Mental Models - Noticing distinctions

Adam Vile explains how Jonny Wilkinson uses an imaginary girl to stay focused on the rugby pitch and how we might acquire similar mental skills.

There is no denying it; some people are just much better at some things than others. No matter how much effort you put in, no matter how much practice, there seems to be an insurmountable gap between them and us. In general, if someone is a professional sportsperson, they have the luxury of time and resources that amateurs do not have. Still, even then, there are vast differences between the skills even of world-class athletes. It cannot just be practice, although this has a significant impact, perhaps it is talent? Yet some may argue that it is the talent that gets you noticed and gives you the opportunity. You have to turn that talent into enhanced skill somehow. So, what is the difference that makes the difference?

Consistency

One of the critical attributes of world-class athletes is consistency, the ability to perform at a top level of skill in every situation. Milton Erickson, a psychiatrist who was a pioneer in the use of Hypnotherapeutic methods in sport, worked with several world-class athletes (including the US Olympic Rifle squad and the shot-putter Donald Lawrence). In one story relating to a tournament golfer (Rossi 1988), Erickson is asked to assist in improving the golfer's consistency across all holes throughout a round. He seemed always to play the first hole perfectly and then deteriorate. The question, for Erickson, was: if you can play the first hole perfectly, then can you do as well on the next? He put the golfer in a trance and told him "You will play only the first hole, that is all you will remember, and you will be alone on the golf course". The golfer played an excellent round in his next tournament.

The secret to Jonny's conversions

This is one of the things that set Jonny Wilkinson above his peers, consistency. He is feared by opposing teams for his ability to turn pressure into points, and he can do it under the most stressful conditions. How does he do this? His approach is not too dissimilar from that taken by Erickson. You only have to watch him prepare for a kick; he uses the same ritual every time."

He places the ball carefully, the same way that he has so many times before. Shutting out the cheers and jeers of the crowd, he stands up and walks just the right number of paces backward. Then takes a single sidestep. But he is not yet ready. Standing with his feet a shoulder-width apart, he clasps his hands in front of himself, staring at them for what seems like an age. Finally looking towards the posts, tilting slightly upwards, he pulls his head back just a little, as if the target somehow magnifies in his vision. He focuses, and there he sees her, sitting right in the middle, in the crowd, between the posts. Then he feels it; he knows that he is ready. And the rest is history". (Vile and Biggs 2004 p.44)^[8]

By following this series of steps, the same steps each time, he can get himself in the zone and shut himself away from all the pressure and noise. He has a single focus of attention, the process of kicking a rugby ball over the bar and between the posts, he is alone, and it seems that for him, this is the only kick that matters. If you have a chance to watch him, you may also notice the defocusing of his eyes, the flattening of his face, as he stares at his hands, the way looks up at the posts, bringing them closer in his mind, visualising the ball going up, and then down between them.

OK, so who exactly is Doris?

However, Jonny attributes his success to one fact above all, that he can visualise a woman sitting in the crowd behind the posts, directly in-between them. He has named her Doris. He aims for Doris, and invariably collects the three points on offer. Essentially, Jonny Wilkinson hallucinates during his kicking process. Hallucination, along with several other phenomena that Jonny exhibits - a single focus of attention, defocusing of the eyes, disassociation - are signs of trance. When he is at his most accurate, most elegant, and most efficient, Jonny is in a brief, specifically directed trance.

Suppose we wish to replicate Jonny's consistency we not only have to practice regularly (even on Christmas day apparently), modelling his style and specific movements. In that case, we have to understand his mental processes as well. As Annett (1995)^[1] suggests, "The key to cognitive-motor learning lies in elucidating how learned skills are represented in memory". Often it is the mental processes that are the difference that makes the difference. These processes are skills, and skills can be learned.

Acquiring mental skills

The good news is that just like their physical counterparts, mental skills can be developed and perfected. The acquisition of physical skills can be thought of as a three-phase process (Fitts and Posner 1967)^[3]:

Cognitive (focusing on the nature of the task)
Associative (develops proprioception - learning to feel if our movements are correct)
Autonomous (making this an unconscious process)

Mental skills can be thought of as developing in the same way.

