Home . | NLP eye-movements (You're here.)
--John Burik
[responding to comments by George Lester, Psy.D. in 1994, regarding Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)]
I had heard over the past few months several references to an experimental therapy (EMDR) utilizing rapid eye movements in a directed fashion. It reminded me of the early work of Richard Bandler and John Grinder, in what Richard called Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP).
Professor Grinder assigned homework of noting an unnamed behavior and
labeling it. The story goes that then-student Robert Dilts said, "You
mean like that [pointing to a discrete eye movement, up and
to the right, made by Grinder]? Grinder was not aware of the movement.
The hypothesis was offered that eye movements were related to the sensory
mode of cognitive processing occurring. While there seem to be idiosyncratic
differences, and some variation for left-handers and ambidextrous individuals,
some generalizations can be made.
A later observation was that spatial orientation along the left-right horizon is often associated with past-future distinctions, respectively (in visual and auditory modes).
The writer has noticed that some individuals have difficulty moving between certain combinations of eye positions, for example, up-right to up-left. Yet, when asked to follow some type of pointer (finger, pen), subjects can perform the movements.
When asked to hold in mind a particular problem while following a pointer through an alternation between each of possible eye movement endpoints, subjects routinely report the gravity of the problem decreases. Hmm.
If we hypothesize that individuals' problem-solving abilities are directly related to the cognitive strategies they possess, perhaps the presence of a problem indicates a paucity of cognitive strategies in a particular area. Ergo, assisting an individual in "activating" a variety of cognitive resources (via directed eye movements) may be bringing appropriate solutions to the problem.
Main.