During rehearsal members of the cast anchor their on-stage entrances, exits, movements and dialogue lines to particular cues —words or actions immediately preceding their own "parts"— until each scene and act flow as smoothly as the ongoing life experience it represents and emphasizes. The purpose of all preliminary work is to embed, to disguise, to render magically invisible in the flow of the performance another and more fundamental set of cues: a sequence of culturally rooted visual and auditory stimuli that evoke appropriate combinations of audience 4-tuples. By controlling the sequence, tempo, timing, variation and magnitude of audience internal kinesthetics during a stage play, the actors and actresses play their audience much as a musician plays an instrument. If it is done well, both the audience and the cast thoroughly enjoy their shared experience.
Whether art imitates life or life imitates art, effective installation is like the preparatory work that is integral to a successful performance. The NLP practitioner, like the director of the play, insures that all cues are appropriately anchored and that each member of the cast has rehearsed until his performance is exactly tuned to achieve the desired outcome — only in this case you will write the script for your own third act.
6. Well-formedness conditions for the installation.
There are two basic ways to install a strategy sequence that you have designed: (1) through anchoring and inserting the steps of the strategy and (2) through having the client rehearse (a form of self anchoring) the strategy sequence. Although these two methods will be treated separately as we initially present them, they are best utilized in conjunction with one another — firing off the anchors you have established as you "walk" the person through the strategy-The goal of installation is to make the strategy you have designed function as naturally and automatically as the existing strategy you are replacing. Each step in the strategy must automatically trigger the next. There are two major well-formedness conditions for installation that you will be testing for to insure that you have done effective work:
1. The entire strategy sequence must be available to the client as an intact unit — so that each step is automatically tied to the next.
2. The strategy sequence must be tied to the appropriate context —so that it is wired (anchored) to some stimulus (context marker) within the context that will initiate the strategy when that stimulus is introduced. This is to insure that the strategy will initiate itself at the appropriate time.
To install a strategy effectively you will have to interrupt or break the existing strategy at the appropriate place so that the new one may be inserted. Generally this is just a matter of timing, so that you begin the new strategy at the place in the existing sequence where the old strategy would have gone into operation. Sometimes, however, you will have to purposefully interrupt the existing strategy (if the synesthesia patterns are too ingrained or the strategy operates too quickly) before the new one can be effectively installed.
As you install the strategy you will also want to test its ecological fit. (This can be done by finding the outcome sequitur). If you try to install a strategy that is somehow inappropriate or maladaptive for the client you will encounter interference phenomena such as resistance to the strategy or "sabotage" of the installation process.
6.1 Installation Through Anchoring.
In the Utilization Section of this book we discussed how anchors could be used to establish and elicit either full 4-tuple representations of an experience, or could be used to selectively access one particular portion of a 4-tuple. The use of anchors in strategy installation involves the anchoring of a selective sequence of individual representations over time. Just as anchors may be used to access either one or more parts or the whole of a 4-tuple, in the utilization of strategies, so may they be used to access either parts or the whole of a particular strategy sequence for installation purposes. An entire strategy sequence may be anchored with a single anchor, or the programmer may selectively anchor single steps or subroutines (synesthesia patterns).
A major difference, however, between the use of anchoring in utilization procedures and the use of anchoring in installation is that, in utilization, you want to use anchoring for controlling the content of particular strategy steps. In installation you want to control the strategy step itself. What you will want to anchor for installation purposes, then, is not any particular content, but rather the act of using the particular representational system required for the step. You will want to establish your anchors so that they gain access to the use of a particular representational system, or established sequence of representational systems.
As we discuss the various methods of utilizing anchors in installation procedures we will be using the symbol, "∮" to represent an anchor. This symbol means that an anchor has been established for whatever bracketed representational system or sequence follows it. ∮ [Vi] indicates that an anchor has been established that initiates access to internal activity of the visual representational system. It will be assumed that the anchor indicated by the symbol is unspecified with respect to which representational system it has been established through, unless this is specified by a superscript, if ∮ Ke would indicate a tactile kinesthetic anchor (such as a touch or squeeze), ∮ Aed would indicate a verbal anchor (a word), ∮ Vc would indicate an anchor in the form of a constructed visual image and so on.
6.11 Anchoring An Entire Strategy Sequence.
If your strategy design calls for the use of a particular strategy sequence or subroutine already available in some form in the client's existing repertoire of strategies, it is possible to anchor that entire existing sequence with one anchor, so that it may be inserted as an entire unit into the new sequence you are designing. It may also be inserted into some situation where it was not available previously as a resource — so that it becomes wired to the contextual stimuli that make up the situation and allows for another possible choice of behavior within that context. It is installed as a resource into situations where the client desires a choice of outcomes.
In such cases the strategy is generally taken from a context in which it occurs naturally and is installed in a context in which it does not occur or has not previously occurred. In performing this operation it is important to be sure that you separate the strategy sequence itself from the trigger that has formerly initiated the strategy sequence within the context you are extracting it from. We can show this process visually in the following way:
Step 1 shows that some external visual stimulus in Context A naturally initiates the strategy sequence Aid . .. . Ke . This sequence is anchored in its entirety by the anchor.
In step 2 the strategy unit is anchored into Context B where, formerly, some external auditory stimulus had initiated a
loop. This allows the individual the choice of accessing the strategy from Context A in Context B so that it may serve as a resource.
In our seminars we often demonstrate this process by anchoring an individual's entire motivation strategy. The individual is asked to think of a time when he motivated himself to do something he did not particularly want to do. The steps in this strategy are then elicited through questioning and observation, and each step is anchored with the same kinesthetic anchor on one of the individual's knees. Some behavior is then suggested or proposed that the individual does not particularly care to do (for example, to walk across the room and lift a chair over his head, or to pick up a pencil that has been thrown on the floor). The individual is questioned a number of times to establish that he really does not want to complete the behavior. The motivation strategy is then triggered by "firing" off the anchor. When the strategy has been well anchored, the individual will automatically reaccess the strategy sequence for motivation, applying it to the ongoing context. In many cases the individual will spontaneously begin to perform the task that, seconds before, he had not been motivated to do. If the anchor is released before the individual has completed the behavior he will often stop in mid-reach, remaining immobile until the anchor is replaced.