the Swish to achieve some amazing change.
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Finding the Problem Context and
the Trigger
The first step in the Swish Pattern is to find the trigger picture.
The trigger picture is typically what the client sees in the outside world
immediately before they have the problem. Examples might be a pack of
cigarettes (if they are a smoker), a small imperfection on the fingernail (if
they are a nail-biter), or some junk food (if they have unhealthy eating habits).
In order to find the trigger picture, you first have to find the context in which
the problem arises. Bear in mind that there may be several such contexts for
any one problem, and that you may need to run the Swish Pattern separately
on each of these contexts, even if the outcome picture is the same (although,
at some point, the change will generalize across all contexts).

Finding the Context of the Problem Behavior

All behaviors take place in a specific context. This context may be a place, an
activity, a social setting, another person, or even another behavior. It may be a
group of people with whom the behavior takes place. It is important, for all
sorts of reasons, for us to understand the context of a behavior. When it comes
to the Swish Pattern, the context is important because you need to be able to
associate the client into their behavior. If you do not do this successfully, you
may not get the correct trigger picture. And how do you know if you have
been successful? Look at the client’s reaction when they see the trigger. Their
posture may change, their facial expression may change, and their breathing
may change.
It will be more difficult to test your work if you do not have the correct
context. You will also not be able to do a “future pace” (a mental rehearsal of
the next time the client will be in the situation where they want the new
behavior) if you do not have the correct context. So getting that context, with
as much specificity as possible, is really important.
Let’s revisit, once more, the example of the client who came in to stop
smoking. When specifically does the client smoke a cigarette? The more
precisely you can answer this, the easier the change work becomes. It is much
easier to run the Swish on a specific cigarette that the client smoked at 8:30 in
the morning on Thursday than on every cigarette she has ever smoked in her
life. Some people think that it would be easier to take all the client’s
experiences and change them all at the same time. After all, if you only
change the client’s experience of the cigarette that they smoked on Thursday
at 8:30, then won’t every other cigarette they smoked still be a problem for
them? The answer is no. As you begin to repeat the pattern on various
experiences and various cigarettes, the client’s unconscious mind begins to
generalize the change. The human brain likes to categorize things by grouping
similar experiences together. So, for example, the brain may link all the
cigarettes that are smoked first thing in the morning as one set of experiences,
and the cigarettes that are smoked after dinner as a totally different set of
experiences. Or the client’s unconscious may view the evening cigarette as
being the same as the cigarettes she smoked in the morning. In any case, the
mind will categorize the experiences into groups, and you must deal with each
group in order to create lasting change.
So how do you associate the client into a particular experience? It’s simple:
First, you ask them for a specific time and place in which they engaged in the
behavior. You may have a client who says, “I do this all the time,” or, “It
happens all the time.” If they say this, you can respond: “In that case, it
should be easy to pick one of those times.” It is worth repeating that the more
specifically you elicit the time and the place in which the event took place, the
easier the change work will be. If your client gives you a list of times and
places, (as in the cigarette example), make a note of them all. You may have
to visit each and every one of those contexts to make sure that your change
work has generalized.
Once the client has chosen a specific event at a specific time and place, then
you can begin to associate them. You can say: “So it happened on Thursday.
Where are you?” Note that shift into the present tense—“Where are you?”—
even though you are talking about events that took place in the past. Using the
present tense will take the client back to that time and place and reassociate
them. It will become the present, the “now.” Next, you ask them about their
sensory experience: “What are you seeing? What are you hearing? What are
you feeling?” Notice again that you do not ask them what they saw; you ask
them what they are seeing, for the same reasons: because it helps associate
them into the experience. This associated context forms the foundation within
which the Swish will take place.

Finding the Trigger Picture
Once you have identified the context, you can begin to search for the trigger
picture. This is what the client sees in the outside world immediately before
he or she engages in the problem behavior. In the example above, it is the
pack of cigarettes. With a nail-biter, it might be a small nick or imperfection
in the nail that “needs” to be bitten off. In order to do the Swish accurately
and effectively, you need the correct trigger picture.
Sometimes the trigger picture will not be easy to find. For example, a client
might seek help because he habitually gets angry with his spouse, but not all
the time. So it is not his spouse who triggers the anger; it is something more
specific. It might be something that his spouse says, or a facial expression that
his spouse has, or something similar. If you do not use the correct picture,
then you will not be attaching the outcome picture to the correct trigger. You
might not be lighting up the correct neural network, and the change work
might not be so effective.
So how do you make sure that you have enough information about the trigger
picture to allow you to do the Swish Pattern? You should ask for some
specific, small detail. When you have that, then you will know that the client
is paying attention to the trigger. For example, for the client who gets angry
with his spouse, let’s say he tells you that it happened on Monday, in the
evening, in the kitchen. You begin to associate him into the event and run him
through the experience based upon what he tells you—not your own mind
reading. You repeat back the information he gives you and watch for changes
in his body language and facial expression: “So it’s Monday evening; you’re
in the kitchen; your wife walks in, and she asks you how your day has been.
You look at her, and you see that expression on her face: You see her lips are
turned down…” As you say this, the client’s posture and facial expression
begin to show signs of anger. So, in this case, the trigger picture is clearly his
wife with her lips turned down.
There are two keys to finding the trigger picture. The first is patience and
persistence. You need to keep asking questions, and make sure the client is
associated into the experience, in a specific context, until you come to the
moment when the client loses conscious control. For example, the client’s
conscious mind is telling her not to smoke, but she unconsciously reaches for
cigarettes anyway. If you miss the moment, or if you are not sure what that
moment is, you can always go back to the beginning and walk them through
the experience again.
The second key to finding the correct trigger is noticing when the client
changes his or her state. At the moment the client sees the trigger picture, an
automatic and unconscious process begins to run. As this process runs
unconsciously, her internal state will change. This change might be reflected
in her posture, breathing, skin color, voice tone, facial expression, or in other
physical changes. In NLP we call these signs BMIRs—Behavioral
Manifestations of Internal Representations.
The trigger causes the client to change their state. The combination of the
trigger and the state it generates is called a “synesthesia,” or a visual-
kinesthetic synesthesia (because the visual picture creates a kinesthetic
feeling), or simply a V-K synesthesia for short. What the client sees
immediately before the synesthesia is the trigger picture. It is the trigger in the
outside world that causes them to lose conscious control and then engage in
the unwanted behavior. So the form of the synesthesia for an unwanted habit
is “see the trigger” > “feel the desire.” In the case of a smoker, the synesthesia
might be “see the pack of cigarettes” > “want to smoke.”
In the case of a smoker or a nail-biter, finding the synesthesia may be
relatively easy. For example, in the case of the smoker, you may present them
with their pack of cigarettes and watch their reaction. If they look like they
want to immediately reach forward and take one, then you have found at least
one of their triggers. Similarly, if a nail-biter looks down at an imperfection
on their nail and looks like they want to bite it, you probably found their
trigger. Of course, there can be wide variety in triggers. A smoker may only
smoke in a certain context, such as at work. If he sees the pack of cigarettes at
any other time in the day, he does not want to smoke. Therefore there is
something in the work environment that creates the desire to smoke; it’s not
just the pack of cigarettes by itself. In this case, if you simply did the Swish
on the pack of cigarettes, then you would not have addressed the underlying
cause of smoking, something that stresses him at work: perhaps a certain look
on his boss’s face, or seeing an email from a certain person.
This subtle point is very important for properly understanding and utilizing
the Swish. In the example of the smoker, he is smoking at work because he is
stressed. His boss told him off, and as soon as he got back to his desk he
picked up his cigarettes and went outside to smoke. What is the trigger here?
You could, of course, say that the trigger is the pack of cigarettes. This is what
he sees immediately before he smokes, and when he decides he wants to
smoke he probably pictures the pack of cigarettes or something similar.
However, there is another synesthesia at work. This is the moment in time
where he sees or hears his boss and feels stressed. So there are two very
different synesthesias, each with different triggers and different resulting
feelings. The first is “see boss” > “feel stress,”, and the second is “see pack of
cigarettes” > “feel desire.” Which synesthesia should you work on? The
answer is that you could work on either, and you should work with both. If
you were able to remove all sources of stress from the client’s life, then he
may no longer smoke. If you remove the desire to smoke from the pack of
cigarettes, he may continue to feel stressed but find some other way of
dealing with it. So the better answer is to deal with both synesthesias. You can
do a Swish on the pack of cigarettes and another Swish on his boss’s face.
(We discuss a Swish specifically designed to deal with difficult people later in
the book.)
In summary, there may be several triggers for any issue. The coach should
deal with as many of these as necessary to fully generalize the change work.
If some important trigger is missed, then the problem may recur in that
context.

Summary
In order to find the synesthesia, you need to:
1) Find out in what context the client engages in the problem behavior.
If the client is a smoker, maybe she smokes at breakfast time, at work,
and in the evenings.
2) Find a specific time and place in which the client engaged in the
unwanted behavior. For example, she smoked at work yesterday.
3) Associate the client back into that specific time and place.
4) Guide the client to slow down the movie of that memory until she
finds the exact synesthesia. You will know when that has happened
because you will see the emotional reaction in the client.
5) Once you have found the synesthesia, the visual part of it is the
trigger picture. The more precisely you hone in on the trigger picture,
the more precise the change work will be. We cannot stress this enough.

Doing a Break State

Once you have found the trigger picture at the point of synesthesia, you need
to do a “break state.”
A break state is an NLP technique that is generally used to move the client
from a negative state into a neutral or more positive one. It doesn’t matter too
much what the neutral or positive state is; you simply want the client out of
the negative state. The break state is useful if you are about to ask the client
about a more resourceful state. It may be difficult for her to find a resourceful
state if she is feeling negative—it’s easier to move the client into a neutral
state first.
The break state is an important step in the Swish because, when a client is in a
problem state, it is difficult to activate the new neural pathways she will use
in creating the positive image of the outcome. Think of it this way: When you
are feeling down or depressed, and some kind soul tells you to “cheer up,” it’s
difficult to do because the shift in state is so great. By breaking the state, you
have a neutral starting point from which to build the positive outcome.
To break state for a client engaged in the Swish, you need to dissociate them
from the first picture so that the neural pathways associated with the problem
are no longer active. The client is then free to create the second picture, which
is connected with a resourceful state. There are several ways of achieving the
break state. The coach could suggest that the client blank their internal screen,
wiping out their trigger picture. A more natural and conversational way is to
ask them a question completely unrelated to both the problem and the
resource. For example, the coach could ask about the client’s evening plans,
or perhaps a pleasant vacation they had. This jump in topic will create a very
brief moment of confusion, which pulls the client’s attention away from the
picture associated with the problem behavior and changes their state. Once
the state has changed then the client is ready to begin creating a new picture,
one that will be connected with their desired outcome: a more resourceful
state.
When you do the break state you are looking for the client’s BMIRs to change
as a way of verifying that his state has also changed. You might see a shift in
physiology, or a color change in his face. If he still looks like he is in a
negative state, then you may have to do another break state. Once you notice
a change in his state to either a neutral or a positive state, then you can move
ahead and create the outcome image, which we discuss below.
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Creating the New Self-Image
In this chapter we will talk about the second important piece of the Swish
Pattern: creating the new self-image.
As we have discussed before, the Swish works by linking what you actually
see to a new internal image of how you want to be as a person. This is what
makes the Swish Pattern generative: the new self-image creates a context in
which amazing change can happen. For this reason, we are going to go into
detail about the various ways in which we can generate this new self-image.
Investing time in creating a powerful new self-image for use in the Swish
Pattern is time well spent.
What qualities will the new self-image have? The image will have certain
qualities, some of which we have already discussed: The image will be
dissociated. This means that your client will see herself in the picture as if she
were looking at herself in a photograph. The image should start out small, say
about the size of a postage stamp or smaller, and then expand to life-size. The
expanded image will have positive submodalities, which typically means that
it will be bright, colorful, and three-dimensional.
How different will the new self-image be from the way the client is now?
This depends upon what the client is trying to achieve, as well as her
preferences and your preferences as the coach. Some coaches will keep things
simple and help the client to construct a self-image of some simple but
different behavior. Some coaches will construct a more compelling self-image
with additional capabilities, while others will construct an idealized self-
image including beliefs, values, and self-identity. Here we will give examples
of the range of self-images that could be constructed for a client who bites his
nails.

Creating a Simple Self-Image
It is possible to run the Swish Pattern with a very simple outcome picture, a
picture in which the client is doing something—anything—other than the
problem behavior. For example, if you are running the Swish Pattern for a
nail-biter, then the outcome picture could simply be the nail-biter more-or-less
as he is now, but doing something other than biting his nails (which of course
means that he has better-looking nails). It is perfectly possible that the idea of
having nice-looking nails would motivate the client to stop biting his nails.
During the Swish, the coach helps the client’s unconscious mind to realize
that changing the behavior (nail-biting) will lead to a change in appearance
(nicer nails). Rather than simply looking at his chewed nails and thinking, “I
wish I didn’t bite my nails,” the client’s mind now has a new path to follow:
“Keep your fingernails out of your mouth and have nice-looking nails.”
The problem with this approach, if there is one, is that it does nothing to
address the root causes of the nail-biting. The client is biting his nails for
some purpose, to satisfy some secondary gain. (“Secondary gain” refers to the
underlying psychological cause of the behavior: the hidden benefit to the
client.) Therefore, the next step in building the self-image will address that.

Adding New Capabilities to the Self-Image

By adding additional capabilities to the new self-image, the Swish becomes
even more generative, as it can address the underlying causes of the problem.
In the case of the nail-biter, the new self-image might be him with nice, neat,
clean fingernails, together with some new resource, capability, or skill, such
as self-control. Self-control becomes the resource that he needs in order to
make the change. When the Swish is installed, the next time he looks at his
fingernails and sees a snag that might have previously caused him to bite, he
now sees the outcome picture, which includes both the self-control and the
positive consequences of having that self-control: nice fingernails. Even
though the image is dissociated, by seeing it he will realize that self-control is
something he desires, and therefore his unconscious mind will make it
available.

Adding New Beliefs and Values to the Self-

Image
You can continue to build an image using beliefs, values, identity, and even
values beyond identity. So the self-image could include:
The values that are being satisfied by the change in the behavior. What is
important to the client about not biting his nails? More to the point, what is
important to him about being a person with clean, fresh, unbitten nails?
Beliefs. What does he believe about himself as he explores the world with his
new, clean, unbitten nails?
Identity. Who is he as a person—what is his identity—after the change? How
does changing this one behavior make him part of something bigger?
Beyond identity. What larger plan is he satisfying by changing his behavior?
Perhaps he is setting a good example for his children? Perhaps he is treating
his body with the respect it deserves? Perhaps it is God’s plan for him?
As you can see, there are many new levels, capabilities, values, and beliefs
that can be built into the new self-image. For each, the coach should ask the
client what he sees, specifically, in the picture of his new self that lets him
know that the quality he desires is present. It could be the posture, the
breathing, the facial expression, whatever he identifies. It’s important to make
a link between specific qualities in the picture and the values, capabilities, and
beliefs that the client wants.
Asking lots of questions will help the client to create a picture of how he will
be and who he will be as a person once he has achieved his goal. This is the
fun part of the Swish Pattern, because the client gets to dream and play. If the
client is not having fun in this step, then the coach is doing it wrong! The
client must be attracted to the new image so that it can pull him in a new
direction. We are essentially saying to the mind: “Not that, but this.” See the
fingernail, and your mind immediately creates the outcome image and says:
“Not ‘Biting that finger nail,’ but ‘This person I want to be.’”
Eliciting a strong desire for the new self is a crucial part of successfully
leading a client through the Swish. If the client does not truly desire the new
self, the Swish will be only partly successful at best. The coach must use her
own enthusiasm to create that desire in the client. To illustrate this, here is an
excerpt from an NLP training course that the authors of this book ran recently.
One of the students, Kristina, acting as coach, was saying that her client was
not attracted to the outcome picture, and as a result the Swish “didn’t work.”
Here Shawn explains to Kristina what she could have done differently while
at the same time covertly running the Swish pattern to install a new level of
“go-for-it” in her.
In order to demonstrate that it is the coach’s state rather than the archetype or
self-image that controls the process, Shawn deliberately breaks all the rules
by picking an archetype, NASCAR racer Danica Patrick, that Kristina didn’t
know and would normally have had no interest in.
The demonstration starts with Kristina’s question:
Kristina: With the client, would you be asking them what else they wanted in
the picture? I asked my client whether he wanted anything else in the picture,
and he said no, it’s fine. So I’m wondering if I went more into that, maybe
he’d get more attached to the new self-image?
Shawn: One way of approaching it is to go with an archetype, a character
from a book or from history, of somebody they know. Because that archetype
is going to bring with it all sorts of positive things: an identity, beliefs and
values, capabilities and resources, as well as behaviors. It’s a package deal
and it saves a lot of time. It may not be the perfect package, but it gets you a
good package. And for most people the right archetype is going to
automatically have some attraction.
Kristina: So, you mean a historical figure?
Shawn: Historical, fictional, mythical, biblical… NASCAR racer… What
was that woman called? Danica Patrick…the first female NASCAR racer to
have pole position at Daytona, the Super Bowl of NASCAR.
[Shawn is now going to elicit a strong positive state and attach it to a picture
of Danica Patrick.]
And this woman has pole position! She’s in number one position! Danica
Patrick! Isn’t that awesome! Isn’t she self-actualizing as a woman! If you can
imagine the qualities—you may not be into NASCAR, in fact I’m sure most
the people in the room are not—but the quality she must have as an archetype,
the raw courage that you need to have to drive that car around that narrow
track at 200 miles an hour and you’re just gunning that thing! Isn’t that
fucking incredible?! She’s a woman, she doesn’t have all that male
testosterone stuff, but she has DRIVE, just pure “go for it” DRIVE. Now,
isn’t that something you could use more of?
[Shawn can see that Kristina is “lighting up” in a positive state whenever he
says DRIVE. You will also see that Shawn has switched to using the pronoun
“you,” in order to lead Kristina to “become” Danica Patrick. Shawn now
describes the trigger picture for Kristina—what she will see in the real world.
In this case, it’s an unenthusiastic client.]
And when you think of that time in your life when you would normally say to
yourself [whiney voice] “I don’t know if I can do this…” [Laughter]… and
the thing you see when you look at your client, and you see they’re not
attaching to that image, and they say [whiney voice] “I don’t think I’m
attaching to this….”
[Kristina now has the outcome picture of Danica Patrick as an archetype, and
the trigger picture of the unenthusiastic client. All that remains is to run the
Swish.]
And suddenly a picture appears in your mind of Danica Patrick and you feel
that DRIVE, that energy; there may be cars in front of you but you go, “I’m
gunning it!!! I’m gunning it for that line!!!”
[Kristina is laughing and bouncing in her seat.]
And that’s the Swish, are you getting some emotional attachment now?
[Laughter.]
Kristina: Wow, and I didn’t even know who she was!
Jess: And he got in touch with the energy of it and the passion of it. If he had
just said, “Think of Danica Patrick… Swish!” [Laughter.] Instead, he got up
out of his seat and embodied the energy of it, and that’s the theater!
Shawn: I even picked the archetype there, and you don’t even know who she
is! [Pointing at Kristina.]
Kristina: I didn’t, but I do now! [Laughter.]
When the client has created her new outcome image, she should literally be
licking her lips in anticipation. It’s your job as the coach to get her there!
We will now discuss various ways that you can create a new self-image for
yourself, or help your clients to create theirs.

