Self-programming is the introduction of figuratively represented commands or suggestions (programs) into the brain against the background of a hypnotic (or meditative) state of consciousness.
They say that the reserves of the human psyche are limitless. But how do you unlock access to these resources? Self-programming comes to the rescue — a set of technologies that allow you to find the way to the deep resources of the unconscious and use them in everyday life.
Self-programming and self-hypnosis
It is no secret that the first technique of self-hypnosis and self-programming, which became widespread in scientific and psychological practice, was the autogenic training of Johann Heinrich Schulz. Being an ardent follower of hypnosis and yoga, Schultz noticed a curious feature — the state of the patient during a hypnotherapy session and the state of a person practicing yoga definitely had a lot in common. This allowed him to develop his own system, with the help of which a person could independently immerse himself in a state of internally oriented trance and give himself instructions.
Actually, it was this model that for many years became the basis of most techniques of self-hypnosis and self-programming — the techniques of immersion and «trance» changed, the ways of using (or, scientifically, «utilizing») trance changed, but the essence remained the same. However, this model was not the only one.
Self-programming was known to mankind much earlier than the appearance of all kinds of auto-training methods, the formation of psychology or science in general as such. Because all archaic psychotechniques, magical rituals, traditional systems of self-regulation, as well as mystical disciplines or esoteric teachings, performed the function of self-programming. Since they formed a kind of sign-symbolic system of communication with the unconscious and acted as a kind of «programming language». But we discussed this process in detail in a separate article.
However, humanity does not stand still, and scientific progress has brought new trends and new technologies to the difficult task of working with the resources of the psyche. A new stage in the development of self-programming methods were NLP technologies.
Self-programming with NLP
A feature of the neuro-linguistic programming approach to modeling mental processes and other aspects of self-programming is that the emphasis is not on the question of “how to transcend and give yourself some kind of attitude in this state”, but on changing the structure of subjective experience. What does it mean?
Suppose two people are doing the same thing, and they appear to be doing the same thing. But the results of one are impressive, while the results of the other leave much to be desired. Why is that? Largely because this skill is differently encoded in the structure of their experience. But how then to reveal this structure and «recode» it?
- First, we need to understand which perceptual filters shape the flow of information we receive, what are their specifics, and what model of the world they form as a result. And also — how can we change them in order to form a more comfortable model of the world for ourselves, in which we will be more effective. But this is only the first stage.
- Next, we need to track all our beliefs that affect the mental process (skill or behavior model) that we want to change. And then change them. But it’s easy to say. Much harder to do. If all our beliefs changed as easily as gloves, there would be no mental problems in the world, and everyone would be successful and happy. To reliably change beliefs within NLP, there is a separate set of self-programming methods, each of which requires a detailed description.
- But all our beliefs come down to one point — our identity, or belief about who we are. This determines our values, and our abilities, and the ways of behavior that are available to us — and, as a result, everything that we have in the end. All this forms a system of logical levels, in which only the level of mission is above the level of identity — that which goes beyond our limits and is much more important than ourselves. And for the effective recoding of the structure of subjective experience, it is very important to balance, align and, if necessary, rebuild all logical levels.
- But in order to qualitatively work out and restructure our own identity, making it the way we want to make it, we need to deal with our subpersonalities, or parts of the personality. It is they who create internal contradictions, pull us in different directions and provoke mental discord. Therefore, our task is to bring order to our subpersonalities, eliminate their conflicts and find new ways of behavior for them. In particular, if any part of the personality causes behavior that is undesirable for us, then, by revealing its positive intention, we can “motivate” it to perform a new function, as it is necessary for us at a given moment in time.
- Another important layer of self-programming is working with the past. As you know, in our behavior we rely on our own experience, and this is logical — what else should we rely on? And therefore, we have at our disposal those resources that are conditioned by our life circumstances. But what if we had a different life story? For example, at what level would we master any skill if we had it since childhood? Of course, we cannot change our past, but it is quite possible to change its perception. This allows not only to heal many mental traumas, but also to find additional resources to achieve the goal, and also contributes to a change in identity in the direction that is desirable for us.
- In addition, we can fully control such subtle parameters of our psyche as submodalities. Submodalities are the settings by which information is encoded in our experience. For example, think about an event from your past. And pay attention — as soon as you have an image, it immediately has certain parameters — it has a certain place in space, it is located at some distance from us, it has a certain brightness, contrast, color saturation, etc. By changing all these characteristics, we can control the perception of the memory or process with which we are working. For example, we can change our reaction to certain events, make things pleasant that we didn’t like before, and even speed up the passage of time in those situations when it drags on long and monotonously.