After reading this post - NO! While reading this post, I, in my own mind, began coming up with words that described my opinion on the subject of submodalities. Well. . . with the keyboard at my fingertips. . . I just couldn't resist! . . .

. . .And it kinda reminds me of a story. . . Who was it? . . . Christopher Columbus -- who discovered what was already here, or was it? When we chunk the structure of our subject experience down into pieces we then need a way of describing what it is we wind up with. The notion of modalities, visual, auditory, kinesthetic and vestibular, is a useful one. We can agree to use these words to describe different functions of our neurology.

Next, in order to better describe what occurs inside of each of these modalities, again we chunk down into the smaller pieces, the sub parts, or the sub-modalities. Which leaves me with the understanding that submodalities aren't the tools or techniques of change, but the very elements of subjective experience we are using the tools/techniques to change.

When we engage in the activity of communication, we are in effect affecting the submodalities of the person we are communication with. It doesn't matter what TOOL you use, or what TECHNIQUE you pull out of your bag, the end result is the same. At some level, in usually more than one modality (representational system), changes will occur within the coding of the submodalities of the individual you are using the tools with. In fact, it might even be safe to say that all change occurs at the level of submodalities.

The other day, I was having a discussion with an individual who was interested in learning the activity we call NLP. He had acquired the foolish notion that in NLP we change people by changing reality. I told him that I like to think of it differently, that people don't necessarily act in accordance with "reality" as much as they do on there own individual perception of "reality". And that although the map may be the territory in effect -- the map isn't really the territory. That you make sense of the world through your own neurology, which you represent to yourself through the different modalities (representational systems) you have come to believe you have. And when you engage in the activity of using the art of NLP you are changing your PERCEPTION, the way you code the meaning OF REALITY, and that this re-coding takes place on a submodality level -- what we have come to call the submodalities.

Now, Columbus may have discovered America but I think that he only discovered what was already there. And after doing so he updated his own neurology to include a new set of representations for what he considered reality to be. The same is true for the "discovery" of submodalities! Neurologically, this way of functioning has always been there, we just found a new way to talk about it, and in the end, affect it!

Let me add this: Say I use a technique to assist an individual past any limited set of perceptions. For the sake of this discussion, let's say I use the very old model of six step reframe, or for that matter the old idea of timeline therapy. I use this technique by going through all of the steps and in the end the magic has occurred, the person in front of me has updated his/her map of reality. So I sit back and ask myself what had to occur for this person to have been able to do reach this new set of perceptions? Ultimately, the answer will be a recoding on the submodality level.

Just another point of view, feel what I'm saying?

Carmine