Skill acquisition essentially begins in the cognitive stage with the process of modelling the skill required. This is a straightforward matter when this skill is physical and can be observed and taught. In particular, the use of videotapes and computer software can assist in establishing the finer nuances, which perhaps the performer did not even know about. Yet when the skill has mental components or is a purely mental skill, you can only achieve so much by observation, the way to understand the breakdown of the strategy is to ask. And of course, you have to ask the right questions.

Think big and slow it down.

Bandler (1982)^[2] tells of a time when he was asked to assist a Baseball player in raising his game. Not knowing much about baseball, he watched a lot of videos of the top hitters and observed a pattern of behaviour that could only be attributed to mental processes. He interviewed several of them and found out that as the ball was thrown toward them, they were using a mental process of slowing down the ball and making it much bigger. This made it, for them, easier to hit. Now, of course, the ball did not slow down or increase in size, and equally, they did not go through this process consciously. But this process did exist, and it did seem to be the difference between the top hitters and the player that wanted to improve. In real terms, these players were exhibiting the signs of trance: time distortion and hallucination, being two indicators. So Bandler taught this player to go into a trance, make the ball bigger, and go slower. He connected this to standing on the plate. The player improved his game and became a top hitter.

The difference that makes the difference

Not all mental strategies are connected with trance, but many are. Hypnosis has, for a long time, been utilised in improving sports performance, and research is now catching up (Liggit 2000)^[5]. Alternative models (Robazza 1994)^[6] are suggesting that (alert) hypnosis should be induced before or during the performance. The suggestion, which I fully support and want to argue here, is that self-hypnosis should be part of the skill set of an athlete. Practically, of course, we are not all hypnotists, and inducing trance does require special skill and training. Anyone can learn self-hypnosis, and we have seen that some sportsmen use alert trance as part of their mental strategy for success. We need not focus on trance in our modelling of mental processes, however, as it will come as a by-product if we get it right. The key elements of such modelling concern how we represent skills internally.

What you hear, see, and feel is important

We may assume that experience is stored internally in the three primary sense systems (Visual, Auditory, Kinaesthetic), and that by modelling and replicating this structure, we can have access to the same experiences as someone else. In this way, we have more chance of developing the same mental skills. Understanding how someone represents skills internally then is essentially a case of asking the following two questions repeatedly:

What do you See, Hear and Feel, inside, when you are about to (perform whatever physical skill)?
What do you do then?

These questions address two aspects of internal strategy, the key representations associated with the skill, and the order in which things happen.

For example, Jonny sees Doris, he hears nothing (shutting out the crowd), and he feels that it is right (I would be interested in asking him how that feeling starts and where it moves to). Then he kicks. For some athletes, it may be that having a thumping soundtrack playing in their head gives them just that extra push (after all many of us listen to music as we run), but it may not start until they hear the gun or get a specific feeling in their stomach of excitement. If these strategies are successful, then they constitute part of the whole that makes up a particular skill, and such mental strategies may tip a performer into the world-class arena.

The key to modelling the mental structure and process is to notice finer and finer distinctions. For example, when Jonny sees Doris, is she in focus or out of focus, does he wait until she is in focus, and then he knows that it is the right time? Without asking, we will not know, but if we can find a successful performer in our sport, and understand the order, structure, and distinctions in their mental strategy, then we will have a model of the psychological underpinning of whatever skill we are working on.

Try this with your athletes

By way of example, you may like to try the following exercise on yourself, or with your athletes. Pick a time in the past when you were highly motivated. Go back and see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. Imagine you have a control panel in which you can adjust the representation. It has the following controls: Volume, Brightness, Contrast, and Focus. Adjust them up and down until you feel motivated and utterly compelled. Write down the numbers on each control knob. Now think of something that you do not want to do (the washing up always gets me) and make a representation of you doing it. Set all the controls to those of your most compelling motivation. How does that make you feel?

The key to modelling the internal process is to understand not only at the general level of what it is that the expert sees, hears, and feels internally but also the fine distinctions that they make in these representations. It may be that you can take these basic building blocks and subtly modify the distinctions to suit your representations, improving perhaps at the micro-level, whilst adopting at the macro-level the winning strategy.

Towards Autonomous installation

Having broken the mental processes of the expert on a specific skill down into several representations in a particular order, we then need to install it in ourselves and our athletes. This is the process of association. It is important to remember the aim of our modelling is to learn a whole skill. So, the mental processes that we have elicited must be connected with the physical aspects of the skill and should go hand in hand with the practice of that skill. During coaching sessions, the mental and the physical aspects must be practiced and seen as two sides of the same skill.

