Spin How You Feel! Try it Now to Feel Better

Changing how we think

I learned the spinning the feeling technique when I was in London on an NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) course with Richard Bandler, one of the founders of NLP in the 1970's. Since then I have used this on numerous occasions both with clients and on myself. It works like magic.

NLP works on the structure of thought. How we think. I have studied with both founders over the years and other amazing trainers too. It was developed in the 1970's as a way of studying people who were excellent in their chosen field, in way of replicating the behaviour. What happened aside from increasing the speed of learning, also left behind a trail of techniques.

Unfortunately, many people now think the techniques are what NLP is about. This is not the case, but the techniques are useful and I use many different technqiues as a tool to help clients change their lives.

Spinning how you feel

We create our perceived reality through our senses:

• Seeing
• Hearing
• Feeling
• Tasting
• Touching  

This technique works predominantly with the feeling, kinesthetic sensations in our body.  Until asked, most people describe their feelings as a pain in the head, or butterflies in the stomach, some people struggle initially to add a description to the feeling. I invite you here to go along with the exercise without any pressure or thinking getting in your way, notice what you notice, feel what you feel and you might just be surprised at the change.

Spinning feelings is a set of simple, quick and efficient techniques that can be used to deal with a wide range of personal issues. 

The basic idea is this. You focus your attention on a feeling in the body, discover how it rotates, then pretend to move it out of the body, switch the direction of the rotation and finally put it back in the same place again. The point with this trick is that the feeling cannot be entirely still – it must move in some way or it would attenuate. But since it can’t rotate in two opposite directions at once, the old pattern is interrupted and the feeling disappears.

Seek out the bad experience

• Go to a place that you associate with a bad experience or unpleasant person, or perhaps a place where you spent a lot of time during a generally rough period in life, such as a place you lived, worked or went to school.
   
• If you find it difficult to get back to the old bad feelings, you may try to remember some specific bad events. You may also try to relive them in your mind as you experienced them when they first occurred, i.e. as if you were actually there again.
   
• Now you will likely experience an unpleasant feeling somewhere in your body. Close your eyes and focus on that feeling.
   
• Often it feels like a knot in your stomach or a lump in your throat.
   
• After a while you will most likely notice that the feeling is moving around in some cyclical fashion, as if rotating along a path.
   
• If it is difficult to find the direction in which it is rotating, you may try to very gently spin it in various directions and try to notice if one of them seems right, as if the feeling will tend to keep spinning in that direction even if you stop nudging it.
   
• Reverse the rotation:
   
• Once you’ve found a rotational cycle that seems stable, imagine moving it out of the body.
   
• Now flip the plane of rotation half way around so that the feeling spins in the opposite direction.
   
• When you’ve got it spinning in the other direction, put it back in the same place in your body again.
   
• The pattern is broken.
   
• Since the feeling can’t spin both ways simultaneously, the pattern is broken and the feeling disappears.
   
• Sometimes after dissolving the first rotating feeling, you may discover another place in the body where there is another one. Then repeat the process.
   
• The memories become more positive.
   
• When you are finished with the technique, open your eyes and remain still for a while.

If you now think back upon the event you’ve worked on you will likely notice that your feelings are entirely different, less unpleasant. Often one remembers more positive circumstances and details that were previously overshadowed by the dominating bad feeling. This can sometimes be an opportunity to reflect on the experience and learn something that one hadn’t thought of before.

I’ve often found that in this situation it is relatively easy to forgive what someone has done, that life or the world in general has been awful or perhaps yourself for having done something stupid.