Glossary of Terms

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Bobby G. Bodenhamer, D. Min.
Accessing Cues: How we use our physiology and neurology by breathing, posture, g
esture, and eye movements to access certain states and ways of thinking. These a
re observable by others.
As-If Frame: To "pretend." To presuppose some situation is the case and then act
upon it as if it is true. This encourages creative problem-solving by mentally
going beyond apparent obstacles to desired solutions.
Analogue: An analogue submodality varies continuously from light to dark; while
a digital submodality operates as either off or on, i.e. we see a picture in eit
her an associated or dissociated way.
Analogue Marking: Using voice tone, facial expressions, gestures, or a touch to
emphasize certain words non-verbally as you are talking to someone. The marked o
ut words give an additional message.
Anchoring: The process by which any stimulus or representation (external or inte
rnal) gets connected to and so triggers a response. Anchors occur naturally and
in all representational systems. They can be used intentionally, as in analogue
marking or with numerous change techniques, such as Collapse Anchors. The NLP co
ncept of anchoring derives from the Pavlovian stimulus-response reaction, classi
cal conditioning. In Pavlov's study the tuning fork became the stimulus (anchor)
that cued the dog to salivate.
Association: Association contrasts with dissociation. In dissociation, you see y
ourself "over there." Generally, dissociation removes emotion from the experienc
e. When we are associated we experience all the information directly and therefo
re emotionally.
Auditory: The sense of hearing, one of the basic representational systems.
Behavior: Any activity that we engage in, from gross motor activity to thinking.
Beliefs: The generalizations we have made about causality, meaning, self, others
, behaviors, identity, etc. Our beliefs are what we take as being "true" at any
moment. Beliefs guide us guide us in perceiving and interpreting reality. Belief
s relate closely to values. NLP has several belief change patterns.
Calibration: Becoming tuned-in to another's state and internal sensory processin
g operations by reading previously observed noticed nonverbal signals.
Chunking: Changing perception by going up or down levels and/or logical levels.
Chunking up refers to going up a level (inducing up, induction). It leads to hig
her abstractions. Chunking down refers to going a level (deducing, deduction). I
t leads to more specific examples or cases.
Complex Equivalence: A linguistic distortion pattern where you make meaning of s
omeone else's behavior from the observable clues, without having direct corrobor
ating evidence from the other person.
Congruence: A state wherein one's internal representation works in an aligned wa

y. What a person says corresponds with what they do. Both their non-verbal signa
ls and their verbal statements match. A state of unity, fitness, internal harmon
y, not conflict.
Conscious: Present moment awareness. Awareness of seven ( two chunks of informat
ion.
Content: The specifics and details of an event, answers what? And why? Contrasts
with process or structure.
Context: The setting, frame or process in which events occur and provide meaning
for content.
Cues: Information that provides clues to another's subjective structures, i.e. e
ye accessing cues, predicates, breathing, body posture, gestures, voice tone and
tonality, etc.
Deletion: The missing portion of an experience either linguistically or represen
tationally.
Digital: Varying between two states, a polarity. For example, a light switch is
either on or off. Auditory digital refers to thinking, processing, and communica
ting using words, rather than in the five senses.
Dissociation: Not "in" an experience, but seeing or hearing it from outside as f
rom a spectator's point of view, in contrast to association.
Distortion: The modeling process by which we inaccurately represent something in
our neurology or linguistics, can occur to create limitations or resources. The
process by which we represent the external reality in terms of our neurology. D
istortion occurs when we use language to describe, generalize, and theorize abou
t our experience.
Downtime: Not in sensory awareness, but "down" inside one's own mind seeing, hea
ring, and feeling thoughts, memories, awarenesses, a light trance state with att
ention focused inward.
Ecology: Concern for the overall relationships within the self, and between the
self and the larger environment or system. Internal ecology: the overall relatio
nship between a person and their thoughts, strategies, behaviors, capabilities,
values and beliefs. The dynamic balance of elements in a system.
Elicitation: Evoking a state by word, behavior, gesture or any stimuli. Gatherin
g information by direct observation of non-verbal signals or by asking meta-mode
l questions.
Empowerment: Process of adding vitality, energy, and new powerful resources to a
person; vitality at the neurological level, change of habits.
Eye Accessing Cues: Movements of the eyes in certain directions indicating visua
l, auditory or kinesthetic thinking (processing).
Epistemology: The theory of knowledge, how we know what we know.
First Position: Perceiving the world from your own point of view, associated, on
e of the three perceptual positions.
Frame: Context, environment, meta-level, a way of perceiving something (as in Ou
tcome Frame, "As If" Frame, Backtrack Frame, etc).