Consciously Building the Outcome Picture

The first and most obvious way to build an outcome picture is to ask the
client. We can simply say: “Who will you be as a person when you’ve made
this change? How will you be feeling? What skills and abilities will you
have? With these new feelings, with these new skills and abilities, how will
that new you look? How will she be different? What will you see that will let
you know that this new you has these skills and abilities?”
In describing her new self in the outcome picture, the client may talk about
the expression on her face. She may say, “I’ll be smiling.” She may talk about
her breathing being deeper or easier. She may talk about her posture, about
how she’ll be standing straighter, or about being more relaxed. She may even
talk about how she’ll be dressed.
When we have this new picture, we can begin to enhance it by adding even
more skills and abilities, beliefs and values. We can ask: “What else will you
have when you’ve made this change? What other skills and abilities will you
have? What else would you like to put into the picture? Remember you can
have anything that you want!” When the client mentions a new skill or ability,
or a new feeling, then the coach can begin to associate her into it—so that she
feels it. Supposing the client says, “I will have a sense of confidence,” but she
doesn’t yet look like she is feeling confident. Then you can say: “What’s it
like when you’re feeling confident?” This has the added benefit of embedding
the command: “You’re feeling confident!” Encourage the client to add
positive and fun resources into the picture so that, when she looks at it, she
feels fantastic. She should think: “Yes, I want to be this person!” If she looks
at the picture and she seems like she doesn’t care about it, then you haven’t
yet done your job as a coach. Get your clients excited!

Unconsciously Building the Outcome Picture

A second way of creating the outcome picture is to rely on the unconscious
mind. In order to do this you have to ask questions that either make no sense
to the conscious mind, overwhelm the conscious mind’s ability to answer, or
both. Here’s one example:
“Aside from the smoking, what is everything else about who you can be that
you haven’t been seeing until now?”
This question does several things:
It overwhelms the conscious mind by being a relatively complex three-part
question, as well as by asking for “everything else.”
It instructs the unconscious mind to search for something aside from the
smoking, something different.
It invites the unconscious mind to make a picture of a new self-image—“who
you can be,” “haven’t been seeing until now.”
Typically, when you ask a question like this, the client will look momentarily
confused, and perhaps move their eyes up and begin to look to left and right
for an answer. You can help the client to find the outcome picture simply by
holding your left hand up, palm towards your client, inviting them to look up
and to their right. This will take them into the visual-create portion of their
visual field; one way to make it easier to create new pictures in our minds
(rather than memories of things we have seen) is to look up and to the right.
Looking up takes our mind into a visualization mode, and to the right takes us
into a mode of imagination.
If they can’t find the new self-image—if they say something like, “I’m not
sure”—you can help them by reminding them of why they want to make this
change in their lives. Supposing they came in to stop smoking because they
are concerned about their health and afraid they may not live to see their
grandchildren graduate college. In doing the Swish Pattern, you ask them:
“Aside from the smoking, what is everything else about who you can be that
you haven’t been seeing until now?” Your client looks up, glances left,
glances right, looks at you a little confused and says, “I’m not sure.” You
smile at them, and you say: “That’s right, you’re not sure about that, but you
are sure that you want to watch your grandchildren on graduation day, and as
you’re seeing them graduate, who are you as a person?” And you raise your
left hand, palm towards them, leading them into their visual-create area.
So you are validating their response (“that’s right, you’re not sure”),
reminding them of their value (“you want to watch your grandchildren on
graduation day”), and using that value to help them find the new self-image
(“as you’re seeing them graduate, who are you as a person”), as you lead their
gaze into visual-create.
Using this approach allows the new self-image to be built by their
unconscious mind, and—because it’s the unconscious mind that is driving the
behavior—the new self-image generated by it is likely to be more effective.
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Using Archetypes
Another way to generate the new picture is to use a mental image of
somebody the client admires. It could be a picture of somebody he knows,
somebody he has seen in a movie, somebody he imagines from a book, or
perhaps a historical figure. These people will act as archetypes.
To help a client think creatively about whom he might want to model, it’s
good to offer him some ideas. For example, you may want to tell him how
you used to imagine being a movie character:
“Personally, I always used to like to watch Batman on television. I would
really get into the role of being Batman. I would stand like Batman; I would
walk like Batman; I would even breathe like Batman. I would put on
Batman’s expression; I would speak like Batman, and deep down inside I
would take on the beliefs and values of Batman. And when you do take on a
role like that, you feel strong and confident. I told myself, “You can do
anything! You can be who you want to be! You have all the power and
resources you need!” I was a superhero! That’s very exciting for a young
child. My brother and I would spend our time fighting imaginary villains, but
for us they were totally real. Children have great imaginations, and your
imagination is a gift because it allows you to be anything you want to be and
to do anything you want to do. So, ready to play?”
Telling this sort of story to your client will allow him to activate his
imagination. You can then ask him, “Whom do you know—from movies,
books, history, or even people you know in your life—who handles this sort
of situation the way you would like to handle it?”
Give him enough time pick somebody whom he really admires. He’ll tell you
who this person is and what the characteristics of the person are. Perhaps the
main characteristic is confidence. When he is describing this hero, this
archetype, you want to see him go into a state of confidence. You can see this
in action in the following excerpt from a client session.
Coach: So when you think of a person that you see in the movies, or a person
you’ve read about in books—someone who has been able to handle this in the
way you would like to handle it—who would that person be?
Client: Iron Man.
So now we have the character, the archetype.
Coach: Iron Man? I love Iron Man! And when you think of Iron Man, what
characteristics does he have that would help him in this situation?
Client: Confidence and self-esteem.
What? Iron Man has confidence and self-esteem? This sounded to the coach
like the conscious mind talking, because there was no emotional energy
expressed in the words. He wanted to challenge this and get the unconscious
mind involved.
Coach: Really? Confidence and self-esteem? What about his cool jet suit?
What about his rockets?
Client: Oh yeah, those are totally cool! I love the way he flies around, and if
anything gets in his way, he can just zap it!
Great! The client is finally having fun and his unconscious mind is involved.
Now we have to turn Iron Man into something we can use in the session. We
are going to ask about who Iron Man is—his beliefs and values—and go from
there.
Coach: And when he’s flying around in his jet suit and zapping things with
his rockets, who is he then, as a person? What does he believe? What’s
important to him?
Client: He’s just bad! He knows he’s unstoppable, that he can do anything! I
love the way he uses his mind as well to solve problems, to get what he
wants.
Coach: That’s right, he’s just bad, he’s unstoppable and he can do anything!
And he uses his mind to solve problems, and to get what he wants. That’s just
awesome! And when you see him, what is it about him that lets you know
he’s so bad, that he’s so unstoppable, that he can do anything?
Client: I guess it’s the way he stands. He sort of has this posture where he
leans forward and you know he’s ready!
Coach: That’s right, he does have that posture; he leans forward and you
know he’s ready for anything. He’s unstoppable; he can do anything; he’s just
totally bad!
Client: Yeah!!
Now the coach returns to comment about using the mind to solve problems.
Coach: And when you see him, his posture—the way he leans forward so
you know he is ready—what is it about him that lets you know that he can use
his mind to solve any problem and get what he wants?
Client: It’s the look on his face; it’s determined but it’s also thoughtful. You
know that his mind is fully engaged.
Coach: That’s right, it’s the look on his face—determined and thoughtful—
and you know his mind is fully engaged.
Client: Yeah!!
Now the coach wants to turn the picture of Iron Man into the client. He wants
to have the client see himself as that totally unstoppable Iron Man.
Coach: So I want you to see that picture, that posture: leaning forward ready
for anything, unstoppable, you can do anything. And this time that picture is
you! You’re in this picture, ready for anything, unstoppable, totally bad.
You’re looking determined, thoughtful, your mind fully engaged! Totally bad!
Do you see that?
Client: Yeah!! That’s what I want!
The more the client is able to feel a particular state, the easier he will find it to
build the outcome picture—picture two. The bigger the state is, the more
compelling the outcome picture will be.
Notice how the coach is using conversational anchoring by repeating back the
client’s exact words, including his intonation. The coach will also be using the
client’s gestures and facial expressions as anchors. The aim is to build up a
very powerful state, a state that the client would dearly love to have. The cool
part about this is that by building it up, the client gets to experience the state
now. This type of anchoring is very important, and it will become even more
important when we move on to the conversational versions of the Swish
Pattern. We’ll talk more about this type of anchoring then.
It’s great if your client picks a superhero as their role model. Superheroes
have lots of resources—that’s what makes them super! Most people will pick
somebody more mundane as an archetypal role model, though. They may pick
a friend, a family member or a colleague. All these will work fine as long as
you identify what it is about the role model that allows them to handle the
situation easily, and how this is reflected in their appearance, so that it can be
translated into the picture of the new self-image. In addition to overt behavior,
the image should reflect the posture, breathing and facial expression of the
role model. Remember, the client has to feel the new resources, not just talk
about them.
Using this approach to constructing the outcome image has several
advantages. It allows the client to engage both their conscious and
unconscious minds, and it enables them to construct a rich self-image: one
that includes identity, beliefs, values, capabilities and resources, as well as the
outward appearances of success and the desired behaviors.
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Designing the Swish Pattern
using Submodalities
You now have the trigger picture and the outcome picture. Before you run the
Swish, you need to determine which submodalities to use in the delivery. This
is what we will discuss in this section.

Another Break State

Before you run the Swish, you need to do another break state. You do this
because you want the client to feel good after they see the outcome picture.
You want the sequence to be:
1) See trigger picture.
2) See outcome picture.
3) Feel fantastic.
This break state simply needs to bring the client down from the peak of their
feelings after they have built the outcome picture (rather than before). The
good feeling then acts as a reward for the unconscious mind, so that it will
continue to show them the outcome picture.

Creating the Swish

In order to do the Swish Pattern, you have to exchange picture one (the
trigger picture) and picture two (the outcome picture). You need to do this in
such a way that the unconscious mind becomes involved in the process—so
that, in the future, it will switch (or “swish”) the pictures as soon as the client
sees the trigger picture in real life. We’re going to talk about several different
ways in which you can exchange the two pictures and create the actual Swish.
We will start off with the Slingshot Swish Pattern.

The Slingshot Swish Pattern

The Slingshot Swish will work with ninety to ninety-five percent of your
clients because it uses the common driving submodalities of size, distance,
and brightness. Remember, submodalities are simply the qualities of our
internal representations—the pictures that we make in our minds. A visual
representation might be in color or black and white. The picture could be a
movie picture or a still picture. The picture could be big or small, framed or
unframed, two- or three-dimensional. The picture could be a certain size, near
or far, to the left or to the right, up or down, fuzzy or clear, bright or dim.
You should be aware that there are some people for whom the Slingshot
Swish is not effective because their unconscious mind processes information
in an unusual way. You will have to do a little more work with these people to
make the Swish truly effective, and we will go through how this is done later
on. But first, we will explain the Slingshot Swish Pattern.
When you were young, you may have played with a toy consisting of a ball
attached to a bat with a piece of elastic. You would bounce the ball away from
the bat, and the elastic would stretch. It would then pull the ball back, and you
would be able to hit the ball with the bat again. Imagine you have a picture in
front of you that is attached to you with a piece of elastic. You throw the
picture away into the distance, but as it moves away the elastic begins to
stretch. Finally the elastic becomes so tight that it pulls the picture back
toward you. Each time you throw the picture away, the elastic pulls it back.
This is the basis of the Slingshot Swish Pattern.
The client sees picture one, the trigger picture, in front of them. They will
imagine that the picture is attached to them with a piece of elastic. They will
then send picture one off into the distance, far, far away. It needs to be so far
away that it becomes a small dot, so that they really cannot make out what the
picture is anymore. As the picture moves away and becomes smaller, it will
also become darker. The elastic will eventually stretch enough to pull the dot
back. However, it pulls it back as the second picture, the outcome picture. The
outcome picture will rush toward the client and end up big and bright, right in
front of them.
The client will then blank the screen so that no picture is visible. This is
essentially a break state for the unconscious mind. The client will then see
picture one again, and repeat the process. This conditions the Swish.

Why the Slingshot Swish is So Effective
The Slingshot Swish is very effective because it uses three of the key
submodalities: size, distance, and brightness. One or more of these
submodalities is likely to be important for the client. A driving submodality is
a one that has a major impact on the emotional content of a picture or other
internal representation. By “emotional content” we simply mean how the
picture makes the client feel.
You can try this out for yourself. Try thinking of a happy memory. Notice
what picture comes to mind. Notice where the picture is, how large it is, how
bright it is. Notice how the picture makes you feel. Now move the picture
further away, and notice how that affects how you feel about it. The chances
are that the farther you move the picture away, the less intense your feelings
become. Now move the picture back to where it was but make it smaller, and
notice how that affects how you feel about it. The chances are that the smaller
you make the picture, the less intense your feelings become. Now make the
picture the same size as it was but make it dimmer and notice how you feel
about it. The chances are that the dimmer you make the picture, the less
intense your feelings will become.
Try one final change. This time, make the picture bigger, bring it closer, and
make it brighter. Notice how you feel about it now. The chances are that the
bigger, closer, and brighter the picture is, the more intense your feelings will
be. Now move the picture to wherever feels best, adjust the brightness and
size so that you feel comfortable with the level of emotion the picture evokes,
and leave it be.
As we have discovered, most people will find that their feelings about an
image are directly affected by changes to the size, distance, and brightness of
the picture. Using all three of these submodalities in the Slingshot Swish
gives you an excellent chance of achieving the result that you want. When
you do the Slingshot Swish, the trigger picture will move farther away, and it
will get smaller and dimmer. On the return journey, the outcome picture will
get closer, bigger, and brighter. Therefore, the client’s feelings about picture
one should become less intense, and their feelings about picture two should
become more intense. This is exactly what you want to happen.

Other Methods of Using the Swish Using

Submodalities
Very occasionally you will find that the Slingshot Swish is not effective. This
may be because distance, size, and brightness are not major driving
submodalities for the client. Alternatively, one—and only one—of those
submodalities might be very important, but the client’s unconscious mind is
confused by the inclusion of the other two. In this case you may need to be
more precise in how you perform the Swish.
You can test the effect of changing submodalities, and therefore find a driving
submodality, by asking the client to think of a memory of something pleasant
and then ask them to:
Move the picture closer and see how they feel. Move the picture farther away
and see how they feel. Put the picture back where it was.
Make the picture bigger and see how they feel. Make the picture smaller and
see how they feel. Put the picture back as it was.
Make the picture brighter and see how they feel. Make the picture dimmer
and see how they feel. Put the picture back as it was.
Turn the picture into a movie and see how they feel. Turn the picture into a
still photograph and see how they feel. Put the picture back as it was.
Put a frame around the picture and see how they feel. Take the frame away
from the picture and see how they feel. Put the picture back as it was.
Make the picture three-dimensional and see how they feel. Make the picture
two-dimensional and see how they feel. Put the picture back as it was.
By going through each of these choices in turn, you can find the submodality
or modalities that have the greatest impact on the client. You can then use
them to design the Swish.
For example, suppose you find that the size of the picture is a driving
submodality, but that distance and brightness are not. In this case you might
want to do the Swish entirely on size. You would direct the client to make
picture one (the trigger picture) its normal size, and then you would instruct
them to embed picture two (the outcome picture) inside picture one very, very
small. You would usually ask them to embed the outcome picture either in
some detail of picture one (like we did in the example of Janet’s cigarette
packet), or maybe in the bottom right hand corner if there is nowhere better.
You would then run the Swish by having picture two quickly grow in size
until it covers picture one.
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Delivering the Swish Pattern
using Gestures and Voice
The Classical NLP Swish
At this point, you have helped the client to find their trigger picture and their
outcome picture, and you have identified the appropriate submodalities. Now
you just need to install the Swish—creating a chain leading from the trigger
picture to the outcome picture—and then run the Swish enough times to
condition the change. You can then test your work.
The Swish Pattern is delivered to the client not just in words, but also using
the voice and body of the coach. In this chapter, we will discuss how the
coach might deliver the Swish Pattern to the client in the case of a Classic
NLP Swish. We will talk about other types of Swish Patterns later on.
In order to get the client’s unconscious mind involved, you want to make the
process very active and lively.
Before you actually perform the Swish for the client’s conscious mind, you
perform it purely for her unconscious mind. You set this up by saying, “In a
moment, but not yet…” and then describing the steps of the Swish. This
allows the client’s conscious mind to relax (because it is not being asked to do
anything yet). However, the client’s unconscious mind will continue to play
along with the instructions as you run through the Swish. This allows you to
look for the client’s unconscious responses, particularly how they respond as
the new self-image picture approaches them.
So you may say: “In a moment, but not yet, I am going to ask you to move
that picture way into the distance….” Everything you say will be as you say it
in the actual Swish, as if the Swish were really being done. The conscious
mind relaxes while the unconscious mind goes along with the process.
You might also physically mime taking hold of the client’s mental pictures,
though you need to know exactly where the pictures are to do this effectively.
You might mime moving or throwing picture one out into the distance as you
continue to instruct the client verbally in what to do. You may also begin to
use a quieter voice as the picture moves away, as if speaking from the location
of the picture. Then, you will use the appropriate body language and voice
tone as the outcome picture moves back towards the client. You will bring
your hand or hands back toward the client, indicating that the picture is
returning, while widening them until they reach the final location where you
want the outcome picture to be. Your hands will essentially frame the
outcome picture. This allows you to make sure that the client is moving and
changing the size of the pictures. You can also control the speed at which the
pictures move—allowing for a slower Swish at first, while the client gets used
to the process, then speeding it up.
You will continue to use your voice to match the movements of your hands
and the movement of the picture. So, as the picture moves closer, you can
increase the volume of your voice and widen your hands. Similarly, you can
change the tone of your voice so that it becomes more excited. This provides
valuable nonverbal instruction to the client’s unconscious mind.
As the outcome picture moves closer to the client, you will watch for the
client’s head to move backward slightly. This is the natural physical reaction
to something coming close to your face, and it’s a valuable calibration tool,
particularly if you ask the client to do the Swish by themselves in their own
mind. Seeing that head movement lets you know that the client has performed
the Swish.
Once you are happy that the client is running the Swish unconsciously, you
can also involve the client’s conscious mind by saying, “OK, ready? Let’s
start…” You will then break state by saying, “When I count to three, that
picture [trigger picture] will shoot off into the distance. One… Two…
Three… Shooting off into the distance… Farther and farther… Getting
smaller and smaller…” and so on. Counting to three is not absolutely
necessary, but it does allow the client to prepare herself. All this will be
accompanied by you using your hands, body, and voice to support the idea of
the trigger picture moving off into the distance and the outcome picture
returning. Be theatrical! Break state between each repetition by asking the
client to “blank the screen.” Once you have led the client through the Swish
several times, you may ask her to perform the Swish in her own mind a few
times. The coach may also ask the client to perform the Swish faster. The
visual sense is extremely fast and the faster the Swish runs, the greater the
unconscious involvement and the more profound the change.
When you have run the client through the Swish several times, and perhaps
asked her to run it in her own mind, it is time to test your work. You will do
this by reassociating the client into the context in which she previously
experienced the problem and leading her to the point at which she sees the
trigger. If the Swish has been effective, then you should see the client
unconsciously perform the Swish in her own mind. You will know this is
taking place because her head will snap back as the trigger picture moves
away and the outcome picture moves closer. You should also see her going
into the positive state associated with the outcome. Associate her into several
times and places where she had previously experienced the problem to make
sure that the change has generalized.
If you find a context where the change has not generalized, then perform the
Swish again within that context, as you may have found a different trigger
that you have not covered yet.
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Combining the Swish Pattern
with the New Behavior Generator
The Swish Pattern can be combined with another NLP pattern called the New
Behavior Generator. As the name of the pattern suggests, the New Behavior
Generator is particularly useful for extending the Swish into the area of
generative change. While the Classical Swish may primarily cause a change
in a specific behavior, the New Behavior Generator is designed to offer an
embodied experience of possibilities.
Some trainers run courses where the high point of the course is an experience
such as the fire walk. In the fire walk, you’ll actually walk across a bed of hot
coals. Although it is quite possible for the human foot to withstand the heat of
these coals as long as a normal walking speed is maintained, it seems
impossible, and that’s the key. The fire walk forces you to realize that the
boundaries you have set for yourself can be breached, and you can extend
your range of possibilities. Although the New Behavior Generator does not
have the glamour of a fire walk, it is designed with the same goal.
In the New Behavior Generator, you associate into somebody who you
believe has more possibilities than yourself. When combined with the Swish,
the New Behavior Generator allows the client to step into her future, ideal self
and experience what it is like to be that person of unlimited potential. Once
she has had this experience, she will never be able to go back to who she was!
Combining the two patterns can be really fun, and it’s something that you as
the coach will also enjoy. Your client actually gets to step into their new
identity at the end of the Swish Pattern. This will make them feel awesome,
and you’ll get to see their reaction. Practicing with the Swish and New
Behavior Generator allows you to see the power of your work. During your
next practice session, try this pattern out and see the result. Make sure that the
outcome picture, the new self-identity, is so compelling to the client—so
amazing, so awesome, so limitless in possibility—that the client has an
incredible experience stepping into the picture. Like the fire walk, it will act
as a ritual that allows them to take on their new identity and then take it home
with them in a very real way. Before we describe how to combine the two
patterns, we will briefly outline how the New Behavior Generator works.

