Swift Changes PGPE - What is Neuro-semantics?

What is Neuro-semantics?

and why include it in our training?

We are naturally Meaning-makers. We cannot not make meanings everywhere, anywhere, all the time, about everything, anything and even nothing! It is a survival mechanism which structures the way we respond to situations and interact with people, at least to begin with, i.e. a means to an end. Later in life, it commonly becomes an end all by itself.

Neuro-Semantics ¹is about the way we make meaning about everything and encode it in our mind and body.

It is about gaining a structural understanding of the way our mind works in order to track where it goes when we think or feel something about something.

If it works, we can validate it and enhance it further. If it doesn't, we can then do something about it, so that the meaning we bring to bear on a situation changes and we function better.

Our mind does not operate linearly from A to Z.

It meanders and loops back upon itself and cannot not do that.

We don't just think, feel or do something about something out there in the world, we also think about our thinking, feel about our feeling, think about our feeling, feel about our thinking, and so on and on.

In so doing, we create our own ‘psycho-logics’, which are logical only to us (at the best of times). These meanders or loops can serve us or disserve us: they can form vicious circles which hold us stuck or pull us downwards or virtuous circles that propel us upwards and forwards.

Over the years, NLP has developed all sorts of processes to enable people to achieve change, either by resolving their problems or by developing even better ways of operating.

We now know that the effectiveness of these processes is due to the abilities that our mind has of reflecting upon itself and of referring to itself, i.e, our Neuro-Semantic way of operating in the world and of interacting with it. Unique in the UK, our training incorporates Neuro-Semantic approaches to build even further on that. Neuro-Semantics enables us to structure NLP to make it even more effective.

It gives us even more flexibility and fluidity in the way we address issues in order to achieve the outcome we desire in a manner that will respect the environment we operate in and the people we interact with.

1 “Semantics” comes from the Greek ‘semos’ and relates to the way we give MEANING to something, consciously or unconsciously.

Top