TIMELINE PATTERN

Timelines emerged in NLP in the early 1980s. Timeline emerged through different sources.
• Leslie Cameron Bandler while researching NLP metaprograms made the distinction in
people who are “through time” and others who are “in time”.
• Jonh Grinder and Robert Dilts (through separate and independent research) developed
the idea of a spatial timeline, where people walked backwards into representations from the past
and forwards into representations of the future. The spatial timeline is a powerful metaphor for
linear (temporal) association of memories. The spatial timeline forms the basis of powerful NLP
interventions designed to resolve limiting beliefs and situations with heavy emotional content,
which are past memory driven.
• Richard Bandler began working with the concept of visually oriented timeline where the
client visualises the past in one direction from their body and the future in another direction.
The client then visualises themselves floating above the timeline into the past creating V/K
dissociation from events to resolve the issues. The client also floats out into the future, to future
pace change.
• Tad James together with Wyatt Woodsmall further developed the work with visual
timelines and created a set of patterns called timeline therapy.
Time in our perception of time is a powerful filter at both F1 and F2. The F1 neurological
transforms can speed up or slow down events at FA. F2 transforms, overtime, regularly update,
transform and twist past orientated representations.
STRUCTURE:
1. Elicitation of timeline one
1. Discover how your client organises their submodalities of time.
2. Elicited an involuntary unconscious signal.
3. As you elicit a timeline, calibrate the client’s nonverbal behaviour.
2. Set the frame.
1. Timeline = a mental construct, most people tend to organise time in a linear
format with their past in one direction and future in another.
2. “Did you know your unconscious mind represents time spatially in relation to our
body? In a moment, I'm going to ask you which direction your past is, and you will
probably point to where is your past. Then I will ask you which direction is your future,
and you will point to where is your future.” Calibrate nonverbal behaviour.
3. Elicitation
1. PAST: “As you think of your past, and all the unconscious memories that let you
know who you are, and your conscious memories of times gone by, old jobs, friends,
places you used to live and more recent memories as well, which direction is all of that?
If I were asking you where your past is, where would you now point?”
2. FUTURE: “If you think of your future and all the unconscious representations of
things yet to happen and your conscious representations of things you know will happen,
which direction is all of that. If I were asking you where your future is, where would you
now point?”
3. PRESENT: “And the present, where is the present?”
Note: pay attention to the client's analogue behaviour. Make sure you keep your body still,
so you do not overly influence your client's responses.
4. Ask the client to mentally explore the relationship between the past, present and
future and if it connects as some kind of line. Explain to the client this is the timeline.
An experience of different moments in time:
• Dissociate from TimeLine:
• Float high up, visualising your timeline reducing to a small size below.
• Significant Memory:
• Float back above TimeLine.
• Associate into the memory.
• Float down into memory; experience it as if you are there.
• Repeat for another significant memory, associating into it.
 • Continue with the above until the client has visited at least four memories,
spanned out over their life i.e., early 30s, early 20s, mid-teens, and about age 10, 11 or
12.
• Calibrate how the client responds and associates.
• Future Memory:
• 1 Month, 3 Months, 6 Months, 1 year and further...
• Float above and then step into that future event.
• Experience those events through your senses.
• Calibrate how the client associates to the future.

• Purpose of the induction above is to give the client an experience of floating along the
timeline and associating and associating to different representations.