We do have an additional advantage in the learning of mental skills: they can be practiced and refined almost anywhere, even on the bus. There is enormous value in repetition (of course assuming that the correct components are repeated), and mental skills can be repeated far more and much more quickly. There is a view (Bandler 1982)^[2] that the brain learns quickly, not slowly (how long, for example, does it take you to learn a phobia?). We can take advantage of this by repeating and practicing the skill mentally at a much faster rate than we would perform it in practice.

Practice makes permanent

By constant repetition, these mental skills and strategies will become unconsciously installed. Additionally, in moving to the autonomous stage, we can benefit from hypnosis, which can quickly install processes directly in the unconscious. Accelerated learning works in this way, and many athletes can see immediate benefits in their game after just one or two sessions of hypnosis (Holdevici 1989)^[4]. Understanding mental processes are just as relevant for the occasional squash player as for an international sportsman. My challenge to you is to go out and notice distinctions. Start with the way you represent success yourself and replicate that the next time you are competing. Turn up the brightness, pump up the volume, and if you want to, play to win!!

Article Reference

This article first appeared in:

VILE, A. (2004) Mental Models - Noticing distinctions. Brian Mackenzie's Successful Coaching, (ISSN 1745-7513/ 14 / July-August), p. 8-10

References

ANNETT, J. (1995) Motor Skills. In: Mackintosh, N; Coleman, A (Eds) Learning and Skills. Longman. p. 56-75
BANDLER, R. (1982) Using your Brain for a change. Real People Press
FITTS, P. and POSNER, M. (1967) Human Performance. Belomont Brooks
HOLDEVICI, I. (1989) Hypnosis in the Psychological Preparation of High Performance Shooters. Revue Roumaine de Sciences Sociales Serie de Psychologie. 33 (2), p. 155-160
LIGGET, D. (2000) Enhancing Imagery Through Hypnosis: A Performance Aid for Athletes. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 43 (2), p. 149-157
ROBAZZA, C. and BORTOLI, L. (1994) Hypnosis in Sport: An Isomorphic Model. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 79 (2), p. 963-973.
ROSEN, S. (1989) My Voice Will Go With You: The Teaching Tales of Milton H.Erickson. Norton
VILE, A. and BIGGS, J. (2004) Grace Under Pressure: Martial Arts and Sports Hypnosis. Trafford, Lulu Press

Page Reference

If you quote information from this page in your work, then the reference for this page is:

VILE, A. (2004) Mental Models - Noticing distinctions [WWW] Available from: https://www.brianmac.co.uk/articles/scni14a7.htm [Accessed

About the Author

Dr. Adam Vile is a Hypnotherapist and NLP master practitioner. He has a Ph.D. in education and has been a teacher, lecturer, computer scientist, and manager. He is a martial artist and has been teaching and coaching both competitive and traditional martial arts for over fifteen years.


