People make tiny little changes moment to moment, that most of us are
completely unaware of. Interestingly enough, these changes reflect the internal
thinking processes of the person at that time. When one of the creators modelled
Milton Erickson, he observed that people make changes in their physiology in a
split second, without knowing they are even doing it! If you stay attentive to
these changes within yourself and others, you’ll gain new understandings of
what’s going on inside.
In NLP, these are some of the basic areas that we focus on with a person’s
physiology:
Breathing speed (are they breathing faster or slower?)
Skin color (is it darker or lighter?)
Pupil dilation (are their pupils bigger or smaller?)
Skin tone (are the muscles tighter or more loose?)
Lower lip size (is it bigger or smaller?)
Breaking location (are they breathing from the chest or stomach?)
Eye focus (are they eyes less or more focused?)
There are many other areas of the body that you can pay attention to that will
allow you to gain further insight into what’s going on inside someone’s mind, but these are a good starting point. During a speaking event, Anthony Robbins
noticed one of the audience members going into a trance-like state and later he
was asked how he knew, where he replied, “I could tell because her eyes began
dilating the more she went into trance.” As your ability to read people (using
sensory acuity) improves, so will your communication abilities.
As a Personal Trainer (one of my past professions), I remember many occasions
where I would routinely ask my clients whether or not they had stuck to their
exercise program throughout the week, or if they had skipped a few days… I
remember one particular day a client came in and I looked up and said, “Good
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morning! How are you feeling on this wonderful morning?!” And she said, “Really
good!” I replied, “That’s excellent, and how have you been going over the week,
since I last saw you?” And she said, “Yeah, good…” I asked, “Did you follow the
program I laid out for you?” And she answered, “Yeah, kinda…” But I could
already tell from the slight changes in her skin tone, and pupil dilation that she had skipped at least a day or two, so I said, “You skipped a couple of days, huh?”
And she grinned, “How did you know?!” I replied with a laugh, “Because it’s
written all over your face, ha ha!”
I could have even asked her to purposely lie to me, and I would have been able to tell when she was lying and when she was not. In fact, I could quiz her and even
before she opened her mouth, I could tell if what she was going to say was a lie, and what was her truth.
This is an example of how sensory acuity can greatly improve your ability to read people, and to gain an understanding of how they process thought. Basically, you
can read what they are thinking before they say it, based upon skin color,
tightness, eye, lip and breathing changes. These are all subtle changes that can be picked up on if you have developed your sensory acuity.
Many people also respond differently, so for one person their pupils dilate and
their breathing becomes chesty when they lie, whereas for another none of those
changes occur and instead their lip swells a little and their cheeks tighten.
Now that you’re aware of sensory acuity, you can begin practicing on friends,
family or anyone whom you come in contact with (just for fun of course)!
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