Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) examines the influence language has on our mental programming and other functions of our nervous system. NLP is also concerned with the way in which our mental programming and nervous systems shape and are reflected in our language and language patterns. The essence of Neuro-Linguistic Programming is that the functioning of our nervous system is intimately tied up with our language capability. The strategies through which we organize and guide out behavior are made up of neurological and verbal patterns.

All the accomplishments of the human race, both positive and negative, have involved the use of language. We as human beings use our language in two ways. First off all, we use it to represent our experience – and we call this activity reasoning, thinking, fantasying. The model of the world which we create by our representational use of language is based upon our perception of the world.

Secondly, we use language to communicate our model or representation of the world to each other. When we use language to communicate we call it talking, discussing, writing, lecturing, singing etc.

The nervous system, which is responsible for producing the representational system of language, is the same nervous system by which humans produce every other model of the world – visual for ex. The same principles of structure are operating in each of these systems.

Thus, language can parallel and even substitute for the experiences and activities in our other internal representational systems. An important implication of this is that “talking about” something can do more than simply reflect our perceptions; it can actually change our perceptions. This implies a potentially deep and special role for language in the process of personal change or healing.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming contends that we all have our own world view and that view is based upon the internal maps that we have formed through our language and sensory representational systems, as a result of our individual life experiences. It is these “neurolinguistic” maps that will determine how we interpret and react to the world around us and how we give meaning to our behaviors and experiences, more so than reality itself. As Shakespeare´s Hamlet pointed out, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”