::Structure First::

While many people engage the world as though it's their environment that determines how they're experiencing the world, for the neurologically well-formed it's exactly the opposite.

A person's experience of the world is mediated and essentially determined by the structure of who they are. Structure in this case refers to the organization of your brain, muscles, organs and sensory systems (your 5 senses) among others.

Since most of us were raised with little awareness of the structure of how we hold ourselves (other than maybe keeping our backs straight - no slouching!) the way most people are organized to experience the world and their ability to shape and reshape that organization is lacking.

Becoming aware of your own unique structural well-formedness is the most important step you can take in beginning to operate in a well-formed and satisfied manner. You need to become sensitized to how you do you when you're at your best in order to know when you are when you are not doing it.

The key to learning how you're structured when you're at your best is in knowing how to track for structure in the first place. Though nothing beats personal training by a skilled NeuroLogic facilitator, below are a few things that you can begin to track for in yourself and others when you're at your best.

1. Eye Accessing. Though this may be one of the most difficult elements to track in yourself it's a powerful asset in tracking other people's experience. Eye accessing cues give you information about what sensory system or systems a person is using to create their experience of the world. Are they thinking with pictures or words or feelings primarily? Do they have a feeling and then talk to themselves about it or do they make pictures of the world around them and compare it to the pictures they have in their head of how things should be. Eye accessing will also give you information on what I'll call the quantum access points of the state a person is in. People are reliable in that they do things in patterned ways. They will do depression or happiness or satisfaction in a similar way each time they do it. This begins when they access the state which always has a corresponding eye movement. Watch the eye movement and you'll have information about how they do the state.
2. Gestures. Be aware of the gestures a person makes. Like eye accessing, gestures offer insight into how a person accesses a state using patterned movements.
3. Posture. If you try on another person's posture you will begin to get a sense of how they experience the world. Almost everyone has chronic muscle tension somewhere in their body and everyone has patterns in the way they move. Those patterns drive their experience of the world. As you try on other people's patterns you will also get a sense of your own patterns which will free you up to try on new things.
4. Breathing. Pay attention to how you breathe when you're at your best. Notice it when you're not there and relax back to your natural breathing.
5. Internal Dialogue. How you speak internally is an important aspect of your experience of the world. Where your internal dialogue is, how it sounds, its volume, pitch, intensity, speed, etc. all drive your experience of the world. Do you speak in your own natural speaking voice or do you use the voice of your mother or father or Jaba the Hutt? Perhaps when you're at your best you speak to yourself with profound silence.
6. Vision. Your visual attention is important in processing the world around you. Whether you're making pictures in your head or have your visual attention totally on the outside, whether your vision is focused or soft (allowing in lots of peripheral information) will affect the musculature around your eyes and will influence your experience of the world around you.

These are just some of the basics for tracking structure. If they seem like strange things to be aware of, don't worry, almost no one was taught to do this so it takes some time and practice to get used to. Also, its much easier to learn by experiencing another person operating this kind of awareness than it is to read about it and try it on which is a much clunkier way to do it. These are all very natural functions once you've gotten yourself habituated to track for them. The benefit in actually putting the time and effort in is that,

1. You can track when you are and are not in your natural ready state.
2. As you learn to track all of these things simultaneously it becomes like driving a car. Although at first its seems like there are a million things to keep track of, gas, easy on the brakes, music, stay in the lines, off the shoulder, 'what are you talking about mom?”, etc…once you've done it for a while it goes on automatic pilot. As it does, you'll be in a much different state of awareness than before you knew how to track these things. You will in fact be aware of so much more that on reflection, you'll be amazed that there was so much information available that you weren't attending to. As you become aware of this available information, your experience of time will actually begin to slow down and your immersion in the aesthetic sensuality of life will deepen.
3. The primary content of any communication is state so being able to track the state you're in as well as the other people you're communicating with will give you the most information about what's happening around you.
4. Awareness of this kind allows much more intimate and powerful communication between people. It opens the channels of communication so that you can have more artistic and more interesting conversations.
5. These are fundamentals in the evolution of human communication.