Wesley:   This is Jan, 19th, 2000,  This is the Atlanta  NLP Study group  presentation, Good evening,  I am  Wesley Anderson Doctor of Clinical Hypnotherapy.  I am going to subject you to my thoughts, ideas and give you some things to practice and do for yourself,  maybe even be able to apply in other places. 
     So we are going to talk about the NLP technique of swishing today, tonight, maybe tomorrow, I don't know maybe we'll get it together by then.  So, you both are familiar with the swish already I assume?
(Both answer yes)
Ok, let me start by telling you a story of a swish I did with someone that was nontraditional.  A woman came to see me as a client.  She was a prostitute and she wanted to forget her boyfriend. She wanted amnesia for her boyfriend, not know who the hell he was when she walked out the door, not have any memories of what happened between them. Which I thought was  probably: A. Over Kill and B. a bad idea.  Because you know the next time he sees her, he's gonna be able to get in with her again, because she is not going to be able to remember anything.  So we talked about this for a while, and at one point I said to her, if you get what you want, which is to forget this guy, your gonna open your eyes and look at me and say, "Why am I here?"
And I'll say, "to forget Joe", and you'll say, "Joe who?" and I'll say,  "See, it worked".  But, I won't get paid because your not going to believe we did anything.  ( Group *L* )  So, she laughed and gave me some money, she paid cash.  As it turned out, what worked for her, instead of giving her amnesia, which I thought was a bad idea, as I said, I had her do a swish of his image to slimy worms.  She liked that, so I figured, OK, she was not willing to go anywhere positive in terms of her imagining herself resourceful with the guy.  She wanted slimy worms, so I gave her slimy worms. 
So she says, "yeahhhh, that's goood. When I see him I go 'argh', I don't have to worry about it any more."  Apparently he had not been treating her the best. 
My thinking was I wanted to give her a good place to go as well, so I had her build an image of herself who was a step beyond not only this guy but anybody like him.  And I asked her, since you got what you wanted, would you mind if I added a little piece that   I think would be worthwhile? 
She said, "sure, fine", so I had her swish from this guy's image, to slimy worms, then to the image of herself being resourceful and one step beyond, or how ever it was that I phrased it.
So she goes boom, boom, boom,  starts with Joe, ( snapping fingers) worms (snapping fingers ) and back into the image of herself as being extremely resourceful.  She was Ok with that, and if you stop to think about that, what happens with an anchor chain like that, is that it tends too streamline itself, (snapping fingers twice)  and she is going to end up in the resourceful state and Joe is going to be out in the doghouse for her forever.  She'll get on with her life, and when she sees Joe, or thinks about Joe, she is going to end up in the resourceful state.

Miki:  Same with slimy worms

Wesley:  So here is an example of a non-traditional swish, because you don't usually go to someplace unpleasant first at all, so the requested topic for the guy who is not here, was about kinesthetic swishes and since he is not here, I would like to show you something else that does the same thing without going through the swish pattern, because doing a kinesthetic swish is going to be a lot longer and a lot more work, than doing this particular technique. Starting with the kinesthetic system of changing feelings to other feelings.
Most swishes use the visual system.  The first thing you do is find out, what intensifies a feeling by changing the visual submodalities. Does making it brighter intensify it, does it lessen it?  Let's say we checked somebody and we have an intensification from brightening the image, then we ask what else would make it more intense. Try to making it bigger, try to making it smaller,  distance farther, closer. Those are the ones most common. I had someone for whom focus was the most important submodality, that means it had the most effect of changing the feelings associated with the image.  Some times it has to do with whether the color is vivid or faded, etc.

Miki: Or color like black and white?

Unknown Speaker: I just caught something, you said, shrinking a picture can increase the feeling.

Wesley: It may, but it is unlikely, but for some people making it bigger makes it stronger, but for some people shrinking may intensify it.  It's individual, but there are some generalities, they are basically guide lines, you can't be sure making it bigger will make any difference or making it smaller will make any difference for any given individual until you check. 

Miki:  An example Bandler uses in making brighter and dimmer: when you make something brighter makes it make it worst or darker makes it better, an example is a romantic room with candle lights, making it brighter would lessen the effects of that particular one.

Wesley: So, those are analog which means it can go from very dim to very bright, ok, that is a spectrum, digital is either off or on. So, let's suppose that we find for someone that they intensify things with brighter and closer, so brighter and closer are two analog submodalities and we'll also use one digital submodality in most cases.  Usually we will have them go from an associated image to a disassociated image. 

Wesley:  I'll just wait until everyone settles in.  So, what Bandler teaches as the basic pattern of the swish is that you start associated and end up disassociated.  next page