The New Behavior Generator

The New Behavior Generator is an NLP pattern designed to install a new
behavior in a certain context. In NLP our clients typically have four types of
problems:
1) They don’t feel something that they want to feel, such as motivation.
2) They feel something that they don’t want to feel, such as fear.
3) They do something that they don’t want to do, such as a bad habit.
4) They don’t do something that they want to do, such as finishing their
great novel.
With the last category, it could be that they simply do not have the motivation
to do what they want to do, so this is really the result of the first category of
problems. The client doesn’t feel a sense of motivation and therefore she does
not do what she is not motivated to do. On the other hand, it could simply be
that the client does not have a memory or other reference experience of the
behavior that they want to do. They have never done the behavior, they’ve
never been able to do the behavior, and there is simply no part of their
neurology that is set up to do the behavior. In this case, they need to build a
new part that will be responsible for the new behavior.
The way a person would traditionally install a new behavior is by going to a
vocational school to learn how to “do” the behavior. I have no part of myself
that cuts hair so I go to hairdressing college and it builds a part of me that cuts
hair. Simple. While we are not suggesting that NLP can teach you how to cut
hair, we are saying that NLP can be very efficient at installing the part that
will be responsible for some new behavior. Supposing you want a part of you
that will approach and speak to people in bars. This doesn’t require you to go
to school; it simply requires that you have a part of yourself that is
responsible for the behavior. The New Behavior Generator would be a
suitable pattern for this.

Steps of the New Behavior Generator:
1) Identify the outcome for the new behavior. This outcome needs to be
what is called, in NLP terms, “well formed.” This means that it is
specific, positively stated (what the client wants, not what he doesn’t
want), contextual (he must know the context in which he wants the new
behavior to appear) and sensory-based (he knows what he will see, hear
and feel when he has the outcome). The outcome should also be
ecological and worthwhile. An ecological outcome is essentially one
that is good for all of you, in all aspects of your life. For example, if I
were to say I want to work hard all the time, this would not be
ecological because I would not have time to spend with my family (or
to eat and sleep, for that matter)!
2) Identify a reference experience for the behavior that will lead to the
desired outcome. As in the description of the Swish, this reference
experience could be something from the client’s own experience, or it
could be the experience of an archetype who is able to embody the
behavior and get the outcome. The archetype could be drawn from a
character in a movie or a book. It could be a historical figure, or
somebody the client knows from his own life. He could even imagine
doing the new behavior himself as long as he imagines it in a
compelling enough way.
3) Identify a “movie,” a sequence of images, which shows the behavior
being carried out and the outcome being achieved. This could be a
movie from the client’s memory of himself. Alternatively, it could be a
movie from his imagination, showing the archetype performing the
behavior and achieving the outcome. This movie should be dissociated,
meaning that the client should see himself in it as if watching the movie
from a seat in a movie theater. Make sure the movie is just the way the
client would want it to look, with him or the archetype performing the
new behavior perfectly.
4) Associate your client into the movie by inviting him to step or float
into the “him” on the screen, so he can see feel what it feels like from
the inside. Make sure it is perfect from an associated position, and make
any appropriate editorial changes. It may be necessary to dissociate the
client from the movie to make these changes by asking him to step or
float back to the “seat in the theater.” Once the client has made any
necessary changes, associate him into the movie again to make sure it is
perfect from the inside.
5) Make sure the client is truly happy with the new behavior, while
watching and listening for any unconscious objections. For example, if
you ask the client if he would be happy with the new behavior and he
says “yes” in a doubtful tone of voice, then you should ask him about
any doubts he has. Assuming he is entirely happy with the experience,
suggest that he absorb it unconsciously: “You can begin to absorb this
on a deep unconscious level…”
6) Future pace and test the new part by having the client imagine the
 next time he might need this behavior. Once again, pay particular
attention to any sign of doubt in his voice or manner. For example, if he
says, “Yes…I guess that’s good…” then you have missed some aspect
of the change. Ask him, “What was that?” or, “What’s happening now?”
to discover the source of the doubt. Once any problems have been
addressed, you can run the New Behavior Generator one last time to
make sure it is fully installed.

The Difference Between the New Behavior

Generator and the Swish Pattern
The New Behavior Generator and the Swish are very different patterns. The
Swish uses a client’s existing desire to move toward a new identity, or to
install a new identity in a specific context. The intention is to create
generative change. In contrast, the New Behavior Generator creates a new
behavior for the client that will be triggered in a certain context. So on the
surface, the Swish creates a new identity, while the New Behavior Generator
creates a part responsible for a specific behavior.
But we know from our discussion of the history of the Swish that it can be
used to change a behavior while also creating generative change at the
identity level. This is true because all experience is multilevel. At any
moment in time we are not simply existing, not simply doing something in a
behavioral way; we are also feeling a particular way, believing, valuing, and
holding a sense of our own self-identity. So behavior begets identity, and
identity begets behavior. They are intertwined and cannot be separated.
Combining the Swish with the New Behavior Generator installs a new
identity level that can create generative change, while also installing a new
part for a new behavior aimed at achieving a specific new outcome. It
combines new identity with new behavior and everything in between such as
beliefs, values, and emotional resources.

The NBG Swish

For the sake of brevity we will call the combined pattern the NBG Swish. It
requires some minor modifications from the Swish Pattern you have already
learned. The main difference is that the process ends not with an outcome
picture, but with an outcome movie—a movie that has all the qualities and
power of the client’s desired outcome. This will result in a much richer
representation of the outcome while also being more specific as regards
behavior. In fact, the outcome image has to be a movie because it involves a
behavior. The client needs to see and then experience himself performing the
new behavior. The first frame of the movie will be a picture of the client’s
new self, the middle frame (or frames) will be that new self engaging in the
new behavior, and the final frame will be their new self achieving the desired
outcome.
The client will have designed and directed the movie under your guidance,
using the New Behavior Generator as outlined above. During this process the
client will have watched the outcome movie from both a dissociated position
(watching it on a movie screen) and an associated position (from inside the
movie). This should make it very easy for the client to reassociate into the
outcome movie in the steps to follow.
Let’s work this through with an example. George is a writer with writer’s
block. Each time he sits down to write he sees the blank screen on his
computer and his notebooks full of notes and he freezes. Inside his mind he is
making pictures of himself writing stories, none of which meet his high
standards. So then he makes movies of himself editing the stories and creating
new stories that also fail to meet his standards; he feels overwhelmed by the
material that he has accumulated and yet is unable to turn it into words on the
screen.
Running the NBG Swish, we first help George to develop a new self-image
that will replace the image he currently holds of himself as being unable to
write stories worth reading. When we ask George how he will be as a person
when writer’s block is no longer an issue for him, he slowly begins to craft an
image of a man who is experiencing the world in a new and unique way. This
man is intensely curious and adventurous and his primary motivation is to
experience. The writing comes second, and he writes because he has
something worth saying. This new self-image becomes the opening frame of
the New Behavior Generator movie.
From this we move to his desired outcome, which has changed from wishing
to write a book to wanting to share his experiences of the world. This widens
the outcome so that it is no longer about the book; the book is still in the
outcome, but this time he sees himself at a book signing, sharing his stories
on a personal basis with the audience. The book is secondary. This becomes
the final scene of the New Behavior Generator movie.
All we have to do now is to link the opening frame with the final scene. What
happens in the movie to get from the identity that he has to the outcome that
he wants? What behaviors does he have to engage in? It is not appropriate or
even possible to build the movie frame by frame, at least not on the cognitive
basis, because too much time will lapse in the “real” movie—George’s life—
in the several months leading up to the book signing. We may have George
run through the entire experience in a formal “eyes-closed” trance later on,
but for now we will just build two or three scenes to represent the behaviors
that George will have to engage in to reach his outcome scene. George
chooses three scenes to create. In the first, he is planning a trip to a small
town that will be used as a location in the book. In the second scene he is
visiting this town, exploring and speaking to the people there, asking them for
their stories. In the third scene he is sharing his experiences with his writing
club friends while recording the conversation for later transcription.
We now have a short movie. The actor in the movie is the new George: a man
who experiences the world in a new and unique way and then shares his story.
This new George begins to prepare for his trip to the town, and the scene
shifts to him actually visiting the town. The scene shifts again to the new
George sharing his experiences with his friends, and finally it moves to the
book reading and signing as the final scene.
You’ll notice that there is no scene in the movie of George actually writing.
George seemed very congruent with the movie as it was, so we expected that
the writing would take care of itself once the new identity was installed,
which proved to be the case.

Doing the NBG Swish
You will now run the NBG Swish in the usual way, with the trigger picture
being the trigger for the problem, and the outcome picture being the first
frame of the outcome movie. You will lead the client to embed the first frame
of the outcome movie within the trigger picture. You will then do the Swish
using the slingshot technique, or some other version of the Swish using
driving submodalities. You will blank the screen and repeat as before until it
has been installed in the client and then you can test by asking the client to
think of the trigger picture and watching his reaction. Typically his head will
move backwards as the unconscious mind presents him with the first frame of
the outcome movie.
In the case of George the writer, the image of the new George (which he saw
as an emoticon of a smiling face) was embedded in the power switch of his
computer. We conditioned the Swish by running it several times. Now each
time he turns on his computer, or wakes it up from hibernation, the smiling
face expands and turns into the picture of the new George.
It may be a good idea to do the above pattern with the client standing up, so
they can step into the opening frame of the New Behavior Generator movie in
the step that follows. However, if preferred, the client can be sitting down, or
even in a formal trance, and they can step into the movie in their imagination.

Stepping into the Outcome Picture
Finally, you will invite the client to step into the outcome picture so you can
invite them to experience the outcome movie from an associated position
(from inside the movie). You will invite them to run the movie to the end until
they have the desired outcome. To guide them through that journey, you might
say something like this: “I would like you to step into that new you that you
see in front of you. Feel how good it feels as you do that. And as you step into
that new you, feel yourself in that movie—see what you are seeing; hear what
you are hearing; feel what you are feeling. Feel what it feels like to engage in
those new behaviors, knowing that you are moving toward your outcome.
Notice what is happening as you do that, and how the people around you are
reacting. Feel yourself moving through the whole movie, until you achieve
the outcome at the end.”
In the case of our writer, George, once we had conditioned the Swish Pattern
so that each time he saw the power switch on his computer the smiling face
would expand into the new George, we took him into a deep trance. Then we
ran the NBG Swish while he was in trance. We suggested to George that he
visualize the power switch on his computer. We were immediately able to see
George’s reaction as the Swish was unconsciously triggered. We ran the
Swish once more and this time suggested that he step into the new George.
We noticed a wonderful physiological shift as he did so. We then allowed him
to fully experience the movie from beginning to end from this associated
position.

Using the NBG Swish in Practice

The NBG Swish is a useful and entertaining pattern that your clients will
love. The pattern can take some time because it has so many moving parts to
design, build, and run. The NBG Swish is a great way to unconsciously install
a new behavior because the Swish portion of the pattern can be repeated
several times very quickly, and it can be very efficiently linked to the trigger.
This means that the new behavior can be installed in a very specific context.
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The Swish Pattern as a Recovery
Strategy
In this chapter we will describe how the Swish can be used as a Recovery
Strategy. A Recovery Strategy seeks to answer the question, “What should the
client do if things go wrong?”
The Swish is a wonderfully powerful pattern for changing behavior. As a
result of it, your clients will find themselves not only changing their specific
problem behavior but also making other generative changes in their lives.
However, nothing works all of the time, for all people, in all situations. There
will be times when you have led the client through a wonderful Swish Pattern,
have seen real change occur in your office, have future paced the new
behaviors, and have done everything else humanly possible to ensure that the
change was successful. And yet the client goes out and engages in the same
problem behavior. An example of how this can occur in practice is with
smokers. Someone who visits your office as a smoker may leave totally free
of the power of cigarettes. They may go for weeks, months, or even years
without smoking. And then, one day, perhaps they go out with their friends
and they have some drinks, and one of their friends challenges them to go
outside and smoke a cigarette. Because they have had some drinks, their
willpower is a little less than usual, so they agree to the challenge. Suddenly
they are a “smoker” again. They disregard the fact that they have only
smoked one cigarette and that they hadn’t smoked for six months. Instead,
they focus on the fact that they have smoked, which they take to mean that
they are a smoker. In NLP we call this kind of thought—“I smoked a cigarette
so I’m a smoker again”—black-and-white thinking. It’s all or nothing.
In this section we will discuss the use of Recovery Strategies to deal with
those times when your client falls off the wagon in spite of the change work
that you did with them. A Recovery Strategy is simply a set of links that we
attach onto the end of a behavioral chain to lead in a new direction. Think of
it this way: when we do the Classical Swish we are building a chain that
begins with the trigger picture. The trigger picture used to lead to unwanted
behavior, but with the new chain created by the Swish, it now leads in a new
direction. The Recovery Strategy takes a slightly different approach: it
follows the original chain but adds new links onto the end so that it ends in a
new place.
You know how, in a scary movie, the teenager always decides to go through
the front door of the haunted house on Halloween? Nobody in their right mind
would actually go through that door, just as nobody in their right mind would
smoke a cigarette after they’d quit. Yet they do! The Classical Swish Pattern
is like having the teenager’s mother waiting by the front door of the haunted
house with her arms crossed saying, “Don’t go inside!” Similarly, your client
might want to smoke another cigarette, but the Swish Pattern puts their new
self-image on guard against that. In spite of everything, the teenager goes into
the haunted house, just as your client decides to smoke a cigarette on a Friday
night after a few drinks with her friends. A Recovery Strategy is like leaving
the back door of the haunted house open. Even though the teenager goes
through the front door, she can escape through the back door. For your
smoking client, the Recovery Strategy can allow her to feel like even more of
a successful non-smoker after she smokes that one cigarette.
A simple example of a Recovery Strategy is to tell the recovered smoker that:
“You will not know that you are a non-smoker until you have smoked at least
one more cigarette and found that they no longer have a hold over you. In
fact, from this point on, each time you smoke a cigarette, you will find it more
repulsive and sickening; you will be more confident that you are taking the
right path for your health; and you will be more certain of your ability to be
the person that you want to be, smoke-free.” This type of double-blind allows
a smoker to use the fact that he just smoked as proof that he is a non-smoker.
And the more times he smokes, the more proof he has that he is a non-smoker.
You are chaining another representation (in this case using words) onto the
end of the problem behavior, so your client can recover if they happen to fall
off the wagon.
In the case of a smoker, they have smoked a cigarette and there’s nothing we
can do about that fact. If we did not give them the recovery strategy, they
might run a chain of the following representations: cigarette they smoked in
the bar > image of themselves as a smoker > begin smoking again. They have
essentially done a “problem Swish” on themselves and installed a new self-
image of themselves as a smoker! We need to install a new Swish: cigarette
they smoked in the bar > image of themselves as a non-smoker > continue
their healthy habits. In order to do this we must chain the pictures together,
but if we simply tell them (with words) that the next cigarette they smoke will
mean that they are a non-smoker, the picture of them as a non-smoker may
not appear in the chain. Instead, if we install the chain using images, there is
more chance that the positive chain will be there if they need it.
Since we already know how to do the Swish, it is very easy to install the
recovery strategy using it. We will use the smoker as an easy example, but of
course it can be generalized to any other problem behavior.
Here is the pattern:
1) Find a context where the client may fall off the wagon and return to
the old problem behavior. With a smoker, it might be when they go out with
their friends to a bar, or with a particular group of friends who always smoke,
or perhaps at work if they have a particularly stressful day. Find out where
they might be when they would be most likely to smoke again, or to engage in
the problem behavior. If you know where they smoke most of their cigarettes
now, you already have a short list of the places where they are most likely to
fall off the wagon. Since the Swish is a very quick pattern to perform and
benefits from repetition, you can install the recovery strategy in each of these
locations.
2) Find out what they would be likely to see that would let them know
that they were engaging in the problem behavior again. So, in the case of
the smoker, it could be seeing a cigarette in their hand—or even seeing
another person smoking, which could mean they are hanging around outside
with other smokers (at least in New York, where smoking is banned in all
public buildings). This will be the trigger picture.
3) Find out what they would see that would let them know that this is not
part of their identity, it was simply something that they did which is over
(even though they have fallen off the wagon this once). This picture may be
more difficult to find, particularly if they are a black-and-white thinker. You
may want to use a metaphor, for example, of a client who quit, smoked one
more time and realized how terrible it made her feel. Your client could decide
to create a picture of themselves as somebody like that: the sort of person who
smokes a cigarette and discovers that not only does that not make you a
smoker, in fact it makes you someone who is even more of a non-smoker.
4) Now you run the Swish. The client has two pictures: one being what they
will see when they have fallen off the wagon, and one of themselves as
somebody whose identity is not determined by what they did in the past—
someone determined to be the person they want to be in the future.
Take the first picture—perhaps a picture of a hand with a cigarette—and
embed the second picture, the client-as-they-want-to-be picture. Do the Swish
so that the first picture moves into the distance on the slingshot, and the
client-as-they-want-to-be picture comes back to replace it. Blank the screen
and repeat. Blank the screen and repeat. (Don’t forget that the structure of the
Swish should be based upon the driving submodalities of the client.)
5) Now future pace. Get them to think of a time in the future when they
might fall off the wagon. Have them imagine falling off the wagon, and notice
what happens. Ask them what meaning they attach to that event. Does it make
them a smoker again, or is it just something that happened which does not
affect the fact that they are a non-smoker?
The danger with this technique is that the client could imagine themselves
smoking in the future and think that that is no big deal. This could encourage
them to go back to their old behavior once in a while. For this reason you
might also want to attach a suggestion that each cigarette they smoke in the
future will taste worse than the one before. The more they smoke, the worse
the cigarettes will taste. If you are installing this type of posthypnotic
suggestion, of course, you’ll want to use your voice and your face to convey
the nasty taste to the client’s unconscious mind. When you are discussing the
first cigarette, you will have a slight look of distaste on your face; by the third
cigarette you will look and sound thoroughly disgusted, and by the fifth you
will be practically vomiting.
If you are doing a first smoking session with a client, you may wish to use the
simple verbal recovery strategy described at the start of the chapter, telling
your Client: “You will not know that you are a healthy non-smoker until you
have smoked again and realized that cigarettes no longer have power over
you. In fact, the more cigarettes you smoke, the more you will realize this and
you may have to smoke another three or even four cigarettes to be totally
certain you are free of them.” If, on the other hand, you have a smoking client
who returns and reports that she has gone back to smoking after a period of
being smoke-free, you may wish to spend more time and do the full Swish
Recovery Strategy.
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The Hypnotic Swish Pattern
This book is designed to allow the Swish to be used in a number of contexts,
including by classical hypnotists, and in this chapter we will discuss how to
use the Swish during hypnosis and deep trance.
Once you understand how to use the Swish during your hypnotic trance work,
it will become a very potent tool for you. In fact, if you wanted to, you could
use the Swish Pattern with virtually all your clients, and on virtually any
issue. It is truly that versatile. In order to give you maximum flexibility, we
will present three variations of the Hypnotic Swish. In the first variation we
will assume that you have performed a Classical Swish (as described in
earlier chapters) when your client is in a more uptime state, and that you wish
to repeat the Swish Pattern when your client is in trance to deepen the effects.
In the second variation we will show you how to do a Swish while the client
is in a normal waking state, and use the Swish itself as a trance induction, so
that it is seamlessly integrated into the trance process. In the third variation
we will do the Swish entirely in trance, relying on unconscious processing
and the unconscious mind’s ability to implement the Swish.

