Here is another interesting video to watch, showing Mark Hayley demonstrating what he calls a “kinesthetic swish.” Mark was a personal apprentice to Richard Bandler for five years, and is certified by Bandler as a “Licensed Master Trainer of NLP.” Bandler is quoted on Mark’s web site as saying. “Mark Hayley is thoroughly trained, highly skilled and very elegant with my most up-to-date teachings. I highly recommend him.”
The link below will take you to a page with “Rare NLP technique
Kinesthetic Swish demonstrated live” and then underneath the still image of Hayley and the client you can click on the free download.
Special Gift: Rare NLP Technique Demonstrated Live - Download it Now
My review will follow after Christmas.
Steve Andreas

Gosh, Steve, you do seem to be on a bit of a campaign. "Cleaning up Dodge" are we?

Eric.

That metaphor works for me.
Let's see if my shovel is big enough.
Which side are you on, pilgrim?

Here, as promised, is my commentary on Mark Haley’s video demonstration of the “kinesthetic swish.”
First, and foremost, it is NOT a swish (kinesthetic or otherwise) as Bandler originally developed it, but which Bandler himself (or the editors of his new books) has apparently forgotten, since the word “swish” has been applied to quite a variety of different interventions in those books.
In a swish the cue representation is associated, and this representation is chained to a dissociated self-image of an evolved self for whom the cue situation was no longer a problem, so that perceiving the cue event chains immediately to the self-image, which is a very powerful catalyst for change--FAR more than a "state," or a feeling.
The linkage between these two images is made using two “driver” submodalities that change simultaneously in opposite ways. For example in the standard size/brightness swish, the cue image starts out big and bright, and then shrinks and dims, while the self image simultaneously starts out small and dim, and quickly gets large and bright.
The swish was first described in Bandler’s Using Your Brain—for a CHANGE, chapter 9 (1985) and a bit later in our book, Change Your Mind—and Keep the Change, Chapter 3 (1987) and some time ago I wrote an article about the kinesthetic swish that can be found at: Steve Andreas Home
In short, a swish is a very special kind of chain, but not every chain is a swish. A chain is ONLY a swish if it goes from an associated cue representation to a dissociated representation of an evolved self.

In Mark Haley’s demonstration, the chain is as follows: the woman identifies a bad feeling “yucky green rotating blob” (1), pulls it out of herself (2), shrinks it dow, (3) makes it black and white (4), brings it into her body in the place where she has a quick feeling (5), that then dissipates out of her body (6).
The ONLY submodality that links ALL these five steps is location; there is no second submodality as in the original swish (and no self-image representation).

Curiously, step 2, pulling it out of her body, is not that different from the last step in which the feeling dissipates out of her body. Why not just pull the feeling out of her body and fling it across the room and be done with it, as many masseurs or “body workers” do in order to get rid of accumulated tension or “bad energy”?
If the feeling dissipates out of her chest into the surrounding air, why the need to “shake off” anything after each rehearsal through the chain? If it truly dissipated, there would be nothing to shake off.
Even if we accept that it is useful to utilize the woman’s personal reference experience of a quickly dissipating feeling, why not just take the “yucky green rotating blob” and move it directly up to her upper chest to dissipate (a much simpler 2-step chain)?
Bandler has been using the reversal of the spin of a feeling for some time now—a method that I and others have found to be very fast and lasting. Why not just take that “yucky green rotating blob” and reverse its rotation? I have found that often it will change color spontaneously—no need to change the color or instruct the client to change anything else.

There are just too many contradictions like this for me to think that this is anything more than an arbitrary and complicated ritual that is an excuse for someone to change—at least temporarily. (I have been told that the client is someone who has assisted on many courses with Haley; I wonder if this method would work at all with someone unfamiliar with NLP.)

The best NLP interventions are based on elegance: doing the smallest intervention that will get the desired change. Spinning feelings is a great example, because only ONE very small element of the feeling is changed, the direction of spin. Haley’s process is not elegant, because it introduces many changes.
Notice too that there is no test, no future-pace, and no follow-up.
Which brings up the next point: even if the method works, there is no ecology whatsoever in this process—none. Are we to believe that the original feeling had no positive function, and was simply an artifact of some irrelevant prior learning? That’ may occasionally be true, but most feelings have some kind of positive function.

One of the things we learned from John Grinder long ago was what he called “economy of movement”—that everything you do, both verbally and nonverbally, should support a client’s outcome. In a typical exercise one of us would engage in a pattern, and one or more observers would notice a movement, expression, or word or phrase that didn’t seem relevant, mention it—and demonstrate it—and ask, “Does this support your outcome at this moment?” The person being observed would either say, “No, it’s irrelevant” and find a way to eliminate it or change it to make it relevant, or specify how it supported the outcome—sometimes finding a better way to do that.
Having watched many hundreds of hours of live Bandler seminars and videos repeatedly—during editing, and later—over a period of some 30 years now, it is quite obvious to me that Haley has copied all of Bandler’s behaviors, and a lot of them aren’t that useful; they are only distracting and uneconomical.
Starting with the beer belly and the pony tail, the rolling up of sleeves, the brushing the hair back, tucking in the shirt, pulling up the pants, rubbing of nose and ears, head tilt and movement, playing with his fingers, etc. The huge ring and bracelet was quite a distracter for me even when he didn’t play with them, and when he did play with them, I imagined that he had his hands somewhere else. Years ago, I made up the following saying, “You can play with your mind without going blind,” but perhaps I was wrong about that.
Or perhaps my description above is wrong, and I entirely missed the point. If so, I would appreciate it very much if someone would provide a specific and detailed description of what the different steps demonstrated in the process in this video accomplished.
Steve Andreas

Before watching this video the announcer instructs us to pay attention to multilevel communications. In the light of this, I wonder what is the profound significance of this guy constantly pulling his pants up.

