One tool we frequently use in NLP therapy is a story containing a message, meaning or the solution to a problem.
Through stories we quickly reach another person's unconscious and help develop the right side of the brain: the intuitive, non-rational side.
The story's message reaches the reader and stimulates creativity, giving them more tools to resolve a difficult situation without their realising it.
Here is a story I wrote during my last holiday. Enjoy it.
Once upon a time, there was a wooden gate deep in the Guatemalan jungle.
The gate hung on two hinges, swinging gently back and forth with a creak. After hours along mountain roads with endless twists and turns, we boarded a minibus that sped up stone tracks opening through dense jungle vegetation.
Coffee plants, palms, banana trees, colourful butterflies, orchids and other exotic species passed before our eyes.
Marvelling at such beauty, we reached Lanquín, walked another kilometre and arrived at the wooden gate. Nearby flowed a clear turquoise river. We all enjoyed it, bathing in its crystal waters on warm days.
Over the following days, we passed through the gate in both directions.
One way led to a place with wooden, thatched cabins built in harmony with the local environment: an eco-lodge called El Retiro.
Along its paths walked fair-haired foreigners speaking English, German, Hebrew and other European languages. We ate with them in the vegetarian dining room and shared dormitories.
Resting in a hammock, we watched them arrive and leave with heavy backpacks containing their belongings. On the other side of the gate was a Guatemalan village inhabited by descendants of the Maya, wearing loom-woven clothes and carrying baskets of fruit and food on their heads.
They made corn tortillas and spoke a Mayan dialect, one of the twenty-two spoken in Guatemala.
As we passed, they watched us with wide brown eyes, in amazement and sometimes fear, laughing among themselves. As South Americans, we wondered which world we belonged to.
Only an unlocked gate separated one world from the other.
Mónica Lewin, Licensed Psychologist
Psychologist, Neuro-Linguistic Programming trainer, international coach and Gestalt therapist.
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