Variation One: Repeating the Swish Pattern in

the Trance State
In this variation of the Hypnotic Swish, you will do the Classical Swish
Pattern with the client at the start of the session, while they are in a normal
state of awareness. You can use any of the variations of the Swish described
earlier in the book. You will then put your client into trance and simply repeat
the same pattern, this time when they are in trance. The variation that we
describe here uses auditory anchors. Remember that we include visual
anchors in the Classical Swish by moving our hands away from the client and
then back toward them. But during hypnosis the client’s eyes are probably
closed, so in this variation the client will hear the coach making sounds and
those sounds become anchored into the process. Here is the sequence for the
first variation:
1) Find the context and the trigger picture, as in the Classical Swish.
2) When you find the outcome picture, you will add one additional step: ask
the client what the sound of the outcome picture would be if it were a sound?
This sounds like a very strange question, but it has two important functions
within the hypnotic version of the Swish: firstly, this sound will become an
auditory anchor for the outcome state. The benefit of an auditory anchor is
that it can be used easily and rapidly when the client is in a closed-eye trance.
Secondly, sounds activate a very primitive and powerful area of the brain.
Sounds, especially the sounds that we can make with our own bodies (shouts,
screams, cries, laughter), have been with us far longer than language has.
Human language is a relatively new development in the history of mankind,
one which went hand-in-hand with the development of the brain’s prefrontal
cortex and what we think of as our rational and logical mind, the mind that
speaks to us inside our own head.
Because our rational brain has essentially hijacked the sound-creating part of
the brain, we now get a little embarrassed by making sounds in a public
context because, by doing so, we are sharing our deepest emotional state with
the strangers around us. For example, we may make a sound of appreciation,
or joy, and then feel a moment of embarrassment when we look around to see
who noticed it. This may sound like a minor point, but it is not. Think back to
the Democratic primaries for the 2008 presidential election. One of the
candidates is Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont. Howard Dean is
giving a rousing speech, firing up his supporters. His supporters are cheering
loudly, and the governor joins in. At first he shouts out the names of the states
that he will be visiting on the campaign trail, but then he simply screams into
the microphone. Not a word but a primeval sound, something like
“yyyeeeeaaahhhh!!!” Of course, because the governor was miked, that scream
sounded ridiculously loud compared to the background noise. It is said that it
was the repeated playing of that scream on the nightly news shows that
destroyed Dean’s chances of being president. If Howard Dean’s shout didn’t
echo around the world, it certainly echoed around the Democratic presidential
campaign race!
By asking the client to make a sound associated with the outcome, we are
asking the client to “do a Howard Dean.” We are asking them to get back in
touch with their own emotional and primeval sound, which allows the sound
portion of their brain to go back to what it was originally designed for:
making sound. And because we are asking the client to use the sound portion
of their brain to make sound, it becomes temporarily unavailable for thinking
in words. So this request provides the unconscious mind the opportunity to
step forward while the conscious mind takes a short break.
When the client presents us with the sound, it should have the “feel” of the
identity that the client would like. Because we’re not used to making sounds,
the client is likely to offer us a very weak and unappealing sound at first. If
they do so, you should not accept it. Rather, you should repeat it back to them
with some amplification and continue doing so until a suitably rousing
primeval shout or scream is produced.
Client: Ah.
Coach: You mean E-ah?
Client: A-ah!
Coach: Oh, you mean A-Hah!
Client: A-ha!
Coach: A-HAAAH!
Client: A-HAAAH!
If you are uncomfortable with this process—perhaps your client is an elderly
lady—you can simply choose to click your fingers to anchor the Swish. If you
do decide to use the finger click, then make sure you use it while you are
doing the Swish in the waking state so that it will become anchored when you
do it in trance. Also, do not click your fingers too close to the client’s ear, as it
can bring them out of trance.
Once you have obtained the sound, it acts as an auditory anchor for the
outcome state. When the client is in trance, you will use their sound to fire off
the Swish and replace the trigger picture with the outcome picture. This is
simple to do. Suppose the client wants to be confident when they are with a
customer. The trigger picture is the face of a customer who looks a little
“defensive.” The client creates an outcome picture of himself or herself
looking totally confident, completely in control, and very calm. When asked
to choose a sound reflecting the state, they choose this: “Bu-AAH!” When
you do the Swish Pattern, before the formal trance begins, ask the client to see
the face of the customer and then embed the outcome picture of himself or
herself right in the center of the customer’s forehead. You will then get them
to perform the Swish so that the calm, confident picture of themselves flows
out of the center of their customer’s forehead and into the space in between
them and the customer. You will say something like this: “I want you to see
your customer there in front of you, and right in the middle of their forehead
you see that picture of yourself. Now when I make the sound ‘Bu-AAH’ I
want that picture of yourself to come out of their forehead and to appear in the
space in between you and them. Ready?… One… two… three… ‘Bu-AAH.’”
So “Bu-AAH” becomes the signal for the Swish. Because they are now used
to the sound “Bu-AAH,” meaning “do the Swish,” they automatically do it
when they hear the sound again later on in trance.
During the trance, when you wish to do the Swish, you simply say something
like: “So now when you see the face of the customer…Bu-AAH… and every
time you see the face of the customer…Bu-AAH.” And so on. Of course, you
will still be calibrating to make sure that they are doing the Swish.

An Example of a Hypnotic Swish
The following example is taken from a client session. The hypnotist has done
the Swish with the client using the slingshot method. The hypnotist has used a
finger click to indicate the movement of the trigger picture into the distance,
and used the word “two” to indicate the outcome picture moving back
towards the client. So the Swish was anchored to the sounds, bracketed here
to indicate their auditory nature: [click] and [two].
Toward the end of the session, the client had gone into trance spontaneously,
and the hypnotist had reinforced the work done earlier in the session by using
the instruction [click] [two] to run the Swish Pattern. Whilst running the
Swish Pattern in the trance, the hypnotist was calibrating the unconscious
response of the subject. The client would relax slightly to the finger snap, then
the client’s head would move back on [two]. When the coach was saying
“that’s right” and “thank you,” she was ratifying to the client’s unconscious
mind that the client was doing the Swish correctly.
A standard end-of-trance protocol is included at the end of the trance,
including instructions for selective amnesia, general ego building, deeper
induction and trance ratification.
Most of what was said as part of this example simply reflected explanations
that have been given to the client in a waking state prior to the unconscious
Swish. Therefore, the actual words used in this trance should not be taken as a
script that could be used with other clients. But hopefully this will give you
some ideas as to how the Swish can be incorporated into a trance once it has
been set up in the more conscious portion of a session. Here is the trance
script:
“So when you go into trance, then you can start to see one of those times, one
of those contexts, where you previously had that problem. You can see that
picture in front of you, that’s right, thank you, and [click] off into the
distance, [two], thank you, and now you can see another context where you
used to have the problem and it can [click] and shoot off into the distance,
[two], that’s right, and now you can pick another context and it can [click]
[two], very good! And now because the unconscious mind is basically a
machine for generalizing it can begin to do this process [click] [two] inside
[click] [two]… it’s all ready [click] [two] to do so and the great thing about
the unconscious mind [click] [two] is that it’s able to do things very, very fast
[click] [two] [click] [two] [click] [two] so you can get a lot of generalization
inside, [click] [two] [click] [two] very good, that’s right, continue to make all
those changes, [click] [two] [click] [two] because the faster the unconscious
mind processes the deeper and more profound the changes [click] [two]
[click] [two] and this pattern can fire up automatically so as soon as you see
that first picture [click] [two] the second one automatically comes up [click]
[two]… the person that you want to be, the person that you’re already
becoming, each and every time [click] you’re in this context, [two] right
[click] [two].
“And before you come back into the room on a count of three I want to say
that you can consciously remember everything that will be beneficial for you
to remember and as for the rest you can simply find that it’s easy to forget,
and you can forget this process [click] [two] until you’re in the situation, the
context, [click] [two] when it will be beneficial for your unconscious to
[click] [two] remind you of the person that you’re already becoming [click]
[two]. Because you are a wonderful person…[click] [two] and a wonderful
hypnotic subject [click] [two]… and the next time you go into trance you can
go even deeper and so now I’m going to count to three and when I reach three
you’ll find yourself back in the room feeling awake alert and absolutely
fantastic. One… aware of your body in the chair…[click] [two] … your eyes
beginning to flutter… three… coming fully and completely back in the room
feeling awake alert and fantastic! WOW – great job!”

Variation Two: The Swish as a Trance Induction

In this variation of the Hypnotic Swish, you will actually use the Swish as a
trance induction, or to deepen the trance. You will start off, prior to the trance,
by asking the client what they want to work through, obtaining the context in
which they want to change, and finding the trigger picture. You will then
begin the trance. You could do a formal trance induction followed by the
process described below, which will then act as a deepener. Alternatively, you
could simply ask the client to close their eyes and then use the process
described below (which, as you will see, is similar to the NBG Swish) to
begin the trance, as an induction. You will have your client with their eyes
closed, either in trance or about to go into trance. Now you’re going to
instruct the client to go through the following process to create the outcome
picture:
1) Imagine relaxing in a comfortable seat in a movie theater. This
imaginary movie theater will allow you to create a picture of your
outcome, and it will be fun!
2) As you continue to relax in that chair, you can see a movie on the
screen of somebody dealing with the same situation, which they want to
change, and dealing with it in a totally resourceful way. If you wish,
you can see somebody on the screen that you admire, and who you
know could deal easily with the situation.
3) You are the director of the movie and can make any changes that are
needed. At the end of this process the person on screen should be
handling the situation perfectly. Being the director gives you control
over the resources, the feelings, the beliefs, and the values of the person
on screen.
4) As you relax comfortably, you slowly begin to realize that the person
on the screen is you.
5) Float into the screen and experience the movie from the inside, from
inside that person on the screen. See what they see, hear what they hear,
and feel what they feel!
6) Float back to the chair in the movie theater and make any necessary
changes so that the movie is perfect from both outside and inside. When
you have a complete and perfect movie, float back into it and try it on
again, seeing what you see, hearing what you hear, and feeling what
you feel.
7) Float back out to the theater. Now shrink the picture down until it is
small.
By asking the client to imagine being in the movie theater, seeing themselves
on the screen, and then to float into themselves and experience things from
the inside, we are asking them to create positive hallucinations with visual,
auditory and kinesthetic elements. Having positive hallucinations is a trance
phenomenon and this experience will induce or deepen trance naturally.
You will now lead the client through the Swish itself. Let’s go back to our
example of the client who wants to be more confident in front of his
customers. You would ask him to: “See the face of the customer, this time
with the picture of the ideal you embedded in the customer’s forehead, as if
someone has stuck a stamp on it. When I click my fingers, that picture will
Swish out of your customer’s forehead, grow to life-size and appear in the
space between you and him. When it does, step forward into that new you,
ready to greet your customer…One two three CLICK…” The hypnotist may
once again want to have the client generate a sound that will symbolize that
outcome state. This sound can be used to set off the Swish as in variation one.

