Submodalities describe the way we internally represent our thoughts and experiences. They describe our inner world in the same way that our senses describe our external world. The most common submodalities are visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.

The submodalities that accompany a belief are different to those associated with a non-belief. You can use this to change the way you perceive your beliefs when you think about them mentally. For example, if you have trouble imagining yourself enjoying healthy food, it is likely that you don’t believe it tastes good, and that belief might lead to health problems. Changing the way you create your mental pictures, sounds and feelings etc. can immediately change your beliefs.

When you create mental pictures the images have visual submodalities. Some examples include:

• colour – the hue and saturation
• location – the centre of your field, or to a side, top or bottom
• depth – two or three dimensional
• movement – motion or a stationary image
• clarity – clear or blurred
• size – large or small
• brightness – dark or light
• viewpoint – your own or an external perspective.

When you create or reconstruct sounds in your mind they have auditory submodalities. Some examples include:

• volume – loud or quiet
• tone – harsh or soft
• distance – near or far
• pitch – high or low
• clarity – clear or muffled
• speed – fast or slow
• location – the centre of your field, or to a side, top or bottom.

Kinesthetic submodalities include those associated with the senses of touch, balance and body awareness, as well as emotions. Some examples include:

• location – a feeling in a part of the body
• pressure – hard or soft
• temperature – hot or cold
• weight – heavy or light
• frequency – constant or intermittent.

In order to use your submodalities to help you change a belief, you need to discover the ones you use already and what they mean. Consider an extremely strong belief. It does not have to be too difficult – you may believe that you own a pair of sneakers or that gravity will act if you step off a cliff. When you think about the belief, note whether you see something, hear something or feel something that makes you feel so secure about it. Try to list as many submodalities as you can when you think about the belief. Do the same for an idea that you have no belief in – it may be as absurd as you like. Are any of the submodalities that you use different between the two mental representations?

Once you know how you represent a definite belief as opposed to a non-belief you can use that information to change the way you think about things, and hence change your behaviours. If you think about an idea that you’re not too sure about now, but know it would benefit you if you strongly believed it, you can adjust the submodalities to match those experienced when you do believe strongly. Changing the submodalities is a powerful way to change a belief, but requires practice and vigilance before the new representations become a habit.

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