Hemispheric Integration
Foreground-Background
By Allen C. Sargent

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The following is a process called The Hemispheric Eye Model Foreground-Background, first introduced at the NLP World Health Conference at the University of Santa Cruz in June 1997.  By doing this exercise you will be able to experience the Hemispheric Integration Model^TM and discover how this model can be useful and powerful in your life.

Purpose:  To soften the initial internal response or reaction of the Explorer to a challenging person, while maintaining ecology necessary for safety.

Preframe: Establish Rapport and Ecology for working together.

Guide is to:

Step 1:  
Explain and demonstrate the current external dominant eye. This step shows that there is a difference, and will assist in determining the internal dominant eye.

Step 2:  
Have Explorer think of a challenging person with whom they would like to have a more resourceful initial internal response or reaction.   Example: Supervisor, coworker, relative or neighbor.  To begin with I suggest you pick a moderate example - a five on a scale of one to ten.

Step 3:  
Elicit the Explorer's sub-modalities paying particular attention to:

Visual - associated or dissociated, clarity, color, movie or still picture, panoramic or framed, size and location. 

Auditory - internal and external, volume, location and content.

Kinesthetic - tactile, proprioseptive, and emotional evaluation. 

Guide calibrates external cues, checking carefully for ecology. 

Step 4:   
Say to Explorer:  "Get a sense of which internal eye you're seeing that picture with."  Note response.   After response guide says, "After checking inside and in a way that is just right for you, shift your internal dominant eye to the opposite eye so that you will be seeing that person now with a new perspective." 

Guide note any change in external cues.

Step 5:   
Elicit any differences in sub-modalities, paying close attention to any shift in emotional response.

Step 6:    
Identify which picture the explorer wants to leave foreground, and which to leave background.  Leaving one of the pictures background balances ecological issues. 

Step 7:    
Assist Explorer in establishing foreground-background by asking them "What would make that picture stand out?" Often changing color and intensity or size will make the difference.   

Test for response and adjust as appropriate.

Step 8:    
Check to see what follow up work is needed.  

Doing this process may allow other issues to surface such as belief changes or re-imprinting.  These may be dealt with at a later time.

Step 9:    
Future pace the new choice the Explorer now has to adjust their Hemispheric Integration.

I've chosen this exercise to share in this article for its effect and simplicity.  One of the most important pieces in change work is to get out of a "stuck" place.  By using the Hemispheric Integration Model^TM I've found this first step can be achieved quickly, and more important, ecologically.  The "second picture" is stored in the memory of the explorer, thereby giving the explorer a choice of  what is already within their own experience.  

Feedback from people I have taken through this process often involves the sense of safety they felt during the process.  As a guide for this process, I find it very easy to let the explorer's other-than-conscious mind direct whatever changes need to occur ecologically. 

I have found this particular process very effective for a variety of situations where a person has a negative initial internal response involving a person or situation, and where it is likely that the person or situation will be in the explorer's future.  

I shared this process with a person who had a negative relationship with their supervisor at work. Whenever my client thought about or had to deal with her supervisor, she found herself in an unresourceful state based on her initial internal response to thinking about or seeing the supervisor.  

When I took her through The Hemispheric Eye Model Foreground-Background process when she shifted to her other internal eye she was able to maintain a normal breathing pattern and the feeling of "yuk" disappeared. The next time she went to work she was able to keep a resourceful state in her interactions with the supervisor. The built in ecology in this process preserves the information of the first internal picture while giving more choices of response with the calmer more neutral feeling of the second picture.

One of my early concerns in developing this model was that since the process changes the emotional value of a challenge situation so quickly and dramatically, would the changes last?  Follow up has shown that the changes do last and understanding the model itself maps over to other areas and issues. 

Having had opportunities to share this model with other NLP trainers and master practitioners, the multi-use value of Internal Dominant Eye  Accessing is becoming more and more evident. 

Another area where this model has proven effective is in the field of learning strategies, teaching a person how to access and hold a visual memory. 

More detailed information is available through SDI's seminars and my book, The Other Mind's Eye: The Gateway to the Hidden Treasures of Your Mind.