Variation Three: Relying on Unconscious

Processing
Unconscious processing relies upon the ability of the mind to restructure itself
in a beneficial way outside of conscious awareness. There may be times when
you as a hypnotist may wish to rely on the client’s unconscious mind, rather
than on a more formal and cognitive process like the Swish. Examples of
times when you may wish to use this approach include:
1) As a closing technique at the end of the session. This gives you the
opportunity to instruct the client’s unconscious mind to make any
changes required to integrate their new learning, or deal with any part
of the issue that may have been missed in the session. This type of
“process instruction” need only take a minute or two and can be
included in a piece of trance work prior to bringing the client out of
trance. In fact, we would encourage you to have a standard piece of
process instruction that you can include in all of your sessions.
2) When the client herself is not aware of the details of her issue. This
happens when the unconscious mind has decided to protect the person
by keeping details of the issue outside of their conscious awareness.
Using process instruction allows the unconscious mind to deal with the
issue while still maintaining its secrecy.
3) As a powerful technique in its own right when dealing with a deep
trance subject. For many clients, trance results in an almost complete
lack of conscious awareness. Very deep and profound work can be done
with the unconscious mind in the absence of conscious interference.
If you wish, you may even rely entirely on unconscious processing to locate
the synesthesia and resources that the client needs. You could use the outline
script below as the basis of a Hypnotic Swish Pattern using purely
unconscious processing. It could be inserted into any hypnotic trance. It is
based on a session with a smoker who reported feeling stress in the office
with his boss, but it can easily be adapted to other issues. The script assumes
that the hypnotist is familiar with catalepsy, which, in the world of hypnosis,
is when a client moves or holds a part of their body without conscious
awareness. We all experience catalepsy everyday— for example, when we
hold a drink in our hand during a conversation in a bar or restaurant and
“forget” we are holding it. In change work, however, catalepsy often takes the
form of the client’s arm or hand “floating” or rising through in the air
following a suggestion from the hypnotist. If you have not worked with
catalepsy before as a coach, you can simply give more general instruction
without reference to the “rising arm” included in the example below. Here’s
the hypnotic script:
“… and as you begin to drift deeper into trance I would like you to consider
that you came here today for a very important reason; you came here today to
make an important change in your life. And your unconscious has begun to
consider how you will be as a person when you have made this change in
your life and become a healthy non-smoker. I would like your unconscious
now to create an image in your mind, an image of how you will be when you
have made this change.
“And it’s not important whether or not your unconscious mind chooses to
share this image with your conscious mind, or whether your unconscious
chooses to keep this image in the background. What is important is that your
unconscious begins to understand how you’ll be as a person now that you’ve
made this change, how you will be as a person when you are already a healthy
non-smoker, now, with all the resources that you need to deal with those times
in your life when you wish to feel relaxed.
“And as your unconscious creates that image, I would like this arm [hypnotist
lifts the client’s left arm] to begin rising only as quickly as you can find all the
resources that you will have when you’ve made this change. I don’t know
what those resources will be, when you are able to take care of yourself and
keep yourself healthy, and when you are able to remain calm in all those
situations when you would like to feel calm. That’s right. [Left arm continues
to rise.]
“And as your unconscious creates this image, you begin to notice how you’re
different in this picture when you have all those resources that you need, just
as you’re beginning to realize that what’s really important to you is feeling
healthy inside, where changes are already beginning to take place. As you
look at that picture you will begin to see that other changes, taking place on
the inside, can also be seen on the outside. That could be the glow of your
healthy skin, your clear eyes, the way you can breathe easily and deeply, and
an overall sense of confidence that comes from knowing that you’re in
control.
“Thank you. Now I would like you to make that picture bigger, make it
brighter, and move it a little closer. That way you can really enjoy looking at
that picture, knowing that this is the person whom you are already becoming.
You have already stepped out on the path to becoming this person and all you
have to do is to keep moving.
“In a moment, but not yet, I would like you to go back to that time in the
office that we talked about. Only this time it will be different. This time as
soon as your boss steps into your office, I would like your unconscious to
show you this picture that you just made of yourself, the healthy non-smoker,
confident and breathing deeply. And to make it easy, I will lead you through
the experience: you are in the office, your boss walks in, and you see that
picture of yourself as a healthy non-smoker, confident and breathing deeply.
And as you see that picture you feel that sense of calmness, confidence, and
relaxation. Now blank the screen. You are in the office, your boss steps in,
and you see that picture of yourself in control, a healthy non-smoker, seeing
that confidence and breathing deeply, and as you see that picture you feel that
sense of calmness, confidence, and relaxation.
“And now I would like your unconscious mind to begin to search through
your memories, and to find all those times when you saw your boss’s face,
and each time you do that the picture of the new you appears in front of you,
and you feel calm, confident, and relaxed. And I don’t want this arm
[touching left arm] to begin sinking down to your lap any faster than you can
go through each and every one of those memories, and have this new image
appear in front of you, and those new feelings of calmness, confidence, and
relaxation grow inside.
“That’s right. Each time you see your boss’s face, that new picture appears,
and as you see the new picture you feel calm, confident, and relaxed.”
Now that you have mastered the Hypnotic Swish, you will find that it’s a
powerful technique to keep in your hypnotic toolbox. Feel free to use it
liberally with your clients and you will have great results.
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The Conversational Swish Pattern
The Swish Pattern can also be delivered conversationally, which means it can
be used in business coaching—when the Classical Swish might not be
appropriate. The version of the Conversational Swish described here is based
upon John Overdurf’s wonderful coaching pattern.
There have been a number of business coaches who have attended our NLP
training courses in New York. Although they are often impressed and amazed
with the NLP techniques they learn, they are concerned about how they will
use the techniques in their own practice. They may be coaching very senior
executives and they don’t want to do techniques that are “unusual,” such as
patterns requiring their clients to make pictures in their minds and move those
pictures around—patterns like the Swish! They are afraid that their clients
will think that they are strange or crazy, which could jeopardize their jobs.
However, if you are a business coach you may want to have a Swish Pattern
available, so it’s good to know that the Swish can be done in a purely
conversational way.
The Conversational Swish allows you to install a new chain of representations
and a new behavior in your client without them being aware of exactly what
you are doing or how you are doing it. They will simply feel a different way
about things and find their behavior changing. In fact, by using the
Conversational Swish, they might find that their entire life is transformed
without knowing how!
If you do most or all of your coaching over the telephone, then you need to be
able to lead your client through the Swish Pattern without being there in front
of them or being able to use your hands to show them where to move the
pictures. The pattern described in this chapter overcomes that difficulty so
that your telephone coaching with the Swish is seamless and transformative.
The steps of the Swish will be the same as those discussed for the Classical
Swish in Chapter Four. However, the method for obtaining each of the
pictures, and the method for running the Swish itself, will be a little different.
As you read the description of the steps, remember that your objective is to
get the client to see what they see before they have the problem (the trigger),
create a dissociated picture of how they want to be instead (the outcome), find
a method to perform the Swish, and then condition it through repetition.
Here are the steps.
1) Find the context. It is necessary, even in business coaching, to find the
context; if you don’t, then the resource will not be attached to the correct
external stimulus. What this means is that your subject will not feel the way
they want to feel, will not be the person they want to be, and will not behave
the way they want to behave at the actual time that they need to. The context
acts as an anchor for the resource, and to find it you simply need to ask them
the usual question: “When was the last time this happened?” You can then
transition into the present tense: “Where are you when this is happening?”
And, of course, you want to get sensory information: “What are you seeing
that lets you know that?” When in the middle of a conversation, none of these
questions seem out of the ordinary. However, it is really important that you
track your client’s responses and backtrack as necessary to find any
information that you may have missed, and to check that you have actually
found the right context and the right trigger.
2) Find the trigger image, the visual portion of the synesthesia.
Remember, the synesthesia is the combination of the trigger image, plus the
feeling that the trigger image evokes. The visual part of this is the specific
thing that the client sees in the context that causes them to lose control and go
into the negative state. In the conversational context, the client’s unconscious
mind will provide this information. As you ask the client about what they are
seeing and hearing, you will see (or hear, in phone coaching) the point at
which there is a shift in their state: their posture might change; their breathing
might shift; they may sigh; or the tone of their voice may change as, perhaps,
tension creeps in. The picture they were seeing in their mind immediately
before that change will be the trigger picture that you need.
Of course, it might not always be that simple. For example, you might say:
“So you’re sitting in the boardroom, waiting for the chairman to arrive, and
what happens next?” And the client sighs. So you don’t know what happens
next, you simply know that something happens that causes them to shift their
state and sigh. The easiest way of dealing with this is simply to ask them:
“What was that?” They may reply: “What was what?” and you will say: “That
sigh.” And they will tell you exactly what happens in the mind-movie that
makes them sigh. Alternatively, you can ask them to “go over that again for
me…” to backtrack the entire sequence.
Again, these questions appear very natural in a conversational setting. People
are generally quite happy to talk about themselves and their experiences when
the listener is showing an interest in them, in the presence of rapport. Even
when you ask them to repeat the story, they will not mind because someone—
you—is listening!
3) Break state. In a conversation this is very easy to do. You simply begin to
talk about something else, something that is either neutral, or mildly positive.
When you do this, you will be checking to make sure that they go back into a
state that looks or sounds neutral or slightly positive.
4) Find the outcome picture. After breaking state, you can elicit the outcome
picture by asking questions such as: “How will you be as a person when this
is so far behind you that it is no longer an issue?” and “How would you prefer
to be, as a person, different from how you’ve been?” and “If you could be any
way you wanted, how would that be?” All these questions, while being
conversational, ask about the desired identity of the client. You can use
whichever version feels most natural to use in your coaching conversations,
or you can make up some other version. You could even use a question such
as: “How would you like to feel about this?”
Although this question is about feelings, it can still create effective change.
You are not asking for a new identity-level picture, so the client may not get
the generative benefits of the Swish, but she will still get a change in state
which you, as coach, can attach to the trigger and that could well lead to a
behavioral change.
While asking about the outcome picture, if you are face to face with the client
(not phone coaching), you may wish to hold up your left hand with your palm
towards the client. This creates a little “movie screen” on which the client can
create the outcome picture. The reason you will generally hold up your left
hand, rather than your right, is that it will pull the client’s eyes into their
“visual create” space. Most people find it easier to create pictures if they look
up and to their right (and they find it easier to find pictures from their memory
if they look up and to their left).
After you have asked a question to obtain the client’s outcome picture, you
should sit quietly and wait for a response. The client may need to think for a
few seconds in order to find the answer. It’s important to realize that the client
might provide the answer with their body, not necessarily in words. In fact,
the client may not be able to find the words to describe how they want to be.
The answer that you are looking for, or listening for, is a shift in the client’s
physiology into a more positive state. You may see the client straighten up or
hear their voice become more confident. You may even hear the client sigh as
tension is released.
When you see or hear the client moving to a more positive state, you should
both reinforce and validate that change, and also allow the client’s conscious
mind to catch up with what is going on. What does this mean? Well, to
reinforce and validate, you may want to match the physiology and tonality
that the client has adopted. You may wish to give an appreciative laugh and
say, “That’s right!” These reactions will convey that the response the
unconscious mind gave was correct. To give the client’s conscious mind time
to catch up, the coach might ask, perhaps with a chuckle: “What just
happened?” The client’s conscious mind will likely respond with some
insight. They may precede their comments with something like: “Oh, I just
realized….” This is exactly where you want to be. When you are doing the
Classical Swish, it’s important to get the outcome picture in as much detail as
possible. But in the Conversational Swish, this might not be possible or
appropriate. So it does not matter if the client doesn’t describe the picture in
detail to you. As long as you know that the client is seeing the outcome
picture, that’s sufficient.
5) Anchoring the Response. Because you are leading the client through the
process in a more covert way, you will need to use covert anchoring.
Anchoring is the process whereby a feeling, emotion, or state is linked to, and
triggered by, something else in the environment. So for example, if you and
your spouse have “your song,” that particular music will act as an anchor for
the emotional significance and depth of your relationship. The national
anthem and the national flag are strong auditory and visual anchors for a state
of patriotism. The smell of a certain type of baking may be a strong anchor
that takes you back to how you felt when you visited your grandma and she
was cooking.
The coach needs to understand how anchoring works and be able to use it
effectively in order to do the Conversational Swish. A complete discussion of
anchoring is outside the scope of this book. However, we will comment that
the words, the tonality, the physiology, and the gestures that the client uses
when the client is in their outcome state are the anchors that the coach will
use to bring that state back. For example, suppose that, after eliciting the
trigger and then breaking state, you asked the Client: “How would you rather
be in this situation?” The client looks up and to his right, then sighs and
laughs. The coach asks: “What was that?” The client shakes his head and
chuckles and says, “I’d be free,” while opening his hands, palms upwards. In
this case the phrase “you’re free,” spoken in the client’s tonality, together with
a gesture of opening the hands, palms upwards, could be an anchor that you
could use to re-elicit the outcome state.
Taking the client’s words, tonality, and gestures, and using them as anchors, is
called “stealing anchors” in NLP. When you have got the anchor for the state,
you should test it by doing a break state, then firing off the anchor. To revisit
the hypothetical example above, you may break state then ask, using the
client’s tonality: “And what’s it like for you when you’re free?” At the same
time, you open your hands, palms upwards. You will stress the words “you’re
free.” If the anchor is good then the client should go back into a positive state.
This will be reflected in their physiology: their breathing, voice tone, and so
on. This lets you know that the anchor is working. If it’s not, then you should
take the client back into a positive state and look and listen for more anchors
to use.
6) Doing the Conversational Swish. You can now run the Conversational
Swish by firing off the anchor, waiting for the client to go into a positive state,
and then reminding the client of the trigger picture.
Notice that we are suggesting you do the steps of the Swish in a slightly
different order this time. In the Classical Swish, you would ask the client to
see the trigger picture and then swish in the outcome picture. This time we are
firing off the anchor first, and only then reminding the client to look at the
trigger picture. You’re no doubt asking yourself why we have reversed the
order of the steps: The simple answer is that, because you are doing the Swish
conversationally, it is more difficult to stop the client from associating with
the feelings linked to the trigger picture. If you were doing the Classical
Swish, then the client would be focusing instead on the coach’s moving hands
as she demonstrates the Swish. But in the conversational model, as soon as
you remind the client about the trigger picture, they’re likely to re-experience
the feelings that go along with it. In order to avoid this, put them into a
positive state before they see the trigger picture.
A little later, when the Swish has been installed in the unconscious mind, you
will reverse the order once more. But for now, you will fire off the positive
anchor—“you’re free”—and then you will remind them of the picture. So you
might say something like: “What will it be like when you’re free to view the
situation in an entirely different way?”
Begin to back off the anchor as your run through the process a few times..
“Backing off the anchor” is a term that we use in NLP to mean that we begin
to use less and less of the anchor each time we fire it. Think of a comedian
who tells a joke: as he tells the joke the first time, he makes a certain facial
expression and a certain gesture, and perhaps he says a certain key word in
the punch line with a particular tonality. The facial expression, the gesture, the
key word, and the tonality become anchors for laughter. The comedian later
may make a reference to the joke, without telling the whole joke but with the
facial expression, gesture, and the key word. Later on, he may simply make
the facial expression, gesture, and say the key word and everyone will laugh.
He may then simply make the facial expression and the gesture and everyone
laughs. Then he just makes the facial expression and everyone laughs. It’s the
same process here.
The objective of backing off the anchor is to transfer the desired state onto the
trigger picture. The trigger picture itself becomes the anchor for the positive
state. When you have backed all the way off the anchor and the client is still
going into the positive state, then they are doing the Swish on themselves.
They are seeing the trigger picture but instead of triggering a problem state, it
now triggers a positive state.
7) Test and Future Pace. You should now test and future pace your work. Do
another break state, and then simply ask the client to think about a situation in
the future when he will see the same trigger picture. If the Swish has been
successfully installed, then you will see the client go into a positive,
resourceful state. You can then ask the client about how he will behave in the
situation in the future, allowing him to practice, or “future pace,” the new
behavior.
The Conversational Swish is a lot more elegant than the Classical Swish, but
it does require a little more practice as a result. You might wish to go to your
local NLP practice group (if you have one) and go through the pattern a few
times before you try it with clients. To make your practice easier, we have
outlined the complete, simplified Conversational Swish below, along with
some basic phrases that you can use for each step.
1) Find the context. “What do you want to work through?”
2) Find the trigger image. “Tell me about the last time and place you
experienced this. Where are you? What are you seeing, what you
hearing, what are you feeling?
3) Test the trigger. “So it’s [Tuesday], you’re [in the office], and you
see [your boss walk in and see his face]…”
4) Break state.
5) Find the outcome picture. [Coach raises her left hand palm towards
the client] “So that’s how you been, how do you want to be different?”
[Invites client to feel resource and create new self-image]. “And when
you’re [confident], who are you then as a person?”
6) Fire the anchor and then the trigger. “And as you’re feeling
[confident] and you’re [free], and you see [your boss’s face] how is it
 different now?”
7) Back off the anchor while conditioning the Swish.
8) Test and future pace. “So the next time you are in the office and
you [see your boss’s face]…”
The Conversational Swish allows you to use the powerful Swish Pattern
confidently in contexts where it would be difficult to use the standard
coaching version. The Swish presented here is versatile and ideal for business
settings. Because the Swish is such a powerful pattern, we encourage you to
practice being as conversationally creative as possible, so that you have
another tool in your repertoire as a coach.
To receive your free Swish Videos please
visit: http://www.bestnlpnewyork.com/Swish_Video.html

The Social Swish Pattern
In this chapter, we will discuss how to use the Swish Pattern to help friends
overcome their problems. The Social Swish Pattern can be used in a similar
way to the Conversational Swish. The difference is that in the Social Swish,
the friend does not necessarily know that they are being coached. Rather, the
coaching will seem like a normal conversation between two friends. The
Social Swish can be used whenever a friend is discussing a problem that they
have.
Of course, you will have to judge when it is appropriate for you to use the
Social Swish to help friends, and when it is not. It will depend, largely, upon
the nature of the relationship that you have with the friend in question.

The Social Swish uses the following steps:

1) Re-associate the friend into the problem state, so they begin to re-
experience the problem situation. Given that most people love to talk about
their problems, this is generally a very easy step, and it’s usually the fact that
your friend is talking about her problem that brings up the possibility of the
Social Swish in the first place. Use the ebb and flow of conversation to
associate them into the problem by switching to the present progressive tense
(“-ing”), and asking about their feelings. So you might say something like,
“Wait, so you are in the office and your boss frowns at you, and how are you
feeling when he does that?” As your friend tells her story, notice the words
and gestures associated with the problem situation. These “hot” words and
gestures (those that seem to carry the emotional energy of the problem) will
be used as anchors to re-trigger the problem situation when doing the Social
Swish.
Next, introduce a break state by telling a story that is related to the problem
situation but sufficiently different from it that your friend doesn’t think you
are talking about her. If she does think you are talking about her, then her
conscious mind may interfere and she consciously think: “This story is
nothing like my situation.” One good way to ensure that the story is
sufficiently different is to change the gender of the protagonist. So if your
friend is a woman, tell a story about a man, while if your friend is a man, tell
a story about a woman. A lot of people find it difficult to consciously consider
that a story is about them if it is stated to be about somebody of the opposite
gender. The story will also introduce the outcome and the outcome picture. If
you know that she has an interest in something at which she excels, then you
can ask her about this both as a break state, and also to introduce a resource
state.
When you’ve reached the part of the story about the outcome state, you can
use a pronoun shift (to “you”) to help your friend to envision the outcome
picture. Let us suppose that you are telling the story about a friend of yours
who had been arguing with his brother, and getting very angry about the
situation, but who then finally realized that his brother was acting like a child.
In fact, the brother was acting the same way he did when he was in fifth
grade. You could then shift the pronoun and say something like, “When you
realize that that other person is doing the best they can, given that their social
skills are those of a fifth grader, you can begin to realize that you’re bigger
than that—you’re bigger than him—and you no longer need to let him control
how you feel. It’s time for you to take control of your feelings, and feel at
peace even when someone else is acting like a fifth grader.” Switching
pronouns is something that we do naturally in conversation, but in a coaching
environment it allows us to offer direct positive suggestions to our client (or,
in this case, a friend).
When you notice your friend’s state shift as they envision the outcome
picture, you will then use the words, tonality, and gestures of the story to
anchor this state. So, in the above example, you may decide to use “you’re
bigger than that,” and “feel at peace,” each said with a certain tonality and
gesture, as the anchors. You should choose whichever words or phrases you
see your friend respond to.
You will perform the Social Swish using gestures associated with the
problem, followed by the anchors that you have set for the resource. You will
make the gesture associated with the problem and then immediately remove it
and make the gesture associated with the resource. Because you’re making
two gestures in this way, it will be helpful if the gesture associated with the
problem is made with one hand and the gesture associated with the resource is
made with the other hand. We suggest that you generally make the problem
gesture with your right hand, and the resource gesture with your left hand.
This will allow you to place the resource into your friend’s right visual field –
their creative field – and also into their future space, if they are normally
organized as regards their timeline. (A full discussion of timelines in NLP is
outside the scope of this book, but most people keep their future on their
right, or in front of them, and their past on their left, or behind them.)
When you have conditioned the Swish, you can change the topic of
conversation. This will act as a break state, and you can return to the problem
that your friend shared later on in the evening to test that she feels differently
about it now. You will then future pace the new response. This will be the end
of the pattern.
Here’s a working example:
You meet your friend John for a drink after work. John has clearly had a
tough day, and possibly a tough week. You ask him if he is okay and he says:
“My boss called me into his office to give me a dressing down about the
project I did for him. It was so unfair, as I had no experience in that area and
he knew it!” Rather than take the conversation with his boss as feedback,
John has clearly taken it as a personal attack and he is seriously pissed. You
wonder what will happen the next time John meets with his boss for some
more feedback! Perhaps you should offer John a resource—which may make
the next conversation between John and his boss easier.
The first step is to re-associate John back into the problem state. Although he
has told you about the problem, he has done so from a dissociated position so
you do not know whether the anger is what John experienced at the time of
the interaction with his boss, or whether it’s simply what he feels now, as he
looks back on it. In order to re-associate John into the situation, you’d use
tools such as shifting into the present tense and spatial awareness of the
physical location where the situation took place (so you can gesture toward
objects as they were). “Really! So he calls you into his office. Does he at least
ask you to sit down?… So you’re sitting down, what is he saying to you?…”
And so on.
As you speak to John, you begin to set spatial anchors by gesturing to the
place where his boss was sitting. In order to do this most effectively, the ideal
place to sit is facing towards your friend but slightly to his right. (For most
people, the right-hand side represents the future and it also represents their
resourceful, creative side. By sitting there, you will find it much easier to lead
them into a resourceful state.) So assuming that you are sitting slightly to
John’s right, you will use your right hand to anchor the position of John’s boss
in front of him.
At the same time, as John speaks, you will take note of the “hot” words that
he uses, and of the tonality and gestures associated with those words.
Remember, a hot word is simply a word that John places special emphasis on.
Hot words are generally relatively easy to notice once you begin listening for
them. In this case, John may use his boss’s name with a particular emphasis or
tonality, or he may call his boss a jerk (or similar) with a particular emphasis
and tonality. These words and their associated tonality are anchors to re-
trigger the experience.
Once you have identified the point in the story when John drops into a
negative state, and you know the word (or words) that John uses at this point,
and the tonality associated with those words, you should test your
assumptions by repeating back the hot words to see whether they take John
back into that negative state. You only need to test this once! If you test it a
number of times you will make John feel much worse.
As you say, “he’s a jerk,” with the associated tonality, you gesture toward the
position of his boss with your right hand.
When you feel like you have sufficient information about the situation in
which John found himself, you perform a break state by beginning to tell a
true story about you or someone you know—a story that contains a situation
that parallels John’s situation, but is sufficiently different that it does not
appear to be exactly the same story. The secondary purpose of the story is to
introduce a more resourceful state. For example, I might tell the story of when
I used to fight in martial arts competitions:
“When I was younger I competed in a number of martial arts competitions.
These were full contact competitions, no pulling punches. You learn more
about yourself fighting with a stranger than you do in six months of training
with your friends. In these competitions, you can kick your opponent
anywhere above the belt. Kicks below the belt were illegal, of course, but
they happened, either by accident or if you happened to be fighting an
opponent who didn’t respect the rules. So we used to wear a groin protector, a
“box.” A traditional box is designed to protect the groin from being struck
from the front, and on most occasions this was perfectly adequate to protect
from accidental blows. However, in one competition, I was fighting an
opponent I had never seen. You learn quickly [gesturing with your left hand to
anchor the resource of “learning quickly”] who the dirty fighters are, and this
guy, he’s a jerk [gesturing to your right, the anchor for his boss]. But when
you’re fighting a jerk like him, actually, these are the fighters who can teach
you the lessons you need to learn [gesturing left]. This guy [gesturing right]
simply kicked straight into my groin from the ground. My box was not
designed to protect from blows that came straight up and this jerk knew it. A
second after the impact, I found myself falling to the floor, totally
incapacitated. At the time, I was thoroughly pissed with the jerk for the “low
blow.” However, in retrospect, you realize that there’s a lesson to be learned
here [gesturing left] from dealing with that jerk [gesturing right]. The lesson
is to get good protection, to protect yourself from low blows when you’re
fighting a jerk, as well as blows that come from the front. Sometimes things
happen and you simply have to learn that lesson [gesturing left] so they don’t
happen again. Jerks [gesturing right] can be your best teachers [gesturing
left]!”
Alternatively, you could both break state and introduce a resource state by
asking John to tell you about something that he does well: “How was your
salsa dancing this weekend? It’s amazing that someone can learn to dance as
well as you do. You have great footwork—it’s amazing!”
Either way, you want to begin to anchor the resource states that you lead John
to. As you tell the story, or observe him speaking about his skills, you’ll wait
to see him change into a good state. You will see him begin to light up as he
enters the state. When you see this, you will then set an anchor by using a
particular key word with a particular tonality, and making a particular gesture
with your left hand at the same time. For example, in the story about the
martial arts, the active phrase might be “You can learn the lesson,” said with a
particular tonality.
Alternatively, as John is telling you his story about salsa dancing, you will
wait to see him change state and light up. You will choose as the anchor
whatever word or phrase he is saying at this time. Perhaps when he lights up
he says something like: “You’ve really got to know how to move,” putting
particular emphasis on the word “move.” So the anchor might be the word
“move,” said with the same tonality, or possibly the whole phrase. It won’t
make a difference whether you choose the single word or the phrase. You
have flexibility in how you approach this so choose the one that appears to
have the greatest effect on John.
The gesture associated with the positive anchor should be a movement of
your left hand, palm out, toward John. It is as if the picture of the martial
artist, or the picture of John the Salsa Dancer, is painted on the palm of your
left hand and you’re moving that picture toward him.
You are now in a position to do the Swish. After all this setup, you essentially
have the negative picture on the palm of your right hand, together with a hot
word and the associated tonality. This anchors the negative state. You also
have a resource state on the palm of your left hand, together with a hot word
or anchor phrase for that state. All you have to do now is to fire off the anchor
for the negative state. And then, as you remove that, you will introduce the
anchor for the resource state. So, in the above example, you have John’s boss
on the palm of your right hand, together with the anchor phrase, “He’s a jerk,”
and you have John salsa dancing, together with the anchor phrase “You’ve
really got to know how to move,” on the palm of your left hand.
You will then perform the Swish by giving John the suggestion: “When he’s a
jerk you’ve really got to know how to move,” delivered as follows:
Show John the palm of your right hand as you say, “When he’s a jerk…”
Then turn your right hand over, so the palm is facing away from John, and
begin to move it backward, towards your right, and away from him. Raise
your left hand, palm toward John, and begin to move it toward him as you
say: “…you’ve really got to know how to move.” As you do this take a look
at John’s face. If the Swish has been effective then you should initially see a
look of mild confusion, which gives way to a positive reaction at the end.
Assuming this is the case, simply repeat the Swish to condition it as the night
goes on. Each time he mentions his boss you say “That jerk…” [gesturing
with your right hand] “…you’ve really got to learn how to move…”
[gesturing with your left hand].
Try the casual Swish out with your family and friends. It’s fun to help other
people and watch them change for the better, and you deserve a little fun!
To receive your free Swish Videos please
visit: http://www.bestnlpnewyork.com/Swish_Video.html