Releasing position
• Before doing the timeline intervention, set up a release anchor.
• Peripheral vision: ask the client to focus on a spot on the wall, high up where the wall
meets the ceiling, and while focusing on a spot, expand their vision so they are aware of the area
a meter either side of the spot. Induce full peripheral vision.
• Physiology: loosen shoulders, relax jaw.
• Breathing: breathing include nose and not through mouth. 1:1:2 ratio. The client will
now be in a parasympathetic state - the opposite fight or flight.
• Ask the client to take a deep breath in, hold and push breath out saying ‘release’
something similar. (the client can pick his own word for release)
• Break state
• Test: ask the client to recall a memory with a negative association. As the client accesses
the VAK stimuli of the negative experience, suggest the client fire their release anchor.
This release anchor will be used during timeline intervention.
Discovering the unconscious Choice Point
Frame the session by saying that the events that will come up will be reconstructions of what
happened, and that whatever will come up is pure representation, and not the real event.
It is essential that the client moves on from content to form. Coach the client, using sensory based
descriptive language, to track for the qualities of the memory.
Choice Point is the source from which the internal representations, state and behaviours
were generated.
Elicit experience the client wants to work with. The client can work content free. The client
can pick generic emotions such as anger, fear etc, generic beliefs or specific behaviours.

Elicit kinaesthetic submodalities of the experience that the client wants to work with. Shape,
size, wait, texture, temperature or any of the kinaesthetic submodalities. Overlap with visual by
asking if the feeling has a colour.

Ask the client to backtrack on the timeline to the Choice Point of X. At the source, the client
might notice an amplification of the sensations.
Test “source” by asking unconscious to signal through amplification of sensations that this is
the choice point. Or you can
The client moves slowly back in time. If the sensation disappears, it is possible the client is
at the choice point.
 Associated release format

This format has the client associate directly to a past event. Use with caution if working with
a trauma or phobia.
You may want the client to go to position a 1st and then you as the practitioner calibrate the client's
state.

1. Elicit the issue your client wants to work with. Elicit kinaesthetic submodalities of
experience.
2. Use the kinaesthetic submodalities as a means of calibrating unconscious metaphor of
the choice point.
1. “Just float all the way back in time, allowing those sensations to be a guide in
finding the very moment in time when first experienced them. And as you float back, let
your unconscious mind signal you by amplifying these sensations, when you are at the
choice point of X?”
3. Have the client describe kinaesthetic submodalities
1. Confirm that the representation is the source through amplification, unconscious
signal or reduction prior to the event
2. Go to position A (above the TimeLine). Elicit intention – for yourself and
other(s) involved - and gather learnings.
“Now, allow yourself to float above all that... so much so that you have a clear and clean
representation of whatever happened down there. When you are in that place, above what
happened, ask your unconscious to reveal to you the intention for X below.”
“What was the intention in taking that choice? What was the purpose in choosing what you
did?”
“When you think of the ongoing effects/ consequences, has the intention been preserved
through the timeline? Look at your whole TimeLine and the effects of the issue. What do
you need to have learned from this event, so you can now let go of it once and for all?”
4. Go before the event, B1
1. “Go back down into the Choice Point and then step back 20 minutes before the
event. What are you experiencing now?”
5. Access resources in position B
1. Ask the client what resources they need in moving on from the decision. Have
the client move to above and before the event. Ask what resources the person/people
need on the timeline below.
2. “Now as you see the younger you, what do you need to tell him/her about the
choice/decisions back then in the light of what you now know. Tell him/her everything
he/ she needs to move on as you know best what needs to be said.”
3. “Imagine an infinite source of X&Y, filling up your body here. Let X and Y
ripple through your body and flow out of you into the younger you in the timeline.”
6. Releasing state
1. “Now get a sense that you can become the molecules of resource, so you are the -
name of resource - in all positions on the timeline, PAST, PRESENT and FUTURE.
Take a breath in and as you breathe out say internally the word release.”
7. Test in the event
1. “Go into the event and notice how the experience changed. Notice what new
choices are now available.”
2. Check the submodalities have changed.
8. Bring resources forward.
1. “Now, come back along the timeline, bringing the accumulated resources
forward. Release all the connected issues and let go of all attached unwanted emotions
on the events all the way back to now. Let your unconscious assume all the positions,
preserve the learnings, and let go of the emotion(s) way back to now. Float down into
now, come back into the room.”
2. Break State
9. Test present issue
1. “As you think of times in the present where you experience XYZ what do you
notice now?”
10. Future Pace
1. “Go out to the future to an unspecified time where you would have felt XYZ.”