NLP Stalking Technique

To reprogram patterns of unconscious automatic behavior, John Grinder and Carmen Bostic introduced the “Stalking” technique (meaning “tracking” or “observing”) at a New Code NLP seminar in Moscow in 2004. The name of the technique accurately reflects its essence, and despite its simplicity, it has proven to be highly effective. One of its most notable effects is that new options for action (alternative behaviors) become apparent right during the process. Most importantly, Stalking helps you become aware of every moment of the pattern you want to reprogram, giving you the ability to make a conscious choice in similar situations in the future, at any moment.

Stalking works especially well in communication scenarios where interactions can develop along different paths but often cross the line between common sense and emotion. If you have situations where you suddenly want to yell at someone, or someone wants to yell at you, try working through the situation using the Stalking technique—you’ll change the usual course of events.

How to Use the Stalking Technique

1. Choose a space that you’ll call your “safe place.” Enter this space and mentally outline its boundaries.
2. Leave the safe place and select a new space. In this new space, lay out the process you want to work on along a timeline. At the start of the timeline is the “trigger” point (the very beginning of the process or what comes just before it), and at the end is the “exit” point (when the process ends and something else begins).
3. If the process is long, you can also mark key points that separate different stages, so you can keep track of where you are at any moment.
4. Return to your safe place and fill yourself with a resourceful state, for example, by playing the Alphabet Game.
5. Now step onto the timeline, just before the trigger point, and fully associate yourself with the situation in all three perception systems (Visual, Auditory, and Kinesthetic). Begin to move forward very slowly through the events, paying attention to everything happening around you, noticing all the details, including your own reactions and thoughts as they arise.
6. If at any point you feel yourself losing your resourceful state, immediately jump out of the process and return to your safe place.
7. While in your safe place, restore your high-performance state. If needed, you can use the Square Breathing technique to release unwanted emotions.
8. Then return to the process space and step onto the timeline again, just before the trigger point. Associate yourself with the situation and move at your own pace through the part where you feel comfortable, then once again start moving very slowly, noticing everything happening both outside and inside you in all three perception systems.

Continue this way until you reach the exit point of the process, and then take one more step beyond it. If necessary, don’t hesitate to return to your safe place to regain your resourceful state. Always enter the timeline just before the trigger point.

This technique may seem like a children’s game. But despite (or perhaps because of) its playful nature, the results can be amazing! Maybe it’s because we so rarely give ourselves the chance to move slowly enough to notice everything happening around us.