There must be some, after all the guy is obviously a master -- he has a belly, a ponytail, and that special fashion sence that makes him a true disciple.

Steve,

The reversing the direction in which a feeling "is" spinning is just one technique. From your descriptions it seems or at least I understand that Mark was combining at least three techniques.

A second one is moving the bad feeling (from where ever it starts) to where a fast-disappearing one starts so it disappears really fast following the sequence of that second feeling. This one is based on the drug of choice pattern but instead of a drug state, it is following the fast disappearing feeling sequence.
A third one (leaving aside any submodalities shift in color, brightness or whatever which could be a fiurth one) is cleaning the clients energy by taking out the "bad" energy and replacing it with "clean" energy. This one is less observable unless you can see energy.

Is it bad to combine techniques? Depends, sometimes it is (following the elegance principle) and sometimes combining techniques is exactly what makes something work.

I haven't seen the clip (I can't for some reason), however it is true Mark has copied many extra & unnecesary portions of Richards external behavior/appearance and out of respect to Mark and Richard (as his mentor) I will not go any further into this.

I do want to extend on the "reversing feelings" bit. It was 2003, Richard and myself were running/co-training a Personal Enhancement workshop together in Mexico and as we were reading the participants "wish lists" on his suite I asked Richard: Do you really think all feelings are spinning as you describe (forward, backwards, to the right or to the left) or do you get them to think that with your set up stories and how you ask?
Richards reply was (paraphrasing): Well Gabe the truth is... feeling have to be moving to remain there but most likely they move like spagheti on a bowl, so when I get them to focus on either of those 4 directions I am already tricking them into the first powerful shift. Reversing the direction is simply because in their minds (logicaly o junko logic) if one direction is a bad feeling, in the opposite direction it should be a good one.
Besides this, he (RB) has discussed with me the power of spinning feelings symetrically inside what some refer to the microcosmos (up the spine and down the front, or the other way around)... and a few more things involved in this simple technique.

So there is a lot more behind the spinning feelings than meets the eye.
Does it work for everything, with everyone with lasting results? Of course not.

Happy new year everyone

Oh and Steve some of us do think positive intent (and secondary gain) is just a "content" justification (many times a reframe) which is very rarely useful to ask for... or something that is rarely there to start off with... at least the way it was or is thought of by most NLPers.

Just a map.

Do we (the few of us thinking this way - which does not include Mark that I know of) check ecology? Absolutely but not explicitly during the technique, and certainly not asking the traditional questions, we do it long before during the interview or during the whole set up of an exercise when in group demos.

Testing is in most cases a must, although sometimes I've found it useful to allow some time for the adjustments to settle before testing.
Future pacing is a must but it could be done several ways after a demo is over. (perhaps not included on Mark's clip)

Ok now I go... happy new year

Hi Steve,

You say:

"The swish was first described in Bandler’s Using Your Brain—for a CHANGE, chapter 9 (1985) and a bit later in our book, Change Your Mind—and Keep the Change, Chapter 3 (1987)"

- surely you mean first described IN PRINT - and IN BOOK FORM, with the appropriate library of record registration and publishing details, etc.

The actual swish itself, that was first described IN CLASSES by Richard Bandler much earlier - at least in 1982, by my recollecting ….

And contributing to the development of the swish along the way were Chris Hall and Todd Epstein - and also Will McDonald (he did a fair bit with the kinesthetic swish, too, Steve - if you remember).

It’s funny, tho, how little mention is made of any of these three in either of the books you mention - one which you edited and the other which you co-wrote. It’s almost as if it was only you and Connirae - and, of course, Richard - who were responsible for all the discoveries in sub-modalities.

Me, I think: if you give credit, it does you credit. Don't you agree?

Eric.

Eric:
Yes, you are right. I should have specified "in print."
I looked through our old file of brochures, and found that Connirae and I first taught the swish in October of 1982, so we must have learned it at least several months before then, confirming your memory. We learned this pattern direct from Richard, and as far as we knew, he was the sole developer. That is why no one else is mentioned in either of the two books.

I agree completely that "if you give credit, it does you credit." At that time we had only infrequent contact with Chris, Todd, or Will, and we have no knowledge of their contribution to the swish. We were friends of all three, but none of them ever mentioned to us having a role in the development of the swish. If you say that they contributed to its development, I certainly would not contest that. Richard has not always given full credit to others involved in the development of a pattern--notably Leslie Cameron-Bandler. At other times, Richard has mentioned someone else as the originator of a pattern--for instance Ed Reese and the kinesthetic state access, and we did give Ed credit for that chapter 9 (p. 163, footnote) of Change Your Mind. Certainly our only contribution to the swish was to test the pattern, find ways to make it fail, and figuring out what to do to make it not fail--which we wrote up in Change Your Mind.

We have always made it clear that Richard (undoubtedly with contributions from some others along the way) discovered and developed submodalities. We have made a number of very useful applications of the submodalities model, but Richard is the genius who figured out the fundamental principles.
Steve Andreas

Why grow a ponytail and wear rings and stuff that could be desribed as making you a puppet for your mentor... Surely that's not what the mentor expects...

A mentor for me expexts you to go beyond what they are giving in the hope the field pregresses... and in the process they learn from the mentoree...

Stand n your mentors shoulder and show them how far you can see, Then wait for the feedback. This is why this forum is so valuable to me...

Interesting thread Steve and Eric must have phenomenal memories.

I like the technique and have used it quite a few times now and it works really well.