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Dive into the sensory world of your interlocutors to gain deeper understanding and to be understood. This "sensual awareness" opens up unpunished levels of communication for you. We experience the world through our sensory organs. External stimuli, e.g. a ray of sunshine or a friend's voice, are transmitted to our brain via our nervous system by electrical or chemical signals. There, images, sounds and other sensations are created. These represent the external stimulus. Therefore we speak of representation systems in NLP.
Table of Contents
The following letters in the VAKOG system stand for:
V
visual
vision
A
auditive
listening
K
kinästhetic
touch / feel
O
olfactorially
odour
G
gustatoric
taste
According to the NLP model, people use these five sensory channels with different emphasis. Some people are very visually oriented and use little information on the other channels. When people with different dominant systems of representation meet each other, there can be a lot of misunderstanding.
Examples are:
The preferred or current dominant representation system can be recognised by the predominant signal words or physical cues, such as speaking rate, breathing etc. Here you can find a list of words that each indicate a representation system: Three types VAK.
Sensory words are verbs, nouns and adverbs that refer to a certain representational system. NLP assumes that a person's favorite expressions related to seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling and tasting indicate his representational system of preference.
Visual expressions: See, look, picture, imagine, observe, focus, notice, watch, visible, overview, clarify, illustrate, overview, appear to be, clear-cut, looks like, plainly see, short-sighted, take a peek, apparently, at a glance, image, dark, bright, gloomy, dazzling, bright, foggy, gigantic, gain an insight, a transparent argument, obscure references, shadow somebody, put things into perspective, keep an eye on, examine, inspect, illuminate an aspect, look ahead, in retrospect, catch a glimpse of something, love at first sight, be in the dark, apparent, mask sb/sth, veil sb/sth A visual oriented person might say:
Visual idioms:
Auditive expressions: Quiet, calm, loud, that sounds good, discuss, rumor, hear, speechless, say, whine, something clicked, listen to somebody, clear as a bell, loud and clear, hear somebody out, squeaky, word for word, unheard of, crashing, tramping, rattle, hoarse, snort, clearly expressed, call on, music to my ears, listen, tune in, to tell you the truth, remark, sounds like, hoarse, dull voice, screaming, nagging, last call, roar, shout, final call, call to mind, whimper, voice an opinion, state a reason, catchy tune, at the top of our lungs. An auditory oriented person might say:
Auditory idioms:
Kinesthetic expressions: Feel uncomfortable, broken-hearted, gritty, creepy, heart skips a beat, be on cloud nine, hold on, pull some strings, hand in hand, slipped my mind, keep one's feet on the ground, feel secure, ice runs down my spine, foot asleep, sticky, slimy, heartache, take ones breath away, get cold feet, warm one's heart, soft, rough, cold, start from scratch, shiver, hang on, fluffy, stiff upper lip, heated argument, butterflies in one's stomach, work up a sweat, from head to toe, stab in the back, with a heavy heart A kinesthetic oriented person might say this:
Kinesthetic idioms:
Olfactory expressions:
Turn up one's nose at sth, the scent of the chase, running nose, have a good nose for sth, just follow your nose, smell, scent, burned, rosy, smoky, mossy, earthy, woody, odorless, perfumed, thumb one's nose at sth, stink, inhale, smelly, burnt, flowery, rotten, odorous, sweet, stench, strong smell, blow one's nose, by a nose, brownnose, look beyond one's own nose
Olfactory idioms:
Gustatory expressions: Juicy, suck, fatty, smack, lick, sip, slobber, taste, burnt, nutty, delicious, dry, oily, spicy, hot, mellow, bitter, sweet, sour, creamy, fast food, hot, cold, salty, tasty, soft, drinkable, crispy, tepid, feast, munch, to shoot one's mouth off, savory, piquant.
Gustatory idioms:
Three people read the same book and now share their experience. Pay attention to signal words! The first person reports that he discovered a lot from the book, that the examples were well-chosen to illustrate the topic and that the book was written in a brilliant style. The second person has a completely different view: he describes the writing style as shrill prose, is not in tune with the ideas expressed in the book and would like to voice his opinion to the author. The third person thinks that the book handles a weighty topic in a balanced way. He likes the way the author touches on the key issues and grasped the new ideas easily.
Dear Mr. X, as discussed in our phone call, I am sending you my book collection and audio CDs of the previous seminar. I hope that the language is clear enough and that I will hear back from you. Dear Mr. Y, I have taken a detailed look at your words in the letter. I see the problem and am sending you a photo set and our video recordings. I hope you will soon take a look at the videos to get a clear picture of us. I am looking forward to your early response. Goodbye! Dear Mr. Z, I am deeply touched by your recent visit. Now I can fully sympathize with your feelings concerning your specific problem. Thus, I am sending you my used handkerchief. In the next seminar, you are more than welcome to unburden your heart to me. Until then, I wish you all the best. With warmest greetings and affection.
Often, the eye-accessing cues are misrepresented or misinterpreted. Here are some finer distinctions. It is necessary to distinguish between a primary representational system, a lead system, and a reference system. The primary representational system has to do with the process of taking in information, and the lead system with remembering and retrieving of information. Among other things, the primary representational system is recognized by the predicates chosen to describe how the data was originally recorded. The lead system can be recognized by the eye movements that someone makes while accessing information from the long-term memory (LTM). The reference system refers to the decision as to whether the retrieved information is true or not after it has been accessed and brought into consciousness. The reference system is the system that someone uses to answer the question: Is that really the case? Very often the reference system is the kinesthetic system. It feels right!
The modalities of how we record information, store it and code it into our brains. The representational systems are also referred to as perception systems or levels of perception with which we perceive the environment. They are the modes of the five senses:
For short: VAKOG. The sense of touch (tactile, haptic) is usually not treated on its own, but is associated with feeling, the body sensations.
The lead system (also called guidance system) is that representational system with which a person makes information accessible internally. The lead system is sometimes different from the representational system that a person uses to make information consciously accessible (this system may be the preferred representational system).
When asking a person about a past experience, a person may first activate a visual image and then internally hear the dialogue that was being spoken. (This sequence is called the NLP memory strategy.) The visual system here is the lead system, the auditory system the preferred one. The visual image is needed here to make the memory accessible at all, the further "thinking" then takes place in the auditory system. A lead system that deviates from the preferred system is usually an unconscious system: the process of accessing information takes place on a subconscious level. Other people's lead system can be recognized by posture, gestures, breathing, and eye movements.
The reference system internally verifies the accuracy of an experience and the truth of the information retrieved. A person reacts e.g., to the question of an event from their past with the following memory strategy:
In addition to language usage and eye-accessing cues, there are several other indicators, e.g. breathing, speech rate. These are presented here.
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