topics A-Z Page Index Article Library Coaching General Young Athletes Literature Reviews Coaching Conditioning Endurance Ergogenic Aids Evaluation Injury Prevention Nutrition Physiology Planning Psychology Skill Development Speed Strength Female Athletes Master Athletes Young Athletes Sports Specific Basketball Bodybuilding Boxing Cycling Golf Rowing Rugby Soccer Squash Swimming Tennis Triathlon USA Football Training Conditioning Endurance Ergogenic Aids Evaluation Injury Prevention Nutrition Physiology Planning Psychology Skill Development Speed Strength Anatomy & Physiology Articles Biomechanics Body Systems Cardiovascular Digestive Endocrine Muscular Neurological Respiratory Skeletal Body Type Energy Systems Maximum Heart Rate Movement Analysis Coaching Articles Assessment Communication Ethics Group Dynamics Methods Philosophy Process Principles Responsibilities Styles Skills & Roles Young Athletes Fitness Development Articles Agility Conditioning Core Stability Endurance Flexibility Skill Speed Strength Training Principles VO2max Fitness Testing Articles Blood Pressure Evaluation Tests Ideal Weight Nutrition Articles Basal Metabolic Rate Eating & Competing Eating Disorders Glycemic Index Healthy Eating Minerals Vitamins Planning Articles Athlete Profiling Creating a Plan LTAD Tapering Warm Up & Cool Down Programs Aqua Training Circuit Training CNS Training Complex Training Fartlek Training Heart Rate Training Hill Training Medicine Ball Training Personal Exercise Plan Plyometric Training Track & Field Training Weight Training Psychology Articles Competitive Anxiety Mental Imagery Relaxation Techniques SCAT Sports Psychology Stress Management TEOSQ Sports American Football Basketball Boxing Cross Country Cycling Fell Running Golf Rowing Rugby Soccer Squash Swimming Tennis Triathlon Ultimate Frisbee Sport Development Funding in Sport History of Sport Olympic Games Sport Structure Sports Injury Articles ACL Cramp Cryotherapy Dehydration Hot & Cold Baths Injury Prevention Muscle Imbalance Over Training Shin Soreness Stitch Sports Merchandise Books & DVD's Clothing & Shoes Training Aids Magazines Track & Field Combined Events Decathlon Heptathlon Hexathlon Octathlon Pentathlon Jumps High Jump Long Jump Pole Vault Triple Jump Running Hurdles Long Distance Middle Distance Sprints Steeplechase Throws Discus Hammer Javelin Shot Putt Track & Field Safety Training Aids Articles Ergogenic Aids Massage Sports Drinks Supplements Website Blog Website Updates Website Information Awards Disclaimer & Copyright Help - where do I find Link Exchange Policy Visitors Comments Visitor Feedback Visitor Statistics Web Master Web Links Coaches Corner Useful Links	Mental Models - Noticing distinctions Adam Vile explains how Jonny Wilkinson uses an imaginary girl to stay focused on the rugby pitch and how we might acquire similar mental skills. There is no denying it; some people are just much better at some things than others. No matter how much effort you put in, no matter how much practice, there seems to be an insurmountable gap between them and us. In general, if someone is a professional sportsperson, they have the luxury of time and resources that amateurs do not have. Still, even then, there are vast differences between the skills even of world-class athletes. It cannot just be practice, although this has a significant impact, perhaps it is talent? Yet some may argue that it is the talent that gets you noticed and gives you the opportunity. You have to turn that talent into enhanced skill somehow. So, what is the difference that makes the difference? Consistency One of the critical attributes of world-class athletes is consistency, the ability to perform at a top level of skill in every situation. Milton Erickson, a psychiatrist who was a pioneer in the use of Hypnotherapeutic methods in sport, worked with several world-class athletes (including the US Olympic Rifle squad and the shot-putter Donald Lawrence). In one story relating to a tournament golfer (Rossi 1988), Erickson is asked to assist in improving the golfer's consistency across all holes throughout a round. He seemed always to play the first hole perfectly and then deteriorate. The question, for Erickson, was: if you can play the first hole perfectly, then can you do as well on the next? He put the golfer in a trance and told him "You will play only the first hole, that is all you will remember, and you will be alone on the golf course". The golfer played an excellent round in his next tournament. The secret to Jonny's conversions This is one of the things that set Jonny Wilkinson above his peers, consistency. He is feared by opposing teams for his ability to turn pressure into points, and he can do it under the most stressful conditions. How does he do this? His approach is not too dissimilar from that taken by Erickson. You only have to watch him prepare for a kick; he uses the same ritual every time." He places the ball carefully, the same way that he has so many times before. Shutting out the cheers and jeers of the crowd, he stands up and walks just the right number of paces backward. Then takes a single sidestep. But he is not yet ready. Standing with his feet a shoulder-width apart, he clasps his hands in front of himself, staring at them for what seems like an age. Finally looking towards the posts, tilting slightly upwards, he pulls his head back just a little, as if the target somehow magnifies in his vision. He focuses, and there he sees her, sitting right in the middle, in the crowd, between the posts. Then he feels it; he knows that he is ready. And the rest is history". (Vile and Biggs 2004 p.44)^[8] By following this series of steps, the same steps each time, he can get