Future Pace: Process of mentally practicing (rehearsing) an event before it happ

ens. One of the key processes for ensuring the permanency of an outcome, a frequ
ent and key ingredient in most NLP interventions.
Generalization: Process by which one specific experience comes to represent a wh
ole class of experiences, one of the three modeling processes in NLP.
Gestalt: A collection of memories connected neurologically based on similar emot
ions.
Hard Wired: Neurologically based factor, the neural connectors primarily formed
during gestation, similar to the hard wiring of a computer.
Incongruence: A state of being "at odds" with oneself, having "parts" in conflic
t with each other. Evidenced by having reservations, being not totally committed
to an outcome, expressing incongruent messages where there is a lack of alignme
nt or matching between verbal and non-verbal parts of the communication.
Installation: Process for putting a new mental strategy (way of doing things) in
side mind-body so it operates automatically, often achieved through anchoring, l
everage, metaphors, parables, reframing, future pacing, etc.
Internal Representations: Meaningful patterns of information we create and store
in our minds, combinations of sights, sounds, sensations, smells and tastes.
In Time: Having a time line that passes through your body: where the past is beh
ind you and the future in front, and 'now' is inside your body.
Kinesthetic: Sensations, feelings, tactile sensations on surface of skin, propri
oceptive sensations inside the body, includes vestibular system or sense of bala
nce.
Leading: Changing your own behaviors after obtaining rapport so another follows.
Being able to lead is a test for having good rapport.
Logical Level: A higher level, a level about a lower level, a meta-level that in
forms and modulates the lower level.
Loops: A circle, cycle, story, metaphor or representation that goes back to its
own beginning, so that it loops back (feeds back) onto itself. An open loop: a s
tory left unfinished. A closed loop: finishing a story. In strategies: loop refe
rs to getting hung up in a set of procedures that have no way out, the strategy
fails to exit.
Map of Reality: Model of the world, a unique representation of the world built i
n each person's brain by abstracting from experiences, comprised of a neurologic
al and a linguistic map, one's internal representations (IR). (see Model of the
World)
Matching: Adopting characteristics of another person's outputs (behavior, words,
etc.) to enhance rapport.
Meta: Above, beyond, about, at a higher level, a logical level higher.
Meta-levels: Refer to those abstract levels of consciousness we experience inter
nally.
Meta-Model: A model with a number of linguistic distinctions that identifies lan
guage patterns that obscure meaning in a communication through distortion, delet
ion and generalization. It includes specific challenges or questions by which th

e "ill-formed" language is reconnected to sensory experience and the deep struct

ure. These meta-model challenges bring a person out of trance. Developed in 1975
by Richard Bandler and John Grinder.
Meta-Programs: The mental/perceptual programs for sorting and paying attention t
o stimuli, perceptual filters that govern attention, sometimes "neuro-sorts," or
meta-processes.
Meta-States: A state about a state, bringing a state of mind-body (fear, anger,
joy, learning) to bear upon another state from a higher logical level, generates
a gestalt state--a meta-state, developed by Michael Hall.
Mismatching: Offering different patterns of behavior to another, breaking rappor
t for the purpose of redirecting, interrupting, or terminating a meeting or conv
ersation.
Modal Operators: Linguistic distinctions in the Meta-Model that indicate the "mo
de" by which a person "operates": the mode of necessity, possibility, desire, ob
ligation, etc. The predicates (can, can't, possible, impossible, have to, must,
etc) that we utilize for motivation.
Model: A description of how something works, a generalized, deleted or distorted
copy of the original; a paradigm.
Modeling: The process of observing and replicating the successful actions and be
haviors of others; the process of discerning the sequence of IR and behaviors th
at enable someone to accomplish a task.
Model of the World: A map of reality, a unique representation of the world which
we generalize for our experiences. The total of one person's operating principl
es.
Multiple Description: The process of describing the same thing from different pe
rceptual positions.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming: The study of excellence. A model of how people str
ucture their experience; the structures of subjective experience; how the person
programs their thinking-emoting and behaving in their neurology, mediated by th
e language and coding they use to process, store and retrieve information.
Neuro-Semantics: A model of meaning or evaluation utilizing the Meta-states mode
l for articulating and working with higher levels of states and the Neuro-Lingui
stic Programming model for detailing human processing and experiencing, a model
that presents a fuller and richer model offering a way of thinking about and wor
king with the way our nervous system (neurology) and (linguistics) create meanin
g (semantics).
Nominalization: A linguistic distinction in the Meta-Model, a hypnotic pattern o
f trance language, a process or verb turned into an (abstract) noun, a process f
rozen in time.
Outcome: A specific, sensory-based desired result. A well-formed outcome that me
ets the well-formedness criteria.
Pacing: Gaining and maintaining rapport with another by joining their model of t
he world by matching their language, beliefs, values, current experience, etc.,
crucial to rapport building.
Parts: As in "a part of your mind" that generates other frames of reference, the
se include belief frames, value frames, understanding frames, etc. When we ask,

