Classic NLP tips: 1. How to identify your sensory preference the easy way!

The aim of this exercise is to find your preferred modality so you can use this knowledge to increase the power of the NLP exercises that I am going to teach you in the coming weeks. This is my first blog on the use of classic NLP techniques as taught by Richard Bandler that you can use to elicit powerful and long lasting change in your life! Maybe you want to achieve a goal, feel more comfortable about distressing past events, feel more motivated or simply feel good! The classic modalities we use are either auditory (we can imagine sounds), visual (we see images) or kinaesthetic (imagine feeling or touching something), olfactory (the use of smell), gustatory (taste) when thinking about a past or  future event. Most people will have a preference for using one of the 3 senses of visual, auditory or kinaesthetic to describe an experience. So are you prodominantly visual, auditory or kinaesthetic? Let’s find out!



You can do this exercise with a partner or by yourself. If you are alone, it helps greatly to speak out loud, possibly into a voice recorder so you can review your experiences later.

1. Imagine as clearly as you can a walk along a beach. It can be a beach you know or an entirely imaginary one. Your goal is to describe in as much detail as you can the experience, running through each of your 5 senses. First describe everything you see, the colour of the sky, the ocean, the seagulls in the air, the white foam flying into the air as the waves crash into the black rocks, maybe you think about colours of the clothes people are wearing on the beach, the sand and so on. The move to another sense such as hearing, describe everything you can hear, the sound of the seagulls, children playing...the sound of the ocean... and so on, next move on to feelings and touch, taste and smell until you have completed your description.
2. Now review your description and notice whether it was easier to make pictures, hear sounds, or feel sensations such as the temperature, the texture of the sand under your feet, was it the salty taste of the air. One of those senses will dominate. This is your sensory preference.

Having a preference for one sensory modality doesn’t mean you do not use the other senses or that you use your preferred modality in all situations. We tend to use all our senses when processing information but you will find that one modality will dominate over the all the others. So if you are a visual person you will classically think in images, moving pictures perhaps and may also use a lot of visual language which we refer to as predicates so you may use phrases such as 'I see what you mean' or 'that looks good to me'!