himself in the zone and shut himself away from all the pressure and noise. He has a single focus of attention, the process of kicking a rugby ball over the bar and between the posts, he is alone, and it seems that for him, this is the only kick that matters. If you have a chance to watch him, you may also notice the defocusing of his eyes, the flattening of his face, as he stares at his hands, the way looks up at the posts, bringing them closer in his mind, visualising the ball going up, and then down between them. OK, so who exactly is Doris? However, Jonny attributes his success to one fact above all, that he can visualise a woman sitting in the crowd behind the posts, directly in-between them. He has named her Doris. He aims for Doris, and invariably collects the three points on offer. Essentially, Jonny Wilkinson hallucinates during his kicking process. Hallucination, along with several other phenomena that Jonny exhibits - a single focus of attention, defocusing of the eyes, disassociation - are signs of trance. When he is at his most accurate, most elegant, and most efficient, Jonny is in a brief, specifically directed trance. Suppose we wish to replicate Jonny's consistency we not only have to practice regularly (even on Christmas day apparently), modelling his style and specific movements. In that case, we have to understand his mental processes as well. As Annett (1995)^[1] suggests, "The key to cognitive-motor learning lies in elucidating how learned skills are represented in memory". Often it is the mental processes that are the difference that makes the difference. These processes are skills, and skills can be learned. Acquiring mental skills The good news is that just like their physical counterparts, mental skills can be developed and perfected. The acquisition of physical skills can be thought of as a three-phase process (Fitts and Posner 1967)^[3]: Cognitive (focusing on the nature of the task) Associative (develops proprioception - learning to feel if our movements are correct) Autonomous (making this an unconscious process) Mental skills can be thought of as developing in the same way. Skill acquisition essentially begins in the cognitive stage with the process of modelling the skill required. This is a straightforward matter when this skill is physical and can be observed and taught. In particular, the use of videotapes and computer software can assist in establishing the finer nuances, which perhaps the performer did not even know about. Yet when the skill has mental components or is a purely mental skill, you can only achieve so much by observation, the way to understand the breakdown of the strategy is to ask. And of course, you have to ask the right questions. Think big and slow it down. Bandler (1982)^[2] tells of a time when he was asked to assist a Baseball player in raising his game. Not knowing much about baseball, he watched a lot of videos of the top hitters and observed a pattern of behaviour that could only be attributed to mental processes. He interviewed several of them and found out that as the ball was thrown toward them, they were using a mental process of slowing down the ball and making it much bigger. This made it, for them, easier to hit. Now, of course, the ball did not slow down or increase in size, and equally, they did not go through this process consciously. But this process did exist, and it did seem to be the difference between the top hitters and the player that wanted to improve. In real terms, these players were exhibiting the signs of trance: time distortion and hallucination, being two indicators. So Bandler taught this player to go into a trance, make the ball bigger, and go slower. He connected this to standing on the plate. The player improved his game and became a top hitter. The difference that makes the difference Not all mental strategies are connected with trance, but many are. Hypnosis has, for a long time, been utilised in improving sports performance, and research is now catching up (Liggit 2000)^[5]. Alternative models (Robazza 1994)^[6] are suggesting that (alert) hypnosis should be induced before or during the performance. The suggestion, which I fully support and want to argue here, is that self-hypnosis should be part of the skill set of an athlete. Practically, of course, we are not all hypnotists, and inducing trance does require special skill and training. Anyone can learn self-hypnosis, and we have seen that some sportsmen use alert trance as part of their mental strategy for success. We need not focus on trance in our modelling of mental processes, however, as it will come as a by-product if we get it right. The key elements of such modelling concern how we represent skills internally. What you hear, see, and feel is important We may assume that experience is stored internally in the three primary sense systems (Visual, Auditory, Kinaesthetic), and that by modelling and replicating this structure, we can have access to the same experiences as someone else. In this way, we have more chance of developing the same mental skills. Understanding how someone represents skills internally then is essentially a case of asking the following two questions repeatedly: What do you See, Hear and Feel, inside, when you are about to (perform whatever physical skill)? What do you do then? These questions address two aspects of internal strategy, the key representations associated with the skill, and the order in which things happen. For example, Jonny sees Doris, he hears nothing (shutting out the crowd), and he feels that it is right (I would be interested in asking him how that feeling starts and where it moves to). Then he kicks. For some athletes, it may be that having a thumping