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Reprinted with permission from Chet Day's Health
and Beyond Weekly Newsletter
The exercise we call "Swish" is a procedure
that gets your brain moving in a new direction. It doesn't
tell you how to behave but points you in the direction of where
you want to go.
To begin, a bit of background.
Learning has several separate stages. When you first try something
unfamiliar, you get nervous and make loads of mistakes, don't you?
But with practice you also start to learn the beginning of competence
and familiarity. Then things gradually become automated as habits,
and you don't have to think consciously at all.
But at first something new can seem uncomfortable, and sometimes
you probably fell like you'll never get the hang of it.
Try this: put your hands together in the gesture of prayer and
then intertwine your fingers so both hands are clenched together,
but one thumb is neatly crossed on top of the other. Look down and
note if the right thumb is over the left or vice versa.
Now unclench the hands, give them a shake, and re-clench with fingers
intertwined, but this time, make sure the other thumb is on top.
How does it feel? Unfamiliar?
Strange? Wrong?
Now flick the thumbs back and forth a couple of dozen times, still
with fingers intertwined. Left thumb over right, right thumb over
left, left thumb over right and so on. Do this very, very quickly
a couple of dozen times.
Now, unclench, shake the hands, and re-clench. Doesn't matter which
thumb is on top. Unclench, shake and repeat, but reversing the thumb
position.
Does it still feel odd, strange, wrong or do you now notice that
there is little difference in feeling, no matter which way you place
your thumbs?
Guess what?
You've just learned how to Swish, how to do accelerated learning.
To illustrate the Swish in action a second time, let me share an
example from a Richard Bandler workshop on Neurolinguistic Programming.
Bandler asked a man named Jack, who chewed his fingernails without
realizing it, to imagine that he was watching a movie, actually
bringing one of his hands up as if he was going to bite his nails.
Jack could see what his hand looked like and was asked to set the
pictures aside for the time being.
Bandler next instructed Jack to visualize a more positive image
of himself, as he would be if he no longer had the nail biting habit.
This picture would show the advantages Jack would realize if he
no longer bit his nails.
Then Bandler asked Jack to get the first picture of his hand coming
up and make it really big and bright, and in the lower right hand
corner of this picture to place a small dark image of how he would
see himself differently if he no longer had the habit.
Then Bandler told Jack to Swish it.
This meant Jack had to have the small dark image explode upwards
and outwards, getting bigger and brighter until it covered the first
picture, which simultaneously got dim and small.
Bandler told Jack it was best to do this with the eyes closed.
Jack did it fast, in under a second. Then he opened his eyes to
"clear the screen," closed his eyes to have the big bright
picture of his hand coming up and the small dark image in the right
corner ready for another very fast Swish.
He did it, opened his eyes, closed them, and repeated the Swish
five times, in this sequence of steps.
Then Bandler asked Jack to test and bring the big bright image
back up and see what had happened.
Jack couldn't hold the old image because it faded out and the other
image, the new one, came in to replace it.
The Swish had redirected his brain, setting up a place for his
mind to go. When Swish is effected, the behavior has a very strong
tendency to go in the same direction.
When Bandler asked Jack to physically bring his hand up in the
old gesture, his hand stopped before it reached his mouth, and Jack
had the instant feeling that he wanted to put his hand down again
(and not nibble).
The feelings Jack created with the new image are now automated,
and they pull him in the opposite direction or a new direction -
to a place he wants to be. Fingernails aside, this Swish technique
may make life a whole lot nicer for people who have learned to feel
bad about their tubby bodies.
Using Swish, you can learn something new and
better in a matter of seconds, and the new learning will
be another element helping to pull you towards the direction you
want to go and the feelings you want to have.
So, to avoid confusion, I'm going to dip back into Bandler and
use his instructions more or less as given so you have the separate
steps down correctly. Then, go away and play! And give us some feedback
on the "Slim without Diet Club" at
http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/slimwithoutdietsclub
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