The Physical Swish Pattern
Over the last few decades, educators have become aware that students have
different learning styles. Some people prefer to learn visually: by seeing
pictures, charts, graphs and diagrams, or by watching a demonstration. Other
people prefer to learn through sound: by hearing someone speak about a
subject and listening to the words, rhythm, and intonation of the speaker. Still
other people like to learn kinesthetically: by actually trying something out and
feeling their body take on the shape and rhythm of the learning. In this
chapter, we will discuss a kinesthetic version of the Swish, which is great for
work with kinesthetic learners.
Having the flexibility to use different representational systems (visual,
auditory, or kinesthetic) is a wonderful skill for you to develop as a coach.
The Hypnotic Swish (see Chapter Twelve) uses sound to trigger the pattern.
In fact, when I learned the Swish, many years ago, it was taught using both
visual and auditory anchors. I was told to say “swish!” when I wanted the
client to change the trigger picture into the outcome picture. Since then, the
word “swish” has gathered a wide range of cultural associations relating to
gender rights, food, and dancing. As a result, we no longer teach our students
to say it when performing the Swish. Instead, we allow the client to create his
or her own sound, or use a simple finger snap.
The Kinesthetic Swish uses exactly the same principles as the Classical Swish
that we discussed in Chapter Four, but the process has been translated entirely
into kinesthetic terms. In the Classical Swish you see the trigger picture
moving off into the distance and see the outcome picture approaching, or you
see the outcome picture expanding out of the corner of the trigger picture.
Sense for a moment the possibility of allowing one feeling to drift away, and
replaced by another, or of sensing one feeling expanding out of the corner of
another. If this is a little difficult to wrap your mind around, bear with us as
we hold your hand through the process.
Here’s what you need to know before we lead you through the two variations
of the Kinesthetic Swish:
Feelings have a slower tempo than visual scenes. A feeling will last for
perhaps ninety seconds, even if you do not begin to intensify the feeling by
making pictures in your mind or talking about the situation inside your head.
Ninety seconds is simply the time it takes for the biochemical wash that has
been triggered by the feeling to move through your mind-body. Because of
this, you have to give your client enough time to move from one feeling to
another when doing the Kinesthetic Swish.
In terms of NLP eye-accessing cues, feelings are found down and to the right
for most people. If you want to get in touch with a certain emotion, then you
can allow your eyes to move down and to the right. You can even reach down
with your right hand to touch the feelings you want to access. We will be
using this accessing when doing the Kinesthetic Swish (although you should
feel free to modify if your client is organized differently). Most of your
clients will be normally organized. You can calibrate for this by watching
their eye accessing during the intake. Are they accessing memories on their
left or their right? If the memories are on their right there is a possibility they
are reversed organized.
We will offer two different ways of carrying out the Kinesthetic Swish, each
using different submodalities. One will be a little slower and gentler, and the
second will be faster and more energetic. We suggest that when the outcome
state is lower in energy than the problem state, use the slower Kinesthetic
Swish (for example, if your client is anxious and wishes to feel calm). For
higher-energy outcome states, such as excitement replacing boredom, you
might want to use the faster and more energetic Kinesthetic Swish.
Because you are doing the Swish entirely kinesthetically, you do not need to
know what the client is seeing as the trigger. In this version of the pattern, it is
all about the feeling. However, as with all NLP work, it is better to create
change within a certain context, so we suggest that you find both the specific
situation within which the client wants to change and the point of synesthesia.

Variation One: The Slow Kinesthetic Swish
Supposing you are with a client who gets anxious, annoyed, agitated, or feels
some other high-energy feeling. In conversation, before you formally start
running the pattern, you explore with her how she would like to feel and she
talks about wanting to be calm and peaceful, relaxed and mellow. In other
words, she’d like to feel a lower-energy state than the one she experiences as
the problem. Essentially, she wants to slow down and dissipate the energy of
her problem state. Higher-energy states tend to overwhelm lower-energy
states. Using a slower version of the Kinesthetic Swish will allow time for the
higher-energy state to dissipate and the lower-energy state to emerge.
The steps of the slow Kinesthetic Swish are as follows:
1) Associate the client into the context where she wants the change.
Uncover the point of synesthesia within this context—what happens that
causes her to feel the way she does not want to feel? As usual, you will use
present tense language to achieve this. As she discusses the context from an
associated position, you will pay attention to her BMIRs, listen for her hot
words, and get a grasp on her gestural anchors.
2) Break state. As this is a Kinesthetic Swish, you might want to break state
spatially, by asking the client to stand up or move to another part of the room.
3) Ask the client how she would like to feel in the situation. Associate her
into this new feeling. So, for example, if she says, “I would like to feel calm,”
you ask her: “You want to feel calm, and what’s it like when you feel calm?”
You can build on her response to enlarge the feeling of calm and, as this
happens, the words, tonality, gestures, and other BMIRs that she uses will
provide the anchors for the state.
4) Ask her to go back into the situation where she wishes to feel this sense
of calm. Ask her to see what she sees, and hear what she hears. Allow her to
begin to feel the negative state. As you see the BMIRs for the negative state,
ask her to reach down with her right hand and unhook the feeling—the
anxiety, or whatever the negative state is—and allow it to float away in the
sky like a balloon, as, simultaneously, the new state of calm develops. The
pacing of the change is pegged to the feeling of calm: The balloon of anxiety
will float away at the same pace as the calm grows. Use the anchors for the
new state to help her build her sense of calm.
5) Break state. You can take her to the place in the room that represents the
break state if you are using spatial anchors.
6) Now ask her to step back into the situation where she wishes to feel the
sense of calm. Ask her to see what she sees and hear what she hears. Allow
her to begin to feel the negative state and then, again, ask her to unhook the
state and allow it to float off into the air only as quickly as the new state, the
state of calm, can arise. Repeat the steps as many times as necessary to
condition the change. You will know that the change has been conditioned
when she is no longer able to access the negative state and instead, she goes
automatically into the positive state.

Variation Two: The Fast Kinesthetic Swish
The fast Kinesthetic Swish is an ideal pattern when somebody wishes to have
a more energetic state. For example, if your client wishes to be motivated to
work out, then they will need energy to do so. The fast Kinesthetic Swish is
an ideal pattern to provide this energy.
The steps of the fast Kinesthetic Swish are as follows:
1) Associate the client into the situation that she wants to change. Let’s
say that she feels lethargic. What does she see, or hear, or feel in this context
that lets her know it is time for her to have more energy? Use the present
tense and pay attention to her BMIRs as she enters the low-energy state.
2) Break state. As with the slow Kinesthetic Swish, you may use a spatial
anchor to break state by asking her to move to another place in the room.
3) Ask your client how she wants to feel differently in the situation.
Perhaps she wants to feel excitement. Associate her into this state of
excitement. If her neurology and physiology are not accustomed to high-
energy states, then pacing and leading will be extremely important. This
means that you, as the coach, have to get into the high-energy state first in
order to lead her there. Once she associates into the high-energy state, pay
attention to her BMIRs as, once again, these will provide anchors for the
state.
4) Ask her to step back into the situation where she needs this high-
energy excitement. As she begins to slip back into the low-energy lethargy,
suggest that she reach down to the right, with her right hand, and grasp the
new state of excitement. As she now has a hold on this state, she can pull it up
and through her body by moving her right hand strongly and steadily up
toward her left shoulder. It should look and feel as if she is throwing a cloak
over her left shoulder. Use anchors to help her associate into the excitement.
The movement should be faster and more energetic than in the slow
Kinesthetic Swish but should still give her enough time for her energy to
change.
5) Break state by asking her to move to the point of the room occupied by
the break-state anchor.
6) Now ask her to step back into the situation where she needs that
excitement. Once more, calibrate if she begins to slip into the state of
lethargy, and get her to reach down with her right hand and pull the state of
excitement up toward her left shoulder. The movement should be slow and
steady. Use the anchors for excitement to assist the process. Break state and
repeat as many times as necessary until she automatically goes into a state of
excitement whenever she begins to feel the lethargy.
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The Self-Coaching Swish Pattern for Personal Success
The Swish Pattern is ideally suited for use as a self-coaching technique. If
you haven’t already, read Chapter Four, which outlines all the steps of the
Classical Swish and the necessity of each one. Once you have all that
information, you are ready to practice becoming the new you.
Unlike many NLP patterns, the Swish is very easy to run on yourself because
it is based around the manipulation of pictures within your mind. As long as
you can visualize the outcome picture, you can easily run the Self-Coaching
Swish. Because the first part of the Swish involves seeing what you actually
see in the outside world when you are in the situation in which you want to
feel differently, all you have to do is go into that context and look around you.
Look at what it is that would normally make you feel less than resourceful
and then simply imagine the outcome picture swishing up in front of you. It is
as simple as that! Now we will go through each step in detail.

Overview of the Self-Coaching Swish Pattern

The Swish as a self-coaching tool follows the same basic steps as the
Classical Swish. First, you select a context or situation where you want to
change how you feel or behave. The Swish can actually be practiced in this
physical location, as long as you can go there and have a minute or two for
the required mental rehearsal. If you can’t do this—for example, if a specific
person at work has been making you feel unresourceful and you can’t go into
their office and rehearse the Swish—then go to a similar environment and
imagine they are there, or simply find a quiet place to imagine. What you do
not want to do is to try and practice the Swish in a real-time environment. For
example, if you want to stay calm when your boss is yelling, don’t wait until
he is actually yelling in your face to practice! Practice first in a low-pressure
environment that you control, so that your unconscious mind will be trained
to do the heavy lifting later, in the real situation.
Now you are ready to find the trigger picture: what you see through your own
eyes when you are in the problem context or situation and immediately before
you begin to feel unresourceful. The easiest way to find the trigger picture is
to go to the environment and slowly look around. As your eyes rest on the
trigger picture, your unresourceful feelings will begin to increase. There could
be a number of different trigger pictures to deal with in any one environment,
and if so, simply do the Swish Pattern on each trigger separately.
Now you will take a moment to create the outcome picture. If it is easier or
more convenient, you can create the outcome picture before you go into the
environment. The outcome picture is simply a picture of you as you would
want to be in the situation: your ideal self. This outcome picture should be
amazing and inspiring. Make the picture big and bright and totally
compelling. The one thing you must make sure of is that the picture is
attractive to you. It should make you think: “Yes! I want to be like that!” The
outcome pictures should include you with any added abilities you would like
to experience in the context, and also everything else that you will have when
you are able to perform the outcome behavior effortlessly. Whatever you feel
is attractive and compelling to you should be part of the picture that you use.
Now you can do the Swish by exchanging the two pictures. If you are doing
the Swish in a place other than the environment where you want the change,
then practice by visualizing the trigger picture. Now notice some well-defined
spot within the trigger picture where you can place the postage stamp-sized
outcome picture. For example, if you are doing the Swish in the context of a
business interaction, you could choose the forehead of the person you are
talking to. In your imagination, shrink the outcome picture to the size of a
postage stamp and place it on the spot you have chosen. Now perform the
Swish as usual. Have the outcome picture spring out from that spot, growing
as it does so into a life-sized and three-dimensional picture of you in full
Technicolor. If you wish, you can step into this image and see how fantastic it
feels to know that you are already becoming this new you!
If you are doing the Swish in real time, in the place and situation where you’d
like to change, then you will not have to imagine the trigger picture—it will
actually be there in front you. In this case, simply look at the trigger and
imagine that the stamp-sized outcome picture has been placed at some
specific point in the scene in front of you. Now once again, do the Swish as
usual by imagining the outcome picture springing out and becoming life-
sized, three-dimensional and Technicolor. Once more, if it is appropriate, step
into the image and feel how good it feels to know that you are already
becoming this person.
Repeat the Swish a number of times until you feel yourself completely
entering into that state of total resourcefulness.


Summary of the Self-Coaching Swish:

1) Select a context.
2) See the trigger picture, either in real life (by going to the actual
physical location) or in your imagination. This is what you see
immediately before you want to be your best.
3) Create a picture of the ideal you, the outcome picture.
4) Embed the outcome picture somewhere in the trigger picture.
5) Imagine the outcome picture exploding out of the trigger picture and
becoming life-sized in front of you.
6) If appropriate, step into the outcome picture.

An Example of the Self-Coaching Swish

Peter is a salesman for an office machine company. He wishes to feel totally
confident each time he makes a sales presentation.
When asked, “What do you see immediately before the sales presentation
begins?”, after a little thought he identifies being in a situation where he is
sitting across the desk from his prospective client, and his client is frowning
and saying, “We already have all the copiers we need.” Although Peter
believes that he can bring a superior solution to any prospective client, he
reports feeling a drop in energy when he hears this (which is frequently). Now
Peter has both the context and the trigger picture for the Swish.
Peter’s outcome picture is of the Peter who is confident; knowledgeable about
his field, his company’s products and their advantages to his competitors’
products; focused on the prospective client’s needs; and politely determined
to educate the prospective client about the pros and cons of his company’s
products.
However, the outcome picture should also have other attributes based upon
the following questions: “Why do I want to get this account? What do I
achieve in winning this account? Why do I want to be a success in my
company and my field? Who will I be as a person when I am a total success in
this field? How will I look then?”
As he asks himself these questions, Peter begins to form a picture of himself
as proud of his profession and his role in the company. He sees himself
standing taller and speaking with more authority not only to his colleagues,
but also to his clients and prospective clients. Because he is more successful,
he sees himself as no longer feeling the pressure to make any particular sale.
As a result, he can relax into the process of acting as a consultant to his clients
and prospects, educating them about the true cost of their office machines—
including not just leasing costs, paper, toner, and maintenance, but also the
cost of reprinting inferior copies, paper jams, downtime, and other factors. In
this picture, he sees himself as more of an educator than a salesman. As a
result of his financial success, he sees himself better dressed and driving a
better car. He also sees himself looking healthier and fitter because he will
have more time to take care of himself and go to the gym. By the time he is
done with the process, he is extremely excited about the new Peter he sees in
the picture.
Peter passes a small park on his way to work every day, and he decides to
initially practice the Swish for five minutes each day while sitting in the park.
He sits down in the park, imagines one of the prospective clients he is going
to see that day—imagines sitting in their office, across the desk from them.
Peter then takes a postage stamp-sized copy of his outcome picture and places
it firmly on their forehead. Then he imagines hearing them tell him that they
have all the office machines they need, and at that point in time the new self-
image springs out of their forehead and appears—life-sized, three-
dimensional and Technicolor—in front of him. He blanks the screen and
repeats this a few more times. He also runs the pattern with some of the
prospective clients he has visited in the past, particularly those that gave him
the hardest time. When he’s done, he walks on to work. After one week of
practicing the pattern in the park, he begins to use it in real time when he is
actually sitting in front of the prospect. As he is sitting there, he imagines
seeing the postage stamp-sized picture of the new Peter, right in the middle of
their forehead. He then has the image spring out of their forehead into the
space between them. Peter is very happy with the results and is closing more
sales.
However, he still has trouble with some of his accounts and still gets the old
feelings of doubt. When asked which accounts he has the most difficulty with,
Peter says it is with large prospective customers, when there is a lot of
pressure to close the sale, and also some of his existing customers who
intimidate him. When asked, he reports that the old feelings of doubt arise
before he walks into their office. In fact, he begins to have these feelings as
soon as he imagines walking into their building. Peter now begins to practice
the Swish as before, but this time based on the trigger picture of the front door
to their building: Peter sees the front door and imagines his outcome picture
embedded in the corner of the front door. The outcome picture then springs
out of the door, becoming life-sized, three-dimensional and Technicolor in
front of him; he steps into it, taking it with him as he enters the building. He
repeats the process as he enters the door to the prospect’s office suite, and also
on the client’s forehead as they first greet him. He continues to run the Swish
from their forehead as they sit in the meeting. He uses the same outcome
image for each Swish. He also practices each Swish in the park in the
morning, as well as in real time as he visits each client. His state of
confidence in these high-pressure meetings increases dramatically.
After a few weeks of practicing the Self-Coaching Swish in this way, Peter
finds that it begins to take place automatically; he will approach his client’s
office building ready to do the Swish, and find that he has already done it on a
more unconscious level. At this point Peter begins to incorporate the Self-
Coaching Swish into other areas of his life, including his golf game!

