Bandler's partner in the creation of NLP

Grinder is back to Barcelona giving interviews in the media and talking about how you can predict certain things through what was probably one of the best hooks of the NLP: Eye accessing cues.

In this blog I gave my opinion about the absurdity of the assumption that all people follow the same specific pattern of movements with their eyes so you can access to other people internal mental processes. I also gave my opinion about anyone who teaches that, in my point of view, he does not understand the principles of NLP and thus discredited him as a trainer.

But then, one of the co-creators arrives to Barcelona and talks about the same topic. I have been probably in more than fifty different courses, where you could see clearly how you can not reduce the access cues to a smiley face with arrows. I witnessed the frustration of many students when they realize that his observations did not fit with what the model said, how people carry out different movements, how some of them do not move their eyes and finally how many times you can not differentiate clearly when one constructs to recall or remember to build.

If I’ve been able to see it by myself (I am an apprentice compared with the 35 years of Grinder giving courses), why he (and almost all books in NLP) are still repeating the same? Well, my explanation is simple: because it sells. Just the idea that they can access the most intimate thoughts of a person simply by observing that with their eyes is a powerful lure for many.

Of course, that they forget to explain that people run complex strategies inside they brains before giving an answer or just before thinking about who they are. Someone who is thinking, deliberating, considering, or constructing or any of the 7 different internal dialogues that my friend Eric Robbie described, is carrying out sophisticated mental processes that can not be reduced to a simple single eye movement.

But this makes it complex. And the complexity does not sell. It has to be fast and efficient. And Grinder knows. Well, I think that's the explanation. Because another explanation would leave him in a strange position.

Eye access cues are very useful to understand the different patterns of a person. That is, when you find a repeatability before certain stimuli that allow you to generalize enough to reduce the margin of error in predicting their future eye movements.

Also, do not forget that the accesses are not the only access cues. Why just to have information restricted to the eyes if you can get information around the body?

Why you have to think that we can only know if someone is building a picture when you can know their size, their movement, distance, brightness, etc?... everything through body access cues, not just the eyes?