How To Use Anchoring for Accelerated Learning

by Stelios Perdios

Anchoring is a powerful NLP technique for ensuring access to our greatest personal resources. Anchoring means creating an association of ideas, feelings, thoughts or states with a specific stimulus. This technique is not new. In a famous series of experiments, Dr. Ivan Pavlov placed hungry dogs near meat so they could smell it and see it but not reach it. The meat acted as a powerful stimulus to the dog's digestive processes, causing them to salivate copiously. While the dogs were in this intense state of hunger and salivation, Pavlov consistently rang a bell with a specific tone. Pavlov showed that he could then induce the dog's state of copious salivation, just by ringing the bell. The sight and smell of meat was no longer needed. Pavlov had created within each dog's central nervous system, a neurological link between the sound of the bell and the state of hunger and salivation. All Pavlov had to do was ring the same bell and the dogs would salivate. In other words he had created an anchor.

Whenever a person is in an intense state where the mind and body are strongly involved together and a specific stimulus is consistently and simultaneously applied at the peak of the state, the stimulus and the state become neurologically linked. Then, when ever the same stimulus is applied, the associated state is induced. Have you noticed how this principle is used by professional athletes? Tennis players for example often use a certain rhythm for bouncing the ball to put themselves in their best state as they serve, or weight lifters use a certain pattern of breathing to induce best state just before they lift. You could if you wanted to, anchor five different resourceful states onto the five digits of one hand. The states might be exuberance, confidence, motivation, decisiveness and relaxed alertness. The stimuli would be unobtrusive and you could trigger the stimulus selectively, whenever you wanted and needed a boost! How would this change your life for the better?

You could easily learn how to anchor resourceful states of mind in your self, and in your pupils and colleagues. What if you could anchor the Alpha State onto your thumb or a pupil's thumb? The Alpha State is considered very important for accelerated learning. Scientific evidence shows that listening to music recorded at around sixty beats per minute is conducive to achieving a state of relaxed alertness, free from stress. In this state, you are enabled to learn new concepts and skills far more easily. Classical music by Mozart and baroque pieces are often played to induce the Alpha State for teaching or training or for personal learning. You could learn how to anchor the alpha state so that a simple stimulus could accelerate your learning and the learning of others.

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