Troubleshooting the Self-Coaching Swish

In this section, we will discuss what can go wrong in using the Self-Coaching
Swish. If you are not benefiting from the wonderful changes that the Swish
can bring about, it’s likely to be for one of the following reasons.
If you decide to do the Swish in real time—for example, as you are walking
into your client’s office—then this should not be the first time you do it.
Doing the Swish only in real time is like an NFL team practicing only when
they run onto the field for the Super Bowl. You should practice the Swish in a
low-pressure environment first, before you get to the client’s office, so that
your unconscious mind and your neurology is primed to do the Swish when
the time comes.
Make sure that you use the Swish sufficiently early in the process that leads
up to the undesired state. For example, it’s no use having a great sense of
confidence when you stand up to make a presentation if you have behaved
like a gibbering idiot for the previous twenty minutes! Break each situation
down into the triggers that could lead to a negative state, and run the Self-
Coaching Swish on each one in turn.
For example, a sales presentation might be broken down into how you want
to feel and behave in the following situations:
The pre-sales presentation rehearsal.
 Entering the client’s building.
Entering the client’s office suite.
Being introduced to the client’s team.
Making the presentation.
Answering questions at the end.
Saying goodbye to the client.
You can’t expect to get the results you want by doing the Self-Coaching
Swish only once or twice. Remember the value of repetition for the purposes
of rewiring your brain. The more times you do the Swish, the stronger you are
making the associated neural pathways. If you only do the Swish once, then
you can expect only limited results.
If you are doing the Swish in real time, you must remember to actually do it
when you need it. If you don’t do it, it won’t work! And if the situation in
which you need it is one where you usually feel nervous, then you may very
well forget to do the Swish. Make it a regular habit to check in on your own
state. Ask yourself: “How am I feeling right now?” This is probably the single
most important thing that you can do to transform your life. The simple
process of stopping, checking in with your feelings and, if they are not what
you’d like them to be, making a decision to feel another way, is powerful.
This practice of choosing how you want to feel will create spectacular
changes in your life. It demonstrates to you that you have choices about how
you feel and gives specific instructions to your unconscious mind to feel and
behave in a certain way. You’ll find that giving specific instructions to your
unconscious mind is exactly what it wants—remember, though, to give those
instructions stated in the positive—“I want to feel confident”—not in the
negative: “I don’t want to feel nervous”.
Remember also that, for most people, the Swish is a visual pattern, so make
the pictures, don’t just tell yourself how to feel. It is difficult to change your
state by simply telling your unconscious mind in words how you want it to be.
There are a couple of reasons for this: first of all, the unconscious mind is not
as comfortable with words as it is with pictures. Words are primarily used by
the logical, left brain, and the executive, conscious mind. The second reason
is that, when using words, we can easily slip into the negative impact of
saying: “I don’t want to feel….” For example, “I don’t want to feel nervous.”
Stating your desired outcome in this negative way makes things very difficult
for your unconscious mind to understand. Your neurology will be unable to
respond. Here’s an illustration of the problem: If we were to say to you,
“Don’t think of a pink elephant,” you’ll find that the only way you can avoid
thinking of the elephant is to first actually think about it, and then attempt to
stop thinking about it. Similarly, the only way your unconscious mind can
process the idea of “don’t feel nervous” is by first feeling nervous, and then
trying to stop feeing that way. It’s much more effective to show your
unconscious mind how you want to feel by giving it a positive outcome
picture that it can move toward without conflict.
The key to running the Swish on yourself is to make sure that it is operating
on an unconscious level. If you are simply doing it as a logical, cognitive
exercise, the process will not be sufficient to create a deep unconscious
change in your feelings and behavior. How do you know if it’s operating at an
unconscious level? You should feel a physiological shift when you do the
Swish and the outcome picture expands or leaps out in front of you. Your will
body let you know it is being reset into a new state. For some, this feels like
an opening up in the chest, but for you it may be different.

Making the Self-Coaching Swish Part of Your

Everyday Routine
Each and every time you walk into a room, you are walking into a new
situation and you may need to change your state. The state you want to be in
when you see your boss may be very different from the state you want to be
in when you speak to your client, which will be different again from the state
you want to be in when you see your family. Each time you walk through a
doorway you have the opportunity to do a Swish and step into a new state.
This Swish is such a fantastic pattern for controlling and maintaining your
own state that you may wish to consider the following exercise:
Make each and every doorway that you walk through the trigger picture for a
new Swish.
Create some awesome outcome pictures—new self-images. Make one for the
office, another for your client’s office, another for your home, another for the
golf club, another for the gym—however many you want.
Choose an outcome picture and embed it into each doorway you walk
through. So if you are entering your office, you would have the outcome
picture for the “ideal-you-in-the-office” waiting in the doorway for you to
walk through. As you approach the door, have the outcome picture expand
into the doorway, waiting for you to walk through and take it with you.
When you walk through the doorway, you walk through the outcome picture.
It wraps around you like a new skin as you absorb those new qualities and
feelings.
If you do this exercise on a regular basis, then your unconscious mind will
internalize the process on its own and will then begin to do the process by
itself each and every time you walk through a doorway. Each doorway will
automatically trigger the state that you need in that situation. Of course, in
order to do this, your unconscious mind needs to have a sufficient amount of
experience in choosing the appropriate states. You have to consciously do
some work in setting this pattern up so that your unconscious mind knows
what is required of it. But once you have done that, you will have created an
awesome generator of positive states for yourself!
When making the outcome picture big, consider making it slightly larger than
life-size so that you can easily step inside it if you wish to.
The more you practice the Self-Coaching Swish, the more it will become
incredibly generative for you. Before you know it, your brain will
automatically be shifting less resourceful pictures into wonderfully powerful
outcome pictures. In this way, the Swish is one of those exercises that has the
potential to not only change your reactions in certain contexts but to change
your whole life!
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The Swish Pattern for Business
Because the Swish Pattern is visual, it’s quite easy to run on yourself in real-
time. We have included several examples of how you might use the Swish as
a self-coaching pattern in a business context in the previous chapter.
The Swish is also a great pattern to use in a business context with colleagues
or clients. People in a business context usually have specific goals, as well as
specific stresses and frustrations. These stresses and frustrations provide
ample trigger pictures, and their goals provide great outcome pictures.
Furthermore, you will find that your colleagues and clients will be quite
generous in giving you the information that you need to run the Swish. Below,
we will describe two situations in which you could use the Swish in your
business.
Before we go on, though, remember that the Swish Pattern should be used to
improve the lives of those around you. It should not be used for unethical
purposes such as persuading somebody to buy a product they do not want or
need. Using NLP in this way is manipulative and may jeopardize your
business relationships.

Using the Swish Pattern to Coach Your Team

Businesses are fond of setting individual goals. Large organizations and
companies often spend a lot of time and effort setting goals for each
individual employee. Unfortunately, these goals are often written down, or
entered into the system, and not looked at again or considered until it’s time
for a performance review. Thus the primary reason business goals are not
achieved is that they are disconnected from day-to-day activities and the
company employees are not emotionally involved in the goal-setting.
The Swish Pattern offers a unique method for taking the goal-setting process,
involving employees on an emotional level, and attaching their goals to their
everyday environment. The context in which they work—their day-to-day
environment—becomes the trigger picture. Who they will become as result of
achieving their goals becomes the outcome picture. Attaching the outcome
picture to the trigger picture using a Swish Pattern will remind your
employees of their goals on a day-to-day and hour-to-hour basis, and on a
deeper emotional level. As a result, their goals are much more likely to be
achieved.
Here is the procedure for using the Swish Pattern to set corporate goals:
1) Set the goals in the usual way.
2) Make sure that each employee is emotionally committed to his or her
goal. This is done by asking the question, “Who will you be within the
organization, and within your career, as a result of achieving these goals?”
You should see the employee become more animated, perhaps smiling and
speaking faster, when they talk about goals that they are emotionally
committed to. If there is not a physiological shift the coach can explore with
the employee whether the goal is truly hers or if it is what she thinks her goal
should be.
3) Lead the employee to build a visual self-image of how they will be when
they have achieved their goal and reached the next level within the
organization and their career. This can be done overtly or covertly, depending
upon the relationship with the employee, the personalities of those involved,
and the culture of the company or organization. For example, if you wish to
help the employee build this new self-image, you might ask, “When you have
achieved these goals, who will you be within the organization and within your
career? What will you be doing that is different from what you are doing
now? If I were to come and see you one year from now, and you have
achieved your goals, what will I see?” You’d give the employee time to
answer, and then repeat back what they have just told you, saying something
like: “That sounds great. So I would be seeing….” As you describe this new
self-image back to the employee, you should see the same animated
emotional response as before.
You can anchor this new self-image using the employee’s words and tonality,
as well as raising your left hand with your palm turned towards the employee.
(Anchoring in this way is discussed more fully in Chapter Thirteen.) Test the
anchor by breaking state and then raising your left hand again while you
describe how the employee will be when she has achieved her goal. You will
know the anchor is effective if you see her go back into the positive state. If
not, go back to finding out what she truly wants and the hot words and
gestures associated with that.
You can now do the Swish by reminding her of what she will see at the time
that she needs to take action to achieve her goal, and then immediately
reminding her of her outcome. For example, if her outcome is to be promoted
to supervisor with the ability to “make a difference,” and one of her goals is to
complete the monthly billing on a timely basis, you might say, “Each time
you see those monthly billing reports, you’ll know that [raising your left
hand] you’re making a difference, and completing those reports is a step
toward your goal of being a supervisor.” In this case the Swish is contained
within the unconscious instruction to link the monthly billing reports with
‘making a difference’.
If you are a manager or other business leader, using the Swish in this way will
make a huge difference to the performance of your team.

Using the Swish with Business Customers
The Swish can also be used with customers to help achieve a sale. Again, we
cannot stress enough that NLP techniques such as the Swish should only be
used in an ethical way. If you try to use these techniques to manipulate your
customers, you risk generating a lot of buyer’s remorse, which loses future
business! That said, one way of using the Swish with customers is to
construct a trigger image representing whatever problem they are facing, and
an outcome image of you and your product having solved their issue.
Let’s take the example of Mark, a consultant in the healthcare industry. Mark
provides technology solutions that assists healthcare providers with their
billing procedures, and ensures that they are in compliance with governmental
regulations. Failure to bill on a timely basis means his clients do not get paid,
while making a mistake with the billing could lead to a government
investigation. Mark is visiting a prospective client. First, Mark begins to
clarify the trigger picture. He might say something like: “Many of my clients
have concerns about their billing procedures [setting the context]. They look
at the reports generated by their billing system [identifying the trigger picture]
and [sighs to check if the trigger picture generates a negative state] they’re not
sure if they’re capturing all the value they should be, or, worse, if they’re
inadvertently overbilling. So you may find your business has cash flow issues,
or you could be in serious trouble with the government. This is all a big
headache for people like you, who would prefer to spend their time helping
patients.” Depending upon the response of his client, Mark will have
identified the trigger picture. If the client does not respond then Mark will
move on to some other portion of the billing cycle.
Mark may now spend some time asking the prospective client how her
business could be improved, and what that would look like to her. This will
provide Mark with some ideas about the outcome image, as well as various
anchors for the outcome state (the client’s hot words, including the tonality
and gestures).
Next, Mark will break the negative state by describing what his company
does. He may give some impressive facts and figures about the effectiveness
of his solution. Mark will now generate the outcome picture. He will do this
by talking about the healthcare organizations he has helped. He might say
something like: “My clients experience a faster billing cycle and greater cash
flow, which saves them much of the time they used to spend billing. Let me
tell you about one of my clients who has a practice similar to yours and is
using our solution…” Mark will then go on to describe this client, building up
a picture similar to what Mark will expect to see if the prospect engages him
to provide his solution. While describing the outcome picture, Mark will
make sure that his solution is part of it. Mark will anchor the positive state his
client goes into while listening to the story, using certain key words and
gestures.
It is quite possible that Mark will close the sale there and then. If not, Mark
will attach the outcome image to the trigger image using the Swish Pattern.
He will say something like: “I realize you are very busy, and that you are
focused on providing the best care to your patients; when you’re looking at
the reports generated by your current system, consider whether our solution is
right for you—to help you focus on providing care while generating healthy
cash flow….” [Mark continues to fire off the anchors for the positive state.]
The Swish is a fantastic way to improve your business. Using it within your
company allows you to help motivate your employees in a way that leads
them to achieving the specific goals set for them. The Swish also helps you to
better serve your clients and customers by allowing you to communicate to
the client just how you will fulfill their particular needs in a way that is highly
ethical. When employees and clients are realizing their goals on a regular
basis, the value of your company increases immensely.
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The Swish Pattern for Dealing
with Difficult People
We will all occasionally find ourselves having to deal with difficult people.
As practitioners of NLP, we seek to be at “cause,” which means accepting
responsibility for how we feel. We take steps to choose how we feel—to
choose our state—and then to enter that state. Fortunately, as practitioners of
NLP, we have a lot of tools to allow us to control our own state, and one of
the most powerful of these tools is the Swish. In this chapter, we will describe
how to use the Swish effectively when dealing with difficult people, either for
our own benefit or for that of our clients. As a coach, you can use the Swish
to make yourself feel good when dealing with your own difficult clients (if
you have any). I’m sure you will agree that this is a great tool to have!
Difficult people tend to make us feel less than resourceful—otherwise they
wouldn’t be difficult! We may feel annoyed when we are with them, or
frustrated, or angry, or upset. If, instead of feeling annoyed, we felt calm, then
things would be much easier for us and probably for them as well. If, rather
than frustrated, we felt happy, then they may lighten up too. If, instead of
feeling angry, we felt peaceful, then our experiences will be much more
pleasant, and this pleasantness would be shared with them. Rather than
running a destructive cycle—whereby we feel frustrated working with that
person, which feeds into how they react to us and then into how we react to
them—we can begin to run a virtuous cycle, whereby we feel more relaxed
and comfortable working with them, which then feeds into how they react to
us and how we react to them. When we master the Swish, we can always feel
completely resourceful in the presence of difficult people; we can feel calm,
confident, or however else we want to feel.

The Swish for Dealing With Difficult People

Adapting the Swish Pattern for dealing with difficult people is easy, as it
follows the Classical Swish Pattern very closely. Here are the steps:
1) Select the person who makes you feel less than resourceful. For the
purposes of this exercise we will call this person the DP (Difficult
Person).
2) Think of a context—a time and place—when you were with the DP.
Where are you? What is happening? What are you seeing? What are
 you hearing? Notice how you’re feeling. Run this experience as a movie
where you are seeing out of your own eyes. Pay particular attention to
what the DP is doing immediately before you get the feeling. What do
you notice? What are you paying attention to immediately before you
get that negative feeling? This is the trigger.
3) Do you smell popcorn? (In other words, break state!)
4) Consider how you want to be in the presence of the DP. Perhaps you
can make a movie of yourself feeling good and dealing with this person
in a very resourceful way.
Sometimes we make movies like this after the fact, and in the movie we make
some snappy comeback that puts the other person down. This is not the best
movie to have if you want to improve the interaction you have with the DP.
What you want to create is a movie that results in a win-win situation. How
can you walk away from this interaction, having made that person feel good
and feeling good yourself? To create this win-win movie, ask yourself the
following questions: What is important to you about your interaction with this
person? Why are you interacting with them at all? Think about what
interacting with this person does for you. For example, if this is somebody at
work, then ask yourself: Why are you working? If there is no reason for you
to interact with this person that is more important than the difficulty they
create for you, then perhaps you should stop interacting with them!
Perhaps you are working in order to make money to support and protect your
family. When you realize what your larger outcome is, you realize what is
really important about your interaction with the DP. Then you can ask
yourself the question: “When I’m supporting and protecting my family at my
best, who am I then, as a person?” This is the self-identity that we will install
using the Swish. So when you are supporting and protecting your family,
when you are a father or mother, what is really important to you? What are
you believing about yourself and the world? What capabilities do you have
when you realize you are acting to support and protect your family?
When you have all of this, construct the new self-image picture of your ideal
self. In our example, the image would be of the father or mother supporting
and protecting his or her family, with all the values and beliefs and
capabilities that that implies, and doing whatever he or she needs to do to get
the job done.
Alternatively, you could use the archetype method described earlier in the
book. Think of a character that you know from a movie, a book, history, or
think of somebody from your own life who would have the skills necessary to
deal with the DP in a totally resourceful way. Again, aim for a win-win
outcome to the interaction. We are not seeking to put anybody else down, or
to “win” if it’s at someone else’s expense.
When you find a person who can deal with this sort of situation easily, an
ideal archetype, make a picture of them in your mind. You can even find a
picture on the Internet if it helps. Take a look at the picture. What is it about
the archetype that grabs your attention? What is it about their posture? What
is it about their facial expression? What do those things reveal about them?
What do those things reveal about their capabilities, the ones that would help
in dealing with the difficult person? What is it that is important to them? What
do they believe about themselves and the world? What other capabilities do
they have? What emotional strength do they have? As you look at the picture,
begin to notice everything about that picture which reflects their beliefs, their
values, and their capabilities. When you have done this, begin to transform
the picture into a picture of your ideal self, the ideal you. Take on their
identity in the situation involving the difficult person. Adopt their beliefs and
values in this situation. Notice that you also have their capabilities and their
emotional strength. Make that picture big and bright; make it three-
dimensional; make it into a movie, with sound. Make it panoramic, so that it
wraps around you. When you see the picture of your new self, you should feel
fantastic.

Doing the Difficult-People Swish Pattern

We are now ready to do the Swish using the two pictures we have
constructed. The trigger picture is the DP doing whatever it is that they do
immediately before you begin to feel bad. The outcome picture is the new
you, either the you who is embodying your own highest ideals—those that are
really important to you and that cause you to interact with the DP—or the
archetype. Either way, this is the person you are already becoming! Shrink the
outcome picture down to postage-stamp size. Take a look at the trigger
picture. It will contain the face of the difficult person. Take a look at the spot
right in the middle of their forehead. Now embed the outcome picture there.
Now we’re ready for the Swish: imagine you are in the context when you last
interacted with the difficult person. Imagine being back there, seeing what
you are seeing and hearing what you are hearing. Notice the difficult person,
and notice that small postage stamp-sized spot right in the middle of their
forehead. Now swish that small picture until the image of your new self
appears in bright Technicolor, in three dimensions, right in the space in
between you and the DP. See that image of your new self and notice how
good you feel. If you want, you can step forward into that image. Notice how
good it feels to be that new person.
Now blank the screen. One more time, go back to that context when you last
interacted with the difficult person. Imagine being back there, seeing what
you’re seeing and hearing what you’re hearing. See the person with the image
right in the middle of their forehead, and swish that image so that the new you
appears between you and the difficult person. Blank the screen and repeat.
One more time, blank the screen and repeat.
This time, blank the screen and repeat, and then allow the movie to play out.
Notice how your interaction with the person is different this time. Notice how
you can continue to feel resourceful in their presence. Notice how these
resourceful feelings allow you to behave in a different way. Notice how your
behavior impacts the difficult person, and how they begin to be less difficult.
Notice how they behave in a different way.
Now take a different context, a different time and place when you interacted
with this person. Again go back to that time, seeing what you’re seeing and
hearing what you’re hearing. Notice the difficult person, and notice that they
have the image embedded in their forehead, the image of the new you. Swish
that image until the new you appears in between you and the difficult person.
If you wish, you can step into the new you and feel how good that feels.
Blank the screen and repeat. Once more, blank the screen and repeat. And
finally, one last time, blank screen and repeat, but this time allow the movie to
play out, noticing how it’s different for the new you, with these new
resources.
Pick another context and repeat the process. In fact, repeat the process with as
many contexts as you can think of. At some stage, your unconscious mind is
going to generalize the process so that each time you think of this person, you
feel resourceful. This is when you know that the Swish is fully installed in
your unconscious mind.