soundtrack playing in their head gives them just that extra push (after all many of us listen to music as we run), but it may not start until they hear the gun or get a specific feeling in their stomach of excitement. If these strategies are successful, then they constitute part of the whole that makes up a particular skill, and such mental strategies may tip a performer into the world-class arena. The key to modelling the mental structure and process is to notice finer and finer distinctions. For example, when Jonny sees Doris, is she in focus or out of focus, does he wait until she is in focus, and then he knows that it is the right time? Without asking, we will not know, but if we can find a successful performer in our sport, and understand the order, structure, and distinctions in their mental strategy, then we will have a model of the psychological underpinning of whatever skill we are working on. Try this with your athletes By way of example, you may like to try the following exercise on yourself, or with your athletes. Pick a time in the past when you were highly motivated. Go back and see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. Imagine you have a control panel in which you can adjust the representation. It has the following controls: Volume, Brightness, Contrast, and Focus. Adjust them up and down until you feel motivated and utterly compelled. Write down the numbers on each control knob. Now think of something that you do not want to do (the washing up always gets me) and make a representation of you doing it. Set all the controls to those of your most compelling motivation. How does that make you feel? The key to modelling the internal process is to understand not only at the general level of what it is that the expert sees, hears, and feels internally but also the fine distinctions that they make in these representations. It may be that you can take these basic building blocks and subtly modify the distinctions to suit your representations, improving perhaps at the micro-level, whilst adopting at the macro-level the winning strategy. Towards Autonomous installation Having broken the mental processes of the expert on a specific skill down into several representations in a particular order, we then need to install it in ourselves and our athletes. This is the process of association. It is important to remember the aim of our modelling is to learn a whole skill. So, the mental processes that we have elicited must be connected with the physical aspects of the skill and should go hand in hand with the practice of that skill. During coaching sessions, the mental and the physical aspects must be practiced and seen as two sides of the same skill. We do have an additional advantage in the learning of mental skills: they can be practiced and refined almost anywhere, even on the bus. There is enormous value in repetition (of course assuming that the correct components are repeated), and mental skills can be repeated far more and much more quickly. There is a view (Bandler 1982)^[2] that the brain learns quickly, not slowly (how long, for example, does it take you to learn a phobia?). We can take advantage of this by repeating and practicing the skill mentally at a much faster rate than we would perform it in practice. Practice makes permanent By constant repetition, these mental skills and strategies will become unconsciously installed. Additionally, in moving to the autonomous stage, we can benefit from hypnosis, which can quickly install processes directly in the unconscious. Accelerated learning works in this way, and many athletes can see immediate benefits in their game after just one or two sessions of hypnosis (Holdevici 1989)^[4]. Understanding mental processes are just as relevant for the occasional squash player as for an international sportsman. My challenge to you is to go out and notice distinctions. Start with the way you represent success yourself and replicate that the next time you are competing. Turn up the brightness, pump up the volume, and if you want to, play to win!! Article Reference This article first appeared in: VILE, A. (2004) Mental Models - Noticing distinctions. Brian Mackenzie's Successful Coaching, (ISSN 1745-7513/ 14 / July-August), p. 8-10 References ANNETT, J. (1995) Motor Skills. In: Mackintosh, N; Coleman, A (Eds) Learning and Skills. Longman. p. 56-75 BANDLER, R. (1982) Using your Brain for a change. Real People Press FITTS, P. and POSNER, M. (1967) Human Performance. Belomont Brooks HOLDEVICI, I. (1989) Hypnosis in the Psychological Preparation of High Performance Shooters. Revue Roumaine de Sciences Sociales Serie de Psychologie. 33 (2), p. 155-160 LIGGET, D. (2000) Enhancing Imagery Through Hypnosis: A Performance Aid for Athletes. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 43 (2), p. 149-157 ROBAZZA, C. and BORTOLI, L. (1994) Hypnosis in Sport: An Isomorphic Model. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 79 (2), p. 963-973. ROSEN, S. (1989) My Voice Will Go With You: The Teaching Tales of Milton H.Erickson. Norton VILE, A. and BIGGS, J. (2004) Grace Under Pressure: Martial Arts and Sports Hypnosis. Trafford, Lulu Press Page Reference If you quote information from this page in your work, then the reference for this page is: VILE, A. (2004) Mental Models - Noticing distinctions [WWW] Available from: https://www.brianmac.co.uk/articles/scni14a7.htm [Accessed About the Author Dr. Adam Vile is a Hypnotherapist and NLP master practitioner. He has a Ph.D. in education and has been a teacher, lecturer, computer scientist, and manager. He is a martial artist and has been teaching and coaching both competitive and traditional martial arts for over fifteen years.