एस्ताब्लिशिंग Rapport

Lucas

I see you and you see me.

I hear you and you hear me.

I feel you and you feel me.

We are so different!!!!!!!

And in each difference we find, I absorb the loving manifestation of creation, the expression of the great creative power that breathes through each particular cell of life. I celebrate these differences. They make each of us unique and special.

So when I approach you, I bless the wonderful discovery that I have a completely different being in front of me, and with great respecct, I start to decipher the code with which you relate to reality - which, of course, is different from mine, or from any other human being.

We share a reality. However, we don't share the interpretation of this reality, or the way we relate to it. Our "job" is to find a loving way to bridge the gap between you and me, to understand deeply, with our minds, our spirits, our emotions and our body, how others connect with the world..

I truly believe that this is the first thing I should do when I approach you, if I really want to grow with you. This is the best way I have (at least at the moment) to relate with all the valuable "others" in my life.

Lucas was five years old, and came to his English class in a rather bad mood. He had had a terrible row with his mother, so he was not well disposed to learning or sharing with me or the other kids. His mum left him at the door and said to me :"Do what you can with him today, I don't think he will want to do anything. Either I leave him here or I kill him. I can't cope with him today."
Wow!!!! A desperate mother, a kid that had been threatened with terrible punishment (and I didn't know why) and the parent's assumption/prediction that he wouldn't want to work. Lucas was sitting outside the classroom, head down and bent over, and with all his uncombed long hair covering his eyes. His hands and fingers were tense (as if he wanted to strangle someone, though this was only my interpretation).

I had the feeling that his mum was playing a ball game and that the ball was too hot so she had decided to throw it to me. Has this ever happened to you, dear teacher???

I had all the other kids waiting impatiently to play and have fun . I also had someone who was not ready to join in. I had to do something, fast!

I asked another teacher to stay with the other kids for two minutes. Two minutes??? Yes, two minutes, which was the length of time I thought I was going to need to "connect" with my little Lucas.

I looked at him with the corner of my eye, just to know what he was doing, and I sat down in exactly the same position as him. I tensed my hands, let my head fall down and my hair cover my eyes. I must have looked really angry!!!!!! I started to breathe in exactly the same way and rhythm as Lucas.
What did I do all that for??? Well, in the first place, I wanted to understand how he was feeling. Adopting someone's body position is an excellent way to start to grasp how someone is feeling at a particular moment. A second reason is that through my body, I was telling him: "I am with you". We communicate more with our bodies than with our words (the word only represents 7% of the total communication, and besides, communication is subconscious as well as conscious.

Lucas got my message, and we started to function on the same wavelength. Were we going to stay like that all the afternoon? Of course not; the moment I felt I was really and honestly with him, and he was truly with me, I started to move. He started to move, too. He started to follow me. I stood up, stretched and walked into the classroom. He stood up, stretched, and followed me.

All this took exactly two minutes. If I had asked him what was happening to him and waited for an answer he was surely not ready to give, if I had tried to convince him that he should go into the classrom to learn English in his mental state, I would still be speaking to him: and this happened four years ago!!!!!!!

The teacher who was looking after the rest of the class could not believe it, even though she had been a witness to all the process. "Laura," she said, "where is your magic wand?????" Lucas's mother came back fifteen minutes before the class finished because she thought that he wouldn't be doing anything and was probably causing trouble. She saw him at work, in the best of moods, and could not believe that the "hot ball" had turned into such a wonderful little boy, having fun and playing with his friends.

This was not magic, this was communication. Real, deep communication. At all levels. Using NLP terminology, I will explain what I did:
I established rapport with Lucas. I did this non-verbally, with flexibility of body and mind!!!!
How?
I paced him: I copied his body position and his breathing.
I communicated with him multisensorily.
When he was ready, I led him out of that position and state of unresourcefulness, which was doing him no good.
I reached my objective, which was to make him relax and work. I did this with no words at all, and in a very sweet and subtle way I made him feel understood. He was not alone, after all!!!!!

I do appreciate and thank the moment I learnt these powerful NLP techniques that have made me a more sensitive human being, someone who knows the difference between you and I, and capitalises on that to build bridges of love and understanding. After all, we are different beautiful manifestations of the same creative force.
That's why I enjoy it enormously when
I see you and you see me
I hear you and you hear me
I feel you and you feel me.
With love
Laura