WHAT IS NEURO-SEMANTICS?

“Neuro-Semantics: Taking NLP to a higher level professionally and ethically.” L. Michael Hall, 1996 Original Vision Statement

Several people have seen the advertisements for the new book, Neuro-Semantics: Actualizing Meaning and Performance and while they also saw the chapter titles, they wanted to know a little more about what is in the book, so with this Neurons Meta Reflection and perhaps a few more, I’ll put some of what’s in the book here. The following is from Chapter 1.

Chapter 1 Everyday someone asks me, “What is Neuro-Semantics?” And every time I’m asked, I am tempted to look at my watch to see how much time I have to answer that question. I could easily and quickly say, “It’s your neurology and your meanings; it’s your embodied meanings that comprise your life and that create what for you makes sense in life.” And while that is true, it is also superficial. Neuro-Semantics is so much more.

Neuro-Semantics is the exploration of meaning (semantics) and how we humans, as meaning-makers, make meaning. Exploring the structure of meaning and how we construct, construe, and interpret the events of life endowing them with meaning, Neuro- Semantics focuses on expanding the ability to detect meaning frames, the processes of meaning-making, quality controlling meanings, enriching limiting meaning, suspending dis-empowering meanings, and taking charge of one’s meaning-making instinct. So Neuro-Semantics, as a mind-body-emotion discipline, refers to how we human beings create, experience, and transform meaning within their bodies as performances (actions, skills, gestures, etc.).

Neuro-Semantics goes beyond merely exploring meaning, it enables the skills of meaning-making. It especially enables the processes of identifying meaningful possibilities that represent your highest visions and values in life and actualizing those potentials in your best performance in everyday life to achieve your highest goals and dreams.

Neuro-Semantics is a practical set of processes for unleashing your highest and best and actualizing them so that your life is richly meaningful and significant. In this unleashing, there is an unleashing from the things that limit, interfere, and sabotage your best and an unleashing to your dreams of a highly productive and meaningful life. We call this unleashing process—self-actualization.

Neuro-Semantics is a communication model for exploring how the body (neuro-, the nervous system, physiology, neurology) gets programmed by the use of language (linguistics, symbols), and meaning (semantics). NLP focuses on the linear and horizontal tracking of the processes of the mind. NLP focuses on the how of human behavior. Its central question is, “How do you do that behavior?” Neuro-Semantics adds another distinction—the why of behavior (its meaning). From a higher level of mind, meaning drives behavior. There are many hidden meta (Greek for “above and about”) levels of thought and meaning within the structure of subjective experience.

Neuro-Semantics is a positive, strength-based psychology designed to model the highest and best in human nature so we can transfer it to our everyday lives. The tag-line of Neuro-Semantics, Actualizing Excellence, identifies that we primarily model expertise and best practices. We are able to do this because every experience has a structure. Sometimes we also model dysfunctional experiences to understand how diminishing experiences work. Knowing how an experience works enables us to be able to transform it for higher purposes.

Neuro-Semantics is an expression of the positive psychology that Maslow and Rogers pioneered (Humanistic, Self-Actualization Psychology) that gave birth to NLP and dozens of other strength-based psychologies. In recovering its original NLP history, Neuro-Semantics is rediscovering the health-based philosophy that focuses on the further reaches of human nature.

There you have it! Six paragraphs that define and map out Neuro-Semantics. And I’m sure that with these descriptions, you now have many more questions about Neuro-Semantics. To answer those questions, I will identify the essential variables within Neuro-Semantics and then I’ll set out a list of the fundamental premises that govern our activity as Neuro-Semanticists.