"Does any part of you object to this new way of thinking, feeling, or respondin
g?" we are searching for "internal conflicts" within the facets of our personali
ty and do so to create more alignment and personal congruence. In speaking abou
t "parts," we speak metaphorically and not literally. The term "parts" functions
hypnotically as a "selectional restriction violation" which in essence means we
give life to an object that doesn't have life, as in "the walls speak." With th
e term "parts" we are referring to a certain neurology speaking as if it has a "
mind" of its own separate from the rest of the nervous system which it does not.
Parts: A metaphor for describing responsibility for our behavior to various aspe
cts of our psyche. These may be seen as sub-personalities that have functions th
at take on a "life of their own"; when they have different intentions we may exp
erience intra-personal conflict and a sense of incongruity.
Perceptual Filters: Unique ideas, experiences, beliefs, values, meta-programs, d
ecisions, memories and language that shape and influence our model of the world.
Perceptual Position: Our point of view; one of three mental positions: first pos
ition-associated in self; second position-from another person's perspective; Thi
rd position-from a position outside the people involved.
Physiological: The physical part of the person.
Predicates: What we assert or predicate about a subject, sensory based words ind
icating a particular RS (visual predicates, auditory, kinesthetic, unspecified).
Preferred System: The RS that an individual typically uses most in thinking and
organizing experience.
Presuppositions: Ideas or assumptions that we take for granted for a communicati
on to make sense.
Primary levels: Refer to our experience of the outside world primarily through o
ur senses.
Primary states: Describe those states of consciousness from our primary level ex
periences of the outside world.
Rapport: A sense of connection with another, a feeling of mutuality, a sense of
trust, created by pacing, mirroring and matching, a state of empathy or second p
osition.
Reframing: Changing the context or frame of reference of an experience so that i
t has a different meaning.
Representation: An idea, thought, presentation of sensory-based or evaluative ba
sed information.
Representational System (RS): How we mentally code information using the sensory
systems: Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic, Olfactory, and Gustatory.
Requisite Variety: Flexibility in thinking, emoting, speaking, behaving; the per
son with the most flexibility of behavior controls the action; the Law of Requis
ite Variety.
Resources: Any means we can bring to bear to achieve an outcome: physiology, sta
tes, thoughts, strategies, experiences, people, events or possessions.

Resourceful State: The total neurological and physical experience when a person
feels resourceful.
Satir Categories: The five body postures and language styles indicating specific
ways of communicating: leveler, blamer, placater, computer and distracter, desc
ribed by Virginia Satir.
Second Position: Point of view; having an awareness of the other person's sense
of reality.
Sensory Acuity: Awareness of the outside world, of the senses, making finer dist
inctions about the sensory information we get from the world.
Sensory-Based Description: Information directly observable and verifiable by the
senses, see-hear-feel language that we can test empirically, in contrast to eva
luative descriptions.
State: Holistic phenomenon of mind-body-emotions, mood, emotional condition; the
sum total of all neurological and physical processes within an individual at an
y moment in time.
Strategy: A sequencing of thinking-behaving to obtain an outcome or create an ex
perience, the structure of subjectivity ordered in a linear model of the TOTE.
Submodality: The distinctions we make within each rep system, the qualities of o
ur internal representations.
Synesthesia: A "feeling together" of sensory experience in two or more modalitie
s, an automatic connection of one rep system with another. For example, a V-K sy
nesthesia may involve perceiving words or sounds as colored.
Third Position: Perceiving the world from viewpoint of an observer; you see both
yourself and other people.
Time-line: A metaphor for how we store our sights, sounds and sensations of memo
ries and imagination; a way of coding and processing the construct "time."
Through Time: Having a time line where both past, present and future are in fron
t of you. For example, time is represented spatially as with a year planner.
Unconscious: Everything that is not in conscious awareness in the present moment
.
Universal Quantifiers: A generalization from a sample to the whole population "allness" (every, all, never, none, etc). A statement that allows for no excepti
ons.
Unspecified Nouns: Nouns that do not specify to whom or to what they refer.
Unspecified Verbs: Verbs that do not describe the specifics of the actionhow they
are being performed; the adverb has been deleted. Uptime: State where attention
and senses directed outward to immediate environment, all sensory channels open
and alert.
Value: What is important to you in a particular context. Your values (criteria)
are what motivate you in life. All motivation strategies have a kinesthetic comp
onent. This kinesthetic is an unconscious value
Visual: Seeing, imagining, the rep system of sight.

Visualization: The process of seeing images in your mind.

Well-Formedness Condition: The criteria that enable us to specify an outcome in
ways that make it achievable and verifiable. A well-formed outcome is a powerful
tool for negotiating win/win solutions.