People who have difficulty recovering from physical illness perceive themselves as hopeless, helpless, worthless, and think they will remain unhealthy for ever. The primary goal of the NLP practitioner is to move a person from his present state of discomfort to a desired state of health and well-being by helping to reprogram beliefs about curing.

  NLP practitioners ask questions to discover how a client relates to issues of identity, personal beliefs, and life goals. By reading autonomic body changes - skin color changes, moisture changes on the lips or eyes - as well as other physiological responses, NLP practitioners show people how to tap into their way of curing, as individuals, based on how they process information and how they view their health conditions.

  Janet Konefal, Ph.D., of Miami, Florida, says identity can be a major component of the way a person deals with his or her health condition, particularly someone suffering from chronic disease. Dr. Konefal states that people often tend to identify directly with their illnesses. A person doesn't usually say, ''I'm John, who has this condition of diabetes,'' he says, ''I'm a diabetic.'' The disease moves in and actually shifts a person's identity.

  One of the first priorities of an NLP practitioner is to separate a person's negative or false identifications and then to have that person recapture or regain his identity.

  NLP practitioners invented a term ecology check. According to this method, special care is taken to keep not only a client's family, social, and work relationships in balance, but also his internal systems: thoughts, strategies, behaviors, capabilities, values, and beliefs. It is used to clear up if NLP will be compatible with a person's specific needs. It is realized through the careful questioning of the individual client both before and after a session.

  As a next step, the practitioner will ask a client to see himself in a state of health. By doing so, an outcome is set that will facilitate the curing process. The brain's natural response is to duplicate whatever /images or beliefs are created about getting better. The brain then triggers the necessary immunological responses to guide the body toward its goal of health and well-being.

  While asking questions about client's life and condition, the NLP practitioner observes the language patterns, eye movements, postures, muscle tension, and gestures. These relay information and report internal sensations about how the client relates to his present condition in both conscious and unconscious ways, revealing what limiting beliefs may exist. These belief structures can then be changed using NLP.

  But Dr. Konefal warns that changing a person's belief structures is not the only issue for NLP practitioners. He thinks what people need to achieve in order to become healthy - to actually make some changes in their health state - is not only a shift in their beliefs, but a shift in their behavior. They need to have adjustment at all levels, not just a shift in beliefs. If they change their beliefs, but in fact don't change any of their behavior, then there's an incongruency. It's much more impactful if people tell themselves that they need to eat better than if a doctor or health counselor tells them. They're much more likely to listen to themselves.

 

  In the early 1970s, John Grinder, a professor of linguistics at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and Richard Bandler, a student of psychology and mathematics at Santa Cruz, tried to define the qualities of excellence in several accomplished individuals. They studied the thinking processes, language patterns, and behavioral patterns of Fritz Perls, father of Gestalt therapy; Virginia Satir, an exceptional family psychotherapist; Milton Erickson, M.D., an innovative hypnotherapist; and Gregory Bateson, a well-known British anthropologist and writer on communication theories. As a result, they discovered that many of the behavioral and psychological elements that allowed these individuals to achieve excellence were unconscious and intuitive and that the participants could not describe their own exceptional qualities.

  Grinder and Bandler, analyzing speaking patterns, voice tones, and the selection of words, as well as the gesticulations, postures, and eye movements of these individuals,  made strong connections between body language and speaking patterns. They then related this information to the internal thinking process of each participant. Grinder and Bandler then trained themselves to assist people experiencing emotional difficulties. They asked clients about their problems and their body cues were observed as they responded.

  According to Grinder and Bandler, eye movements, posture, voice tone, and breathing patterns reveal unconscious patterns affecting a person's emotional state. Once these unconscious patterns are distinguished, the client can be assisted in adopting new patterns. From their work they devised a method to teach others how to analyze a person's language, thoughts, and behavior.

 

  Sarah had been severely allergic to dairy products from her very childhood. Whenever they were ingested, she would almost immediately experience sinus blockage, a sore throat, and stomach pain, followed a day or two later by an outbreak of boils. As an adult, Sarah had learned to carefully avoid all dairy products.

  NLP practitioner Tim Hallbom asked Sarah to think of something similar to a dairy product, yet something to which she was not allergic. She chose tofu, a soybean product she ate as a substitute for cheese. As Sarah thought of tofu, Hallbom carefully observed her eye movements, skin color, muscle tones, and breathing.

  Sarah was then asked to think of a food that would cause an allergic reaction. As she thought of cheese, Hallbom observed the changes: her skin color became mottled, her muscle tension changed, her eyes looked down and to the left (compared to looking up and to the right when she thought about tofu). Hallbom explains, when she thought of cheese her immune system reacted as though the cheese was a foreign invader such as a virus. The killer cells were called out, but as there was nothing to fight, they attacked healthy cells. If this occured on a large scale, problems such as those Sarah experienced might occur. Essentially what was happening, however, was a mistaken overreaction of the immune system. On the other hand, when Sarah thought of tofu, her body entered a different (healthy) state, responded appropriately, and she felt fine.

  Hallbom uses touch to create a positive association to that healthy state. NLP practitioners call this an "anchor" because it holds the positive state stable through a client's nervous system. (Anchors can also be created using visual and auditory methods, depending on the client's needs.) As Hallbom anchored Sarah's positive state (associated with eating tofu), he asked her to imagine herself in an audience watching a movie of herself eating tofu, enjoying it, and seeing herself fully healthy.

  Hallbom then asked Sarah to imagine that the "Sarah" on the movie screen was eating cheese. In order for her to have the full experience, he had her feel its texture, taste, and smell. By using the anchor of touch to hold the tofu state constant, it sent a message to Sarah: when she visualizes herself eating the cheese, it's pleasing to her. In order to create a bridge from this point into some future real-life experience, Hallbom then had Sarah imagine a future time when she will eat cheese.

 

  When Sarah was able to hold the healthy state while imagining seeing herself eating cheese on the movie screen, the path was clear for the real change to occur. The "Sarah" in the movie and the "Sarah" in the room were reassociated. In other words, Sarah no longer imagined watching herself eating the cheese, but rather imagined herself actually doing it. When Sarah was able to hold the healthy "tofu" state while imagining that she was actually eating the cheese, Hallbom knew the change had occurred. Sarah has since been able to eat at least one dairy product every day with no allergic response.