The Future Pace
Now think of a time in the future when you may have to interact with this
person. Step into that experience and notice what you’re seeing and hearing.
Now imagine that person appearing in the scene. Notice that they have that
little image right in the middle of their forehead. It’s almost like somebody
has slapped a postage stamp on there! Notice what happens. Don’t be
surprised if you suddenly find yourself feeling totally resourceful. You may
find that each and every time you interact with this person in the future, your
interactions are very different from what took place in the past. You might
find that your experience changes so completely that it begins to change the
difficult person. From now on, your interactions with that person will be a lot
more positive, and a lot more fun.
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The Swish Pattern for Smoking
and Other Habits
As we have already mentioned, the Swish is an excellent pattern to use with
clients who smoke, bite their nails, eat unhealthy food, or engage in other
unwanted behaviors and habits. Indeed, in the early books about NLP written
by Richard Bandler, the Swish was normally described in the context of either
smoking or nail-biting. Because of this, we will spend some time discussing
the Swish in the context of changing habits.
There are many reasons that the Swish is an excellent pattern for changing
bad habits:
1) It is very quick and easy to do. This means that the Swish can be
incorporated into a larger piece of change work within a coaching
session. The Swish only takes five or ten minutes to do, and within that
time the Swish can be performed numerous times to condition the
change.
2) The Swish is very easy to construct in the context of a habit. The
trigger picture is easy to find. It will be precisely what the client sees
before engaging in the unwanted behavior. The outcome picture will be
a picture of the client having found the control to overcome the habit.
3) The conditioning power of the Swish makes it extremely effective in
the context of a habit.

Desire for a Cigarette and Desire for Change
There is another reason that the Swish is such a powerful pattern for changing
bad habits such as smoking. Richard Bandler has stated that the desire for
cigarettes can be mapped onto the client’s desire to become a better person in
the outcome picture. When the smoker is thinking of the trigger picture—
often the packet of cigarettes—he enters into a state of desire, a state that can
be focused onto any outcome. It could be smoking a cigarette, or it could be
becoming a new person. In this way, it is the client’s desire to smoke that
propels him toward his own future self. Using the Swish in this way allows
the problem—the desire for the cigarette (or to bite a nail, or whatever it may
be)—to become a resource.

Finding the Trigger Picture
When dealing with bad habits and compulsions, the trigger picture will be
what it usually is: whatever the client sees through their own eyes
immediately before they engage in the behavior.
For a smoker, this may be the cigarette as it approaches his mouth, or the pack
of cigarettes being offered to him, or perhaps the newsstand where he buys
his pack of cigarettes.
For a nail-biter, this will likely be a picture of his hand as it approaches his
mouth.
For someone who eats too many doughnuts, for example, it will be the
doughnut approaching his mouth, or possibly the box of doughnuts, or
possibly the doughnut store sign, which he sees before he goes to buy his
doughnut.
The trigger picture can be big and bright and appealing to the client. This will
help to generate the state of desire, which can be mapped onto the desire to
become a new person as discussed above. When the client looks at the trigger
picture, he should feel the desire to engage in the unwanted behavior (in
contrast to the Swish for difficult people, in which the trigger picture will not
be appealing, and may be darker, although it will likely also be big).

Finding the Outcome Picture

The outcome picture will reflect the client’s ability to overcome the bad habit.
Therefore, at a minimum, when the client sees himself in the outcome picture,
he will see a person who has self-control. So the outcome picture is likely to
be a picture of himself with self-control and also with the physical benefits of
the change. For example:
For the smoker, the outcome picture may be a picture of the client with better
skin, better teeth, and clearer eyes. He will be breathing more easily, moving
more, being generally healthier, and he will have self-control.
For the nail-biter, the outcome picture may be a picture of the client with
attractive nails, more self-confidence, and more self-control.
For the doughnut-eater, the outcome picture may be a picture of the client
looking slimmer and healthier, being more physically active, with better skin
and more self-control.

Running the Swish for Bad Habits
The Swish itself will be run like a Classical Swish, as described in Chapter
Four. The client will see the trigger picture, embed the outcome picture in one
corner or in some detail of the trigger picture, and then be guided by the
coach to do the Swish using the slingshot technique or simply by shrinking
the trigger picture whilst expanding the outcome picture. It is the moving
away or shrinking of the trigger picture that will push the smoker away from
the act of smoking. It is the moving toward, or the increase in size of the
outcome picture that will pull the ex-smoker toward her future self.
For habits and compulsions, the Swish should be done quickly to maintain the
state of desire. In fact, the faster the Swish is done, the more likely it is that
the client will feel the desire that she used to feel for the cigarettes or the nail-
biting, now transferred onto a future self.

Combining the Swish with the Six-Step Reframe

When a client has a bad habit or compulsion, there is almost always a
secondary gain. A secondary gain is something that the smoker gets out of the
act of smoking. It could be relief from stress or boredom; it could be
something to do with being social or “cool;” or it could be something
completely different. This secondary gain may be so important to the
smoker’s unconscious mind that it causes her to hold onto the smoking habit
—unless she finds another way to satisfy the need that is currently being
addressed by the secondary gain.
Usually, in order to satisfy this need, the smoker will find another behavior
instead of smoking. This is called “symptom substitution.” If the substitute
habit is much less harmful than the original one, then the switch may not be
an issue. For example, the ex-smoker may go out and buy a squeeze ball to
relieve her stress. But the new behavior may be worse than the original habit,
in which case the coach or hypnotist has not done the smoker any favors by
helping her. For example, the ex-smoker may unconsciously begin to eat
when she would otherwise have smoked. If the eating gets out of control, then
she may gain considerable weight, which would also have serious adverse
consequences for her health. By addressing one bad habit, she has simply
created another.
The classic NLP pattern for dealing with secondary gain is the Six-Step
Reframe. We are not going to describe the steps of the Six-Step Reframe it
detail, however it utilizes symptom substitution by allowing the client to
select a new behavior to substitute for the old one. The new behavior is then
subject to an ecology check—meaning that the coach will prompt the client to
check that the new behavior will be good for all aspects of the client’s
personal and professional life. This will prevent inappropriate substitutions.
The new substitute behavior can then be combined with the Swish by
incorporating it into the outcome picture so that, by the end of the process, the
client will see herself with the benefits of having stopped the compulsion and
also engaging in the new behavior.
The Swish can be applied to any bad habit or compulsion. The steps outlined
above can be translated to deal with any problem behavior, as long as the
outcome picture of how they want to be different includes the concept of self-
control. Here’s an example of using the Swish for smoking and nail-biting.

An Example of a Swish with a Six-Step Reframe

for Habits
The trigger picture for the Swish Pattern in the case of a smoker will usually
be the pack of cigarettes, or occasionally the sight of a cigarette approaching
the smoker’s mouth. The usual considerations apply with respect to picking
an appropriate trigger image. For example, if the trigger image is the sight of
a cigarette approaching the smoker’s mouth, this presupposes that the smoker
has already bought a pack of cigarettes, has taken the cigarette out of the pack
and has maybe even already lit the cigarette. So using the cigarette
approaching the mouth as the trigger image attaches the outcome image to a
point in the smoking process that is quite advanced. A better choice might be
to use the pack of cigarettes as the trigger picture. This approach presupposes
that the cigarette has not yet been taken out of the pack, and it therefore
inserts the outcome picture earlier on in the smoking process.
Of course, using the pack as the trigger presupposes that the client has already
gone out and purchased a pack of cigarettes. Therefore, you may wish to use
the newsstand where the client typically buys their cigarettes as the trigger
picture. This attaches the Swish and the outcome picture at the earliest stage
of the smoking process: the point at which the client actually buys the
cigarettes. Of course, the client may not buy cigarettes at all; she may be
given a cigarette by a friend. So you may have to do the Swish Pattern on a
number of triggers: the cigarette, the pack of cigarettes, the cigarette kiosk
where she buys her cigarettes, as well as her friend who offers her cigarettes.
You may also wish to do the Swish Pattern on events in the client’s life that
would previously have caused her to smoke. For example, if she smokes
because of stress, then you may wish to do a Swish Pattern to deal with the
causes of stress (see below).
The outcome picture for the Swish Pattern will be the image of the client as
she will be, a healthy non-smoker. This new and improved healthy non-
smoker will likely breathe more easily, have clear eyes and clearer skin, smell
better, and look generally healthier. She may also be taking more exercise and
therefore may look fitter as well as healthier. In addition, the new and
improved healthy non-smoker will have more self-control, more personal
power, and will be overall a more self-actualized person. This may show up in
various ways in the picture depending upon how the client views her new self.
For example, the new and improved healthy non-smoker may stand in a more
self-confident way, hold her head in a more self-confident way, or speak in a
more self-confident voice. We have already talked about her breathing being
easier and deeper.
You may also wish to deal with ecology issues in the outcome picture. For
example, if you have also done a Six-Step Reframe with the ex-smoking
client, then you will have helped her to identify alternative behaviors to
satisfy the positive intention of the smoking. If smoking was used to relieve
stress, then you’ll help her identify alternative behaviors that will help with
relieving the stress and/or maintaining a state of calm and relaxation. When
building the outcome image, you can include these alternative behaviors. If
the Swish is being done on, for example, sources of stress that caused the ex-
smoker to smoke, then the new self-image will be relaxed. This may show
itself in a more relaxed posture, more relaxed behavior, and a generally more
relaxed attitude. The same outcome image can be used for each of the
Swishes, if multiple Swishes are used for multiple contexts. Once the trigger
picture and the outcome picture have been created, then the Swish can be
performed in one of the usual ways.
Nail-biting is another issue that responds very well to the Swish because it is
usually automatic. The client generally notices that they are in the process of
biting their nails, or that they have bitten their nails—but they don’t notice
when the process starts. This indicates that nail-biting tends to be
unconscious, and therefore installing an unconscious process such as the
Swish works very well.
The trigger picture for a nail-biter will typically be the sight of the hand and
fingers and fingernails approaching the mouth. This will almost always be
what the nail-biter sees when he has dropped into his unconscious nail-biting
program. The nails of a nail-biter are usually bitten down to the quick, and
they are not usually considered to be attractive. When working on this pattern,
you can contrast the unattractive nails of the nail-biter with the attractive nails
of the reformed nail-biter, as seen in the outcome picture. In addition, the new
and improved ex-nail-biter in the outcome picture will have self-control, and
self-actualization. After all, if the client is able to make this change in his life,
just imagine what else he could do. The client should be encouraged to see
himself as actualized, and to visualize those characteristics in the outcome
picture.
As in the case of smoking, if you have done a Six-Step Reframe on the nail-
biter, then he will have identified the positive intention of his habit and also
one or more positive alternative behaviors that he will carry out instead. You
will encourage the nail-biter to include these behaviors in the outcome picture
so that it unconsciously reminds the client about them.
When you have identified the trigger picture and the outcome picture, you can
perform the Swish in any of the ways previously discussed. The different
methods of performing the Swish will have slightly different effects in the
case of a nail-biter. If you use the Slingshot Swish, then you will tend to pull
the client’s attention away from their nails as the slingshot moves into the
distance. In contrast, the version of the pattern that uses image size as the
submodality will tend to make the outcome picture appear between the client
and their fingernails. Bear in mind that one Swish method may be more
effective than another for your client, depending on their preference.
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Stepping into the Future
Now you’ve had a chance to learn about the Swish—and, hopefully, as you
have been reading this book—you’ve been able to practice the Swish on
yourself, your clients, colleagues, friends, and perhaps even on total strangers.
Each of these interactions represents a moment in time when you can hold the
space long enough for the other person to become more than they thought
they could be. They are able to step into their potential. Each of these
interactions is an opportunity for you to transform the life of another person.
Many more such opportunities lie in front of you.
At the end of any NLP pattern we do a final step called the future pace.
During the future pace we would invite the client to imagine stepping into the
future with their newfound skills and abilities, feeling confident in the
changes and able to practice new self-beliefs. So as you step into the future,
we invite you to travel to a time and place where, previously, you might not
have had the resources, but now things are different. Now you are different.
And as you step into that time and place, you also step into the new you. So
we might say something like:
“Imagine taking the knowledge and the skills you have learned and stepping
forward into the future, to a time when they will be of benefit to you and
others. And I don’t know if this time will be later today, or tomorrow, or in
the days and weeks ahead, but think of one specific occasion now. Take the
time you need to think of that time and place. When you have it in your mind,
and as you imagine being there with these newfound skills and abilities,
seeing what you see, and hearing what you hear, you will begin to feel those
new feelings of confidence.
“And you realize that you do have the knowledge and the skills to make a
difference in this situation. You can transform the lives of those around you,
and you can transform your own life. And the amazing thing about
transformation is that you never know how far a change may go. It may seem
small at first, but it can sweeten into a new path of infinite possibility.
“As you find yourself in this time and place, with these new skills, this new
knowledge and this new confidence, you begin to realize that you know what
to do and you know how to do it. You begin to behave in new ways, ways that
change everything, ways that affect everyone around you in exciting and
positive ways.”
And then we might invite the client to think of another time, saying
something like:
“And you can begin to imagine, now, another time when these new skills and
abilities, this new confidence, will be useful to you and those around you.
And because this is the second time that you will use these new skills and
abilities you will be feeling even more confident, and you will be even more
effective. You will see even more clearly what needs to be done, and how to
do it.
“And as your conscious mind continues to consider more times and places
where you could use your new skills, you may find something interesting
taking place within your unconscious. Your conscious mind deals in logical,
step-by-step processes, but your unconscious mind can deal with many things
at once. So as your conscious mind continues to process in one way, your
unconscious mind can process in a different way, a way that is much faster,
considering each and every time in the future when you can use these new
skills and abilities and considering what things will be different.”
When you start to create future memories in this way, memories of what can
be, you begin to program your unconscious mind for success. So please
remember to future pace. It will make all the difference.
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Shawn Carson is founder and co-director of the International Center for
Positive Change and Hypnosis. He is an NLP/HNLP and hypnosis trainer and
he runs a thriving training center in New York City. Shawn is a consulting
hypnotist and works with private clients for trance-formational change.
Originally from the UK, Shawn now lives in Manhattan, New York.
Jess Marion is a trainer with the International Center for Positive Change
and Hypnosis and founder and director of Philadelphia Hypnosis. She is a
NLP/HNLP and hypnosis trainer, NLP/HNLP Master Practitioner, and
consulting hypnotist. Jess runs a busy private practice in Philadelphia and
lives and works in New York and Philadelphia.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, we are indebted to the co-founders of NLP, Richard
Bandler and John Grinder, without whom nobody would be practicing in this
wonderful discipline. We would most like to thank the genius of Richard
Bandler who, we understand, is the developer of the Swish Pattern.
We would like to thank John Overdurf who, directly or indirectly, taught us
everything we truly understand about NLP. John stands as a shining example
of a self-examined life. We stand in awe of John’s compassion and skill, and
truly believe that he is “doing it right.”
We’d like to thank our hypnosis teachers, Melissa Tiers of the Center for
Integrative Hypnosis in New York City, and Igor Ledichowski from
streethypnosis.com. In our model of the world, NLP and hypnosis are two
sides of the same coin; you cannot properly practice one without the other.
Melissa and Igor taught us what trance is.
We would like to thank our wonderful editor, Nancy Rawlinson, for her hard
work and patience.
Finally, we would like to thank our business partner, Shawn’s lovely wife
Sarah, for her invaluable support and suggestions.

GLOSSARY
Anchor: An external stimulus such as a touch that you feel, a gesture or
image that you see, or word or sound that you hear, which leads you to feel a
certain emotional state.
Archetype: A person or character who embodies an idealized behavior or
state.
Associated: Being inside a mental picture, looking out of your own eyes,
seeing what you see, hearing what you hear, and feeling what you feel in the
situation.
Coach: Someone leading another person through a process of change, for
example by using the Swish Pattern.
Conditioning: The process of repeating a pattern a number of times until it
becomes embedded in the neurology of the brain and the physiology of the
body.
Dissociated: Seeing yourself in a picture as if looking at a photograph of
yourself.
Eye Accessing Cues: Eye movements that provide a guide to, and that
influence, what is happening inside the client’s mind.
Future Pace: Inviting the client to imagine multiple future instances in which
they are acting and feeling resourceful when experiencing the trigger for the
old issue.
HNLP: Humanistic Neuro-Linguistic Psychology, a set of skills, techniques,
and patterns based upon NLP and developed by John Overdurf and Julie
Silverthorne.
Leading: When the coach makes small changes in the client’s physiology and
speech to help move them away from an unresourceful state and into a
resourceful one.
Mind Reading: Believing one knows what someone else is thinking,
believing, and feeling.
Modeling: Adopting the physiology, state, values, and beliefs regarding
behavior, as well as the strategy, of someone who does something excellently.
New Behavior Generator: A technique in NLP whereby a new behavior is
installed in a client by getting them to step into the image of a role model who
is already able to perform the behavior.
NLP: Neuro-Linguistic Programming, a set of skills, techniques, and patterns
developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in the 1970s.
Normally Organized: The most common way people use their neurology to
organize their eye accessing cues and their sense of time. A normally
organized person will access memories by looking to the left and imagination
by glancing to the right. In terms of time, the past will be either to the
person’s left, or behind them. The future will be to their right, or in front of
them.
Outcome Picture: In the context of the Swish, a dissociated picture of the
client as the client wishes to be.
Pacing: Matching the client’s physiology, tonality, and language to create a
strong sense of rapport.
Rapport: The foundation of successful communication. It shows empathy,
respect and acknowledgement of the other person’s style of communicating,
both consciously and unconsciously. It is used to help clients change, as well
as to build stronger relationships. Rapport may involve adopting the client’s
words, posture, and gestures.
Resources: Any positive, helpful feelings or states such as confidence,
calmness, excitement, peace, and love.
Secondary Gain: The hidden benefit obtained by the client from their
negative habit or behavior.
Six-Step Reframe: An NLP exercise that elicits the positive intent behind
seemingly problematic behavior, and during which the client’s unconscious
mind is invited to generate other, positive ways for that intention to be met.
Slingshot: A particular method of performing the Swish Pattern in which the
trigger picture is sent out into the distance and the outcome picture returns as
if on a piece of elastic.
Submodalities: The qualities of our internal representations, be they visual,
auditory, or kinesthetic. Submodalities can include size, brightness, distance,
location, volume, movement, intensity, and the number of dimensions.
Swish: An NLP pattern involving chaining together two pictures. The first
picture is a trigger for the problem, and the second picture is what the client
wants, or the outcome.
Testing: The process used to determine if a piece of coaching was successful.
Trigger Picture: In the context of the Swish, an associated picture of what
the client sees immediately before he or she has the problem.